New Releases for the Week of September 5, 2014

THE IDENTICAL

(Freestyle Releasing) Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Seth Green, Brian Geraghty, Joe Pantoliano, Blake Rayne, Amanda Crew, Erin Cottrell, Chris Mulkey. Directed by Dustin Marcellino

 

Identical twins born during the Depression are separated at birth for economic reasons. One stays with his birth parents in poverty and becomes a rock and roll legend; the other is given to an evangelical pastor and his wife who are unable to have kids. He lives a more stable upbringing but is torn between trying to please his adoptive father and following his own muse.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Musical

Rating: PG (for thematic material and smoking)

Alive Inside

(Projector) Dan Cohen, Oliver Sacks, Doug Thompson, Yvonne Russell. The founder of a non-profit organization that uses music to help patients with severe memory loss must fight against the medical establishment and a broken health care system to combat the affliction and restore the sense of self that is lost along with the memories.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Documentary

Rating: NR

Innocence

(JSC) Kelly Reilly, Sophie Curtis, Linus Roache, Graham Phillips. A young teenage girl whose mother’s death in a surfing accident haunts her moves to Manhattan with her novelist father and tries to start over at an exclusive prep school. However, her hopes for normalcy are shattered when she discovers that the women who run the academy may be witches who retain their youth and vitality by drinking the blood of virgins – and guess who’s been saving herself for marriage?

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: PG-13 (self-applied)

The Last of Robin Hood

(Goldwyn) Kevin Kline, Elle Fanning, Susan Sarandon, Max Casella. The great Errol Flynn in the twilight of his career has become enamored of a young actress named Beverly Aadland. Her fame-obsessed mother enables the affair but when it goes public, it puts the young girl in a spotlight of intense pressure and only fuels her mother’s obsession further.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Biographical Drama

Rating: R (for some sexuality and language)

Mary Kom

(Viacom 18) Priyanka Chopra, Darshaan Kumar, Sunil Thapa, Zachary Coffin. The true story of Kom, a female boxer in India whose dream was very nearly an impossible one. In a country where the perception of women doesn’t include strength and power, she took on the sports establishment to make her way into the boxing world – and defied the odds.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Sports Biography

Rating: NR

The Remaining

(Sony Worldwide) Johnny Pacar, Shaun Sipos, Bryan Dechart, Alexa Vega. Don’t you just hate it when you go to a wedding and the Rapture occurs instead? That’s what happens to a group of friends who discover that salvation and damnation ride on the decisions they make – but that they might not necessarily be so easy to determine which is which.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of terror, violence and destruction throughout, and thematic elements)

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Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Born to be wild.

(2014) Action (Dimension) Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Boothe, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Chung, Jessica Alba, Dennis Haysbert, Christopher Meloni, Jamie King, Bruce Willis, Alexa Vega, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Stacey Keach, Martin Csokas, Ray Liotta, Juno Temple, Jude Ciccolella, Julia Garner, Kimberly Cox. Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller

The world is a rough place and nowhere is it rougher than Sin City. A place where the corrupt wield absolute power with ruthless brutality, where tough guys hook up with even tougher dames, where anything can be had – for a price. That price might just be your soul.

Like the original Sin City, the story here is told in vignettes. In one, the ultra-lucky Johnny (Gordon-Levitt) finds a poker game which is run by Senator Roark (Boothe), the spider at the center of all the corruption of Sin City – and he doesn’t like to lose. It’s bad for business.

In the next, Dwight (Brolin), a former newspaper photographer turned private eye is looked up by his ex-girlfriend Ava (Green) who dumped him for a rich man (Csokas). He never could turn down a damsel in distress, and the brutish Manute (Haysbert) who watches Ava for her husband, isn’t about to let Dwight get in the way of the plan.

 

Nancy (Alba) still mourns the death of her love, Detective John Hartigan (Willis) who watches over Nancy from the other side. Nancy longs to take her revenge on Senator Roark who was responsible for Hartigan’s early exit, but she doesn’t have the nerve to pull the trigger. However, when Roark comes after her she knows that she has no choice but to take on the powerful senator. She can’t do it alone and so she enlists the aid of Marv (Rourke), the iron mountain of a man who protects her as best he can in a city that has no mercy.

It has been nine years since the first Sin City has been released and times as well as movie-going audiences have changed. However, the look of the sequel/prequel is pretty much the same as the first, shot in black and white with bursts of color – a headful of red hair, a bright blue coat, burning green eyes – with highly stylized backgrounds. I would imagine nearly the entire film was shot on green screen.

