Wild World of Film

"TOWER HEIST": Eddie Murphy steals the show in the comeback of the year

2011-11-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

Murphy steals the show

With ‘Tower Heist,’ Eddie Murphy makes a comeback in the most enjoyable movie of the year

By Carl Kozlowski 11/03/2011

There are few actors in Hollywood history whose careers have been as utterly confounding as Eddie Murphy’s. Exploding onto the big screen from a three-year stint as one of the most wildly talented people ever to emerge from “Saturday Night Live,” Murphy made three major comedy classics right off the bat in “48 Hours,” “Trading Places” and “Beverly Hills Cop” before apparently deciding to take nearly any paycheck that came along.

In the nearly three decades since 1984’s original “Beverly Hills Cop,” Murphy has made three great movies — “Coming to America,” “The Nutty Professor” and “Dreamgirls” — in between flops and the occasional bland family film. There is almost no one who has disappointed his fans as much, yet Murphy had so much magic initially that fans have always held out hope that somehow he would get his mojo back.

Well, it looks like he’s finally found it.

In the new comedy caper “Tower Heist,” Murphy plays Slide, a comically streetwise, trash-talking thug who gets hired by an unlikely trio of cowardly losers to guide them through an elaborate robbery.

That trio — played by Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck and Michael Pena — are coworkers in America’s most extravagant residential tower, and they are out to get revenge on a Bernie Madoff-style investment guru Arthur Shaw, played by Alan Alda, who occupies the building’s penthouse and lost the building staff’s pension plan when his Ponzi scheme collapsed in ruins.

Teaming up with a building maid (Gabourney Sidibe of “Precious” fame) who has a surprising set of skills and a forlorn middle-aged resident (Matthew Broderick), who’s about to lose his apartment in foreclosure, the hapless half-dozen embark on an absolutely brilliant and thoroughly hilarious plan that takes a turn so wildly original that “Tower Heist” should become an instant classic.

To give away any aspect of the plot would be a crime in itself. The expertly written film comes from Jeff Nathanson (“Catch Me If You Can”) and Ted Griffin (“Ocean’s Eleven”), two of the best caper writers working.

Their script not only combines an ingenious crime, funny dialogue and well-rounded characters, but also hits a bull’s-eye for timeliness by tapping into the frustrations ordinary Americans feel against the Wall Street con artist. Shaw indisputably deserves to go down hard, his fall adding to the satisfaction of seeing a team of average Joes catching a very big break as Robin Hoods of our time.

What I can mention is that the cast goes even deeper, with Tea Leoni as the tough-talking yet sexy FBI agent who’s on the chase against both Josh and the heroic heist team, and Judd Hirsch as Stiller’s meddling boss. While Stiller plays his lovable loser persona to perfection, the movie is stolen by Broderick and Murphy in their best roles in years, with huge bonus points for the fact that Broderick spends his best scenes engaged in peril with a red Ferrari that’s a dead ringer for the beauty he drove in his greatest role ever as Ferris Bueller.

Director Brett Ratner (the “Rush Hour” trilogy, “X-Men 3”) often is derided as a lowest-common-denominator hack, but a movie like “Tower Heist” deserves to rebrand his reputation as a rare director who can keep the bouncy, fun spirit of 1980s films alive.

But it’s Murphy, however, who brings the film to its most vibrant life, as he mixes jive-talking menace in the first half with smooth-talking de-ception in the second in a role that taps into every one of his strengths.

Combined with the fact that he helped organize the whole film as one of its executive producers and is generating buzz for his upcoming stint as next February’s Oscars host, perhaps there’s hope that he might finally feel the hunger necessary to achieve greatness again and maintain it this time. At the bare minimum, “Tower Heist” is one hell of a first step to redemption.

STARS BRIGHTER THAN THEIR FILMS: "IN TIME" AND "MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE"

2011-11-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

Time to shine

Performances by Elizabeth Olsen and Justin Timberlake carry ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ and ‘In Time’

By Carl Kozlowski 10/27/2011

Sometimes people you’d least expect to be movie stars surprise you.

In the case of Elizabeth Olsen, for instance, it would be easy to scoff at Olsen as the coattail-riding little sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of “Full House” fame.

Justin Timberlake is another example of this. Rather than a leading man, people still probably associate Timberlake with the cheesy boy-band N’Sync.

But both Olsen and Timberlake have the skills for stardom, evidenced by their turns in the new films “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and “In Time,” respectively.

“Martha” was a Sundance sensation this year, and it’s easy to see why America’s most pretentious film festival would warm to this tale of ambiguous terror and paranoia. The film follows the story of a woman in her 20s named Martha who is adrift. In the opening moments, the film shows Martha escaping a cult in the backwoods of upstate New York.

That Manson Family-like community is headed by a creepily charismatic leader named Patrick (John Hawkes), who projects a fatherly vibe to wayward young men and women. But he quickly disorients members of his commune by renaming them. Thus, Martha became known as Marcy May before being drugged, raped and manipulated into becoming part of an ever-growing harem for Patrick and the other young men. “Marlene,” as it turns out, is the name that all women at the commune must use when they answer phone calls from outsiders.

Martha races to get away to her estranged sister and brother-in-law’s lake house three hours away, but they quickly notice her abnormal behavior. Martha leaps naked into their highly public lake, nonchalantly walks in on them while having sex and spends hours at a time nervously staring into space without explaining that she’s living in abject fear of being found by the cult members, whom she knows are capable of unspeakable violence.

Writer-director Sean Durkin expertly weaves Martha’s two worlds together, seamlessly blending her present reality and past memories. This not only creates an almost unbearable tension, as viewers are drawn into her paranoia, but spotlights

the amazing acting range of Olsen in a performance that has many considering her likely to be nominated for an Oscar.

“Martha” is not a fun film to watch, but for those seeking scares delivered in intelligent fashion, it definitely delivers — at least until the film’s surprising and maddening final moment.

Meanwhile, “In Time” features Timberlake as Will Salas, who lives in a near-future Los Angeles in which immortality has become attainable, but with a twist: Since the planet couldn’t sustain everyone living forever while new babies keep arriving, every person has a clock embedded in them that allows just 25 years of life.

The bigger problem is that all economic transactions have shifted away from currency to time-based transactions. For instance, a pay-phone call will cost a minute of your life rather than 50 cents and a vintage luxury car will cost 59 years. But how does one accrue 59 years when they’re only supposed to have 25?

The film reveals that the upper classes of this future society are gifted with extra time and might have even well over 1,000 years available to them. But if someone winds up with seemingly too much time, or is caught either stealing it from others or giving it away, they can be marked for death by governmental enforcers known as Timekeepers.

As the film opens, Salas’ mother runs out of time just as she falls into his arms for a long-sought reunion. So when Salas is gifted with 106 years from a man who decides to “time out” and die, he uses his new energy to cross from the Los Angeles ghetto into a Century City-style area known as New Greenwich and take the entire power structure down, kidnapping the daughter (Amanda Seyfried) of a time-wealthy man as leverage.

Timberlake has the charisma and acting chops to be a bona fide movie star. In his first action role, he dresses well and kicks ass with aplomb, but the story by writer-director Andrew Niccol (who did both duties on the far-superior film “Gattaca” and wrote “The Truman Show”) devolves into too many scenes of Timberlake running from the Timekeepers. Midway through the movie you’ll be wondering how you could have made better use of your time.

"Paranormal Activity 3": The third time's the charm, and "Margin Call": Truly Voodoo Economics

2011-11-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

Doubly devilish

‘Margin Call’ and ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ feature two kinds of terror

By Carl Kozlowski 10/20/2011

In an era when far too many Hollywood movies are high-budget train wrecks heavy on spectacle and light on relevance, two films opening this week do a terrific job of demonstrating that good storytelling always results in an entertaining experience.

Both films — all-star “Margin Call” and micro-budget “Paranormal Activity 3” — offer vastly different scares, with “Margin” providing a thinly fictionalized look at how the 2008 financial meltdown began, and “PA3” serving up old-fashioned, bump-in-the-dark terror with ingenious aplomb.

“Margin Call” leaps right into its complex tale of financial chicanery and double-crossing gamesmanship, with Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto, Spock in the “Star Trek” movie reboot and this film’s executive producer) sees the cold-hearted human resources director of his Wall Street firm giving the ax to 80 percent of his colleagues in one day. The problem is one of the dumped employees was Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who slips Sullivan a flash drive containing shocking information and tells him to “be careful.”

Sullivan camps out at his desk to examine the disk and discovers that the firm’s massive investments in mortgage securities are starting to go belly-up. If the trend continues, the toxic assets would be worth more in losses than the firm itself is worth, meaning the firm, a behemoth not unlike Goldman Sachs, would be destroyed.

In a heavily verbose style reminiscent of the early ’90s acting classic “Glengarry Glen Ross,” a tense night filled with plotting over how to handle the situation — whether to sell off all the assets, even if that involves lying to investors, or face the music and watch the company die — begins.

The magic of first-time feature writer-director J.C. Chandor’s script lies in the fact that he not only presents both sides of the dilemma in a compelling fashion, but also explains the arcane world of high-finance in ways that anyone could follow and understand.

The fact that the film has such a stellar cast — Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany and TV star Penn Badgely — doing great work adds to the film’s effectiveness.

Meanwhile, “Paranormal Activity 3” brings the scary back to theaters with the series’ most entertaining installment yet. The first film was shot for $15,000 and focused almost entirely on a couple named Katie and Micah, who were terrified by noises in their house and decided to set up video cameras at night to see what was really going on.

The original’s biggest scares came in its final minutes. “PA2” ups the ante tremendously by showing Katie’s relatives beset by boogeymen and rigging their house with seemingly countless security cameras as a result. While the filmmakers made sport out of the high technology, “PA3” flips the script brilliantly by taking viewers back to 1988, when Katie started experiencing ghostly presences as a young child and her mom’s boyfriend — a wedding videographer — filmed the mysterious activity with dated equipment.

The best twist in “PA3” comes when the boyfriend’s business partner rigs a camera to the base of a rotating fan, providing the disorienting effect of a constant pan shot in some sequences. This works because the rhythmic motion lulls viewers into a sense of complacency, yet drives up the tension each time the camera moves back and forth. The audience is anticipating a big scare, which the filmmakers dole out with expert precision.

In addition, the “PA” team’s increasing confidence means that they now relish making the audience laugh with several red herring moments. The business partner and a babysitter both attempt funny business with the camera, thinking it will only

affect the videographer, but just when viewers think these characters are comic relief, the unseen boogeyman unleashes terror on both of them.

Seen with a packed house of fans at the Cinerama Dome Tuesday night, “PA3” proved itself to be a total crowd-pleaser. Yet, while it expertly mixes big scares with big laughs, milking the tension of unseen terror with moments of spectacular disarray, its darkest revelations unfortunately border on being exploitative, drawing terror from endangering very young girls. But as its final revelation is delivered with deliciously evil glee, the audience clearly didn’t mind, and neither will anyone looking for a good time at the movies. n

'BLACKTHORN": What if Butch Cassidy Had Lived?

2011-11-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

Man of mystery

‘Blackthorn’ offers a look at Butch Cassidy if he had lived into old age

By Carl Kozlowski 10/13/2011

There are certain people whose exploits or accomplishments are so colorful they pass straight from reality into the realm of legend. Often, those legendary figures are outlaws who disappeared before they could be brought to justice. Consider D.B. Cooper, who parachuted out of a plane while carrying a fortune in stolen cash, or the men thought to have survived escape attempts from Alcatraz.

Among these people, Butch Cassidy holds an even greater place in the ranks of great American outlaws whose ultimate fate is uncertain. The story goes that he and his partner in crime, the Sundance Kid, were killed in an ambush by Bolivian soldiers in 1908, but their bodies were never definitively returned to America.

Many have wondered if Butch and Sundance survived that battle, and the new Western film “Blackthorn” offers a captivating take on what might have happened if Cassidy managed to live into old age. Played by veteran actor/

playwright Sam Shepard as an old and bearded hombre hiding out deep in the Bolivian countryside under the alias James Blackthorn, this film’s Cassidy is a man who craves a shot at redemption on a personal level after learning for the first time that he has a now-grown son in San Francisco.

The film is framed by Blackthorn’s letters to his son, which he reads in voiceover as he offers his unique life philosophies to smooth the way for their hoped-for meeting. While there are also a few flashbacks that reveal what happened after Butch and Sundance survived, most of the film takes place in the stark present that Blackthorn faces as he tries to survive coming out of hiding.

As he prepares for his journey back home, Blackthorn encounters Eduardo Apodaca, a younger Latino outlaw who has just robbed a train after studying Cassidy’s famed techniques. The two first meet after Eduardo’s horse is killed in a gun battle he instigated against Blackthorn, forcing the pair to travel together.

But another odd circumstance really bonds the unlikely pair together: Eduardo has stolen $50,000 from what he describes as the rich owners of his company. Blackthorn happily thinks he’s found a new partner in crime but slowly realizes Eduardo’s story doesn’t add up, leading to a stunning series of consequences and betrayals between the men.

“Blackthorn” works wonders on a limited budget, bringing the West to vibrant life under the crisp direction of Mateo Gil and an elegantly thoughtful yet action-packed script by Miguel Barros.

But aside from Shepard’s award-worthy, career-capping take on Cassidy’s alter ego, the real star of the film is cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia, who brings the film’s many Bolivian locations to wondrous life while also helping frame shot after shot with angles that have rarely been seen before.

Offering Western fans a beautifully shot, character-driven take on one of the West’s most mysterious yet charismatic figures, “Blackthorn” is well worth a viewing for those who miss seeing the overlooked genre on the big screen. Its pleasures, however, are strong enough to be appreciated by fans of intelligent cinema, no matter the genre.

"FOOTLOOSE" REVIEW: WHY NOT A REMAKE???

2011-11-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

Movie buffs freaked when word leaked that Paramount Pictures was remaking its 1984 youth classic ‘Footloose,’ as if the studio was tampering with a sacred text. Or remaking ‘The Ten Commandments,’ God forbid. (Oh, wait. ‘The Ten Commandments’ with Charlton Heston was itself a remake – done over by the same director, Cecil B. DeMille).
Sure, the first ‘Footloose’ was fun, but it really was magic for two reasons: a terrific soundtrack built around Kenny Loggins’ title song that sounds every bit as slamming today as it did 27 years ago, and the star-making turn by Kevin Bacon, one of the most enduring actors of the modern era. But aside from that (and OK, Chris Penn’s performance – particularly while learning how to dance – was endearing as well), the movie was MTV-style cheese.

So why make a new one? Frankly, why not? With its tale of a teenage outsider rallying his peers to stand up for their fundamental right to the joyous free expression of dance, the core story has an undeniable appeal that should hold up for generations. Unfortunately, the young audiences that should still embrace the original don’t seem to keep anything from the ‘80s alive outside of John Hughes’ movies.

The new ‘Footloose’ takes a more realistic and gritty tone between its dynamic dance numbers. Directed by Craig Brewer, who displayed a unique vision with his debut ‘Hustle and Flow’ before slipping with the odd ‘Black Snake Moan,’ the new ‘Footloose’ gets off to a riveting start with a wild party that made me wonder just how much the filmmakers could get away with in a teen flick.
That is, until a carload of drunken teens crashes in a stark and strongly shot sequence. As a result, the town council of fictional Bomont – where the kids were from – take dramatic action. The council decides to ban all forms of teen dancing and impose a strict curfew, in response to a demand from the town’s pastor, Rev. Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid).
But when a new guy in town, Ren McCormick (new discovery Kenny Wormald capably filling Bacon’s large dancing shoes) leads a teen rebellion alongside the preacher’s surviving daughter, Ariel (Julianne Hough), the stage is set for a battle between interpreting the Bible’s directives on dancing from a punitive vs. joy-filled perspective. And yes, along the way, Ren also gets to teach a good-natured redneck named Willard (Miles Teller in Penn’s famous role).
Right off the bat it’s clear Brewer is crafting a better movie than the original. The opening party scene burns with a debauched intensity, the car crash hits home and the reverend is a somewhat sympathetic soul whose son was among the young lives wasted in the crash. Brewer’s take on Quaid’s reverend is contrasts with the fire and-brimstone monster that John Lithgow laughably played in the original.
In fact, it’s that portrayal by Quaid, with Andie McDowell expertly replacing Dianne Wiest’s uptight portrayal of the preacher’s wife in the original, that is a perfect example of why the new ‘Footloose’ is not only a good flick in its own right, but downright refreshing in many ways. One might expect Christianity would be portrayed even more stupidly with the advancement of time and loosened onscreen morality, but this movie continues this year’s exciting trend in showing Christians as real people, not morons. Give Quaid a medal for doing double good for the cause between ‘Footloose’ and his turn as the faith-filled father in ‘Soul Surfer’ last spring.
While the dancing in a couple of scenes is definitely raunchier than before, it’s clearly drawn as coming from a yearning to break free against oppressive rules. When (SPOILER ALERT, but are you really surprised?) the kids are allowed to dance again with approval from the pastor, the slutty moves of Hough and company shift 180 degrees toward a positive and fun depiction of dance as a celebration of the human spirit.
There are also great anti-drug and anti-promiscuity messages dropped in, and in keeping with the film’s more realistic tone, the acting across the board is solid. Time will tell if Wormald develops a strong screen career, but he’s great in the lead even if he ultimately doesn’t catch the same lightning in a bottle than Bacon did. Plus, Teller as Willard is funny and charming enough to have a real future. Hough, meanwhile, is a true discovery – even though anyone can figure that a two-time ‘Dancing with the Stars’ champ knows how to tear up a dance floor, she is a surprisingly terrific actress as well, whether playing up her sex appearl or flashing impressive dramatic chops.
I’m just as disgusted as anyone else that some schmuck is trying to remake ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ and I’m mortified at most of the other reboots currently being discussed. But this is one case where a simple, well told American story is a welcome sight – even if it’s being told a second time.

"THE THING" IS AS BLAND AS ITS TITLE

2011-10-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

“THE THING” REVIEW By Carl Kozlowski

This weekend offers a more dramatic example than usual of how Hollywood is running out of ideas. There’s actually two remakes out this weekend, with “Footloose” and “The Thing” both appearing in new incarnations.

The main difference between the two “Footloose” movies lies in the fact that one has Kevin Bacon and one, well, doesn’t. And there is a surprising similarity between “Footloose” and “The Thing”: both have jaw-dropping visuals, with “The Thing” offering up an impressive monster and “Footloose” offering up Julianne Hough. Both are guaranteed to make men ogle the screen like they’re character s in a Tex Avery cartoon.

The new “Thing” features a woman scientist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) instead of Kurt Russell, and is directed by a Norwegian with an unpronounceable name rather than John Carpenter. It’s still set in Antarctica, and the filmmakers do score some impressive snowy visuals from Canadian locations without lecturing viewers about the demise of the polar ice caps.

I don’t remember a whole lot from the Carpenter version of the film, other than that a dog wound up a gory mess and that Kurt Russell looked like he could handle the freezing temperatures a lot better than Winstead, who in one scene here actually runs outside to wave down a helicopter without putting on gloves or a scarf. If you think that’s silly, then consider the fact that the monster here is an alien that looks like a cross between a crab and an ostrich and that the film isn’t so much scary as it is goofy.

The monster in “The Thing” is actually an alien that crash-landed in Antarctica 600,000 years ago and has now been discovered along with its spaceship by a team of burly Norwegian dudes. Winstead’s character, a paleontologist, is called in to evaluate the find but winds up being ignored the whole time by the greedy head of the Scandinavian scientists. He gets one of his fellows to whip out a drill and cut through the ice encasing the alien in order to get a tissue sample, but he doesn’t expect the drill to actually touch the creature.

