Stonewall (2015)

Just another summer night on Christopher Street.

(2015) True Life Drama (Roadside Attractions) Jeremy Irvine, Jonny Beauchamp, Ron Perlman, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Caleb Landry Jones, Matt Craven, Joey King, Karl Glusman, David Cubitt, Andrea Frankle, Atticus Dean Mitchell, Richard Jutras, Otoja Abit, Rohan Mead, Ben Sullivan, Johnny Falcone, Vladimir Alexis, Kwasi Songui, Alan C. Peterson, Veronika Vernadskaya. Directed by Roland Emmerich

For the LBGT community, the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that took place following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn (a bar that catered to gay men and lesbians in an era when it was illegal to serve liquor to a homosexual) are a watershed moment, an event around which prompted real organization of gay rights activists.

In the late 1960s, homosexuality was considered a mental illness and was treated with electroshock therapy among other barbaric treatments. Gays were forbidden from working for the government, couldn’t get bank loans and were the targets of vicious beatings – often from the police.

Danny (Irvine), a young gay man from Indiana who has been kicked out of the house by his homophobic father (Cubitt) who also happens to be the high school football coach, has gone to New York City where he has a scholarship to Columbia University – if he can get his high school diploma and get his paperwork sent to the University. Dear old dad has no intention of helping his son, but his cowed mother (Frankle) is sympathetic and his little sister Phoebe (King) absolutely adores him and is very angry at her parents for the way they’ve treated their son.

Danny, having little money and nowhere to go, falls in with a group of gay street kids led by Ramon (Beauchamp), a hustler who turns tricks with middle class men who are firmly closeted, have wives and careers and occasionally beat the snot out of him. Ramon takes him in and fellow street kids Silent Paul (Sullivan), a Beatlephile, Orphan Annie (Jones) and Cong (Alexis) who is the most flamboyant of the bunch. He also attracts the eye of Trevor (Meyers), an activist who works for the early gay rights group the Mattachine Society. They believe in peaceful protest and non-violence while most of the street kids know that they will never get the attention of the straight society that way.

Most of them gather at the Stonewall Inn, a bar that is owned by the Mafia and managed by Ed Murphy (Perlman) who disdains the gay clientele but allows them to do pretty much what they want (the Mafia used the bar to blackmail wealthier gay clientele and made more money that way than from liquor but that’s not discussed in the film). Danny is a bit out of his element but soon grows to appreciate the more outgoing of his crew but there is tension between Ramon, who has fallen deeply in love with Danny, and Trevor to whom Danny is more attracted to.

Danny’s heart, however, belongs to Matt (Mitchell), the football player whom Danny was having furtive gay sex with and who threw Danny under the bus when they were discovered, prompting his ejection from school and home. Danny endures beatings from the cops and growing tensions between the now very jealous Ramon and Trevor, who may or may not be using Danny for his own devices, but those tensions are nothing compared to what was going on in the community and they would come to a head on a hot summer night in June 1969 when Detective Seymour Pine (Craven) made an ill-advised raid on the Stonewall.

Few people in the heterosexual community are all that aware of the Riots and their significance and the movie is the perfect opportunity to educate and inform. Unfortunately Emmerich, who is mostly known for his big sci-fi epics like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow decided to make a fictional account, using fictional characters mixed in with a few real ones like Pine and Marsha P. Johnson (Abit). Considering that there are plenty of those who were actual participants and observers who had some compelling stories to tell about the riots, it seems a bit of a waste.

&I had wondered why Emmerich didn’t use actual footage from the riots instead of recreated footage disguised as newsreels until I discovered that no footage exists of the riots and precious few photographs. I guess it’s hard for people of this modern society in which everything is documented to understand that news was covered by newspaper writers and photographers for the most part and to a lesser extent, television cameras and it was editors for newspapers and TV who determined what got covered and back then, a riot of gay people would tend to be given less attention (although it was front page news).

Beauchamp does a great job as Ramon/Ramona who wears his heart on his sleeve. There’s a heartbreaking moment after a client has badly beaten him where he confesses to Danny that this life is all he can hope for and that he expects that there will never be anything better for him. It’s a compelling performance and Beauchamp has a good shot at some better roles.

There is a lot of sexuality in this movie – a LOT – and the sex scenes are handled pretty much the same way you would see heterosexual sex scenes in a mainstream movie; kudos to Emmerich for treating the two equally. Of course, conservative Christians will likely lose their shit over it much as they did for Brokeback Mountain but that’s assuming that the movie makes any sort of cultural headway, which is not necessarily going to happen.