Still, if you like your noir hard-bitten with sexy dames more dangerous than the big guns of the guys, you’re in for a treat. The all-star cast all are down with the vision of Rodriguez and Miller, the latter of whom penned the graphic novels that the movie is based on; for the record, two of the vignettes are from the graphic novels, two were written by Miller especially for the movie.

 

Rourke, as Marv, is a force of nature. He’s grim, not too bright and damn near unstoppable, the kind of jamoke you’d want to have your back in a fight. Rourke gives him dignity and a love of violence in equal measures. He don’t remember things too good but he can be counted on when the chips are down.

Brolin takes over for Clive Owen who played Dwight in the first movie – his work on The Knick precluded his involvement here. Brolin is less suave than Owen but captures the inner demons of Dwight far more viscerally than Owen did. They do explain why Dwight’s face changed (and near the end Brolin is wearing prosthetics to look more like Owen) but they can’t explain away the English accent that Dwight affects in the first movie. Oops.

In fact, several roles have been recast. Michael Clarke Duncan passed away between films and Haysbert takes over the role of Manute nicely. Brittany Murphy, who also passed away between movies, had played Shellie in the first movie. Rather than recast her, Miller and Rodriguez instead wrote a new character to take over her part. Finally, Devon Aoki who played Miho in the first film was pregnant at the time of shooting, so Jamie Chung took over. Miho in either actress’ hands is one of my favorite roles in the series.

What is also missing from the first movie is attitude. There’s some of it here but the movie is a little more grim than the first, takes itself a little more seriously than the first one did. Whereas there is a ton of violence and gore here, it is missing the same kind of energy that the first film had. It feels more cynical and less fun.

There is enough going on here to make it worth your while and fans of Mickey Rourke are going to enjoy him cutting loose here as he does – he’s in nearly all of the vignettes. There are also some fun cameos, like Christopher Meloni as a besotted cop, Christopher Lloyd as a medico who doesn’t ask too many questions and Ray Liotta as an amoral husband having an affair who plans to end it the hard way.

I did enjoy parts of it enough to give it a very mild recommendation, but it simply doesn’t hold up next to the first film which was over the top, and balls to the wall. This one tries to be but ends up trying too hard.

REASONS TO GO: Still a visual treat. Some hard-bitten performances.

REASONS TO STAY: Lacks panache. Grimmer than the first.

FAMILY VALUES:  All sorts of violence, bloodshed and foul language as well as a surfeit of sexuality and nudity.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In the film Eva Green and Martin Csokas play a married couple. In real life, they had a romantic relationship for four years.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/1/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 45% positive reviews. Metacritic: 45/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Cold in July

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

NEXT: Carriers

Mother’s Day (2010)

Mother always knows best, especially when she’s packing heat.

(2010) Suspense (Anchor Bay) Jaimie King, Patrick Flueger, Rebecca De Mornay, Warren Kole, Deborah Ann Woll, Matt O’Leary, Briana Evigan, Frank Grillo, Lisa Marcos, Lyriq Bent, Tony Nappo, Kandyse McClure, Jessie Rusu, Shawn Ashmore, Vicki Rice, Alexa Vega, Jason Wishnowski, J. LaRose, Jennifer Hupe, A.J. Cook. Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

There are few bonds quite like the one between a mother and her sons. Especially when the mom is psychotic as all get out.

A group of bank robbing brothers (and sister) bungle a job and one, young Johnny (O’Leary) is shot in the stomach. They try to make it to their Mother’s house but are dismayed to find that she no longer lives there. The couple that bought the house – Beth (King) and Daniel (Grillo) apparently bought it at a foreclosure sale. It’s Daniel’s birthday and they have a bunch of friends over to celebrate – Treshawn (Bent) and his wife Gina (McClure), George (Ashmore) and his girlfriend Melissa (Rusu), Dave (Nappo) and his girlfriend Annette (Evigan) and Julie (Marcos), Beth’s best friend and a colleague of Daniel’s.

Trigger-happy Addley (Kole) and vicious Ike (Flueger) call their sister Lydia (Woll) who tells them that she and her mom now live in a trailer after the house was foreclosed on. Lydia brings Mother (De Mornay) over and they get George, a doctor, to try and help Johnny. Mother also discovers the interesting fact that the boys have been sending money to her old address – money that she hasn’t received.