We know this is a Very Bad Thing because everyone in the scene gets really tense, and because the idiot in charge heads up the drilling and sample retrieval while wearing just a pair of surgical gloves. No mask, scrubs, hazmat suits or anything like that – and soon after, the alien is left to thaw out while everyone drinks, dances and tells bad Norwegian jokes.

Of course, it’s The One Black Guy who pokes around the alien storage room and is the first to see the critter leap back to life. And soon, the Thing is attacking everyone and using its evil alien cells to replicate its victims’ cellular structures – meaning it can look like anyone it attacks, causing everyone to distrust each other because no one knows whose body is going to explode next.

I’ll spare you the rest of the story, as the only fun to be had is when those explosions occur. Because it’s hard to make a human skull split open and reveal a giant alien jaw and have a chest cavity pop open to reveal seemingly hundreds of elastic tendrils that can snatch and grab anyone in the vicinity, the effects often seem obvious rather than seamless. Each time the monster pops out of another body, it for some reason reminded me of the world’s fattest man exploding after a meal during “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.”

All told, the new “The Thing” is too ridiculously over the top in its effects to satisfy all but the most ardent genre fans. But I will grant that some of those true-blue fans burst into applause when its closing moments revealed an unexpectedly strong connection to the Carpenter version of the film. If you love monsters, you might like this; if you don’t you won’t. Either way, you know who you are.

THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR SO FAR IS ONE YOU MIGHT NEVER HAVE HEARD OF...

2011-10-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

A 'Better' perspective

Insta-classic ‘A Better Life’ brings the immigration reform debate home

By Carl Kozlowski 07/07/2011

Drive through Los Angeles any morning and you’ll see dozens of men standing in line at storefronts and strip malls, looking for work. In Pasadena, men dressed in ball caps and work clothes can be found on Los Robles Boulevard or Villa Street, even as city-installed signs declare that they have no right to be hired.

The workers are mostly undocumented Latinos, who have come to America with hopes of improving life for themselves and their loved ones. But they are not defined by their hard work. Instead, their lives are relegated to two coldly impersonal words: “illegal alien.” If noticed by the wrong person, they could be ripped from their families and homes, which they have spent years — in some cases decades — building.

Unfortunately, the law isn’t their only worry. That relative invisibility only seems to elicit resentment and contempt from legal residents, creating a cycle of misunderstanding that often seems never ending.

The new film “A Better Life" tries to reverse some of these negative perceptions.

Starring Mexican movie star Demian Bichir as a gardener named Carlos, and Jose Julian as his teenage son Luis, “A Better Life” comes to Pasadena this weekend while riding a wave of critical kudos.

In speaking recently with the two stars and the film’s unlikely director, Chris Weitz (“American Pie,” “About a Boy,” “Twilight: New Moon”), it became clear why this is a film will likely become part of the national debate on immigration reform.

“That’s probably one of the things that fascinate me about being an actor: The chance to go from one extreme of being as big a presence as Fidel Castro to being a man who’s completely invisible,” says Bichir, who is perhaps best known to American audiences for his work on the hit show “Weeds,” as well as playing the Cuban dictator in the 2009 film “Che,” about revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, with Benecio Del Toro in the title role.

“This is something that comes naturally when you work really hard in a country that doesn’t want to give you a face and a name, and you don’t have proper papers and documentation to be able to ask for some Social Security help, proper education for your kids or health care for you and your family.

“They can’t do that because they don’t have an ID to do that, and can’t go to any office and demand that, even though they work and pay taxes,” he continues. “That’s not only the way Carlos lives, but also at least 11 million undocumented workers.”

Rather than being a heavy-handed political movie, much of the film’s power is derived from its use of the universally relatable elements of an ordinary man’s life. There is not one mention of Republicans or Democrats in the film, nor is there any talk of specific laws. The film is rooted in the adage that all politics is personal.

With that in mind, the film centers on Carlos’ troubled relationship with his 14-year-old son, Luis, whom he has raised alone from a young age. Carlos wants to be a good father, but he has worked seven days a week for as long as he can remember, and he has been unable to spend time with the boy.

When Luis becomes tempted to join a gang for a sense of belonging, Carlos realizes he has to make a move now or risk losing him. He borrows $12,000 from his sister to buy his boss’ truck and gardening equipment in the hopes of being his own boss, finally able to offer his son a better life. However, his plan goes tragically awry when the truck is stolen on the very day he buys it.

That moment of vulnerability is what compels Luis to appreciate the effort his father has made, and they bond while searching Los Angeles for the thief in a struggle for justice.

“A lot of what Luis was going through I could understand, and I could try to portray as accurately as I can,” says Julian. “I can portray this, because I’ve watched friends who struggle to relate to their parents, and it helped me gain a lot more understanding into the character’s resentment.”

“A Better Life” offers a striking panorama of Los Angeles life in the use of more than 70 locations stretching from East Side barrios to the manicured oceanfront estates of Malibu. Weitz might have seemed an odd choice as director due to his East Coast upbringing and apparent blue-blood Anglo background. His grandmother, Lupita Tovar, however, was a longtime actress in Mexican cinema and he’s married to a Latina. Weitz saw the film as a chance to honor his heritage.

But the key to filming in hardscrabble areas, like the Ramona Gardens housing complex in Boyle Heights, and using current and former gang members as actors wasn’t just the authentic quality of writer Eric Eason’s script. Rather, it lay in the assistance Weitz was offered by Father Greg Boyle and his Homeboy Industries program, which helps train former gang members to start new lives with legitimate jobs.

“Father Boyle loved the way the movie didn’t demonize anybody, not even gang members, and he was my way into East LA,” explains Weitz. “This is not a tub-thumping movie, and if you look, a lot of the police and federal officers in it are Hispanic. These are people doing their jobs, and things are much more complicated than they seem to be on the surface.”

That sentiment is supported by Hector Verdugo, who serves as Boyle’s right-hand man in the capacity of associate executive director. As a graduate of the Homeboy program, he can relate to the film on all levels.

“I liked the social issues of immigrants and the struggles they go through, but it’s also about gang members and shows these are human beings with their nieces and nephews and sons and daughters,” says Verdugo. “They love like the rest of us and hurt like the rest of us and didn’t resort to demonizing gang members. We don’t support anything negative. We support justice, love and being compassionate to human beings all around us, and that’s why we support this film.”

With the film widening across the country this weekend and already attracting strong Oscar buzz for Bichir's instant-classic performance, the star has hope that the film will have an impact that can save not only livelihoods, but lives.

“I have a lot of Anglo friends who’ve seen the film, and in two hours their whole perspective toward this particular community changed,” says Bichir. “It goes straight to the human point, to the human nature of the problem. Part of the problem is the misinformation that goes around, from politicians who are out to make you uncomfortable and afraid of ‘These people who are taking everything from us.’ Misinformation plus fear equals hate, and I think this film has the power to change this point of view.”

THIS WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO BE A BETTER MAN

2011-10-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

Gunning for God

For Ken Bevel, playing the sheriff in ‘Courageous’ is a ministry

By Carl Kozlowski 10/06/2011

It’s a blazingly hot and humid day in the rural small town of Albany, Ga., in June 2010, and Ken Bevel is having a very hard day. He’s been carjacked repeatedly, each time jumping onto the driver’s side door of his truck and hanging on for dear life as the thief attempts to shake him by weaving against traffic at high speed. This time, the truck is about to smash into a tree, throwing Bevel to the ground and forcing him to roll uncontrollably through the brush.

That’s not the only high adventure Bevel was experiencing that weekend. In playing a new sheriff in town named Nathan Hayes in the movie “Courageous,” he also experienced two high-speed, high-jumping foot chases and a rip-roaring gunfight with two drug-dealing gang-bangers in the course of a three-day set visit by the Pasadena Weekly. While that might be normal for most actors in a film about cops, what makes Bevel’s story unusual is that he is actually a full-time minister at the Sherwood Baptist mega-church in Albany, and “Courageous” is more of a ministry than a movie to him and the team of pastors at the helm of it.

But more than a year later, “Courageous” is cleaning up at the nation’s box offices, debuting in fourth place last week and earning the highest per-screen average in the country while playing on less than half as many screens as its nearest competitors. While the film’s success and that of the three prior Sherwood films — “Fireproof” (which was the most profitable movie of 2008), “Facing the Giants” and “Flywheel” — have stunned Hollywood and conventional moviegoers, their ability to mix Christian and family-values messages into well-made films has created a formula that’s quietly revolutionizing the way conservative churches and Hollywood relate.

“When my wife and I came to Sherwood in 2007, we didn’t know that this church made movies,” Bevel recalls. “We’d heard about ‘Facing the Giants’ and thought if a church made it, it had to be cheesy or have bad acting, but we were impressed and our lives were literally changed by looking at Sherwood Pictures.”

That’s because at the very first church service Bevel attended there, he heard Sherwood Pastor Alex Kendrick (who has starred in each film except “Fireproof,” and co-writes, co-produces and directs all the films) ask the congregation’s men if they’d like to audition for a movie in which they would be putting out fires and sliding down fire poles while playing firemen. He was surprised to find that Kendrick cast him despite the fact he seemed to have an awful audition.

“I did terrible, and had no experience in doing that,” says Bevel. “When the audition was over they brought me back in and said, ‘Ken, we’ll give you the part not because of your acting ability, but because you have a heart for the Lord, and He’ll provide everything else.”

Once he hit the set, Bevel was indeed surprised to find that he could deliver a solid, wide-ranging performance, as Kendrick’s sprawling screenplays tie together deeply emotional moments with highly comedic hijinks and an ever-growing ability to handle rock ‘em, sock ‘em action. And he’s also been pleased to see that Alex and his brother Stephen, who shares the writing and producing duties, are growing exponentially in their filmmaking abilities.

Far from being a stereotypically single-minded, Bible-thumping film of the kind Billy Graham used to fund in pursuit of converts, “Courageous” ties together multiple storylines. It centers on four small-town sheriffs who make a pact to become better fathers after one loses a daughter in a car accident and as the town faces a new drug-dealing gang.

But even as they strive to be better Christians and role models, one of the four apparent heroes is brought down for stealing and reselling drugs from evidence rooms. The overall result plays like the Oscar-winning “Crash,” albeit with no foul language, unknown actors and a surprisingly low $2 million budget that manages to look like a $20 million film.

“Even if you’re not Christian, you want something wholesome for your family and movies that show a good message, and Sherwood Pictures always figures out a big theme that everyone can relate to,” explains Bevel. “‘Flywheel’ was about a dishonest car salesman who learns to straighten up, and ‘Facing the Giants’ had a David and Goliath-type story about overcoming the odds in life but was centered on football since probably 80 percent of American men love football.

“With ‘Fireproof,’ people don’t get married to get divorces, and in an age of skyrocketing divorce you want to see a happy marriage,” Bevel continues. “And with ‘Courageous,’ no one grows up wanting to be a deadbeat dad, so this will resonate throughout our culture and beyond. It’s incredible to see people in the theater clapping and crying, saying that this movie really challenged them to take it to another level and to bring their families better for the Lord.”

"50/50" BEATS THE ODDS AND MAKES CANCER FUNNY

2011-10-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

Beating the odds

A young man’s battle against cancer is fought with humor and heart in ‘50/50’

By Carl Kozlowski 09/29/2011

Hollywood loves making movies about people struggling with deadly diseases, whether it’s the race against time in “Contagion” or tearjerkers like “Love Story” and “Beaches,” in which the characters who contract cancer wring emotion out of every heartbreaking moment.

Neither end of this spectrum, however, seems interested in telling the truth about cancer, which has impacted the lives of everyone who’s had a relative or friend die from the disease. What is rare is when a film on the normally depressing subject nails the confusing mix of fear, loneliness, hope, bonding and gallows humor that become part of the real-life experience.

The new movie “50/50” does a superb job of managing these complex emotions in intelligent, touching and at times very funny ways. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“(500) Days of Summer”) as a Seattle-based NPR radio writer named Adam and Seth Rogen (“Knocked Up”) as his best friend Kyle, the film has cancer sneak up on the audience in much the way it subtly surprises Adam.

Fit, clean-living and in his 20s, Adam loves to take long runs through the city. But lately, he’s been having unusual pains in his back. Finally checking in with a doctor, Adam learns that he has a rare form of spinal cancer and has just a 50/50 chance to survive. It’s news that shakes up everyone, freaking out his overbearing mother (Anjelica Huston) and leading his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) to attempt to step up their relationship by moving in to take care of him.

But Kyle has a different way of dealing with it all, encouraging Adam to use his disease as a sympathetic hook to help Kyle meet women. He also tries to be indefatigably positive, telling Adam that 50/50 odds would be exceptional in Vegas, and it’s Kyle’s mix of dark humor and unfailing support that forms the heart of the story — along with Adam’s relationship with a new grief counselor (Anna Kendrick).

Thanks to its stellar cast and powerful script by Will Reiser, “50/50” gets the delicate balance of humor and sadness 100 percent right. How did Reiser pull it off? He’s a cancer survivor himself and he based his script on how his real-life best friend Seth Rogen helped him through his hardships.

The only potential downside for some viewers might be Rogen’s highly pro-fane rapid-fire patter, something he’s applied in all of his films. Personally, I love his shtick. Plus, he has grown in his ability to nail serious moments with aplomb as well.

Helmed by director Jonathan Levine, who put a fresh spin on coming-of-age clichés with his debut feature “The Wackness,” “50/50” has enough hope, humor and humanity to beat the odds and draw viewers in as a disease film, a unique romance and, most of all, a tale of a young man learning to be a better person in the face of some pretty bleak circumstances.

PEARL JAM AND MONEYBALL: TWO UNIQUE WAYS TO PLAY THE GAME

2011-10-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

Playing for passion

‘Moneyball’ and ‘Pearl Jam Twenty’ show there’s more than one way to win

By Carl Kozlowski 09/22/2011

All too often the concept of “may the best man win” has come to mean that the side with the most money gets to enjoy a cakewalk to victory. But as the world has devolved a win at all costs philosophy, those victories have often become meaningless.

The New York Yankees will always throw $100 million at their players and all but demand a World Series ring. And the Justin Biebers of the music world can always pay the best producers and promoters to buy their way to the top of the charts.

Two new movies, both based on true stories, offer a refreshing look at how some people can still buck the system and emerge victorious simply by working hard and performing with passion. “Moneyball” tells the tale of how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, built an amazing team out of overlooked players when he was forced to operate with a salary cap that was one-third the level of the Yankees.

And “Pearl Jam Twenty,” a wildly entertaining documentary by rock journalist-turned-director Cameron Crowe, shows how the rock band Pearl Jam has managed to thrive for two decades despite battling Ticketmaster and choosing to largely stay out of the publicity limelight. While baseball and rock music are entirely different arenas, comparisons of Beane with the boys in the band are easy to draw.

Based on a 2003 nonfiction book by Michael Woolf, “Moneyball” stars Brad Pitt as Beane, who was an unusually talented baseball prospect in 1979 when he was signed in the first draft by the New York Mets. Beane could do it all: defense, offense and hit for power. He chose the Mets right after high school while turning down a full-ride scholarship to Stanford University. But things didn’t turn out well for Beane in the majors, as screenwriters Steven Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”) and Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) and director Bennett Miller (“Capote”) masterfully show in a sporadic series of sad flashbacks that show Beane unable to forgive himself for failure and wondering if he’ll ever manage to succeed as a general manager.

Beane can’t possibly manage to pay top stars on his relatively miniscule budget, but when he attempts to haggle with Cleveland Indians management for some B-level players, he notices Peter Brant, a heavyset and insecure young man in his 20s whom the Indians seem to give the power to approve or dis-approve of their trades.

Fascinated by the “kid” and his power, Beane learns that Brant has developed an entirely new way of building teams: Rather than throwing money at top veterans, Brant statistically analyzes every player in the majors to figure out who has the best ability to get on base, even if they do so by walks.

The idea is that if you can get players on base, you’re guaranteed to score runs. And by giving nearly washed-up players a chance, Brant believes that their restored pride and revived passion will make the indefinable difference that can lift a team to greatness.

Against all odds and the salty complaints of the A’s veteran scouts and manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Beane and Brant apply those principles, setting off a rousing tale that had the audience cheering without relying on heavy-handed cliche “moments.”

Add in Beane’s parallel struggle to decide whether to follow big-money offers to manage other teams or stay close to his preteen daughter even if it costs him a big payday, and “Moneyball” accomplishes the unlikely feat of making statistical analysis a moving and vibrantly enjoyable experience.

While “Moneyball” mesmerizes viewers with a deceptively slow build-up, “Pearl Jam Twenty” explodes off the screen from start to finish with a mix of the band’s powerful music and the potent mix of emotions that drove its creation. Following the band from its earliest incarnation as Mother Love Bone, it shows how an unknown singer with an epic voice and charismatic good looks named Eddie Vedder not only saved the band after MLB singer Andrew Wood died of a drug over-dose, but also transcended the Seattle grunge scene to become a lasting force on the global music scene.

The movie has plenty of rocking footage, including an incredible montage of Vedder’s daredevil escapades of hanging from the rafters of concert halls worldwide. But Crowe’s longtime relationship with the band also reveals that they have always attempted to keep their humanity more sacred than the quest for publicity and riches, and offering a shining example of staying true to your dreams no matter what field you’re in.

While “Moneyball” is out in theaters nationwide on Friday, “Pearl Jam Twenty” will only screen at the Sunset 5 theatre, 8000 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood through Wednesday before airing on national television Oct. 21 on PBS’ “American Masters” series. It’s a must-see whether on the big or small screen.

Two kinds of "Drive"

2011-10-10T04:57:00.000-07:00

Two kinds of 'Drive'

‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ finds laughs in the rat race; ‘Drive’ explores the inner demons of a criminal driver

By Carl Kozlowski 09/15/2011

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Remember when movies used to make us feel good about our lives, offering relatable char-acters with everyday problems who stumble into entertaining solutions before ultimately living happily ever after? Whether in highbrow classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life” or memorable romps like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Hollywood used to offer up movies that made audiences happy on a weekly basis.
But ever since the ’80s, those kinds of movies have become far too rare, as films either devolved into empty special-effects extravaganzas, offered gloomier portraits of broken families or settled into barely funny pale imitations of comedies unable to make us laugh. It’s all too rare that a film like “The Devil Wears Prada” or “Mamma Mia” comes out, offering pure comic joy that may not merit Oscars but are certainly worth the price of admission.