Considering that this is a movie about such a significant event in the gay community, the filmmakers including writer Jon Robin Baitz, a respected playwright, seem to promote gay stereotypes almost to absurd heights. Yes, there were plenty of drag queens back then and there were those who were lisping, mincing fairies who gave birth to the stereotype, but we get little sense of who these people are other than those stereotypes. Also, using the very uptight, whitebread Danny as more or less your audience surrogate is almost insulting and watching him go from zero to radical in the space of about 30 seconds is downright jarring and outright unbelievable. If you’re going to pander to stereotypes, may as well go all the way with it.

I’m really overrating this movie to a large degree because I think that the story is an important one. There is certainly a great movie to be made about the Riots but this isn’t it. It’s a squandered opportunity but I’m still recommending it because at least you get the sense of how oppressed the gay community was back then and how far they have come since. That much is worth the price of admission alone.

REASONS TO GO: A story that needs to be told. Some good performances, particularly from Beauchamp. Sex scenes handled with sensitivity.
REASONS TO STAY: Going fictional was a tactical error. Plays up gay stereotypes.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s a lot of sex and sexual content, some drug use, plenty of foul language and some violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:  The riots took place on June 28, 1969 and lasted several nights instead of just the one indicated by the film.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/25/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 9% positive reviews. Metacritic: 32/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Selma
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Black Mass

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New Releases for the Week of September 25, 2015

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2

(Columbia) Starring the voices of Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Mel Brooks. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky

The Hotel Transylvania, once a refuge where monsters got away from it all, has now opened its doors to humans. After all, proprietor Dracula has a human son-in-law, right? And he also has a half-human half-vampire grandson, and therein lies the problem. His beloved daughter Mavis is becoming infatuated with the human world and is proposing to live in it and her son has shown absolutely no vampire traits whatsoever. Drac reasons that if her son is a vampire, Mavis might stay so that he can learn what it means to be a vampire. As every attempt to make his powers develop fails, Dracula will have to resort to the one thing he didn’t want to have to do in a desperate attempt to keep his daughter close at hand – seek the help of his father, Vlad who is none too happy about the invasion of humans into the world of monsters.

See the trailer and a promo here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard  (Opens Thursday)
Genre: Animated Feature
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for some scary images, action and rude humor)

The Green Inferno

(Blumhouse Tilt) Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton. A group of student activists travel from New York City to the Amazon, hell-bent on saving the rainforest. In the eternal tradition of “no good deed goes unpunished” they soon discover that they are not alone and that presence in the rainforest is hungry. From master horror director Eli Roth.

See the trailer, a featurette and a promo here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (Opens Thursday)
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R  (for aberrant violence and torture, grisly disturbing images, brief graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use)

The Intern

(Warner Brothers) Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Anders Holm. A 70-year-old widower finds that he just isn’t suited for retirement; he decides to get back into the workforce by getting a senior internship at a fashion company. The company’s founder and CEO is at first skeptical of what her new intern brings to the table before discovering that he is a far greater resource than she ever thought possible.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (Opens Thursday)
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some suggestive content and brief strong language)

Pawn Sacrifice

(Bleecker Street) Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard, Lily Rabe. At one time, Bobby Fisher was a household name in the western world. He was America’s chess prodigy, perhaps the only one who was realistically able to compete against the Russians who dominated the game back in the day. However, Fisher had a whole bus full of demons haunting his every move and the higher the pressure was, the more bizarre his behavior became. Fisher walked a tightwire between genius and madness and would eventually fall off, turning from prodigy to legend.

See the trailer, interviews, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Downtown Disney, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for brief strong language, some sexual content and historical smoking)

Stonewall

(Roadside Attractions) Jeremy Irvine, Jonny Beauchamp, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ron Perlman. I will probably use this in the review (to be published tomorrow) but the Stonewall Riots of 1969 for the LGBT community has a very similar emotional resonance as Selma does for the African-American community. This is a fictionalized version of events with a young naive gay man coming to Christopher Street in New York City, then the center of gay activity basically in the country. He observes directly the violence directed at gays by the police, the institutional repression of gays and the marginalization. Joining a crew of street kids, he searches for his own identity while rejecting the labels put on him by the rest of the world. In the meantime, caught between two different worlds, his frustration and resentment grows until it boils over on one fateful night. An unusual turn of styles for director Roland Emmerich, who is better known for big budget sci-fi extravaganzas.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: True Life Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for sexual content, language throughout, some violence and drug use)

Turbo Kid

(Epic) Munro Chambers, Lawrence Leboeuf, Michael Ironside, Edwin Wright. In an alternative future where the world ended in 1997, the Kid, a comic book-obsessed scavenger trying to survive in the Wasteland, meets up with a beautiful but mysterious young girl. They try to lay low but eventually run afoul of the sadistic self-proclaimed ruler of the Wasteland. Now The Kid will have to become the hero he’s always dreamed of, armed only with an ancient weapon and blind faith. Could be a cult classic one day.