From that point her demeanor changes from courteous and kind to vicious and cruel as she and her boys torture the hostages in order to find the money. The boys are going to need about ten grand to get to Canada and that kind of money just doesn’t grow on trees. As the night goes later and a tornado warning sounds, the hostages begin to bicker and fight amongst themselves and as Mother grows more impatient, the violence escalates.

This is a loose remake of a Charles Kaufman movie from the 80s about which Roger Ebert famously said “The question of why anyone of any age would possibly want to see this movie remains without an answer.” Like the remake, there was a certain mean-spirited attitude in the original (in which the hostages were all women). There are rape scenes in both movies (more graphic in the first) and redemption through violence in both.

The similarities end there however. This one has  much better acting than the first, which while a flop at its release has a kind of cult status among horror fans. This one didn’t exactly do blazing box office either which of course leads to the question why was it made at all.

De Mornay, a much-underrated actress who rarely gets the kind of parts she deserves but delivers each time she does, makes a fine villain. She’s never over-the-top with her character’s psychosis but instead keeps it low-key, making it all the more terrifying when she blows her cool. Most of the others in the movie do pretty well too.

The biggest problem was that once the set-up is complete it turn into a torture fest in which we are made to watch just how cruel these characters could be to each other, and while the original had just three victims involved, this one has eight and there really isn’t enough time for us to get to care about any of them. Most of the characters in this movie exist only to have bad things happen to them. The writers really should have cut out all but three or four of them and focused on them. The whole tornado subplot doesn’t work logically; they’d have been better off using a hurricane as a threat because that would have fit the story’s needs better.

Bousman, who has directed movies in the Saw franchise is  capable enough but here there are some continuity errors that frankly should never happen with a cast and crew of this quality. Quite frankly, while there might have been opportunity for an interesting movie about what it would take to force normal people into barbarity and how far a son would go for his mother, the filmmakers instead prefer to take the low road and just go for shock and gore. For me personally, I need a little bit more to keep my attention. There are, I’m sure, plenty of folk who are fine with just that – I’m just saying for myself it’s not enough.

WHY RENT THIS: De Mornay delivers.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Really never goes anywhere new. Distracting continuity errors.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a good deal of violence, much of it gory as well as some depictions of torture. There is also plenty of cursing and some very sexual content

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: During the filming of a scene in which the criminals had their guns out, police mistook the actors for participants in a bank robbery nearby and held the cast at gunpoint until the situation was cleared up.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $862,769 on an $11M production budget; after several delays and studio switches, the film got an excuse-me theatrical release and quietly (and quickly) went to home video.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Funny Games (2006)

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Grown Ups 2

Café

Jennifer Love Hewitt wonders why “Ghost Whisperer” got canceled.

(2011) Drama (Maya Entertainment) Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jamie Kennedy, Alexa Vega, Madeline Carroll, Daniel Eric Gold, Michaela McManus, Khan Baykal, Gavin Bellour, Derek Cecil, Adam Shapiro, Richard Short, Olivia Hoff, Katie Lowes, Hubbel Palmer, Clayton Prince. Directed by Marc Erlbaum

 

A coffee house, a neighborhood place to sit, hang out, surf the web and just talk over a cup of coffee with a friend. Every neighborhood worth its salt has one, whether it be a Starbucks or a local joint, unique to its environment. Some however are much more unique than others.

This particular café has a pair of baristas – Claire (Hewitt) and Todd (Gold). Todd has a thing for Claire, but she’s in a relationship with a brutal, abusive jerk (Bellour) and he’s what you might call a little bit on the mousy side. Just a little bit.

It also has a cast of regulars – a writer (Short) who has a secret connection to Todd. A drug dealer (Kennedy) who is beginning to get the idea that he needs a career change. A married man (Cecil) who attends the movies with a woman (McManus) whom he is desperately attracted to. A cop (Prince) who is looking for his cousin who is a junkie and also a regular at the café.

All of which is witnessed by a man (Palmer) on a laptop who gets a video message from a young girl named Kelly (Lowes) who claims that the café is a computer generated environment she created. The man is at first skeptical but when the programmer makes some things happen, he realizes it’s the truth. He realizes he is face to face with his world’s God.

This is a bit of an allegory, but it’s far from being preachy although there are certainly some Christian overtones. At least you aren’t hit over the head with it, as some faith-based films are prone to doing. No, this can be taken just as easily as a treatise on the nature of reality. Whether the creator is a computer programmer, an all-powerful entity or a series of random events, our existence is shaped by the knowledge – or ignorance – of that which created us.