Thankfully, the new comedy “I Don’t Know How She Does It” meets that standard, with a stellar cast of comic veterans matched by a pitch-perfect script and energetic direction that come together for 90 minutes of fun.
Starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Kate Reddy, a Boston-based banking executive with a husband named Richard (Greg Kinnear) and two kids to boot, the film (based on the massively bestselling book by Allison Pearson) offers a funny yet touching portrait of the challenges women still face in the workforce 40 years after the feminist revolution.
Kate appears to be a superwoman, always able to balance her career and personal life with a zesty aplomb that makes everyone around her stare in wonder. But when her husband, a struggling architect, lands the biggest break of his career at the exact same time Kate’s boss (Kelsey Grammer) asks her to handle a huge financial deal with a suave investment kingpin named Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan), the couple decides that with the help of their babysitter, they can accomplish both their goals.
In timeless movie fashion — just like everyday life — the best intentions can go awry. And so, amid jetting between Boston and New York, losing touch with Richard and their kids, battling men who want to steal the credit for her deals and conflicted affection for Abelhammer while watching her perpetual lists of daily tasks grow ever longer and more incomplete, Kate has to juggle ever faster while wondering if indeed a modern woman can have it all.
These may sound like the kind of basic dilemmas discussed in the headlines of countless womens’ magazines or endless episodes of “Oprah” and “The View,” but “I Don’t Know” handles them with a comic touch that will put a smile on viewers’ faces from start to finish.
Special mention goes to the superb writing of Pearson’s novel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who also wrote “The Devil Wears Prada” and easily matches that film’s status as one of the best comedies of the past decade.
While Kate relies on an unceasing inner drive to make her life work, the week’s other big movie “Drive” features a brooding loner known only as Driver (Ryan Gosling) who can’t build a life outside of his dual careers as a movie stunt driver and getaway man for criminals. After years of helping thugs effortlessly evade the LAPD on a nightly basis with his superior driving skills, Driver is finally burning out, feeling guilty and wishing for more out of life.
When he meets Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young and seemingly single mother down the hall from his sparse apartment, Driver starts to form what he hopes is a genuine relationship. But he soon learns that she’s married to a thief named Standard, who’s fresh out of prison but seems like a decent guy.
But despite his genuine hope to go straight, Standard owes his former crime bosses Nino (Ron Perlman) and Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) a mountain of money for keeping him safe in prison. When he is forced into robbing a pawn shop to come up with the funds, Standard asks Driver to be his getaway man.
It seems like a simple, noble thing to help a good-hearted guy get the monkey of his past off his back, so Driver does it, only to find that all hell breaks loose, leading to an ever-spiraling circle of violence and doom. Director Nicolas Winding Refn and writer Hossein Amini team up to craft a film that radiates with the extra feeling and intelligence of a terrific 1970s thriller.
Driver engages in an inner journey that brings audiences along for a moody and intense ride. It may not offer the joy of “I Don’t Know,” but “Drive” should make action fans happy.

Two hot films for the hottest days of the year

2011-10-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

Tasty treats in summer's dog days

‘One Day’ and ‘The Guard’ are two intelligent and entertaining films guaranteed to please

By Carl Kozlowski 08/18/2011

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With a “Conan the Barbarian” reboot apparently so bad that its studio, Lionsgate, is completely hiding it from critics and a “Fright Night” remake offering up warmed-over scares from a 1980s film that barely scored any box office revenue when it premiered back then, it is now sadly obvious that, at least when it comes to the movies, these are the dog days of summer.

In the interest of sparing potential viewers the agony of spending up to $16 on either one of those films, let us instead present a couple of alternatives that were actually inspired by more than just a craven effort to add to the corporate bottom line. And never fear; they’re entirely different kinds of flicks, so there’s still hope to see something original and enjoyable this weekend, no matter your favorite genre.
First up is the classy and intelligent romance “One Day,” which has the timeless look and atmosphere of director Lone Scherfig’s stellar 2009 debut “An Education.” While that film follows a high school girl (Carey Mulligan) in 1950s England as she subtly gets in over her head in an affair with a seemingly sweet yet mysterious older man (Peter Sarsgaard), this film offers a more equal romantic match in its tale of a mousy young British woman named Emma (Anne Hathaway) who secretly pines for her dashing bad-boy friend named Dexter (Jim Sturgess), even though he never realizes how much she loves him.
The film follows a rather ingenious plot device, depicting their rollercoaster relationship over the course of 20 years and focusing on July 15 each year — the day they met and nearly had a one-night stand after finishing college. Over time, Dexter becomes a Ryan Seacrest-style TV host who is a star solely because of his easy-going charms and winning smile, while Emma works an unsatisfying restaurant job and endures a passionless marriage.
Yet, when Dexter falls into drug addiction, depression and the like, Emma is always there for him. What could have easily become maudlin and formulaic with weaker direction and worse actors instead becomes a touching and occasionally powerful story of forgiveness, redemption and true love. If you think that that description points to an obvious conclusion, be forewarned that the film hinges on a shocking twist that completely upends viewer expectations.
Speaking of surprises, “The Guard” offers up plenty of its own, starting with Brendan Gleeson in the lead role of a small-town Irish lawman who’s seen and heard it all for so long that he appears to have completely given up on all normal ethics, guidelines and procedures in his pursuit of stopping crime. One might reasonably wonder just how bad crime can be in a backwater Irish village, but things indeed go haywire when an international drug-smuggling gang attempts to use the burg for its outrageously dangerous activities.
When massive amounts of money and drugs go missing near the town, Boyle’s police partner disappears. Boyle also finds that his usual hooker is trying to scare him off the trail of all the wrongdoing. Ultimately, Boyle is tempted with bribes from the traffickers, just as a laconic American FBI agent (played by Don Cheadle with maximum slow-burn authority and a wicked set of hilariously calm facial expressions) arrives on the scene, primarily because the missing drugs and other goodies were from an American gang.
The rest of the film focuses on the matchup of this very odd couple of cops and the havoc that ensues when they work together. Cheadle wisely puts a 180-degree spin on the racially centered buddy-cop comedies of Eddie Murphy’s ’80s heyday, instead playing the straight man of the duo while Gleeson eagerly destroys nearly all the rules of the world he’s sworn to protect. Factor in the setting, which is unique for a cop comedy, and the Tarantino-worthy dialogue, clever twists and oddball soundtrack of oldies from seemingly other dimensions, and “The Guard” will catch you off guard.

NO "HELP" NEEDED - this movie is sure to be up for Oscar

2011-10-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

No 'Help' needed

The new civil-rights era dramedy ‘The Help’ could be an Oscar contender

By Carl Kozlowski 08/11/2011

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Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous civil rights battles in the Deep South of the mid-1960s, and focused on a group of black maids who, with the help of a white woman, rebel against being treated more like slaves than paid servants, “The Help,” at first glance appears to be a strange choice for a summertime release.

But after two months of gross-out comedies, superhero adventures and pointless sequels, this Oscar-worthy film is actually as refreshing as a tall, cool glass of iced tea on a hot Mississippi afternoon.
Relying on a stellar ensemble cast that’s likely to produce multiple Oscar nominations, “The Help” follows a young white journalist named Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) to her hometown of Jackson, Miss., after graduation from college. Her time away has made it clear she’s outgrown the limited ambitions of the women she grew up with. Education also opened her eyes to the incredible injustices that the town’s wealthy whites — including her parents — inflicted upon their maids.
The rule of law at that time may have said blacks were to be treated as separate but equal, but in reality they were still treated as slaves. When Skeeter gets to know some of the maids as they advise her on a housekeeping advice column, she believes that an anonymous book about the maids’ travails, as told from their perspectives, might be just the thing to shake up the system.
After Skeeter convinces one maid, then two, then dozens to tell their stories anonymously, “The Help” offers a powerful insight into the era and uses a good dose of wit to leaven the very sad moments found within. While many of the young women homemakers who verbally and emotionally degrade their maids claim to be Christian and are clearly hypocrites — particularly a woman named Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) who is on a quest to force the maids to have their own separate bathrooms — Skeeter is determined to bring true justice at last to these de facto slaves.
Based on the massively popular novel “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, which enjoyed a long stay atop The New York Times bestseller list, the film does an impressive job of condensing the lengthy tome by presenting the key events of its first 200 pages in the first 25 minutes. Yet writer-director (and Mississippi native) Tate Taylor, making his big-budget studio film debut, still allows the story to unfold with a depth that brings a strong mix of well-earned laughter and tears to the audience — a difficult balance that often feels contrived in even much more experienced hands.
“The Help” has a powerful cast of actors who fill their roles with zest, bringing a troubled era to vibrant life without ever feeling preachy or heavy-handed. In particular, Oscar nominee Viola Davis (“Doubt”) and longtime character actor Octavia Spencer in a breakout role, burn through the screen with a fiery intensity that covers the full spectrum of emotions.
While Stone has the somewhat thankless role of being the vehicle through which other characters change, she handles it with a notable spark that appears to signal she’s going to be a big star in both dramas in addition to the comedies (“Easy A,” “Superbad,” Crazy Stupid Love”) she’s known for already. And as lead villainess Hilly, who just can’t handle social change, Bryce Dallas Howard bounces perfectly between humorous hysterics and a truly evil hypocrisy in which she bends the rules of Christianity to suit her whims.
Yet, “The Help” offers the welcome surprise of showing that true Christian faith is at the heart of the maids and sustains them through hard times and their battle to find their voice, and the film also has several subplots rooted in the varying degrees of positive and negative relationships between the maids and their employers.
“The Help” should serve as a bracing yet positive reminder of an embarrassing era in American history, yet it never once comes off as a PC mockery of the past.

"I DON"T KNOW" HOW THIS MOVIE FAILED TO SCORE VIEWERS

2011-10-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

Parker’s ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ Salutes Business, Working Moms

by Carl Kozlowski

Think of Sarah Jessica Parker, and her performance as Carrie Bradshaw in the “Sex and the City” TV show and movies likely comes to mind. After all, she became a pop culture icon playing a high-living New York City single gal who made a pact with her three best friends to sleep around just like men without addressing the emotional or physical consequences.
Oddly, by the time the series ended its six-year run on HBO, three of the four women had either gotten married or engaged, and the fourth had settled into a happy, monogamous relationship. The first “SATC” movie continued these nesting themes, though I (like most movie goers) didn’t bother to check out the second film.

“SATC” wound up contradicting its founding premise by showing that these women found happiness when they decided to settle down with a man and possibly start a family. And now, Parker has surprised us once again with “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” which puts her in a similar role but with some key twists. She’s still a high-flying, big city gal (Boston, not the Big Apple), but she’s happily married to an architect with two kids.
While the couple does rely on a part-time nanny, the film still paints a believable picture of the extra struggles women like Parker’s Kate character face in the workforce, most humorously depicted by a smug co-worker (“SNL” veteran Seth Meyers) eager to steal credit for Kate’s ideas. But the movie is a Hollywood rarity in that it depicts banking and finance as a noble and positive field to be in, detailing how Kate’s work can help restore the retirement savings of millions of Americans wiped out by the recession.

The main thrust of the film covers the extra plate-spinning that occurs when Kate gets a chance to propose a new system of retirement planning to a titan of finance named Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan). Here again, the film surprises on multiple fronts. Kate appropriately handles the affection Jack develops toward her during their grueling work schedule together. Jack long ago chose his career over family after losing his wife to cancer, but he finds Kate’s devotion to her own brood enchanting.
In short, he’s far from the caricature one might expect of a big roller.
Not only is Abelhammer depicted as a genuinely decent human being who uses capitalism in a positive way, Kate’s boss (Kelsey Grammer) turns out to respect Kate when she stands up for her right to say “no” to work and “yes” to her family.
*** Mild Spoilers Ahead ***
Most surprising is a subplot in which Kate’s assistant (Olivia Munn) reveals she’s pregnant after insisting she would never have kids. As she tells Kate, “don’t worry, I’m taking care of it,” implying abortion, Kate begs her to reconsider, delivering an impassioned spiel about the joys children bring and how they outweigh the struggles and messiness.
Guess who winds up as a mom by the end?
Unfortunately “I Don’t Know” is already dead in the water as one of the year’s biggest box-office bombs, having made only $8 million at the box office after two weekends. One can analyze why it failed – horrible posters that just showed the title without any film images or even Parker’s name being a major culprit.
Or, perhaps the women who rolled with Carrie Bradshaw are too busy being real-world Kates and don’t have time to check out a movie while they’re running their own dual lives. The family values people may have feared the film was a virtual “Sex and the City 3” and stayed home, while “SATC” fans wanted to write this off for embracing capitalism, stable marriages and even unborn babies.
I walked in on a “I Don’t Know How She Does It” screening at the last-minute, having ridden L.A. mass transit for over 90 minutes from Pasadena to Beverly Hills at the end of a long Monday. I was expecting just another chick flick and as a single guy didn’t relate to the movie’s core themes.
Yet it won me over, thoroughly. I smiled and laughed from start to finish, admired its positive portrayal of the best things that American life has to offer, and was refreshed by the wonderful craftsmanship that went into the film.
By the looks of things, the movie will be on DVD shelves or On Demand within a few months. It’s certainly worth a look for more than just an entertaining two hours. Hollywood won’t keep showing positive looks at families and capitalism if no one sees them.

"GIRLFRIEND" A RARE MAGICAL INDIE GEM

2011-10-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

‘Girlfriend’ Review: Gem of an Indie Deserves Wider Audience

by Carl Kozlowski

It’s rare that a movie can come along and sweep away viewers into its world without the benefit of major stars and a whirlwind of hype. But this weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to see an absolutely mesmerizing film that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Its name is “Girlfriend,” and before I get caught up in rapturously praising the film, I want to let our Los Angeles readers know that they have one shot to see the film in a theater and help give it a broader life. It screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Downtown Independent Theater, the same free-thinking venue that earlier this year earned my praises for having the guts to screen the amazing anti-North Korean documentary “The Red Chapel” for a week.

—–

In its own ways, “Girlfriend” is even more of a must-see, and I urge anyone who appreciates great acting and writing in the vein of William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor’s darkly meaningful tales to go. It’s a thoughtful, quiet film that builds slowly but surely to a compelling series of events that should leave viewers happy that their intelligence was respected like so few films bother to do, as well as a uniquely satisfying conclusion that will leave you seeing the world in a different way.
While it tells its own very personal, compelling and unpredictable tale, it bears a resemblance to another great film that came out of nowhere back in 1996: Billy Bob Thornton’s masterpiece, “Sling Blade.” Like that film, “Girlfriend” centers on a mentally challenged man named Evan in a small rural town who suddenly has big decisions to make with even bigger consequences hanging in the balance.
But while Thornton was a relatively unknown character actor who drew critics and audiences in with a stunning performance pretending to be mentally challenged, “Girlfriend” stars a man named Evan Sneider, who actually lives with the condition of Downs Syndrome. His performance here is a stunner, because he not only holds his own against an excellent cast, but alternates perfectly between moments of subtle sadness and explosive emotion in a way that would make most so-called normal actors jealous.

The plot is deceptively simple at first. Evan lives with his single mother, who works as a dishwasher in a middle-of-nowhere dive and watches over Evan as he takes food out to the customers. Evan went to high school with the area’s “normal” kids years ago, and has started to realize that his life is in danger of being stuck in a perpetual rut because of his mental condition.
He keeps a list of friends he calls daily to check on their own humdrum lives, hoping to hear about their happiness at least. But his heart is set on what he believed was the most beautiful girl in his high school, a woman named Candy who now is a single mother who parties too hard and is caught between a fling with a married man and the abusive and jealous ex-boyfriend named Russ who fathered her child.
When Evan’s mother suddenly dies, he’s left utterly alone in the world and suddenly notices that the relationships of the townspeople around him are just as sordid as the ones he watched on TV soap operas with his mom. The movie mostly hints at these mixed-up lives, rather than graphically dwelling on them. But when Evan learns that Candy is about to be evicted from her home because of Russ’ refusal to pay her rent as promised, he secretly leaves the money she needs, taking it out of a large stash that his guilty brother has left for him to buy food and care for himself.
That decision to give Candy money is Evan’s desperate attempt to be her “man” and attempt to win her over as his girlfriend. Yet that seemingly pure-hearted decision is more complicated than it at first appears, and winds up setting off a whole chain of consequences between Evan, Candy and Russ that no one will see coming.
Aside from being a perfect gem of a film that deserves to be seen and admired by a large audience, “Girlfriend” is important in another major way. In an age where those with Downs Syndrome are being overlooked more and more, this film shows through Sneider’s performance that they are indeed capable of great things when given a chance.
Of course, most people with Downs don’t wind up starring in a movie and like any group of “normal” people, most probably don’t even care to try. However, films like “Girlfriend” and “Sling Blade” and their Emmy-winning TV predecessor “Life Goes On” show that they are more complex and human than we often realize, that they shouldn’t be shoved to the side and forgotten, and that they are often capable of even more profound displays of love than the rest of us.
Again, writer-director Justin Lerner takes his time to tell its story, but when it all unfolds, this film is magic. Relative unknown Shannon Woodward is also excellent as Candy, while Jackson Rathbone – one of the “Twilight” crew of young actors – shows that he’s got a lot more going on than might be expected of a heartthrob through the fact he’s not only great as Russ but he helped produce the film and with his band 100 Monkeys provides the subtly unsettling yet beautiful score.
If you’re in LA and want to see a great film, head downtown Wednesday night. “Girlfriend” just finished a two-week, largely sold-out run in New York City’s Film Forum theater and if it goes well Wednesday, it’ll land at least a full week and from there hopefully get a bigger shot at viewers nationwide

VERA FARMIGA TAKES THE "HIGHER GROUND"

2011-10-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

How Vera Farmiga’s Deep Christian Faith Inspired ‘Higher Ground’

by Carl Kozlowski

Vera Farmiga has lit up the screen in supporting roles for the past few years, first drawing viewers’ and critics’ attention by playing a police psychologist caught between Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in 2006’s “The Departed” before landing an Oscar nomination as the mysterious flipside and lover of George Clooney’s commitment-phobic, constantly traveling businessman in 2009’s “Up in the Air.”

But her almost ethereal calm onscreen also hides a deep Christian faith, and that inspired her to go all the way as the director as well as star of the new film “Higher Ground.” While she’s following in the footsteps of icons like Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, and Robert DeNiro to make that creative leap, “Higher Ground” is a quietly personal film – a fictionalized take on the memoir “This Dark World” by Carolyn Bridges, about a woman’s struggle to balance her faith with her awareness of the nascent feminist movement of the early ‘70s – can she insist on having a voice in the small rural church she attends, or does she have to stay silent just because the men traditionally tell the women they need to be silent?
“Higher Ground” was a Sundance favorite in January, landing distribution with Sony Pictures Classics and started playing in New York and LA last week, with cities nationwide to come. Farmiga sat down recently with Big Hollywood to discuss the film and her profoundly personal reasons for directing it.
“I’m getting surprised reactions a lot because of the subject matter,” says Farmiga, an elegant presence who speaks with frequent reflective pauses. “A big reference film for me and one of my top five favorites is ‘The Apostle’ by Robert Duvall — a story about someone trying hard to master the spiritual life and it necessitates making arduous and at times very painful journeys within our selves and our all too human souls.”
Farmiga felt drawn to “This Dark World” because of its similar tale of spiritual struggle, after being introduced to it by the film’s original screenwriter, Tim Metcalfe. Metcalfe was originally supposed to direct the film as well, but couldn’t find the financing to move forward until Farmiga — who was already signed to star — was convinced to take the helm.
After flying out to Iowa to meet Briggs, who’s now a creative writing professor at a college, Farmiga was convinced that the film should focus not on the loss of faith but of a woman’s journey to reach a deeper, more vibrant sense of belief than she could find among her longtime congregation.
“Looking back on her life, she realized that it was a story about the loss of impoverished faith, and she was searching for an authentic faith that was true to her personal relationship with God,” explains Farmiga. “It requires making a leap into the world of uncertainty.”
At the film’s outset, Corinne, an innocent, wide-eyed teenager, falls in love with a slightly older boy who dreams of becoming a rock star. They marry after she gets pregnant but continue traveling with his band, partying with marijuana and alcohol, until an abrupt accident forces their bus off the road and causes it to crash into a lake, nearly drowning the young family.
But when they survive, they immediately attribute their salvation to God and embrace Christianity wholeheartedly. Yet, as the years go by, Corinne realizes that her inquisitive spirit and desire to have a voice in the world is at odds with the strict rules of the particular parish they joined and her husband’s way of thinking.
As it follows her struggle to find the right balance and relationship with God for her life, the film never mocks or demonizes those who remain in her church. It simply shows that everyone has their own personal relationship, or lack thereof, with God, even if it means splitting up the relationships in their earthly lives.
“I think there are two kinds of films — the anti-religion film, and the pro-religion film,” explains Farmiga. “The films that proselytize are made for that community or to convert others to that community, and then there are those that mock the community and are threatening to the community. That’s not the film I was making.”
Nonetheless, Farmiga has received plenty of feedback from pastors who have attended early screenings and have generally warmed to her respectful take on faith. She has also been pleasantly surprised by the reaction her film received at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, where it was one of several films that explored faith.
“What are the questions I’m asking? The ones that touch me,” Farmiga concludes. “There was a strong conviction in me to direct this. I wanted to ask what does it mean to be holy? That’s what I think the audience is asking: What does God mean to me?
“In my experience, the crossroads of doubt and faith are very common and I wanted to make a movie that didn’t judge it. It’s not a bad thing — a reflective person thinks deeply and questions often.”