See the trailer and an interview here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (playing midnight on Friday and Saturday nights only)
Genre: Retro Apocalyptic Sci-Fi
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: NR

Albert Nobbs

Glenn Close shows off her dapper side.

(2011) Drama (Roadside Attractions) Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Johnson, Brendan Gleeson, Janet McTeer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Pauline Collins, Brenda Fricker, James Greene, Antonia Campbell Hughes, Phyllida Law, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Bronagh Gallagher, Rhys Burke, Laura Kinsella, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Mark Williams, Kenneth Collard, Judy Donovan. Directed by Rodrigo Garcia

It is never easy being a woman (or so I surmise) but it was much harder in the 19th century than it is now. Opportunities for women back then were essentially limited to the husbands they could catch; if you happened to live in Ireland those opportunities were fewer still.

Albert Nobbs (Close) works as a waiter at a Dublin hotel just before the turn of the 20th century. Quietly efficient, he is appreciated for his efficiency, his unobtrusive service and of course his discretion. Even the hotel’s hypocritical owner, Mrs. Baker (Collins) feels kindly disposed towards him.

Albert hides a secret; beneath the starched high collar no Adam’s apple can be found; beneath the starched white shirt are a pair of womanly breasts rightly bound; beneath his perfectly pressed trousers no male member resides. He is a woman masquerading as a man, and successfully. Albert lives in quiet solitude in his small mean room in the employee quarters of the hotel. Beneath a board he hoards all the tips he’s received over a 15 year career. He is very close to his goal of 600 pounds; enough to buy a tobacconist’s shop where he’ll find the true independence he’s been longing for and when he makes enough money, selling the business and retiring to a seaside community.

His life is well-ordered and impeccably run; he knows what each guest needs before his guest knows it is needed. Albert rarely smiles because that would be out of place. That’s not to say that he has no friends although acquaintances would be the better word; the boisterous Dr. Holloran (Gleeson) and the tart-y chambermaid Helen (Wasikowska) socialize with him but don’t really know him. Nobody really does and Albert prefers it that way. Easier to keep his secret.

The hotel is a bit of faded glory and needs some sprucing up. The penurious Mrs. Baker realizes that in order to keep her customers she’ll need to do some maintenance and she hires Mr. Hubert Page (McTeer) to paint the hotel. It will be a fairly long job and so Mr. Page is made to bunk with Mr. Nobbs which doesn’t make Albert very happy. To his shock however, he discovers that he and Mr. Page have something in common – their gender.

Hubert has even gone so far as to marry Catherine (Gallagher), a truly winsome woman who not only knows Hubert’s secret but approves. Catherine is a dressmaker who keeps the two of them afloat when Hubert’s work dries up (in a manner of speaking). They make a fine team.

After Hubert’s job is completed, a new handyman is hired, Joe Mackin (Johnson). There’s not much good to say about Joe; he’s a drunk who can get violent when in his cups, he’s abusive particularly towards women and while devilishly handsome he isn’t particularly a go-getter. Of course Helen falls for him immediately.

Shortly after that a typhoid epidemic sweeps through Dublin, drying up business for the hotel and necessitating some changes. Hubert’s situation has convinced Albert that a good woman will be needed to help run his shop and he decides Helen would be perfect for that position. Not knowing that she is with someone, Albert tries courting her in a stiff and fumbling way. Joe finds out about it and encourages Helen to lead him on so that he might supply her with expensive gifts that he can sell and book passage for them both to America. The naive Albert doesn’t realize what’s going on. In such conditions, can he find his dream and even if he does, is that a sure way to happiness?

The undercurrents here are of sexual politics. The story began life as a novella by Irish author George Moore called The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs which may be found in his collection Celibate Lives if you’re interested in reading it. I get the sense that Nobbs makes a better man than most men which could well be a droll commentary on the state of manhood by Moore although I couldn’t swear to that explanation. I find it kind of comforting to think so however.

Close, who has championed this film for more than a decade, is one of the few actresses who can pull off the role without making a burlesque of it. She has the lower register vocally to make the illusion seem real and so complete is it that during a scene when she and McTeer dress up as women for a stroll along the beach, you almost could believe that they are a couple of men in drag, so awkward are they in the clothing of their own gender.