I have to admit I didn’t expect much from this film, not hearing much of a buzz about it but I was pleasantly surprised. The movie has a great deal of heart and I found myself feeling very comfortable in the café, like one I was familiar with and hung out at all the time which I suspect was the goal of the filmmakers in the first place.

Hewitt is one of those actresses who sometimes doesn’t get the credit that she deserves because of her face and figure which are both spectacular. She’s also a gifted actress who sometimes doesn’t get parts that suit her but here she plays a little bit out of her comfort zone as a battered girlfriend and she does a stellar job.

In fact the entire cast does a pretty solid job. Some of the storylines work better than others (while I like the two characters from the movie infidelity storyline, was it really necessary to the plot?) as is usually the case in movies like this. However, the focus is Gold and Hewitt to a large degree (which is a bit strange given the whole Avatar-Programmer storyline which is the crux of the plot) and they carry it off nicely.

This is probably going to be a little hard to find but worth the effort. It’s a charming film that asks some pretty big questions, doesn’t lead you towards any set of answers and doesn’t seem to conform to any specific philosophy. I like pictures that have both brains and heart – we humans are possessed of both and films that cater to both of them are both rare and appreciated.

WHY RENT THIS: A nice ensemble piece. Had more heart than I anticipated.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Not all the storylines work as well as they might.

FAMILY VALUES: Some violence, some bad language, some drug use and some sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film was shot in a working café in West Philadelphia.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Diner

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: Molly

New Releases for the Week of February 11, 2011

Adam Sandler wonders where his career went.

JUST GO WITH IT

(Columbia) Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman, Nick Swardson, Brooklyn Decker, Bailee Madison, Griffin Gluck, Dave Matthews, Kevin Nealon, Rachel Dratch. Directed by Dennis Dugan

An aging lothario who was once jilted at the altar is able to romance women by convincing them he’s a good guy in an awful marriage by wearing a wedding ring. This all works out nicely for him until he finds a girl he wants to marry – and she finds his ring. In order to save the relationship, he convinces her that he’s getting divorced but she wants to meet his ex. Desperate, he turns to his best friend to play the part of his ex. Cue comedy.

See the trailer, promos, interviews and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: PG-13 (for frequent crude and sexual content, partial nudity, brief drug references and language)

 

The Eagle 

(Focus) Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong. A young Roman centurion is assigned to Briton, determined to discover the fate of his father who commanded the fable Ninth Legion which disappeared north of Hadrian’s Wall. Obsessed with restoring the family honor and retrieving the Eagle, symbol of the Legion, he ventures north to investigate rumors that it had been seen there, accompanied only by his slave, whose identity may tie in with the secret of his father’s fate.

See the trailer, featurettes and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard,

Genre: Swords and Sandals

Rating: PG-13 (for battle sequences and some disturbing images)

From Prada to Nada

(Lionsgate) Camilla Belle, Alexa Vega, Adriana Barraza, Wilmer Valderrama. Two spoiled Latina sisters find their world turned upside down when their father passes away suddenly, leaving them penniless. They are forced to trade their Beverly Hills mansion for a Boyle Heights home with their lively aunt. They will learn the meaning of family, the importance of their cultural heritage and how to live without Gucci.

See the trailer, clips and interviews here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Historical Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for brief drug use and a sexual situation)

Gnomeo and Juliet

(Touchstone) Starring the voices of James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith. A retelling of Shakespeare’s greatest romance (and arguably the greatest romance of all time) as done by garden gnomes. You’re welcome.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, featurettes, a promo and a music video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: G

The Illusionist

(Sony Classics) Starring the voices of Jean-Claude Donda, Elidh Rankin, Duncan MacNeil, Raymond Mearns. The newest animated film from the director of The Triplets of Belleville is based on an unproduced screenplay by the great French comedian Jacques Tati. It concerns a down on his luck stage magician in the 1950s who finds his profession being eroded by rock and roll. In a remote Scottish village, he encounters a young girl who will change his life forever.

See the trailer, clips and an online review here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: PG (for thematic elements and smoking)

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

(Paramount) Justin Bieber and – oh who are we kidding, does anybody really care who else? Bieber Fever is in full bloom and every girl under the age of 15 has it. Does anybody over the age of 15 really know any of his songs? Will his star still be on the rise by next year? Does anybody remember the Jonas Brothers?

See the trailer, featurettes and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Music/Concert

Rating: G