"CONTAGION" : Infectiously exciting entertainment

2011-10-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

‘Contagion’ Review: Not the Ideological Moments You Expect From Matt Damon Film

by Carl Kozlowski

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years about Hollywood, it’s that actors love being part of disaster movies. Whether it’s “The Towering Inferno” or “The Poseidon Adventure,” or any one of the insane “Airport” movies from the ‘70s, they were jam-packed with ridiculous combinations of stars whom no one would ever consider placing together onscreen otherwise.
That tradition comes back strong this Friday with “Contagion,” a film that boasts a cast featuring such Oscar nominees and winners as Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet and Jude Law in addition to longtime TV and movie favorite Laurence Fishburne and three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston. Hell, Cranston took a part in this epidemic epic even though he does two brief scenes buried amid all the mayhem.

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Now, I know that for most BH readers, seeing the name “Matt Damon” at the bare minimum has them cracking their fingers as they ready a diatribe about how proud they are for never seeing one of his movies, despite the fact that he’s now among Clint Eastwood’s most frequent collaborators. I catch a lot of flak for liking these films like “Invictus” and “Hereafter,” but then again, I’m reviewing how well a movie is made rather than casting eternal judgment upon Matt’s soul.
I’ll point out when he puts a sucker punch – or at least I try. I’m not quite as hawkeyed as some of our dear readers. But this movie has a few ideological surprises in store, and I’ll spell them out right off the bat so that everyone can either cool down and read the rest of the review or perhaps on the other hand, to fuel the fire even more as people say “OK, those ARE good points, but it’s STILL Matt Damon! And he can never redeem himself!”
So, first off, Matt doesn’t come up with a government conspiracy behind the epidemic, which is caused by a nasty intermingling of bat and pig that I’ll keep a secret since it makes for an awesome ending to the movie. In fact, the rare characters who imply that there’s a government epidemic causing the problem are all shot down.

The one character who espouses a conspiracy theory about the government and big pharmacies trying to kill us all for profit is himself proven to be the only scumbag exploiting the situation for money, and he’s a lone wolf who’s not tied to Corporate America or Big Pharmaceutical Companies. The problem in “Contagion” is unequivocally dealt with as a purely scientific mystery.
Second of all – and here’s the part where minds will perhaps literally blow open – when Damon finds that a neighbor has been shot and robbed at gunpoint by looters, he races out and finds a shotgun in that house and proceeds to wield it for several more scenes. It is absolutely clear that he sees a gun as key to his and his daughter’s safety and survival.
And third, there are a couple of subtle Christian touches in the film, as when a nun is shown comforting a patient, and another moment where a shelter in an Asian county has been constructed with an enormous cross on the roof when the characters involved are not even missionaries. Touches like that, even when small, are intentional in a Hollywood film and surprising when coming from this gang of actors and director Steven Soderbergh. Could they be a sign of hope that even liberal mainstream filmmakers are acknowledging Christianity does play a positive force in everyday life?
Now, on to the film itself:
Imagine your wife takes a business trip to Hong Kong, and when she comes home she seems to have a truly nasty case of the flu: sweats, shakes, splotchy skin and unending coughing and sniffles. Within two days, she passes out on the kitchen floor, foaming at the mouth and dies at the hospital – and within another 24 hours your six-year-old stepson is also dead from the same symptoms.
Now all you’ve got left is your teenage daughter and a horrible dose of survivor’s guilt, with not a single clue about how your wife got sick or the fact that world health officials consider her to be the Patient Zero, or first carrier, of a deadly global epidemic. The battle by that father to keep his daughter safe and maintain his sanity as the world collapses around them is just one of the six powerfully drawn, well-acted storylines in the new thriller “Contagion,” which marks an intelligently pulse-pounding return to form for Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director of “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic.”
“Contagion” plays like a smarter, more methodical take on the 1995 thriller “Outbreak,” in which Dustin Hoffman leads the fight to save the world from an outbreak of a deadly monkey virus. But where that film deteriorated into hokey fun and ludicrous action shenanigans from its diminutive star, “Contagion” has a more realistic and thoughtful approach that is all the more squirm-inducing because it seems far more realistic.
The film zips around the globe from Hong Kong to Minneapolis, from the heart of China to Chicago, and from London to Tokyo with each city’s population totals spelled out on screen to goose the fear of how many people could be wiped out in each locale. Soderbergh knows that dropping us into impersonal megacities like Tokyo, with 36 million people, while following individual contagion carriers effectively taps into our own daily fears of catching something from the person next to us on a bus, train or movie theater seat.
At the same time, he deploys an incredible cast with precision that makes the intertwining stories compelling to follow. Fishburne plays the head of the Centers for Disease Control, Winslet is an ace epidemic specialist, and Law nearly steals the show as a blogger who’s touting a cure for the epidemic and is alleging that a government conspiracy is behind the panic while hiding secrets of his own.
Add in Damon as the newly widowed father at the heart of it all and Paltrow as his quickly-deceased wife whose Hong Kong trip is retraced through security-camera footage, and viewers will find plenty of rewards in the acting alone. But writer Scott Z. Burns digs deeper than one expects, moving beyond thrills to realistically show how within a matter of weeks quarantines and diminishing food supplies could easily lead even our civilized society into mass panic and chaos.
And just when you think that a happy ending is on its way, Burns and Soderbergh play the ace up their sleeves by revealing how Paltrow got infected in the first place. That sequence of events is both completely plausible and utterly chilling – and showing us that our worst nightmares are a step away from our everyday realities is the scariest thing of all.

"APES" RISES ABOVE THE REST OF SUMMER"S FILMS

2011-10-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ Review: Brilliantly Executed and Exciting

by Carl Kozlowski

There were a few images from movies that left an indelible impression on my mind when I first saw them in childhood. One was laughing hysterically upon seeing Woody Allen getting his arm stuck in a gumball machine while running from the cops in “Take the Money and Run.” Another is Darth Vader taking his mask off in “Empire Strikes Back,” revealing the horrifically scarred mound of goo that passed for his face. And a third would have to be seeing Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes,” first because at age six I was stunned that they allowed him to stand naked on TV and then because of the more iconic terrifying image of the collapsed Statue of Liberty at the end of the film. However, that final shot, which helped spark my passion for movies, was ruined by the lame-o series of sequels to “Apes” and especially by Tim Burton’s disastrous remake.

And so it was that I regarded seeing the new “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” about as much as I look forward to seeing torture-porn or Merchant-Ivory costume dramas. Meaning, I thought I’d rather have my eyeballs plucked out.
But every once in a long while, Hollywood still harbors the capacity to surprise me. And it’s with an utterly stunned sense of joy that I am happy to declare “Rise” the most entertaining movie of the summer, a film that is jam-packed with moments that will awe and inspire both young and old alike. It will have you thinking, “how’d they do that?” over and over.
The film stars Oscar nominee James Franco (“127 Hours”) as Will Rodman, a young science whiz who’s at the forefront of testing a new Alzheimer’s-fighting drug, AZ-112, on apes at a genetic research firm called GenSys. Franco’s presence serves notice that this film is going to be smarter than usual. While he occasionally misfires, like he did in “Your Highness,” his choice of films is usually tied to great writing.
And that is the case here. Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver spool out the scientific info with a minimum of confusing jargon while quickly establishing Rodman as a full-bodied, sympathetic character whose father (John Lithgow) is slipping away into the ether of Alzheimer’s disease.
Lithgow’s role is relatively small but he makes the most of it with one of his most affecting and effective film roles in quite some time. And Andy Serkis, known for bringing an astonishing humanity to the facial expressions of CGI-based characters like Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” films and King Kong in the Peter Jackson remake a few years back, outdoes himself here by bringing heartbreaking emotional depth to the main ape, named Caesar.
When the top ape in GenSys’s initial experiment goes, well, ape, just before the board meeting that will approve the beneficial effects of use of the drug on humans, the program is immediately canceled and the dozen apes involved in it are killed. But one baby chimp, Caesar, has been overlooked, and another researcher convinces Rodman to take the animal home and save it from extermination.
As Caesar grows, it’s clear that his intelligence far exceeds that of humans at parallel ages. Rodman realizes that the animal has developed these remarkable traits as a byproduct of the AZ-112 given to his mother and decides to use the drug on his father, who after the treatment appears to heal immediately. Success in improving his father’s condition inspires Rodman and his boss Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) to launch a new, even more secret round of tests. Only this time, both the good and the bad results of their high-risk experiments are vastly heightened.
To spoil another moment of “Rise” would be a crime. Suffice to say, what follows is brilliantly planned and expertly paced jaw-dropping fun rivaled only by “Fast Five” for the craziest two hours of film this year.
And as an aside to those readers who are wondering if “Apes” hides any sucker punches against capitalism or towards an overly biased take against animal experimentation, another prominent conservative site’s head critic was at the screening I attended and he expressed his surprise that the film wasn’t polticized and that the sympathetic and heroic Franco character more than compensated for any risk of mustache-twirling villainy by the other scientists.

"THE CHANGE-UP" pulls a change-up of its own as crass first half nearly saved by second half

2011-10-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

Review: ‘The Change-Up’ Misses Its Target

by Carl Kozlowski

Last weekend, your choices of new movies at the box office came down to watching apes try to act human in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and watching grown human men try to act like apes in “The Change-Up.” Actually, some of the behavior these guys wallow in would be an insult to apes, as “The Change-Up” traffics in some of the grossest, laziest, most self-indulgent bad behavior and horrid tastelessness of just about any mainstream film I’ve ever seen – and I’m no prude: “There’s Something About Mary” and “Animal House” are among my top five favorite movies.

The premise of “The Change-Up” alone seems like a copycat of the slew of body-switching comedies that flooded theaters in the late 1980s (“Big,” “Like Father Like Son,” “18 Again,” “Dream a Little Dream,” and “Vice Versa,” to name a few). And to add to the sense of laziness, it stars Jason Bateman in what’s starting to appear to be his Movie of the Month Club, playing an uptight corporate lawyer who can’t seem to get a promotion — virtually the same character he played just a month ago in “Horrible Bosses.”
Meanwhile, Ryan Reynolds reverts to the crude shenanigans of his breakthrough film “Van Wilder” in playing a constantly stoned slacker whose idea of a big break is landing a role in a soft-core porn flick. One wishes immediately that both they and the filmmakers – who are talented in the R-rated comedy genre, as Jon Lucas and Scott Moore created the first “Hangover” and David Dobkin directed “Wedding Crashers” – had followed their own title and attempted to create a film that relied more on clever writing and reinventing the body-switching subgenre than just attempting to push the envelope until it’s torn wide open and shredded to pieces.
In the flick, Bateman plays Dave, an uptight and married corporate lawyer whose promotion to firm partner rests on his mastering a huge merger. Reynolds, meanwhile, is Mitch, who’s been his best friend since third grade even though his character would be more likely to flush Bateman’s head down a toilet than hang out with him in real life.
Both men, of course, wish that they had the life of the other. Then one night, while simultaneously urinating in a public fountain, they both say “I wish I had your life!” at the same time, and the body-switch is made. The results are disastrous for both characters, and they realize the only way they can change back is by urinating again in the same magic fountain, which has been suddenly uprooted by the city of Atlanta and lost in the shuffle of bureaucratic paperwork.
The guys have to wait a week before finding the statue, meaning Reynolds now has to inhabit Bateman’s body and experience married life, fatherhood, and responsibility. That also means Bateman’s character can finally live out his wildest fantasies while using Reynolds’ body.
For the first half of the film, this scenario results in a tedious series of events and a slew of profanities that push the limits of bad taste. Fortunately, writers Moore and Lucas and director Dobkin pull off a welcome surprise in the film’s second half, during which time the two friends have to learn from their situations and become better men. This is done with much better writing, much less vulgarity, a welcome minimum of sap, and a heightened commitment to the roles played by the leads.
It also helps that in the second half, the main women in their lives (Leslie Mann and Olivia Wilde) are revealed as funny and multidimensional people, not mere shrews or sex objects. Which makes me wonder: if the writers are capable of writing fairly tasteful yet still very funny material in the second half, why not do it all the way through? You offend less people and entertain more, leading to more people showing up in the theater.
This leaves moviegoers who like R-rated comedies with a decision that may have to be decided by a coin flip rather than a change-up. If you are at all easily offended, this movie is not for you. But if you can handle all the raunchy language and behavior leading to the film’s otherwise well-done, witty, and meaningful second half, then perhaps take a swing at “The Change-Up.”

THE CRAZIEST HOME MOVIE EVER: THESE TEENS REMADE "RAIDERS"!

2011-10-09T17:20:00.000-07:00

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation’ – The Ultimate Passion Projectby Carl Kozlowski

Think back to your summer vacations growing up. You probably took a few trips with your family, then moved on to a lame summer job working in a mall or flipping burgers. Some of those memories are probably preserved in home movies that no one – not even you – would want to watch again.
On the other hand, Lincoln Heights resident Chris Strompolos spent his teen summers being shot at, dragged under a truck, and chased by a giant boulder. He had his first kiss, fought off Arabs and Indians, and eventually saved the planet from Nazi domination. The best part is, he captured it all on video and for the past five years, people all over the planet have been clamoring to see the footage.

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If his adventures sound familiar, that’s because Strompolos was starring in a remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” reenacting the adventures of Indiana Jones. The difference is “Raiders” was directed by the biggest director on the planet, Steven Spielberg, while Strompolos was taking orders from his best friend, Eric Zala, who is only a year older than he is. They were also hindered by the difference in their budgets ($18 million for Spielberg’s, $5000 for the boys’), and having to shoot their entire movie on the fly over seven summers in the backwoods of Mississippi.
On May 14, 2008, nearly 20 years after they finished production in 1989, Strompolos and Zala reunited with their friend Jayson Lamb, who served as editor/cinematographer and effects whiz on the film, to present the Los Angeles debut of “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation” on Hollywood’s ultimate big screen at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. The event was a benefit for the Festival of Children Foundation, but it followed five years of whirlwind screenings at film festivals all over the planet and a personal letter raving about the film from Spielberg himself.
And perhaps the most amazing thing of all is, Strompolos and his buddies never even thought anyone outside their small town of Ocean Springs, Mississippi would ever care about what even they saw as rambunctious summer fun.
“My parents didn’t know what was going on. We kept them in the dark. There was one bit where we set Eric on fire, my mom saw it, and we got in trouble and agreed to have adult supervision,” Strompolos recalls in an exclusive PW interview. “We kept our parents separate from it. We made it sound innocent, just saying ‘We’re going off to shoot ‘Raiders!’’ and mom would say ‘OK!’ It wasn’t until the 1989 premiere that my mom saw me go under the truck.”
Strompolos and Zala were two bored movie buffs who were utterly obsessed with the original “Raiders” when they met at ages 10 and 11, respectively. They hit it off immediately and decided to see if they could remake the original film, shot-for-shot. Since “Raiders” had not been released on video yet at the time of their meeting in 1982, a year after the film’s release, they had to track down a copy of the film’s script and rely on their memories in order for Zala to draw more than 600 storyboards for the film’s intricate costumes, sets, and action scenes.
Their slavish devotion to the cause led them to bringing in fellow dreamer Lamb and his Betamax camcorder onto the project. Soon there were plenty of other things that the young trio’s parents were unaware of, such as the fact that they staged the original’s big gunfight in a bar, complete with raging fires and flame-engulfed stuntmen, in Zala’s mom’s basement.
“We did it safely, and Jayson had learned in a magic book from library that if you use rubbing alcohol it lights nice but doesn’t consume,” explains Strompolos, who is now 37. “All the fire sets were built underneath the kitchen of Eric’s mom’s house. We were pretty lucky. We built our own sets from plywood and other kinds of breakaway wood that could smash or burn easily, plus there was lots of cement in the basement that kept it under control.”
Other tricks employed along the way included building the six-foot-tall boulder that chased “Indy” out of two fiberglass halves that were then glued together. As the boulder rolled rapidly after them, cameraman Lamb crouched inside a shopping cart and shot Strompolos as the star’s offscreen hands pushed the cart in a mad dash for safety.
The film had its hometown premiere back in 1989 as it was finished. The boys drifted apart as adulthood set in, with Zala taking the final-edit videotape with him to college at New York University’s prestigious film school and showing it for fun to friends on occasion. But it was one of those friends who got the ball (or in this case, the boulder) rolling for the film’s eventual discovery and cult-classic status.
That unknown friend told another young filmmaker named Eli Roth about the adaptation, and Roth was determined to see it. When Roth met with Spielberg at his Dreamworks studio while preparing the release of his own debut film “Cabin Fever” in 2003, he told the master director about the adaptation and Spielberg insisted on tracking it down to watch. Once he saw it, Spielberg wrote the filmmakers – and later worked out an arrangement allowing them to show it as long as they couldn’t profit from it, such as at festivals and for fundraisers. Soon Vanity Fair magazine commissioned a ten-page story on the history of the adaptation.
And, in a crazy, almost metaphysical loop of fate, Warner Bros. studio bought the rights to the Vanity Fair article and has been developing a film on Strompolos and his friends’ youthful adventures ever since. Someday, if the cards fall right, he’ll have the surreal experience of watching someone else reenact his reenactment of his favorite film.
While he and Zala are still working together as Rolling Boulder Films, putting together a package for their film “Where the River Ends,” Strompolos already has the satisfaction of having achieved the impossible as a youth.
“We estimated we spent $5000 total, we still don’t know, and we found stuff, built stuff, shopped at Salvation Army and Goodwill while Jayson studied library books to see how magicians did effects and Eric plotted how to coordinate birthdays and holiday to get gifts like hats and bullets just in time for our next shots,” says Strompolos. “There was a lot of planning on the stunts, but we just went for it. And it still gets us meetings to this day.”

"CRAZY STUPID LOVE" : WITTY TOUCHING SMART

2011-10-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

Crazy Stupid Love’ Review: Great Performances, Witty Scriptby Carl Kozlowski

Man, has it been one rough summer for Tom Hanks. As the writer-director and star of the colossal flop “Larry Crowne,” he no doubt has found plenty of time to wonder why audiences stayed away in droves from his tale of an average Joe (well, Larry) and how he shakes his life up when he loses his job amid the recession.

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He may want to look over his shoulder at Steve Carell to figure it all out, for Carell appears to have taken over the title of America’s Favorite Everyman from Hanks. It’s not just that Carell shares Hanks’ genuine relatability and genial everyday charm, but likely also the fact that one is hard-pressed to find Carell forcing his political opinions on movie fans and telling them how to vote. He just shows up and does a great job, often weaving tales of sympathetic characters who ultimately try to do the right thing even amid a world that seems to reward doing the wrong thing – and making us laugh like crazy in the process.
And so it is that “Crazy Stupid Love” marks the latest Carell film to hit the multiplex, this time backed by a stellar ensemble cast with Oscar nominees Ryan Gosling and Julianne Moore, Oscar winner Marisa Tomei, fast-rising star Emma Stone and the perennially popular Kevin Bacon – all of whom are intertwined in surprising ways as they each search for their own form of true love. The difference between this film and utter dreck like “Valentine’s Day” and “He’s Just Not That Into You” is that “Crazy” is genuinely funny and touching with well-drawn and acted portrayals of people who seem real, rather than merely looking like it’s weaving stories just to hit all the marketing demographics in existence.