McTeer, who like Close was nominated for an Oscar in 2012 (making it the first time in Oscar history that two women pretending to be men were nominated for the same film), also makes the illusion seem real and while less time is spent on Hubert than on Albert, McTeer makes the role memorable and the relationships between Hubert and Catherine as well as Hubert and Albert believable.

There has been grumbling from some quarters that the film is a snide rip on the sexual politics of lesbians but I can only conclude that those making such claims haven’t seen the film. Neither Hubert nor Albert (whose real name we never discover) are sexually attracted to women and despite Albert’s pursuit Helen for matrimony, it’s more of a business arrangement for him. In fact, the whole masquerading as men thing is much more of an economic necessity for both of them rather than a conscious lifestyle choice. They’re just doing what they need to in order to survive.

While the pacing is a bit slow and the stiff dialogue and demeanor of the period may be excruciating for the impatient Generation Right Freaking Now, it’s still a movie well worth seeking out.

WHY RENT THIS: Oscar-worthy performance by Close. Wasikowska is lustrous.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: A little bit stilted and slow.

FAMILY VALUES: Some sexuality, brief nudity and some bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Close originated the role in a stage play based on the Moore novella. She won an Obie for her stage portrayal and lobbied for more than a decade to make a film out of it, which she eventually co-produced, co-wrote and received an Oscar nomination for her starring role.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: While commentary tracks are generally de rigueur on most major home video releases, the one here by Close and Garcia is extraordinary, with Close going into enough detail into the source material and how it differs from the film, casting and character backgrounds and into great detail in the making of the film. It’s one of the best I’ve heard yet.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $5.6M on a $7.5M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: I Served the King of England

FINAL RATING: 7.5/10

NEXT: Million Dollar Arm

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

Stop! In the name of love…

(2013) Supernatural Fantasy (Screen Gems) Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower, Kevin Zegers, Robert Sheehan, Lena Headey, Kevin Durand, Aidan Turner, Jemima West, Godfrey Gao, CCH Pounder, Jared Harris, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Harry van Gorkum, Stephen R. Hart, Chad Connell, Chris Ratz, Elyas M’Barek, Melantha Blackthorne, Lucy DeLaat. Directed by Harold Zwart

Even William Shakespeare knew enough to write “tis nothing new under the sun” and nearly 500 years later that’s even more true. We’ve seen it all and there is little out there that is going to be completely original. Of late there have been a spate of young adult fantasy books that have gone for film franchise-dom a la Harry Potter and Twilight with varying degrees of failure – most don’t get past the first installment. Is this another would-be phenomenon destined to crash and burn?

Clary (Collins) is a fairly normal Brooklyn teenager who has just had her 18th birthday (at least I think so – she’s apparently old enough to go to bars and drink) who has had enough of her overprotective mother Jocelyn (Headey). She’s not really seeing anybody, although her bookish buddy Simon (Sheehan) wouldn’t mind changing that which Clary is wholly oblivious to.

However Jocelyn has good reason to want Clary home early – she’s part of a half-human, half-angel group of warriors called the Shadowhunters, who battle demons in the ongoing war of good against evil. When Clary witnesses (apparently) a brutal murder in a nightclub, she’s pretty shaken up but more so when she comes home to find her apartment trashed and her mother missing. Oh, and there’s a demonic dog waiting to play fetch with her intestines.

She’s saved by a Shadowhunter named Jace (Bower), a blonde even prettier than Clary who’s a bit of a badass in his metal band leather pants and bad boy with a heart of gold attitude, certainly enough to have teenage girls hearts melt in ways that Buffy’s Angel and Twilight’s Edward could only dream of. He takes her to the Institute, home base for the few remaining Shadowhunters where they and housebound Hodge (Harris) discuss ancient runes and compare Goth tattoos.

Apparently Clary is being stalked by Valentine (Meyers), a renegade Shadowhunter who only wants to rule the world (doesn’t everybody?) and his thugs as well as vampires (bad) and werewolves (good). They discover that Valentine is after an artifact called the Mortal Cup, one of several powerful artifacts that Hodge is aware of. Clary and her friends will seek the help of a somewhat agoraphobic witch (Pounder) and a mackin’ wizard (Gao) but the only salvation for Clary and her mother will lie inside Clary. But when Clary finds out the truth about who she is, which side will she choose?

The source young adult novel by author Cassandra Clare was over 500 pages in length. There are a couple of ways to go about adapting it – one, cut extraneous plot points out and condense the novel into a 120 page script, or cram as much as you can in there. The filmmakers went the latter route and unfortunately that leads to the serious drawback of an often confusing and conflicting plot. While those who love the series (and there are 22 million copies of the book sold worldwide) will be happy that they didn’t skimp (although the book is far more detailed on the background of the Shadowhunters), those that are less familiar with the books may feel like they’re treading water.