The film kicks off with a bang as average suburban couple Cal Weaver (Carell) and his wife Emily (Moore) are having a seemingly romantic dinner. But when Carell says they should each blurt out what they want at the same time, he shouts “Dessert!” while she yells, “A divorce!”
Needless to say, this comes as a shock to Cal, who agrees instantly to move out and starts getting drunk in a bar alone. That is, until he meets Jacob Palmer (Gosling), a top-notch ladies’ man who offers to get Cal back in the dating game via coaching him on everything from better wardrobe choices to killer pickup lines. Soon, Cal is a ladies’ man sowing his wild oats –including a hilarious hookup with a gloriously unhinged Tomei - after sleeping with just one woman his entire life thus far.
Meanwhile, Emily is torn between the desire for midlife excitement that led her to sleep with David Lindhagen (Bacon) and her guilt over abandoning her marriage and leaving her troubled 13-year-old son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) and younger daughter feeling adrift without a father in the house. As Robbie himself tries to woo the babysitter (Analeigh Tipton) who’s 17 and looks down on him while pining for Cal, Jacob meets his romantic match in a young woman named Hannah (Stone) who sees through his seductive games and has a big secret of her own.
“Crazy Stupid Love” comes from the unlikely directing duo of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who previously teamed up as writers for the hard-R comedy classic “Bad Santa” and as the directors of the little-seen (yet surprisingly funny and affecting) Jim Carrey gay romantic comedy “I Love You Philip Morris.” Here, they show a surprising maturity and warmth that’s borne out of the terrific screenplay by Dan Fogelman, who’s previously scored more with animated films like “Cars” and “Tangled” than with live-action films like “Fred Claus.”
The characters may not be perfect people, and are prone to making mistakes like the rest of us. But the beauty of the film lies in the fact that true love may be an ideal, but it’s one worth striving for and that while even a great marriage may take hard work, it’s worth the effort.
Put all the elements together of a great cast, an insightful and witty script, and directors eager to strut their stuff, and “Crazy Stupid Love” should prove to be the sane and wise choice for date-night moviegoers throughout the rest of the summer.

"COWBOYS AND ALIENS" SURPRISINGLY MEDIOCRE

2011-10-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

Review: ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ – Good Times and Merriment

by Carl Kozlowski

Even in a world where most movie heroes have to take on superpowers before they can fight properly and often find themselves toeing the PC line while saving the world, it’s good to know that some movie concepts are just good, clean, ridiculous fun. And riding onto the nation’s movie screens this weekend is a perfect example of just that kind of film: the new Western/sci-fi hybrid genre mash-up “Cowboys & Aliens.”
The “plot” couldn’t be more basic, yet it took nine people to assemble the script, which opens on tough-guy cowboy Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) waking up in the desert with a nasty gash in his belly and a mysterious iron bracelet on one arm.

As he struggles to remember what led to his desert awakening, Jake is confronted by three horsemen who threaten to turn him in for a bounty. He still can’t remember his name or where he came from, but he does know how to open a can of whupass on the interlopers and proceeds to kill them before riding into the nearest town wearing their clothes and riding their horses.
When he finds that the town is ruled by the terroristic clan of corrupt cattle rancher Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), he proceeds to stir things up by humorously beating Woodrow’s son and henchmen. Just as he’s about to have to run for his life or fight to the death with Woodrow, however, a fleet of alien spaceships comes swooping in out of nowhere to blow a bunch of stuff up for no immediately apparent reason – and Jake and Woodrow have to team up and bring their respective posses together to fight back against the aliens with one cohesive force.
Before you wonder if the idea of combining the gangs to stop an outside force is an exercise in kumbaya multiculturalism, let me assure you that this is a rare case where Hollywood just lets a film play by its own rules, with no agenda to be found anywhere. The two posses are made up of middle-aged white men just because that was the norm back in the days of the segregated Old West, and at a few points there are even touching or haunting moments in which a character named Doc asks the town preacher about the meaning of his life and the suffering he has endured, as well as a touching turnaround in which the Doc makes sure the preacher is treated with respect and proper prayers when he dies.
And it’s also cool to see Craig find inventive ways to beat the crap out of people and shoot them from unexpected angles, enabling him to cut loose in a way his reserved James Bond character rarely can. Ford, meanwhile, pulls off his first fun non-Indiana Jones role since 1997’s “Air Force One,” and while it’s obvious that Craig and Ford are having a blast bad-mouthing and punching each other across some impressive Western vistas, this doesn’t quite add up to the jaw-droppingly entertaining genre mashup that it should be.
Instead, it seems to drag at times while director Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) finds ways to shoehorn the under-developed yet frightening aliens (who bear way too much resemblance to the creatures in the “Alien” series, and are a bit too blatantly CGI amid the vibrantly real locations the cowboys ride through).
But the fact that I was able to maintain a goofy smile and chuckle throughout does count for something. It may not be a great Western like “Shane” nor a sci-fi classic on the level of the “Alien” series, but “Cowboys & Aliens” offers an amusing oasis for weary viewers to drink from amid a summer film schedule filled with parched ideas and countless sequels. If you can’t help grinning over the concept alone, you’ll probably enjoy it. And if you think it sounds stupid, this film definitely isn’t for you.

ITS THE WORLDS GREATEST DOCUMENTARY MAKER - ERROL MORRIS!!!

2011-10-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

Oscar Winning Documentarian Errol Morris on His Latest Film, Tabloid Journalism, and The Nature of Truth

by Carl Kozlowski

In my position as writer about film, I sometimes get to interview filmmakers and performers about their work. One man I’ve interviewed twice is Errol Morris, an amazing documentarian who alternates between making films about oddballs and films about political issues. Following you’ll find my latest interview with him about the nutty and apolitical new doc, “Tabloid,” followed by my 2008 profile of him for his prior film about the Abu Ghraib photo scandal, 2008’s “Standard Operating Procedure.”
First, the “Tabloid” story:

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Errol Morris may not be as famous as Michael Moore, but he’s had a profound influence on the documentary genre with 14 films over the past 33 years. While Moore places himself front and center as the entertaining and emotional heart of his films, Morris has largely remained off-camera, preferring to allow his compelling subjects to speak for themselves.
It’s Morris’ unique choice of subject matter, which he classifies as being either “oddball” or political, and the striking visuals with which he surrounds his interview subjects that have made his films cinematic events for connoisseurs. In 2004, he won an Oscar for Best Documentary with his startling profile of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in “The Fog of War” and later returned to dead-serious wartime matters by exploring the circumstances behind the Abu Ghraib scandal with his last film, 2009’s “Standard Operating Procedure.”
But his latest film “Tabloid,” opening Friday at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, fits more squarely within Morris’ usual strengths of portraying quirky people and events through a comedic lens. “Tabloid” follows the much stranger-than-fiction misadventures of Joyce McKinney, a former self-described “beauty queen” who developed an obsessive love with a Mormon man who was quickly relocated to England in order to keep the lovers apart.
When McKinney followed her lover to the UK in an attempt to kidnap him and live happily ever after, it ignited a British tabloid frenzy as gunpoint abduction, bondage modeling, magic underwear, and oddball accomplices all came into play. And just when she thought she could return to a life in obscurity, McKinney re-entered the world’s news radar by cloning her dog via shady South Korean technology.
Morris took a few minutes to share his thoughts with BH on tabloid journalism and the nature of truth.
Big Hollywood: How’d you find out about this crazy story?
Erroll Morris: A wire service article in the Boston Globe. This was very recently. I knew nothing about it years ago when it was happening. The Associated Press wire service story was about her cloned dogs and concluded with a small piece of information that the dog cloning might be connected to this 30-year-old sex and kidnapping story.
Big Hollywood: What grabbed you right away about this as a film — dog cloning or the actual tabloids about her from the ’70s and ’80s?
MORRIS: Both! A combination of A and B brings it out. I saw the story and I thought this could be interesting. Originally I was thinking about it almost as a first-person story. I called Joyce and she wasn’t interested. She has complained about the film, complained that the film was a completely oriented story against the Mormon Church, as if that was the reason I was making “Tabloid” — to attack Mormons and Mormonism, when in fact that was not the reason I made the movie. I know that whenever you do a story about a real person, there’s going to be trouble of some kind. People have expectations of what they’d like the movie to be versus what it is. It’s inevitable.
Big Hollywood: We just had the Casey Anthony trial. Do you watch that with different eyes?
MORRIS: It came as a surprise to me, a terrible thing to admit to. I did not follow the Casey Anthony trial, but I’m aware of it now. I wasn’t following the whole story of News of the World, but, of course, I’m aware of it now.
Big Hollywood: In the 30 years since the “Tabloid” story happened, it strikes me how innocent this all seems. Since then, the line between tabloid and legitimate journalism has become hopelessly blurred, and we’re constantly bombarded with these increasingly sensational stories. Do you think that this is inevitable, as in News of the World?
MORRIS: I think it would be wrong to conclude that all tabloid journalism is bad. It’s focused on stories that grab a hold of us. It could be two or three or four lines. I’d like to think of the Bible as an extended tabloid story. The tabloids clearly played a destructive role for Joyce in her life, and I wouldn’t argue otherwise. That type of journalism, trying to create narratives, is part of a deeper problem in journalism, per se, not just tabloid journalism. The News of the World story is extreme, because here you have parents who are worried their daughter is dead and they start monkeying around with the evidence as the police are trying to find out what’s happening. It’s crossed a deep line of some kind.

Big Hollywood: Is that true of the story of Joyce McKinney?
MORRIS: It’s much harder to make that claim, for me. I’ll leave each one of you to decide for yourselves. Joyce was not an unwilling participant in this. She came to the UK with the chloroform, handcuffs and fake gun. Maybe it got out of hand, but I don’t think that she can simply claim total innocence in what happened. She provided a story for the tabloids that was too good to be true.
Big Hollywood: You spent time working as a private investigator. How did that affect your interviewing?
MORRIS: I worked as a private investigator briefly in Berkeley, but that was very very briefly. In the ‘70s, then my film career which really never amounted to a film career per se went completely belly up and I had to find a way to earn a living, and so I worked as a private detective in New York in the early ‘80s. I think it’s the other way around, that I started interviewing murderers – Ed Gein, a whole number of different murderers in Northern California and Wisconsin. That goes back so many many years – I had a relationship with Ed Kemper. I’d gone to all of these trials, was going to write a PhD thesis on the insanity defense. In those days there were the Big Three mass murderers in NoCal: Ed Kemper, Herbie Mullen, and Charles Frazer. So I had gone to the Kemper trial, part of the Mullen Trial, and I was really interested in writing about the insanity plea – started interviewing people and I believe those are my first real interviews. I’d been an undergraduate in Madison and went back to Wisconsin and developed this whole style of interviewing where I remembered tape recorders really well – big tape ones. And I would play this game where I tried to say as little as possible so I had tapes that I was particularly proud of, but my voice wasn’t on the tape. I would get the person I would interview talk for a full hour on the tape. The idea was this pure stream of consciousness, the Joycean interview – and that certainly informed “Gates of Heaven” and it became the idea behind “Gates of Heaven.” I’d always excluded my voice in editing these movies. I wanted to publish a book and no one was interested in publishing my writing and I stopped writing for years and years. Now I’m publishing all these books coming out from Penguin – Believing is Seeing, a book on the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case and a third from U Chicago Press based on a set of essays I did in NYT called “The Ashtray,” so I’m writing a lot.
Big Hollywood: How do you decide in your films – subject-wise you seem really known for these portraits of eccentric people, but Abu Ghraib seems like a big change of pace for you, exploring the nature of evil in a serious way. How do you decide what fits for you and what approach – quirky or serious?
MORRIS: I think “The Thin Blue Line” is pretty funny. Not as funny as this. I took out a lot of the funnier stuff in the Abu Ghraib story. These stories have a logic of their own, not a decision per se. once I made a decision to put Joyce on film, it followed in due course: the other interviews and material. It’s certainly funny, it’s sad, and I‘d say it’s also sick.
Big Hollywood: “Tabloid” is a love story but also a bit of film noir?
MORRIS: I like the idea of it being film noir, but never even thought about it til this morning. My intro to noir is through Pacific Film Archives. People don’t really have control over their lives in noir, they’re part of some infernal tapestry of design that has a sense of inexorability. There’s a sense of that in this story. The book ends to me on the strongest element. The material of Joyce reading from her still-unpublished complete book is amazing because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy among other things (her reading about loneliness).
Big Hollywood: Do you ever outright, directly challenge your subjects on their tales?
MORRIS: I gave Fred the opportunity to see the movie with “Dr. Death” (about a man who’s the leading expert on executions in America, yet also is a Holocaust denier) – I put him on the Interrotron when he watched the movie, and then I interviewed him. I said, “Fred, I don’t believe in any of this stuff. I believe poisoned gas was used in Auschwitz and your so called proof was not particularly convincing. It’s the most direct I’ve been with anybody. I believe I was direct in “The Thin Blue Line” line too – you’re making a film about a factual matter, making a claim about something that happened or didn’t happen. If the Dallas police say Randall Adams shot police officer Robert Wood, that’s’ a true or false claim and finding an answer to that is at the center of that claim.
Big Hollywood: You leave things more up in the air in those cases…
MORRIS: For good reason. There are answers in history, but sometimes we can’t know what those answers are. Historical evidence is perishable. If someone destroys all of the historical evidence for any given event, it’s going to make it hard to come to a set conclusion about what really happened. It doesn’t mean that something actually didn’t happen, but we may not be able to ever determine what that is.
Big Hollywood: The tabloid people lost their evidence and she lost her evidence.
MORRIS: That’s absolutely correct. A lot of people losing evidence, and you have people dying. KJ. Take the kidnapping itself. We tried to get the partner to talk to us, but supposedly the partner never really saw the kidnapping. KJ is dead and can’t be interviewed, Kurt who refused to be interviewed, and then there’s Joyce. Do I know ultimately what happened: Was he taken by force either in the Love Cottage or his missionary work?
Big Hollywood: Is it possible for both parties in a story as complex as these have room to be wrong?
MORRIS: In the sense was it wrong for Joyce to try to force Kurt’s hand, or wrong for Kurt to abandon Joyce and so on and so forth? There’s so much ambiguity in the story of every stripe, and it’s one of the reasons I like the story. My job as a filmmaker, if I can uncover some underlying truth or reality and it’s essential to the story, I go after it. In Thin Blue Line, in SOP, in Mr. Death, I went after it in all three of those instances. This is a different kind of story in the sense that what really fascinated me in this story are these competing narratives at war with each other between tabloid journalists, both who had a need to tell their own version of reality. Joyce certainly had one more version, and the ongoing uncertainty about what really transpired in all of this. It’s casting a net around it, making sure there’s mysteries, I’m still transfixed by this.
Big Hollywood: Was the ambiguity at the heart of the decision not to include any filmed reenactments for “Tabloid”?
MORRIS: Filmed reenactments for some people are designed to remove ambiguity but they’ve never served that function to me. They’ve called attention to mysteries and uncertainties. In the NYT I wrote a piece about the milkshake being thrown in “The Thin Blue Line” – I’m not reenacting throwing a milkshake. That’s not the reason it exists in the movie and the people who thought that are retarded. I was addressing a question at the time and still trying to address it. Five people take the stand in this man’s capital murder trial and say “That’s the man,” including the actual killer revealed later is a great witness. One of the central questions in the movie is did the policewoman get out of the police car? What was she in a position to see? She gets a milkshake, sees a car with headlights off, they pull it over and her partner gets out and walks up to driver’s side and gets shot five times and killed. The policewoman claims she’d gotten out and was standing at the rear of the suspect vehicle – a position to look at what’s in the back of the vehicle. The police draw a crime scene diagram. You are asked to reconstruct for yourselves what really transpired. If you’re getting out of the car with your partner, do you take it with you or place it on the floorboard. But if you heard gunshots, you’d toss that shake and run towards that car that’s speeding away.
What those devices do – and it occurred to me that I never thought of this until an interview this morning – that the words on the screen serve the same function in a way. But when you see “Kidnapped” come up on screen, you are forced to address the central question discussed. Was Kurt kidnapped and taken by force, spread-eagled on bed and shackled. It focuses the attention of the audience on some salient detail in a mystery. My favorite question was a Dallas reporter at the time the film was first screened in Dallas – asking me how I happened to be on the road that night with a film crew.

"FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS": ROMCOM OF THE YEAR

2011-10-09T17:09:00.001-07:00

‘Friends With Benefits’ Review: Great Cast In Teriffic Romcom

by Carl Kozlowski

With eight “Harry Potter” movies, four “Pirates” films, three “Transformers” and two “Hangover” flicks clogging the Hollywood distribution pipeline over the last few years, and “reboots” of movies like “Spider-Man” that are less than a decade old, it might seem that nothing original is coming out of La La Land these days. And this weekend might appear to offer up the most ridiculous example of repetitive thinking yet, when “Friends With Benefits” hits theaters a mere six months after another comedy about hot young twentysomethings hoping to score without emotional or legal commitments, “No Strings Attached.”

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Now, consider that “No Strings Attached” was originally titled “Friends With Benefits,” and that each of the films stars one of the lead actresses from “Black Swan” – with Natalie Portman in “Strings” and Mila Kunis in “Friends” – and one might even wonder why the competing studios that released these films aren’t suing each other for copyright infringement.
And yet, against all expectations, “Friends” proves itself to not only be the vastly superior of the two films, but also one of the best romantic comedies – period – to come out in the last few years. It’s a terrific, witty, sexy, and genuinely appealing film that should not only be a big hit but might wind up on my end of year mix list of the best brainy art-house films and crowd-pleasing popcorn flicks.
“Friends” benefits from the beginning from the fact its other star is Justin Timberlake, the pop-music wunderkind who’s proven himself to be one hell of a comedic talent in his surprising switch to comedic acting on “SNL” and in his charismatic drama turn in “The Social Network.” As Dylan, a magazine art director who’s recruited to take over GQ magazine’s creative approach by headhunter Jamie (Kunis), he at first displays just the right amount of cocky charm to win her over along with the audience.

But neither Dylan nor Jamie are looking to be won over, since each have been burned too many times and have decided they just want to have a fun, uncomplicated fling for a while. Soon they’re exchanging witty banter and knocking boots all over Manhattan, free to drop each other at any moment if another potential love interest comes along.
Of course such complications do turn up, and the dynamic duo seems to handle the pivot into straight-up friendship well. But when Dylan is called back home to L.A. over the July 4th weekend because his father (a terrific performance by Richard Jenkins) is starting to slip further into Alzheimer’s-related dementia, he asks Jamie to come along for emotional support and the two find that life, emotions and relationships are way more complicated than they ever expected.
It is in this subplot that “Friends” stands out from the pack of lame Hollywood rom-coms most strongly. How many other movies dare to touch on a serious issue like Alzheimer’s without carrying a heavy-handed message or being a lame excuse for tear-jerking? Yet “Friends” avoids all the clichés that one might fear with this kind of storyline.
The script by Keith Merryman, David A. Newman, Harley Peyton and director Will Gluck (who also soared above genre expectations with last fall’s “Easy A”) keeps that kind of attention to detail and cliché-busting throughout. Dylan and Jamie are smart people with detailed quirks and interests throughout, and Timberlake and Kunis play their roles for all they’re worth; Timberlake is especially funny in a couple of scenes where he plays Dylan as singing out of tune and unable to dance well.
The one potential sucker punch comes in the side character of Tommy, the sports editor of GQ who happens to be openly gay despite being macho. He keeps teasing Dylan that he must be secretly gay because he’s an art director, and in a couple of scenes Tommy either hits on him or offers to take him to meet guys at gay bars and basketball games – offers that Dylan turns down in comic frustration. The one thing that makes Tommy entertaining as a character is that he’s played by Woody Harrelson in his unhinged charmer mode, but then again, the combination of the name “Woody Harrelson” and the words “sucker punch” and “positive gay character” – even though he’s in a small part of the film – will probably make some BH readers’ heads explode.
All told, this is vastly superior to “No Strings Attached” in every way and – while it’s racy in its early stretches – it’s easily the best date movie to come down the pike in ages. It’s also the funniest movie this summer next to “Bridesmaids,” and is a good bet to become a rom-com perennial.

A "TRIP" WORTH TAKING - STEVE COOGAN"S NEW FLICK

2011-10-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Review: British Comics Coogan and Brydon Take Viewers on a ‘Trip’ Worth Taking

by Carl Kozlowski

There are some celebrities who manage to put up a wall of secrecy around their lives, and who make a clear distinction between their public and private personas. And then there are people like Steve Coogan, a major British comedy star who’s built a unique and very funny career out of blazing two career paths.

Coogan has built a rabid cult following in the U.S. to go with his more noticeable British stardom by alternately immersing himself in characters and impersonations so thoroughly he’s compared to the legendary Peter Sellers. Yet he’s also wildly popular back home for letting himself play the fool, Larry David-style, in a series of awkward and embarrassing filmed misadventures. And now he’s put both approaches together quite winningly in the new comedy “The Trip,” which has been doing strong and growing business at arthouses nationwide for the past couple of weeks.
In “The Trip,” which is actually a tightly edited mix of highlights from a BBC mockumentary series of the same name, Coogan teams up with his friendly rival and fellow comic Rob Brydon for a tour of Northern England’s finest restaurants. The idea is to combine humorous insights with genuine culinary opinions for a TV series, but while their stops at gourmet restaurants and deluxe bed and breakfasts offer up plenty of delicious imagery, the actual focus of the film and their journey within it is to create a framework for the two leads’ non-stop and hilarious banter.
Coogan and Brydon are genuine friends and fantastic at one-upping each other here on screen. While director Michael Winterbottom – who previously directed Coogan as a wild British concert promoter in the cult classic “24 Hour Party People” – is at the helm, he knows that these two are at their best when they’re cutting loose with an endless string of hilarious impersonations, climaxing in a tour de force battle royale of who can do the best Sean Connery.
Yet “The Trip” does offer some surprising detours as well. In its rare quiet moments it serves as a thoughtful meditation on the price people like Coogan pay for putting so much of their personalities out into the public. Wherever he wanders on his own seeking a moment of peace and quiet, someone – even in the most remote of villages – is ready to jump out from a corner and scare the daylights out of him with impersonations of his comedy bits.
The film also manages to draw a subtle portrait of the differences that grow between even the best of friends when one takes on the commitment of marriage and family while the other continues trying to live the immature life of a playboy. Brydon is the family man and gradually shows the emotional strain of being away from his loved ones, while Coogan engages in emotionally empty one-night stands that are unseen yet end with the women sneaking out on him in the morning.
Adding the icing of genuine emotions to the rich cake of their zesty performances, Coogan and Brydon have created a film in which longtime fans and those who are new to their charms will all be amply rewarded with 90 minutes of laughter.

THE BEST EVERYMAN ACTOR WORKING TODAY

2011-07-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

Big Hollywood Interview: ‘Terri’ Star John C. Reillyby Carl Kozlowski

Over the course of 53 films in just over a quarter-century, John C. Reilly has established himself as one of Hollywood’s greatest Everyman actors. Whether playing lovable shlubs in films like “Cyrus” and “Magnolia,” portraying wacky characters in “Talladega Nights” and “Stepbrothers,” or showing his musical side in his Oscar-nominated role in Chicago” or his starring turn in “Walk Hard,” Reilly is always ready to please.

In his latest film, “Terri,” Reilly steps into a micro-budget indie flick that has him playing the juicy role of Mr. Fizgerald, a vice principal and guidance counselor who takes a troubled, obese teenage boy named Terri under his wing and helps draw him out of his shell. The film itself is slow in a lot of places and drifts helplessly in its final half-hour, but Reilly makes his moments shine and takes the film to another level.

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Speaking by phone recently, Reilly discussed the appeal of the film for him, as well as the ways in which he manages to have a great career as well as a healthy personal life.

BH: You worked with your wife, producer Alison Dickey, on this film. How was that different than your other collaborations?

JCR: Alison and I worked together before, but not to this degree. It was pretty great working with her, I felt really taken care of, and it’s just simpler rather than having to get to know somebody as things need to be worked out.

I think about 70 percent of it was shot in Altadena, and some in Monrovia and Sierra Madre. I’ve shot a couple times up there, and I like that when you shoot up here, you’re left alone. I’ve shot a lot around Los Angeles and a lot of neighborhoods are burnt out on movies and see you as an annoyance, but people in Altadena are super friendly and curious about what you’re doing. I like the pace of life up here more than in LA in general because there’s less traffic and it’s so beautiful.

BH: This film has a very small budget, so how did it come to you and your wife’s attention?

JCR: It’s a great piece of writing, by a writer named Patrick DeWitt, who wrote it as a novel then asked his friend, our director Azazel Jacobs, for feedback on it. And Azazel told him right away it should be a movie. I liked his prior film “Mamma’s Man,” so that got me interested as well.

And it’s a great character. To get to be a guidance counselor was interesting and I’ve had people like that in my life and I’ve always identified with younger people for some reason. I like the way the character goes somewhere as it progresses – you start thinking of him as one thing and then realize he’s somewhat of a flawed mentor.

The older I get the more interesting those mentor kinds of parts are because I think I’m older and it’s time to give back. He’s a good human being but I don’t know how much success he has as a counselor. At this school he’s also vice principal in charge of discipline so you go to him if you need counseling or if you’re in trouble. I’m pretty direct, a no-nonsense get to the point sort of person, and that ‘no bull’ motto of his appealed to me.

BH: Having done 53 films, what would you say is your decision-making process?

JCR: To try to keep changing it up and surprising people. But I think that being able to be grounded in Hollywood and be able to play average men comes from how you’re raised, and I come from a humble past in Chicago, from working-class people. I suppose the slow growth of my career has helped me stay grounded as well. I think what’s tough is when you come from nowhere at age 18 and have everyone offering to do whatever you ask for. That can be tough to process. I didn’t do really well out of the gate, it wasn’t like I was being followed by photographers at 19 years old.

BH: How do you find your balance between blockbuster broad comedies and highly personal films like this?

JCR: I make the calls pretty much on what I do and what I’m interested in. I made two movies with Will Ferrell and 51 others. If there’s a project where people think I’ve done it before or know what to expect that’s less appealing. Some actors are good at playing the same character and for some reason I envy them because they can find roles for their pocket but this keeps it interesting.

BH: Do you have a favorite film or films that you’ve done?

JCR: All the movies I made with Paul Anderson are pretty great, I knew everyone so well on the films. It was some of the first times I was getting to do something more in terms of bigger roles and bigger part of the story . I was much more involved in the development of those projects. Picking a favorite is hard because they’re all like children to you, even with roles that weren’t so great you find personal things that appealed.

BH: So what’s next for you?

JCR: I have a film with Roman Polanski out this fall. I also have the film “We Need to Talk About Kevin” this summer, just got back from Cannes, we did really well with competition there. It’s based on a book of the same name, I play the father of the kid who has a really difficult relationship with his mother from the time he was born. It’s about a family struggling to connect, the kid does a horrible thing – kills a bunch of people – and the family disintegrates from there. It’s based on a book, not so much Columbine. This is about the relationship of the family.

BH: And you’re really not going to start getting a Hollywood head-trip, are you?

JCR: Not after all this time. We shot “Terri” at a high school on Allen Street, and we didn’t have trailers on the movie because it’s one of the lowest budgets I’ve ever had even though it doesn’t look like it. We would eat and change in the classrooms in high school. My room was the chemistry lab, and we didn’t have a couch – just hard desks and a huge chemistry table. I was tired and had some time off one day. I lay down on the chemistry table and fully fell asleep. That might be funny because the kids there now can think, ‘John C. Reilly slept here.’”

“Terri” opens in New York and LA on July 1, and expands nationwide over the next several weeks

TWO TALKS WITH ERROL MORRIS

2011-07-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

ERROL MORRIS INTERVIEWS BY CARL KOZLOWSKI

NOTE TO READERS: In my position as writer about film, I sometimes get to interview filmmakers and performers about their work. One man I've interviewed twice is Errol Morris, an amazing documentarian who alternates between making films about oddballs and films about political issues. Following you'll find my latest interview with him about the nutty and apolitical new doc, "Tabloid," followed by my 2008 profile of him for his prior film about the Abu Ghraib photo scandal, 2008's "Standard Operating Procedure."

First, the "Tabloid" story:

Errol Morris may not be as famous as Michael Moore, but he’s had a profound influence on the documentary genre with 14 films over the past 33 years. While Moore places himself front and center as the entertaining and emotional heart of his films, Morris has largely remained off-camera, preferring to allow his compelling subjects to speak for themselves.

It’s Morris’ unique choice of subject matter, which he classifies as being either “oddball” or political, and the striking visuals with which he surrounds his interview subjects that have made his films cinematic events for connoisseurs. In 2004, he won an Oscar for Best Documentary with his startling profile of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in “The Fog of War” and later returned to dead-serious wartime matters by exploring the circumstances behind the Abu Ghraib scandals with his last film, 2009’s “Standard Operating Procedure.”

But his latest film “Tabloid,” opening Friday at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, fits more squarely within Morris’ usual strengths of portraying quirky people and events through a comedic lens. “Tabloid” follows the much stranger-than-fiction misadventures of Joyce McKinney, a former self-described “beauty queen” who developed an obsessive love with a Mormon man who was quickly relocated to England in order to keep the lovers apart.

When McKinney followed her lover to the UK in an attempt to kidnap him and live happily ever after, it ignited a British tabloid frenzy as gunpoint abduction, bondage modeling, magic underwear and oddball accomplices all came into play. And just when she thought she could return to a life in obscurity, McKinney re-entered the world’s news radar by cloning her dog via shady South Korean technology.

Morris took a few minutes to share his thoughts with BH on tabloid journalism and the nature of truth.

Big Hollywood: How’d you find out about this crazy story?

Erroll Morris: A wire service article in the Boston Globe. This was very recently. I knew nothing about it years ago when it was happening. The Associated Press wire service story was about her cloned dogs and concluded with a small piece of information that the dog cloning might be connected to this 30-year-old sex and kidnapping story.

Big Hollywood: What grabbed you right away about this as a film — dog cloning or the actual tabloids about her from the ’70s and ’80s?

MORRIS: Both! A combination of A and B brings it out. I saw the story and I thought this could be interesting. Originally I was thinking about it almost as a first-person story. I called Joyce and she wasn’t interested. She has complained about the film, complained that the film was a completely oriented story against the Mormon Church, as if that was the reason I was making “Tabloid” — to attack Mormons and Mormonism, when in fact that was not the reason I made the movie. I know that whenever you do a story about a real person, there’s going to be trouble of some kind. People have expectations of what they’d like the movie to be versus what it is. It’s inevitable.

Big Hollywood: We just had the Casey Anthony trial. Do you watch that with different eyes?

MORRIS: It came as a surprise to me, a terrible thing to admit to. I did not follow the Casey Anthony trial, but I’m aware of it now. I wasn’t following the whole story of News of the World, but, of course, I’m aware of it now.

Big Hollywood: In the 30 years since the “Tabloid” story happened, it strikes me how innocent this all seems. Since then, the line between tabloid and legitimate journalism has become hopelessly blurred, and we’re constantly bombarded with these increasingly sensational stories. Do you think that this is inevitable, as in News of the World?

MORRIS: I think it would be wrong to conclude that all tabloid journalism is bad. It’s focused on stories that grab a hold of us. It could be two or three or four lines. I’d like to think of the Bible as an extended tabloid story. The tabloids clearly played a destructive role for Joyce in her life, and I wouldn’t argue otherwise. That type of journalism, trying to create narratives, is part of a deeper problem in journalism, per se, not just tabloid journalism. The News of the World story is extreme, because here you have parents who are worried their daughter is dead and they start monkeying around with the evidence as the police are trying to find out what’s happening. It’s crossed a deep line of some kind.

Big Hollywood: Is that true of the story of Joyce McKinney?

MORRIS: It’s much harder to make that claim, for me. I’ll leave each one of you to decide for yourselves. Joyce was not an unwilling participant in this. She came to the UK with the chloroform, handcuffs and fake gun. Maybe it got out of hand, but I don’t think that she can simply claim total innocence in what happened. She provided a story for the tabloids that was too good to be true.

Big Hollywood: You spent time working as a private investigator. How did that affect your interviewing?

MORRIS: I worked as a private investigator briefly in Berkeley, but that was very very briefly. In the ‘70s, then my film career which really never amounted to a film career per se went completely belly up and I had to find a way to earn a living, and so I worked as a private detective in New York in the early ‘80s. I think it’s the other way around, that I started interviewing murderers – Ed Gein, a whole number of different murderers in Northern California and Wisconsin. That goes back so many many years – I had a relationship with Ed Kemper. I’d gone to all of these trials, was going to write a PhD thesis on the insanity defense. In those days there were the Big Three mass murderers in NoCal: Ed Kemper, Herbie Mullen, and Charles Frazer. So I had gone to the Kemper trial, part of the Mullen Trial, and I was really interested in writing about the insanity plea – started interviewing people and I believe those are my first real interviews. I’d been an undergraduate in Madison and went back to Wisconsin and developed this whole style of interviewing where I remembered tape recorders really well – big tape ones. And I would play this game where I tried to say as little as possible so I had tapes that I was particularly proud of, but my voice wasn’t on the tape. I would get the person I would interview talk for a full hour on the tape. The idea was this pure stream of consciousness, the Joycean interview – and that certainly informed “Gates of Heaven” and it became the idea behind “Gates of Heaven.” I’d always excluded my voice in editing these movies. I wanted to publish a book and no one was interested in publishing my writing and I stopped writing for years and years. Now I’m publishing all these books coming out from Penguin – “Believing is Seeing,” a book on the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case and a third from U Chicago Press based on a set of essays I did in NYT called “The Ashtray,” so I’m writing a lot.

Big Hollywood: How do you decide in your films – subjectwise you seem really known for these portraits of eccentric people, but Abu Ghraib seems like a big change of pace for you, exploring the nature of evil in a serious way. How do you decide what fits for you and what approach – quirky or serious?

MORRIS: I think “The Thin Blue Line’ is pretty funny. Not as funny as this. I took out a lot of the funnier stuff in the Abu Ghraib story. These stories have a logic of their own, not a decision per se. once I made a decision to put Joyce on film, it followed in due course: the other interviews and material. It’s certainly funny, it’s sad, and I ‘d say it’s also sick.

Big Hollywood: Tabloid is a love story but also a bit of film noir?

MORRIS: I like the idea of it being film noir, but never even thought about it til this morning. My intro to noir is through Pacific Film Archives. People don’t really have control over their lives in noir, they’re part of some infernal tapestry of design that has a sense of inexorability. There’s a sense of that in this story. The book ends to me on the strongest element. The material of Joyce reading from her still-unpublished complete book is amazing because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy among other things (her reading about loneliness).

Big Hollywood: Do you ever outright, directly challenge your subjects on their tales?

MORRIS: I gave Fred the opportunity to see the movie with “Dr. Death”(about a man who's the leading expert on executions in America, yet also is a Holocaust denier) – I put him on the Interrotron when he watched the movie, and then I interviewed him. I said “Fred, I don’t believe in any of this stuff. I believe poisoned gas was used in Auschwitz and your so called proof was not particularly convincing. It’s the most direct I’ve been with anybody. I believe I was direct in “The Thin Blue Line” line too – you’re making a film about a factual matter, making a claim about something that happened or didn’t happen. If the Dallas police say Randall Adams shot police officer Robert Wood, that’s’ a true or false claim and finding an answer to that is at the center of that claim.

Big Hollywood: You leave things more up in the air in those cases…

MORRIS: For good reason. There are answers in history, but sometimes we can’t know what those answers are. Historical evidence is perishable. If someone destroys all of the historical evidence for any given event, it’s going to make it hard to come to a set conclusion about what really happened. It doesn’t mean that something actually didn’t happen, but we may not be able to ever determine what that is.

Big Hollywood: The tabloid people lost their evidence and she lost her evidence.

MORRIS: That’s absolutely correct. A lot of people losing evidence, and you have people dying. KJ. Take the kidnapping itself. We tried to get the partner to talk to us, but supposedly the partner never really saw the kidnapping. KJ is dead and can’t be interviewed, Kurt who refused to be interviewed, and then there’s Joyce. Do I know ultimately what happened: Was he taken by force either in the Love Cottage or his missionary work?

Big Hollywood: Is it possible for both parties in a story as complex as these have room to be wrong?

MORRIS: In the sense was it wrong for Joyce to try to force Kurt’s hand, or wrong for Kurt to abandon Joyce and so on and so forth? There’s so much ambiguity in the story of every stripe, and it’s one of the reasons I like the story. My job as a filmmaker, if I can uncover some underlying truth or reality and it’s essential to the story, I go after it. In Thin Blue Line, in SOP, in Mr. Death, I went after it in all three of those instances. This is a different kind of story in the sense that what really fascinated me in this story are these competing narratives at war with each other between tabloid journalists, both who had a need to tell their own version of reality. Joyce certainly had one more version, and the ongoing uncertainty about what really transpired in all of this. It’s casting a net around it, making sure there’s mysteries, I’m still transfixed by this.

Big Hollywood: Was the ambiguity at the heart of the decision not to include any filmed reenactments for "Tabloid"?

MORRIS: Filmed reenactments for some people are designed to remove ambiguity but they’ve never served that function to me. They’ve called attention to mysteries and uncertainties. In the NYT I wrote a piece about the milkshake being thrown in “The Thin Blue Line” – I’m not reenacting throwing a milkshake. That’s not the reason it exists in the movie and the people who thought that are retarded. I was addressing a question at the time and still trying to address it. Five people take the stand in this man’s capital murder trial and say “That’s the man,” including the actual killer revealed later is a great witness. One of the central questions in the movie is did the policewoman get out of the police car? What was she in a position to see? She gets a milkshake, sees a car with headlights off, they pull it over and her partner gets out and walks up to driver’s side and gets shot five times and killed. The policewoman claims she’d gotten out and was astanding at the rear of the suspect vehicle – a position to look at what’s in the back of the vehicle. The police draw a crime scene diagram. You are asked to reconstruct for yourselves what really transpired. If you’re getting out of the car with your partner, do you take it with you or place it on the floorboard. But if you heard gunshots, you’d toss that shake and run towards that car that’s speeding away.

What those devices do – and it occurred to me that I never thought of this until an interview this morning – that the words on the screen serve the same function in a way. But when you see “Kidnapped” come up on screen, you are forced to address the central question discussed. Was Kurt kidnapped and taken by force, spread-eagled on bed and shackled. It focuses the attention of the audience on some salient detail in a mystery. My favorite question was a Dallas reporter at the time the film was first screened in Dallas – asking me how I happened to be on the road that night with a film crew.

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris casts light on the torture chambers

of Abu Ghraib

By Carl Kozlowski

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then whole volumes of disgust

and dismay were generated by the horrifying photos that emerged from

the US military prison in Iraq known as Abu Ghraib. A former torture

center for deposed and now deceased dictator Saddam Hussein, the

gigantic compound was the scene of unspeakable atrocities and murders

during that notorious despot’s regime.