We might be able to tolerate the overabundance of plot if it weren’t so darn familiar. Those who wait for the home video edition of the movie can have themselves a nifty little drinking game if they try to spot all the plot elements borrowed from other movies – I stopped keeping track after I saw things from Twilight, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Priest. Someone can get themselves smashed real good playing that game.

The mostly young cast are exceptionally attractive (even the semi-nerdy Simon is quite the hunk) so that will appeal to the teen audience to whom such aesthetics are important. In terms of their skills as actors, let’s just say they’re an attractive cast and leave it at that. Collins in particular doesn’t seem to have done much more than reprise her work from Mirror, Mirror.

While the movie looks good and the CGI isn’t bad, the movie’s final confrontation suffers from an excess of histrionics. I do think they were going for an epic scale on this one but really fell short of the mark. I also think that they are really trying to play to the Twilight crowd with a plucky heroine with hidden powers who has two gorgeous guys vying to be her protector and both deeply in love with her yet she merely bestows semi-chaste kisses on one and not even that on the other. Screen Gems confidently green-lit the sequel even before City of Bones opened but the anemic box office and terrible critical reception may cause them to reconsider. Unfortunately, this is just another in a long line of young adult fantasy adaptations that fails to make it as a cinematic franchise which begs the question – maybe if they tried doing some adult fantasy series (i.e. The Wheel of Time, The Codex Alera or Shannara) maybe they might attract a broader audience – but maybe people who read a lot of books don’t have time to go to the movies as much.

REASONS TO GO: Attractive cast. Decent effects.

REASONS TO STAY: Meandering plot. Overwrought climax. Borrows from other sources a bit too freely.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s violence of a fantasy nature, some fairly disturbing-looking demons and some sexually suggestive content.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Collins, who was an ardent fan of the book series, active campaigned for the role of Clary when she discovered that there was to be a film made of it.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/18/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 12% positive reviews. Metacritic: 33/100

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Seeker: The Dark is Rising

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: American Reunion

New Releases for the Week of August 23, 2013

THE WORLD’S END

(Focus) Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Luke Scott, Pierce Brosnan, Bill Nighy. Directed by Edgar Wright

A group of old friends, smarting from their failure in an epic pub crawl 20 years earlier agree to attempt it once again. What they don’t realize is that their venture has taken on cosmic proportions and that not only is their attempt to resolve past and present important to their own futures but holds in the balance the future of mankind as well. Suddenly everything hinges on reaching The World’s End….not literally, it’s a pub ye daft bugger.

See the trailer and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Science Fiction Comedy

Rating: R (for pervasive language including sexual references)

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

(Screen Gems) Lily Collins, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Lena Headey, Jamie Campbell Bower. A young girl’s mostly normal (if there is even such a thing) life is turned topsy turvy when she discovers that she is a Shadowhunter, a half-angelic warrior in an ongoing war with demons who are hidden from humans but not from Shadowhunters. When her mom disappears, she bands together with a group of young Shadowhunters to retrieve her, none of them realizing how important to the war she really is.

See the trailer, clips and promos here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Wednesday)

Genre: Supernatural Fantasy

Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of fantasy violence and action, and some suggestive content)

You’re Next

(Lionsgate) Barbara Crampton, Joe Swanberg, Ti West, Sharni Vinson. A family reunion is interrupted by the arrival of a group of homicidal, animal mask-wearing intruders. I know…seems to happen every year, doesn’t it? Well, this year is different – one of the guests of the family turns out to be just as homicidal and just a little bit more sadistic. There’s one in every family. The latest from up-and-coming horror master Adam Wingard.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for strong bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity)

New Releases for the Week of April 5, 2013

EVIL DEAD

(Tri-Star) Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jane Levy, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore, Jim McLarty, Rupert Degas (voice), Randal Wilson. Directed by Fede Alvarez

You’ve seen it before but you’ve never seen it like this. The 1981 cult hit gets a new coat of paint as a group of young people go to a remote cabin in the woods where they find (da-da-DAAAAAAAAH) the Book of the Dead. Even though they’re warned not to of course one of them reads aloud from it, unleashing demonic possession and all kinds of carnage. You’d think people would know by now…

See the trailer, clips and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for strong bloody violence and gore, some sexual content and language)

6 Souls

(Radius) Julianne Moore, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Jeffrey DeMunn, Frances Conroy. After the death of her husband, a psychiatrist has lost her faith in God, choosing to believe only in science. She is then introduced to a patient with multiple personalities who takes on the physical characteristics of each personality. As she discovers that each of those personalities is the soul of a murder victim living inside him, she discovers that what is happening may transcend science and have deadly consequences for her and those she loves.

See the trailer, clips and a link to download the full move on Amazon here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for violent content, disturbing images and terror)

Himmatwala

(UTV) Ajay Devgn, Tamanna Bhatia, Paresh Rawal, Zarina Wahab. A remake of a 1983 blockbuster in India, a shy schoolteacher inadvertently witnesses a local thug commit a crime, only to see him go free after his testimony. Ashamed and terrified, he leaves his village. His family then sets out to redeem his good name.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Jurassic Park 3D

(Universal) Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Jeff Goldblum. The question is, does post-converting this ’90s classic add anything to the experience that your imagination didn’t already put there? Thought not…

See the trailer, clips, a featurette and a link to download the full move on Amazon here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Adventure

Rating: PG-13 (for intense science fiction terror) 

The Playroom

(Freestyle Releasing) John Hawkes, Molly Parker, Olivia Harris, Jonathan Brooks. A teenager is forced to become a surrogate mother to her younger siblings during the 70s. She tells them fantastic stories to mask the realization that their parents’ drinking is raging way out of control.

See the trailer and a link to download the full movie on Amazon here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: NR 

Tattoo Nation

(D&E Entertainment) Danny Trejo, Don Ed Hardy, Freddy Negrete, Travis Barker. How did tattoos go from being something sailors got when drunk on shore leave in Singapore or something prisoners got to identify themselves as criminals to becoming “body art” and where 25% of all young adults under the age of 40 now have one? It’s actually a pretty good question…

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Documentary

Rating: NR

From Paris With Love

Mr. Clean gets just a little bit tougher on dirt.

(Lionsgate) John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kasia Smutniak, Richard Durden, Yin Bing, Amber Rose Revah, Eric Gordon, Francois Bredon, Chems Eddine Dahmani, Alexandra Boyd, Sami Darr, Michael Vander-Meiren. Directed by Pierre Morel

While the cold war came to an end, espionage didn’t. Spies are alive and well and some of them are living in Paris.

James Reese (Rhys Meyers) is a personal aide to the United States ambassador to France (Durden). He is smart, efficient, ambitious and charming. He’s the point man on nearly all of the ambassador’s projects, from a meeting with the French Defense Minister (Gordon) to an upcoming trade summit with African nations. Reese has a beautiful French girlfriend named Caroline (Smutniak) who loves him so much that she proposed to him. Bold, them French girls are.

James also works for a government espionage agency as a low-level functionary. Most of the tasks he’s been giving are fairly routine, like changing license plates on getaway vehicles and placing electronic monitoring devices in the French Defense Minister’s office. He yearns to be a field operative – a spy – doing his part to save the world but up to now he hasn’t gotten the chance. Still, in these tasks he shows efficiency and ingenuity; so much so that he is given a new task – to partner up with a veteran field operative, Charlie Wax (Travolta).

Wax is foul-mouthed, foul-tempered and operates by his own set of rules. He shoots first, asks questions later then shoots again. He doesn’t mind leaving a trail of damage in his wake the size of an F5 tornado swath. With his shaven head and goatee, he resembles a cross between Satan, Mr. Clean and ex-wrestlers Goldberg and Stone Cold Steve Austin and in temperament…well, whichever one of those has the foulest, vilest most evil temper.

He is there investigating a drug ring run by Palestinians. He tells James to take him to a Chinese restaurant, a dodgy one in a seedy part of Paris. He’s heard the egg foo yung (not even a true Chinese dish, as James is only too happy to inform Wax; it’s an entirely American invention) is superior here, but he’s heard wrong. The service isn’t bad though – in fact, it’s killer.

After letting one of the waiters live through the inevitable barrage of bullets, Charlie and James follow the surviving waiter through the back streets of urban Paris to a…an….well, it’s sort of a cross between a mannequin warehouse and a Chinese theater. At least, as far as I could tell; Might have been a skating rink there too for all I know.

He gets the address of someone farther up the food chain and the two, Wax and James – who is beginning to wonder if he’s really cut out for working with a cowboy like Wax – move their way up the ladder, leaving a pile of bodies as they go. However, Wax has told James a liiiiiiiittle white lie; it’s not drug dealers he’s after, but terrorists. And James, as it turns out, is unknowingly involved, right up to his pretentious moustache.

Director Morel last brought us Taken, a surprisingly effective taut thriller. He showed himself to be an effective action director there, and he is here as well. The car chases are well-staged and the fights for the most part, well-choreographed. There is enough of an adrenaline rush here to keep you going for the whole movie.