When American forces stormed through Baghdad, chasing Hussein from

power, the world believed that places like Abu Ghraib would cease to

exist under the reign of the US. Yet, inexplicably, some soldiers and

officers carried on as if they were part of Hussein’s Republican Guard

and continued the very same practices they swore they’d protect the

Iraqi people from.

Justice seemed to prevail, however, as the world media expressed

righteous indignation over the images and the military tribunal system

appeared to swing into quick action. Within three years of the

revelations, a creepy-looking female soldier named Lynndie England who

starred in many of the most harrowing photos has already been tried,

done time for her involvement and been cast into the world stripped of

her military honors.

But was that the whole story? Why were so many pictures of such

horrific behavior taken? And were England and her peers really the

epicenter of evil there, or merely the scapegoats for far more powerful

people?

The world has wanted to know all of these things, and now documentarian

Errol Morris has emerged with “Standard Operating Procedure,” his first

film since his Oscar-winning 2004 documentary “The Fog of War,” perhaps

the most thorough record to date of one of the lowest points of

American foreign policy.

“I sincerely believe the press never gave any of these people a chance.

No one wanted to hear from them, and for all intents and purposes they

were monsters and should not be listened to,” says Morris, speaking

one-on-one recently at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “That’s

one big reason for making the movie: I was intrigued by the photos and

the circumstances of when they were taken, and what was in them. You

depend on the people involved to talk, and I amazed everyone at the

studio, because Lynndie England was completely different than what we

expected. You were given a very powerful story of a woman who has taken

the blame in good measure for the entire war in Iraq.”

Indeed, the now 24-year-old England seems like a completely different

person in “SOP” than she did in the still images that emerged from Abu

Ghraib. Rather than appearing slow-witted at best and pathologically

uncaring at worst, England emerges in the film as an eloquent and

mordantly witty person who was blinded by youthful fear of and lust for

a superior officer with whom she carried on an affair while he urged

her into her perverse antics.

“Of course there’s a contrast with Jessica Lynch, where people were led

to believe someone was all good or all bad when it was far more complex

than that,” says Morris. “I’ve taken some heat for humanizing Lynndie,

but I’m proud of that and have no problem with it. It’s one of the

things I try to do as a filmmaker and artist; extending sympathy where

no one else has ever done that. It would be nice if she could be seen

as a human being again and get on with her life.”

The interview footage of England and her fellow soldiers portrays a

completely bungled system of command that left American troops

uncertain about where interrogation techniques crossed the line into

illegal torture. Often the soldiers were trying to speak up or outright

stop the abuse of Iraqi prisoners but found themselves overruled by

shadowy men who would not state their name or rank and told the troops

they had no right to question the standard operating procedures

employed at Abu Ghraib.

Much of the film features these soldiers, including England, speaking

directly into the camera on an incredibly intimate level made possible

by a Morris-invented camera technique termed Interrotron. But Morris

also utilizes striking re-enactments and graphics in the same vein as

his groundbreaking work in films such as “The Thin Blue Line” and “A

Brief History of Time,” as well as hundreds of the disturbing photos to

draw the viewer ever deeper into a madness that powerful elements in

our government not only tolerated but apparently planned.

And yet the question remains: Why were the photos taken? Were they just

for sick thrills, or was there a deeper purpose? While an investigator

laughs at the soldiers involved near the start of the film, saying that

criminals always make a “stupid” critical error in the commission of a

crime, Morris believes there was much more going on.

“This was the first war with digital photography included and

available, and the first one to include female soldiers powerfully.

That combination of sex and photography is a major part of this story,”

says Morris. “We’re all obsessed with taking photographs, not just

them. They took the photographs in many instances to expose the

military. One leader even thought this was proof of what he went

through to explain to others later because he thought no one could

believe his experience was that bad.

“Many soldiers took the pictures to protect themselves. The irony is

that it destroyed them. They can sit with a thumb up in the air smiling

next to a corpse because they want to expose a CIA murder, but no one

charges the CIA — they charge her! That’s what’s so crazy. People start

to think that photography is the crime here and it’s not. Part of the

problem here is that we think we know the story and we don’t.”

WHAT A SHORT FUNNY "TRIP" THIS WAS

2011-07-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

Review: British Comics Coogan and Brydon Take Viewers on a ‘Trip’ Worth Takingby Carl Kozlowski

There are some celebrities who manage to put up a wall of secrecy around their lives, and who make a clear distinction between their public and private personas. And then there are people like Steve Coogan, a major British comedy star who’s built a unique and very funny career out of blazing two career paths.

Coogan has built a rabid cult following in the U.S. to go with his more noticeable British stardom by alternately immersing himself in characters and impersonations so thoroughly he’s compared to the legendary Peter Sellers. Yet he’s also wildly popular back home for letting himself play the fool, Larry David-style, in a series of awkward and embarrassing filmed misadventures. And now he’s put both approaches together quite winningly in the new comedy “The Trip,” which has been doing strong and growing business at arthouses nationwide for the past couple of weeks.

In “The Trip,” which is actually a tightly edited mix of highlights from a BBC mockumentary series of the same name, Coogan teams up with his friendly rival and fellow comic Rob Brydon for a tour of Northern England’s finest restaurants. The idea is to combine humorous insights with genuine culinary opinions for a TV series, but while their stops at gourmet restaurants and deluxe bed and breakfasts offer up plenty of delicious imagery, the actual focus of the film and their journey within it is to create a framework for the two leads’ non-stop and hilarious banter.

Coogan and Brydon are genuine friends and fantastic at one-upping each other here on screen. While director Michael Winterbottom – who previously directed Coogan as a wild British concert promoter in the cult classic “24 Hour Party People” – is at the helm, he knows that these two are at their best when they’re cutting loose with an endless string of hilarious impersonations, climaxing in a tour de force battle royale of who can do the best Sean Connery.

Yet “The Trip” does offer some surprising detours as well. In its rare quiet moments it serves as a thoughtful meditation on the price people like Coogan pay for putting so much of their personalities out into the public. Wherever he wanders on his own seeking a moment of peace and quiet, someone – even in the most remote of villages – is ready to jump out from a corner and scare the daylights out of him with impersonations of his comedy bits.

The film also manages to draw a subtle portrait of the differences that grow between even the best of friends when one takes on the commitment of marriage and family while the other continues trying to live the immature life of a playboy. Brydon is the family man and gradually shows the emotional strain of being away from his loved ones, while Coogan engages in emotionally empty one-night stands that are unseen yet end with the women sneaking out on him in the morning.

Adding the icing of genuine emotions to the rich cake of their zesty performances, Coogan and Brydon have created a film in which longtime fans and those who are new to their charms will all be amply rewarded with 90 minutes of laughter.

SOMEONE TEACH THESE PEOPLE HOW TO MAKE A MOVIE

2011-07-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

‘Bad Teacher’ Review: Bad Movie
by Carl Kozlowski

Sometimes a movie comes along that is so tone-deaf and utterly incompetent that viewers can only sit back in wonder at just how things could have gone so wrong. “Bad Teacher,” a new alleged comedy starring Cameron Diaz as an utterly contemptuous excuse for a human being who inexplicably lands a job as a high school teacher, is one of those films.

“Bad” tells the threadbare tale of Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz), who at the movie’s start is a foul-mouthed gold-digger who arrives home one day to find her wealthy fiance breaking up with her on the orders of his mother, who’s outraged that Elizabeth has burned through $16,000 of his money in a single month. Left without her financial lifeline, Elizabeth loudly wonders what she’s going to do to survive – and as the movie jumps four months into the future, we see that she has become a high school teacher who hates not only her fellow teachers but her students as well.

In fact, Elizabeth is so unwilling to do anything remotely educational that she merely orders her students to plug in the TV and DVD player each morning, and proceeds to show them movies about teachers, like “Stand and Deliver,” “Lean on Me,” and “Dangerous Minds.” While this idea is admittedly funny in split-second bursts as the students watch the films in slack-jawed befuddlement and wonder why they never seem to be given anything challenging to do, the running gag is also indicative of the lack of effort put in by “Bad” screenwriters Gene Kupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg; rather than putting in any effort into their script themselves, they’re content to kick back and allow viewers to elicit ironic chuckles at memories of much better films.

Elizabeth also smokes pot constantly, comes into work each morning with a hangover, and winds up caught in two battles for her attention. She sees rich new teacher Scott Delacorte (Timberlake) pull up in a fancy sports car wearing expensive duds and immediately throws herself at him, while deflecting the attentions of average-shlub gym teacher Russell Gettis (Jason Segel). Meanwhile, veteran teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) is a pristine-living perfect teacher who immediately seeks to bring Elizabeth and her wild ways down – particularly once she realizes that Elizabeth is conducting a series of financial scams to finance getting a set of giant new breasts.

Maybe this plot doesn’t sound too bad on paper, or seems like it at least could be passably funny amid the current vogue for raunchy R-rated comedies. But I’m an easy target for that brand of film, and rank flicks like “The Hangover” and “There’s Something About Mary” as some of my all-time favorites – and this still didn’t work for me. At

all.

In order for a comedy to be funny, the characters have to be taking a humorous swipe at some form of recognizable human behavior, as well as turn aspects of normal, everyday life upside down. But in “Bad Teacher,” the only character that is remotely likable or recognizable as a human being is gym teacher Russell, and in portraying him, Segel is appealing but left with the almost utterly thankless role of commenting on Elizabeth’s bad behavior and hoping he can find a way to show her he can make up for being broke by being fun.

Everyone else is such a garish, overplayed freak that it starts to feel like the writers and actors are engaging in a second-grade home movie version of what they think is a naughty comedy. Diaz is so brazenly obnoxious that she only briefly becomes sympathetic near the end, when someone at the film’s studio must have realized that they had to come up with some sort of happy ending to trick the audience into leaving with a vague sense of satisfaction.

Timberlake, meanwhile, is stunningly off-key as Delacorte, who is inexplicably a virgin without it ever being clearly stated whether this good-looking wealthy guy in his 20s is hyper-religious or has any other reason for his status. A scene in which he has a chance to have sex with Elizabeth and merely proceeds to “dry hump” her in various positions is so flat-out illogical that it can’t even be funny: what guy would possibly keep his clothes on in that situation?

And what were an established movie star like Diaz and a musical superstar like Timberlake thinking when they allowed themselves to be directed in one of the most stupid and awkward scenes ever committed to celluloid? Yet the scene is emblematic of the movie as a whole, which feels like one long dry hump: you keep thinking this is about to be fun, but never actually is.

And I haven’t even gotten to the music by Michael Andrews, who should be so ashamed at his alleged attempt at a score that he should immediately seek to have his name taken off the film if he ever wants to work again. Virtually the entire film is underscored by a series of heavy-handed, thumping keyboard sounds that hammer home each and every second that director Jake Kasdan desperately hopes he can trick the audience into laughing.

You might have noticed that I’ve mentioned the filmmakers’ names more than I usually do in a review. That’s because I’m trying to perform a public service: to either make viewers learn the filmmakers’ names so that they can avoid their work in the future, or at minimum, shaming those involved in making this mess so that they try a lot harder if they ever get a chance again.

Someone needs to teach everyone involved how to make a watchable movie. At least I have hope for the rest of the year in cinema, because things can only go up from here.

I"VE HAD SOME BOSSES WHO WERE EVEN WORSE

2011-07-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

Horrible Bosses’ reaches low for laughs

By Carl Kozlowski 07/07/2011

During my 16 years in the working world, I’ve had some pretty bad bosses. One was Glenn, a guy so high-strung and hot-tempered that he once threw a folder at my head. That happened in front of about 50 coworkers, so he was packed off to two weeks at an anger-management clinic and forced to publicly apologize.

Another was Jane, who ass-kissed her way from being a fellow reporter to my editor. Her idea of management was shrieking over the slightest perceived offense.

Best of all was Ruth Ratny, who was not only singled out by Oprah as one of the four meanest bosses in America, but also proved her deal with the devil by surviving a three-story fall through an open elevator shaft.

All of these experiences have made me the target audience for the new comedy “Horrible Bosses,” which brings together a stellar cast to have wicked fun with the idea of three employees teaming up to whack their supervisors.

How can you go wrong, with Kevin Spacey in full-bile mode as a company president who takes an extra job for himself rather than bestowing a promotion on his harried underling of eight years, played by Jason Bateman? Or Colin Farrell as the coked-up, whore-hiring monster of a son who takes over a family business after his lovable father (Donald Sutherland) dies from a sudden heart attack, leaving the father’s preferred protégé (Jason Sudeikis) in the cold?

And then there’s Charlie Day of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” a dental assistant who faces daily sexual harassment from his man-eating boss (Jennifer Aniston), yet can’t switch jobs because he’s been labeled a sex offender for taking a whiz in the middle of the night on a playground that happened to be next door to a bar.

All three workers hate their bosses, and while fantasizing over beers one night they build a drunken determination to kill them.

But while Bateman and Sudeikis were just indulging their drunken fantasies, Day has actually taking steps to hire a hit man, with Jamie Foxx now aboard as the guy who’s willing to kill them all for a mere $5,000, things are about to get out of control.

“Horrible Bosses” is the latest in the seemingly never-ending string of R-rated comedies that seek to push the envelope of bad taste. Thankfully, ace cast members are perfectly matched with their roles, enabling director Seth Gordon to pull off a much more entertaining film than his uneven and awkward prior effort, “Four Christmases.”

While the script by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein is packed with twists, and the audience actually was rolling in the aisles at the screening, it still feels like they’ve taken things a little too far. When nearly every line and plot point involves some sort of kink or a barrage of profanity, even someone like me, who counts “There’s Something About Mary” as a favorite, has to wonder why there isn’t more effort put into being more clever than shocking and gross.

Oh, there are plenty of laughs in “Horrible Bosses.” But there are also plenty of moments that are completely unable to be described in a newspaper. You might laugh at this film, but you also might feel like you need to shower.

WILL FERRELL'S BIG SURPRISE

2011-07-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

'Everything' is beautiful

Ferrell’s touching performance reminds us of the weaknesses that haunt us all

By Carl Kozlowski 06/02/2011

Sometimes our worst problems just sneak up on us. The moment that pushes us too far with our anger, or the need to win that eventually crosses the line into a gambling addiction, the split-second of weakness that makes someone try a deadly drug like heroin or crack — all too easy to think that they could never happen to us.

And yet they do happen, these snap judgments and bad decisions that often snowball with an almost imperceptible force until one day everyone around us realizes that we have a serious problem, even when we don’t see it ourselves. That’s Nick Halsey’s (Will Ferrell) highly troubling situation in the powerfully engaging drama “Everything Must Go.”

“Everything” finds Halsey on a day in which his boss terminates him for one too many embarrassing moments with alcohol at a professional function. Meanwhile, his wife is kicking him out of their house and has strewn all his possessions across their front lawn. Then there’s the cop who serves as Nick’s AA sponsor (Michael Pena) admitting to Nick that he’s been having an affair with his wife.

You can’t get much lower than that, right? Well, imagine if your wife told you that she needs everything gone from the yard within a week and you have nowhere to put it. Nick decides to just sell it, conducting a yard sale that also serves as an existential cleansing of his past.

This doesn’t sit well with his suburban neighbors, who call the cops on him after learning that he’s even sleeping and showering in his yard. Yet he does make two friends who care about him during his slow descent into apparent madness: a teenage African-American boy named Kenny who admits he’s a loner, and a new housewife named Samantha (Rebecca Hall), who can’t quite face up to the fact that she might be trapped in a loveless marriage.

The intertwining moments between Nick and each of his newfound friends form the emotional underpinning that is the heart of the movie. Kenny and Samantha are like far too many average folks out there: kindhearted people who want to help their friends when they see they’re in trouble, but afraid to speak up and demand the truth for themselves. As they see Nick unravel, they still treat him with respect and an occasional dose of touching humor, easing him toward deciding whether to clean up his act.

“Everything Must Go” is hardly a depressing film like “Leaving Las Vegas,” where Nicolas Cage famously drank himself to death in an Oscar-winning role that reeked as much of showboating as it did of alcohol. Here, Ferrell takes an entirely different tack, making Nick a guy who was the life of the party, the guy everyone loved and loved to work with, that is until that time when he suddenly couldn’t lay off the booze.

Following in the footsteps of fellow “SNL” alum Adam Sandler, Ferrell has for several years been mixing artistic parts in films like “Winter Passing” and “Stranger than Fiction” with his broad turns in comedy blockbusters. But here he reaches an entirely different level, with a wonderfully nuanced turn that makes him an everyman to root for and remember.

Shot beautifully in the suburbs of Phoenix by first-time writer-director Dan Rush, who based his script on a short story by Raymond Carver, “Everything Must Go” offers a deeply resonant and human look at the failures we’re all one step away from. It’s also a reminder to look around us, realize that someone in our social circle or neighborhood might be hurting more than we know, and that it’s an essential part of being human to reach out and help them.

RINSE, LATHER, REPEAT VERSUS WILDLY ORIGINAL

2011-07-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

What happened?

Two very different films ask viewers to separate truth and perception

By Carl Kozlowski 05/26/2011

There are two forms of reality: how things actually happened and the way in which we recall their happening. Two vastly different films exploring the gap between truth and perception — the raunchy American comedy “The Hangover Part II” and the Italian Hitchcockian thriller “Double Hour” — are in local theaters now, offering a surprising set of parallels from opposite sides of the planet.

As the sequel to the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, “Hangover II” is the film that is going to clean up at the box office this weekend. Back again are Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, who together made an improbable leap into stardom with the first film two years ago. Their magic together in that film was so strong that they score laughs and big smiles from the moment they each show up onscreen in the new film, bringing an instant likability to events that, in lesser hands, might merely prove offensive.

This time around, they’ve managed to colossally screw up a bachelor party in Thailand, where seemingly straight-laced dentist Stu (Helms) has brought them to take part in his wedding to a wealthy Thai-American woman. After the depraved insanity he endured in the first film’s Vegas-set bacchanalia, Stu tries to trick the guys into merely having their bachelor party at an IHOP breakfast, but Phil (Cooper) insists that with notorious international hotbed of sin Bangkok at their disposal, going the Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity route simply won’t suffice.

Stu still insists things will stay mellow, but the fellas hit the beach behind the wedding site for a quick beer the night before the ceremony, along with the bride’s 16-year-old brother. Everything seems innocent, at least until they wake up the next morning in a seedy Bangkok hotel, with Stu sporting a giant facial tattoo modeled after Mike Tyson and Alan (Galifianakis) finding his head shaved but with his bushy beard intact.

However, the bride’s brother is nowhere in sight, meaning our hapless heroes have to track him down in one of the wildest cities on the planet, with language and cultural barriers adding to their confusion this time. There’s also a very smart and very wild monkey with a bad cigarette habit in their room that might hold the key to unraveling just what happened. And let’s not forget the surprising reappearance of oddball Asian gangster Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong), who is up to no good again and leading the guys into another set of risqué misadventures.

The big question here, of course, is does “Hangover II” hold up to the modern-classic status of its predecessor? The simple answer is no, it’s not as good as the first, but part of that is through no fault of its own. The first film had the advantage of astonishing audiences with the surprise of the unknown, using actors who didn’t have set personas and putting them in situations that no one had ever dreamed up before.

The element of surprise has inevitably dropped in the sequel, but points are scored by the fact that returning director Todd Phillips and co-writers Scot Armstrong and Craig Mazin have attempted to up the stakes with its exotic and even more notorious locale.