What doesn’t work quite as well is the story. A good spy story should have things coming at you from every direction, but there isn’t much of that here. There is a big twist to the plot but it isn’t anything you haven’t seen and can’t predict. Simple can be better in most cases, but in others simple doesn’t work quite as well.

What does work well is Travolta. Completely unrecognizable as Charlie Wax, Travolta takes the opportunity to go completely over-the-top. Alone of anyone in this movie he seems to be having a good time and he takes us along for the ride. If there’s a reason for a sequel to this movie, it’s to see what Charlie does next.

Rhys Meyers, of Showtime’s “The Tudors” has a role that isn’t nearly as fun and doesn’t have the potential, but he makes the humorless James at least palatable. Smutniak also does really well as Caroline; of all the characters she might have had the most depth, but unfortunately the writers chose not to really explore it so she winds up symbolizing the film as something of a wasted opportunity.

Still, as mindless entertainment goes this is top-notch. Travolta is at the top of his game and that alone is worth the price of admission. There are several sly references to Pulp Fiction which may not be the best idea – who wants to remind themselves of a better movie than the one they’re watching – but for my part I found those references to be a nice homage. The movie, in any case, is the cinematic equivalent of a Royale with Cheese; tasty but ultimately filled with empty calories.

REASONS TO GO: Travolta is obviously having a good time with his larger-than-life role and it elevates the movie. Morel is a strong action director.

REASONS TO STAY: The story isn’t particularly innovative and the big twist isn’t much of a surprise (ask Da Queen – I called it early on). The villains aren’t particularly intimidating.

FAMILY VALUES: The violence can be bloody and occasionally gruesome. The language is pretty rough and there is also some drug use depicted. Teens and older only.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The 1955 film To Paris With Love is said to have been the inspiration for the Ian Fleming James Bond novel To Russia With Love which was made into a film in 1963. None of the three films are related.

HOME OR THEATER: Ahhhh I gotta go big screen on this one. Not that it’s got grand vistas or big effects; it just feels like a popcorn movie to me.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: The Wolfman

New Releases for the Week of February 5, 2010

"I've shaved my head. I've grown this goatee. I'm even wearing this crappy t-shirt, but I draw the line at wearing wrestling tights!"

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE

(Lionsgate) John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kasia Smutniak, Richard Durden, Yin Bing, Amber Rose Revah, Eric Gordon, Francois Bredon. Directed by Pierre Morel

James Reese, a personal aide to the U.S. Ambassador to France has it pretty cushy. A great apartment in Paris, a beautiful French girlfriend, but what he really wants to be – is a spy. A low-level operative for the CIA, he yearns for the day when he can be a proper agent. Finally, it looks like he’s getting a real assignment, until he meets his partner; Charlie Wax. Wax is a shoot first, ask questions later then shoot again kind of guy, the sort of agent that gives new meaning to “loose cannon.” When Reese finds out that the same terrorist ring that they’re investigating has targeted him, his only hope is Charlie Wax.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Rating: R (for strong bloody violence throughout, drug content, pervasive language and brief sexuality)

Dear John

(Screen Gems) Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Henry Thomas, Richard Jenkins. A spring break on the beaches of South Carolina brings together a pretty college student and a young soldier home on leave. They fall madly in love but as soldiers must do, he goes to war and over the next seven years, they are separated by his increasingly more dangerous deployments, keeping touch with a series of heartfelt love letters, letters which will have serious consequences. From the revered Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom and author Nicholas Sparks, a machine at turning out Palmetto State-set tragic romances.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Rating: PG-13 (for some sensuality and violence)

The Children of Huang Shi

Radha Mitchell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers open the door to a new life.

(Sony Classics) Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Guang Li, Matt Walker, Ping Su, David Wenham. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode

War brings out the worst in us. Greed, bloodlust, cowardice, brutality, all of these things surface once the shooting starts. However, war also can bring out the best in us, and in the most unlikely of people.

George Hogg (Rhys Meyers) is a confirmed pacifist and a British reporter with a yen for adventure but not a ton of experience. He travels to China to report on the Japanese invasion there in 1938. China had been in the midst of a civil war between the communists and the nationalist regime, but all that was put aside when a common energy emerged.

Along with fellow reporters Andy Fisher (Walker) and Eddie Wei (Su), Hogg manages to finagle their way into a medical supply transportation mission from the Red Cross into the besieged city of Nanking (called Nanjing more properly in the film). There, he witnesses first hand the atrocities of the Japanese army against the Chinese citizenry and captures it on film before he himself is captured. The Japanese commander seems inclined to release his prisoner back to Britain until the contents of his camera are discovered. Hogg is then marched off to be executed, but is saved by communist intelligence agent Chen Hansheng (Fat). During their escape, he witnesses the execution of his colleagues and in his shock, gives away their position. He is wounded and Hansheng only just manages to get them away in the nick of time.

Hansheng leaves him in the care of American nurse Lee Pearson (Mitchell) who has become a de facto caregiver to the displaced refugees of Nanjing. His wounds are not fatal but severe enough that he can’t travel back to England and tell the world what is going on in China, as Hansheng wants him to do. Instead, she sends him to the tiny village of Huang Shi where there is an orphanage, forgotten in the panicked exodus before the Japanese military invasion. She leaves him there to look after the children, who have almost no food and less learning. He is charged to provide them with both.

At first Hogg is uncomfortable with his new position and the children are none too happy with the situation either. In fact, they lead him out and attempt to beat him to death with sticks until a timely return by Pearson who admonishes the kids that if they don’t leave him alone and let him take charge, she will never return leaving them without medicine and food. Reluctantly, the kids agree to the deal.

There is a great deal of mistrust on both sides but as they warm to each other, Hogg proves to be resourceful. He manages to get a rusty old generator working, providing the orphanage with light. He strikes a deal with black marketeer Mrs. Wang (Yeoh) to provide seeds so that the orphanage can grow their own food. In return, he gives her half the harvest to sell on the black market.

Their little community is thriving when the news comes that the nationalist army is coming through and intends to conscript all of the older male children to fight in their army against the Japanese and the communists (talk about ambitious). Hogg, realizing that he can no longer stay in their little sanctuary, determines to move the children to safety. He finds a place on the edge of the Gobi desert so obscure, so out of the way that it is almost a sure thing that nobody will bother them there. The trouble is that the site is 700 miles away and they have no transportation. They must get there on foot.

Director Spottiswoode, whose resume includes Tomorrow Never Dies and The 6^th Day, makes good use of the Chinese locations and even better use of Chinese cinematographer Xiaoding Zhao. Zhao, the man behind the camera for such Chinese epics as Curse of the Golden Flower, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles and House of Flying Daggers, is well able to capture the gorgeous vistas of the Gobi and the hills, forests and plains around Nanjing, but also the horrors of the war. The two make for a jarring counterpoint.

Rhys Meyers, so good as Henry VIII in the Showtime series “The Tudors,” is solid as Hogg. A man with the courage of his convictions but lacking the experience to know when he’s in over his head, he nonetheless changes from a plucky adventurer more consumed with making a mark on the world into a man of resourcefulness and responsibility who realizes that when you make a mark on a child, you’ve made a mark on the future just as indelibly as he wished to in his previous life. Mitchell is likewise solid as the hard-as-nails Pearson.

I was more taken with Fat and Yeoh. The two have a natural chemistry as you may remember from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and their all-too-brief time onscreen together here is memorable. They have very different roles; Fat as an agent who is James Bond on the outside but has deep convictions about his cause and a great deal of love for people. Yeoh is the opposite – somewhat cool and reserved on the outside but similarly soft on the inside. These are simply put two of the finest actors on the planet and it’s a shame they don’t get the props they deserve on this side of the Pacific.

The problem I have with this biopic, as I do with most biopics, is the unnecessary license the filmmakers take with history. One of the major historical characters in the film, for example, is shown dying heroically of wounds suffered in an aerial attack but history show that the character died instead of tetanus incurred when the character stubbed their toe playing basketball after which the toe became infected. Also, the orphans tend to be more stock characters than anything else; if they had been fleshed out more, it would have made for a more interesting dynamic.

Don’t get me wrong; this is a solid bit of filmmaking. Despite the license taken occasionally here, most of the events actually happened. George Hogg was a real guy and he did lead a group of orphans on a 700 mile journey. He also wrote a book about his experiences called “I See a New China” that is worth a read. His story translates well cinematically, although it doesn’t appear that the movie used his book extensively to fact check. Because of that, this isn’t a movie you need to see urgently, but it is still a movie worth seeing.

WHY RENT THIS: It’s a tremendous story from a historical event relatively unknown in the West. Gorgeous cinematography and outstanding performances from most of the cast make this a worthwhile endeavor.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: As is usual with Hollywood biopics, much historical misrepresentation, some of it fairly unnecessary.

FAMILY VALUES: Violence and brutality are everywhere in this representation of the Rape of Nanking; definitely not for more impressionable sorts.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The role of Lee Pearson is loosely based on Rewi Allen and Kathleen Hall, two nurses from New Zealand who were close to Hogg during this period.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: The Syrian Bride