There is one 20-minute stretch of the film in which they should have shown the outrageous behavior rather than just having the characters discuss off-screen shenanigans, but there are still several set pieces — particularly involving Mr. Chow — that provide big laughs. The chemistry among the lead trio and Jeong is superb, and ultimately the twists involved in the mystery add up to a satisfying finish that will provide even more chuckles thinking back on the film after it’s over, making this a rare film in which the whole is better than the parts.

“Double Hour,” meanwhile, is a moody and atmospheric romantic mystery in which a hotel maid named Sonia (Kseniya Rappoport) and a high-level security guard named Guido (Filippo Timi) meet at a speed-dating event and establish an immediate rapport. But when he takes her for a weekend getaway to the mansion of a client, they are attacked by masked intruders and shot, leaving Guido supposedly dead and her alone in mourning.

But then a series of strange events lead her to wonder if he really died. And as she tries to pursue the truth, viewers are slowly pulled in by the masterful script created by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo, to wonder whether she’s sane or as innocent as she first appeared. With twist after twist bending viewers’ minds all the way to the last minute of the film, “Double Hour” provides a mind game for adults seeking more substantial fare than the mindless hijinks of the “Hangover II” guys.

LET'S GO CRAZY - THE MEL GIBSON AND THE WOODY ALLEN WAY

2011-07-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

Madness, dark and light

By Carl Kozlowski 05/19/2011

There are many ways in which a person can escape the hardships of life, but the way that is paradoxically hardest and easiest to do is to alter one’s mind. Whether through choosing to obliterate one’s consciousness with drugs and alcohol, or a mental breakdown, tuning out reality is sometimes more appealing than facing it in the mirror.

Two major filmmakers, Jodie Foster and Woody Allen, explore insanity — or what appears to be madness — in decidedly different ways with their latest releases this weekend.

In the often-dark drama “The Beaver,” Foster directs and co-stars as the wife of a deeply troubled man played by Mel Gibson, who opts to fight his way back from depression by speaking to everyone he lives and works with via the use of a beaver hand puppet.

Meanwhile, with the delightful comic soufflé “Midnight in Paris,” Allen directs Owen Wilson as a neurotic Pasadena screenwriter set to marry a woman obsessed with Paris. While visiting and wondering why the modern-day changes are ruining the City of Lights, Wilson finds that while walking alone each midnight he seems to be transported back into the Roaring Twenties era of American expats and finds himself engaged in conversations with people like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He also finds temptation to embark on an affair.

Both films have their own distinct and ample charms, with “The Beaver” offering a strong portrait of a wife and mother

named Meredith (Foster) who has steadfastly stood by her husband through his years of depression in an attempt to keep her family with two sons intact. When Walter (Gibson) finally becomes too difficult to deal with and she gives him the ultimatum to get help or move out, he leaves for a hotel only to find a decrepit old beaver hand puppet in the dumpster where he’s tossing out a lifetime of memories.

He puts the beaver puppet on his hand and finds that suddenly it’s easy to express himself and to think happy thoughts, as long as he convinces everyone around him to play along with the idea that the beaver is what’s talking to them. The idea is fine with his youngest son, and Meredith is cautiously optimistic that things are turning around. But his teenage son Porter (Anton Yelchin) believes his dad is worse than ever and starts acting out destructively, despite his own burgeoning romance with a girl who’s his class valedictorian but wishes she could be anything else.

“The Beaver” has been the subject of media fascination since last fall, when Gibson’s real-life battles with alcohol and anger spilled into the news and forced the film’s studio to delay its release.

It may seem that the film has fallen into having only an ironic, freak-show appeal — that of seeing an actor with apparent real-life mental issues playing a man who’s cracking up — and that the conceit of having a macho figure like Gibson speak through a hand puppet would be hopelessly contrived and even stupid.

But the amazing thing is that “The Beaver” works really well. Gibson is clearly working with raw emotions here at times, and Foster and Yelchin match him note for note. The film takes some incredibly dark turns in its final stretches, but they ultimately give the movie an added level of power since life’s darkest moments come right before the light of hope emerges.

Allen’s “Paris” is decidedly lighter, yet impressive in many ways of its own. After 30 years of making movies in New York City, the aging, angst-ridden auteur has found renewed vigor in filming in the capitals of Europe. Starting with the sublimely entertaining musical “Everyone Says I Love You” and continuing through 2008’s Oscar-winning hit “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” Allen has found new tricks to go with his new locations.

Wilson easily slides into Allen’s nebbishy persona, infusing the filmmaker’s trademark neuroses with his own charmingly quirky delivery as he contrasts his Texan hipster persona with the highfalutin’ elite crowd of the literary demimonde. The film has a fizzy kick as numerous A-list actors have a hoot playing famous figures, adds mystery as the viewer is made to figure out whether Wilson is really time-traveling or just crazy, and caps it all off with tasty layers of beautiful locations and witty dialogue.

THERE"S SOMETHING ABOUT KRISTIN...AND HER FRIENDS

2011-07-18T16:22:00.000-07:00

Gross girls

‘Bridesmaids’ proves women going for laughs can be just as raunchy as guys

By Carl Kozlowski 05/12/2011

Ever since “Animal House” 30 years ago, raunchy comedies have been almost exclusively the realm of male actors. From “Dumb and Dumber” through “There's Something About Mary,” on through the likes of “Superbad,” “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and this spring’s “Hall Pass,” it’s been guys who have charged boldly forward into the breach of prurient pratfalls, toilet humor and sexually humiliating situations.

Only one film has tried to give gals a shot at matching the guys: 2002’s “The Sweetest Thing,” in which Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Selma Blair gave it their best shot as three loose ladies falling into and out of beds and misadventures while en route to a wedding weekend. But that wildly uneven film alternately took things too far or got too sentimental, a mix that proved deadly at the box office and forced it to build a cult following via Comedy Central reruns.

But this weekend, that could all change after “Bridesmaids” hits theaters. Starring and co-written by longtime “Saturday Night Live” star Kristen Wiig, the film manages to find just the right balance of freak-out humor and non-sappy sentiment that should finally prove women can be more than just two-dimensional wallflowers who roll their eyes and wait for the guys to grow up.

“Bridesmaids” follows the humorously hard-luck life of Annie (Wiig), a Milwaukee resident who’s been struggling to find love and success after being dumped by a longtime boyfriend and losing her bakery due to the recession. Her frustrations and fear of being alone forever are compounded when her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces she’s engaged and asks Annie to become her maid of honor.

Suddenly Annie is meeting an odd array of Lillian’s friends whom she didn’t even know existed as the rest of the team of bridesmaids comes together. Among them is rich snob Becca (Ellie Kemper), who quickly makes it clear she’s willing to spend whatever money is necessary to replace Annie as Lillian’s best friend, and Megan (Melissa McCarthy in a star-making role that steals the film outright), an admitted “fat chick” who scores laughs by throwing herself into every imaginable situation with an insane energy and utter lack of inhibition that one can’t help but compare to John Belushi and Chris Farley.

As the movie barrels its way through a hilarious battle of the toasts between Wiig and Kemper at an engagement party, the misery of dress fittings, Annie’s awkward sex with a guy who couldn’t care less about her, an elaborate bad reaction to “downer” drugs on a packed plane, and an emotional meltdown, the commitment by Wiig and her comedic cohorts rarely fails to impress.

The best scene is the grossest — an epic reaction by the entire band of bridesmaids to a horrific case of food poisoning in a scene that builds and builds to the point that the entire audience was doubled over with whooping laughter and cries of “No! Don’t!”

Wiig has been a longtime favorite on TV's “SNL,” but she’s usually been stuck playing one-dimensional characters whose humor mostly rests in bizarre behavioral tics. Here, she and co-writer Annie Mumolo have crafted a script that could stand to be trimmed by about 20 minutes, yet offers so many laughs so consistently that audiences will stay satisfied from start to finish — while also giving the film an emotional depth that most of the guy gross-outs can’t match.

co-writer Annie Mumolo have crafted a script that could stand to be trimmed by about 20 minutes, yet offers so many laughs so consistently that audiences will stay satisfied from start to finish — while also giving the film an emotional depth that most of the guy gross-outs can’t match.

Wiig is especially surprising in her quieter moments, as Annie wistfully looks back on her shuttered bakery and seemingly shattered dreams. She also creates a winning relationship between Annie and an Irish-born cop named Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) that has a genuine sweetness audiences can root for — one area in which guy gross-outs other than “There’s Something About Mary” have always seemed to fail.

Having comedy wizard Judd Apatow (“40 Year Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up”) on-board as executive producer and his frequent partner Paul Feig at the directorial helm likely helped this ship stay straight. With its mix of humor and heart, “Bridesmaids” should be one of the few films to score at the box office this summer without relying on superhero special effects. Its ace cast and zesty laughs give it all the strength it needs

THE "GREATEST" MOVIE IS PRETTY OK THE SAME WAY JESUS WAS JUST ALRIGHT TO THE DOOBIE BROTHERS

2011-07-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

Interview: Has Morgan Spurlock Made a Doc Conservatives Might Appreciate?by Carl Kozlowski

Morgan Spurlock exploded on the American pop culture scene as the star, writer, and director of the humorous documentary “Super Size Me” in 2003. In that film, he ingeniously shined a spotlight on the epidemic of obesity and the rampant fast-food eating habits of Americans by deciding to eat and drink nothing but McDonald’s products for 30 straight days and documenting the results.

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Basically, Spurlock’s body went haywire, putting on nearly 25 pounds in a month while sending his body fat, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels skyrocketing. The media response was immense, as was the public’s, since “Super Size Me” quickly became one of the ten biggest documentaries of all time, and snagged an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature to boot.

So, Morgan Spurlock became the flip side to Michael Moore, since he was making films that had a point but didn’t beat people over the head with their message, and since people were actually surprised when he wound up getting fat. He went on to make an insightful documentary series on the FX cable network called “30 Days,” in which people had to experience something they’d never normally endure for a month in order to understand others better.

For instance, Spurlock and his wife tried to live on minimum wage for 30 days and found it impossible to make ends meet. In another episode, a devout Christian agreed to move in with a Muslim family for 30 days and see if he could come to understand them better.

Meanwhile, Spurlock flopped hard with his followup film, “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” It was a classic case of a concept being too catchy for its own good, as Spurlock headed into the Middle East with a camera crew to search for the al-Qaeda leader and instead found nothing, despite pre-release hype that led some to believe he had actually gone toe to toe with the terrorist. The result was instead a feature-length plea for understanding of the Middle East and Muslims that fell flat.

Some might have wondered if he could regroup after “Where in the World” earned just around $100,000 at the box office. But Spurlock has come back swinging with what might be an even greater concept and film than “Super Size Me,” as his new movie “Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” takes on the world of product placements and over-the-top advertising that has overtaken so much of modern life.

He centers the film on an utterly ingenious concept: offering companies the chance to place their products in his film in exchange for paying a share of the budget – and scoring enough deals that the entire film was literally bought and paid for without his having to ask for a dime from Hollywood. For instance, he’ll blatantly use Ban brand deodorant in the movie in exchange for the company giving him $50,000. For $100,000 he’ll repeatedly eat a particular brand of pizza. And Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice bought the rights to have their name in the title for a cool million dollars.

The result is funny as well as fascinating, and harbors a sincere underlying plea for us to take a step back from the madness and consider how much advertising is too much, and whether we need to preserve some sacred quiet space in our minds as well as in society.

Spurlock sat down for a discussion of his new film at the Andaz Hotel on the Los Angeles Sunset Strip during the week of the film’s opening. Even that location was ironic, as the Andaz is owned by the Hyatt Hotel corporation – a major sponsor of the film.

Q: Do you believe in guerrilla marketing?

SPURLOCK: I think it works. I came from before I started working in the film business, I worked for a grass roots events marketing company. I think guerrilla and grass-roots marketing are great ways to get ideas out there, get people talking about things and build buzz and excitement. I learned more than that time from one of my mentors than I did through years of film school.

Q: In the film, you show how the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has almost no publicity at all anymore. I knew it was like that in Cuba, but not there. It’s surprising since this is a capitalist system in Brazil.

SPURLOCK: I think they wanted to deal with serious problems. Sao Paolo was a very dangerous place for a long time. Even when I was there in 2003 (to promote “Super Size Me”) people were getting kidnapped, I was being driven around in a bulletproof car, and there were guys stationed at the end of each block in some neighborhoods with machine guns to protect the people who lived or traveled in between from gang warfare. It was a very sketchy place. One of the things they wanted to do was to address these problems, so they said take away the advertising and the pollution it causes, take away the distractions and the noise and force people to look at the city head on, and look at the people they interact with and look at their neighborhoods. Crime’s gone down, the quality of living has gone up and the only jobs affected were the people who actually put up billboards. Everybody else’s businesses have had to focus on making better business, customer service and quality products. For me it’s a fascinating example of where do we draw the line. How do we stop?

There’s an idea called the broken-window theory. If you see a broken window, one will lead to more broken windows. You see an imperfect place and it keeps sliding. Now by doing it this other way, they’re pushing to a much more perfect identity and place just because of the way people responded to it. I interviewed 80 people in that city, and not one said “man it would be so nice if there were more posters or bus stop ads.” If it’s a political thing about why you’re getting rid of this, every business owner would push against it. And that’s not happening. It’s not like there’s a dictator running the country putting his picture up everywhere instead. It’s a referendum by a city council that was voted on and passed. It’s a remarkable thing that they pushed through, and it’s pretty inspiring.

Q: It’s one thing to make a movie about product placement, and another to show how strongly you think about it. How did you get the inspiration to make such a meta, self-referential movie?

SPURLOCK: Once we started talking about it, and we got the idea for the film after a terrible episode of “Heroes” where Hayden Panattiere is given a Nissan Rogue by her dad and he said “Nissan Rogue” six times while showing the car and it cut back to the car again. We thought it would be a great way to explore this world of advertising, marketing and product placement, and get companies to actually pay for it and to make this film be the journey. We didn’t realize how interesting it was gonna be until we started shooting, getting into the rooms and the pitch processes. It was fascinating. People always say ‘Nobody wants to see the sausage get made’ but in this movie to see the sausage get made is amazing. You see conversations and negotiations in rooms you’ve never been in before. It was an amazing thing to see and I’m dumbfounded still every day that people even gave us the money to make this film.

Q: How did you decide on this one out of all the massive problems America has right now?

SPURLOCK: It all comes down to the idea, and if it speaks to me and my producing partner, Jeremy. I really thought this would be a great story to tell and a unique way of telling the story. We’ve been thinking about this ever since working on the ‘Simpsons’ anniversary special.

Q: What was the company that surprised you the most for being in it? And for turning you down?

SPURLOCK: The company I was most surprised was in the film was Hyatt. Hyatt is traditionally an incredibly conservative company and they made a point of trying to change the perception of who they are. We’re staying in a Hyatt – the Andaz is a Hyatt. But just like with their boutique hotels, they’re always looking to do something different. But it was also great for me because what their coming on did was it made a lot of other companies say, “Well, if Hyatt is doing it,” here’s this Fortune 500 company with a blue-chip name with brand identity, then why not them?

The company that most disappointed me was In-N-Out Burger. I wanted a fast food partner so bad, we wanted to make a doc-buster – a documentary blockbuster. If you’re gonna make a doc-buster, you gotta have a happy meal, you gotta have a kids’ meal. We called McDonalds but they didn’t call back. We called Burger King, they called and said ‘thanks but no thanks.’ We called Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, every fast food company you can think of and they all said no. I stalked In-N-Out, called them every week for weeks and weeks and weeks and said ‘it’ll be great and amazing, we can make an Un-Happy Meal, we’ll make the box covered in how marketing and advertising works and why you bought it’ and they said ‘no, it doesn’t sound amazing at all for us.’

Q: Since you have a grass-roots marketing background, did anything you learned about marketing with this film surprise you?

SPURLOCK: You don’t understand the influence the brands will start to have on the creative process until they’re involved in the creative process. You have them say ’shoot here,’ ‘talk about us like this in the film or say these certain things,’ ‘we expect a certain amount of screen time in the film.’ When you’re expected to deliver on all these metrics of expectations, you start to realize ‘wow I’m potentially going to lose control of the film I wanna make.’ At what point do you push back so it doesn’t become a commercial? What made it work really great for this film, because it did start to steer the course of the narrative, when I go pitch Pom and here’s the commercial we want to make and they say “no! We want you to make it like this,’ which is basically everything we want you to say about our company. For me, I love that because it does fall under the idea of truth in advertising. It’s one of my favorite parts of the film. For me that’s it. I thought there would be a way to push the brands back and not have them influence the decision-making process, but that doesn’t happen. Once they’re in, they’re in.

Q: Are you afraid of backlash, like with McDonalds in “Super Size Me.” Were you afraid of dealing with these companies in making this film at all?

SPURLOCK: You’re always afraid of backlash. There’s always a chance that someone will pull out saying they don’t wanna do this after all, or you might get a big scary letter from a lawyer like the one Volkswagen sent us but on a different scale as someone who you’re already in a contract with. There’s always a chance of that, but I made a point of making them all feel they were a part of this while maintaining our creative control.

Q: The eventual DVD or Blu-Ray release – what kind of features?

SPURLOCK: We shot 375 hours. There were so many amazing scenes we shot, the interviews we shot with Nader, Chomsky, and all the great directors we spoke to were an hour each. There was a great scene where we took kids shopping and talked about how kids will basically buy anything once you slap a character on them. We had a great scene where we put Iron Man on motor oil and put Spongebob on a box of Tampax and Spider-Man on a package of Trojans. The kids started going down the aisles,grabbing these things simply because the characters were on them. It was a remarkable scene that just didn’t make sense in the movie, but it’ll be great on the video.

Q: At the end of the film, it says nobody had final cut. How did you make that happen especially when earlier in the film there were all these insane contracts where they’re demanding final approval?

SPURLOCK: We’d push back and push back. They would want more, we’d say no, so what we agreed to with most brands was three things: we’d give them creative consultation where we would call them and talk about how we’d include them in the movie. They all got non-disparagement clauses where we agreed not to disparage their products. We will disparage your competitors all we want, but we promise not to disparage you. The last one is that they got the right to see the film prior to its theatrical release. Once the Sundance announcement happened around Thanksgiving, they said ‘we need to see this movie before Sundance, immediately. Come to our boardroom and show our lawyers.’ But we weren’t done yet, and the last thing you want to do is sit in a conference room with their lawyers and executives who are looking at this film with narrow tunnelvision, dissecting every second their brand is shown and its minutiae. We said ‘you should come to Sundance and see it there.’ They said that’s a release, and we said no it isn’t it’s a little tiny festival. Out of the 15 brands we have on board, 11 of them came. And it was fantastic, the film played through the roof and all of them were ecstatic because now they saw themselves as part of a bigger whole, and that they were being treated equal as everyone else in the film. They also got to see everyone else who helped make the movie happen, and that they were part of something larger.

Q: Do you feel with the finished film that you maintained the goal you set out to accomplish by making a film about advertising?

SPURLOCK: I think the fact that we were able to maintain creative control of the film was huge. That enabled us not to sell out but to buy into how these Hollywood films are made, and that you need these promotional partners to get a larger releases, attention or buzz. We did make the film that dissected the process, what goes on behind the curtain. The film works on a lot of levels, but the biggest is that after you watch this film, you’ll never look at a TV show or movie the same way again. And I think that level of awareness is a great thing to have. What it also does is that once you leave the theater, you become even more hyper-aware of all the marketing and advertising that’s in your life. Everything you see outside, even if it’s on a billboard or poster – this will make you ask the question that Sao Paolo asked: where do we draw the line? How much is too much? Do we really need to live in this world where everything’s brought to us by some sponsor? Or is there some place that is sacred, and what the film shows is that we live in a time where nothing is sacred and everything is for sale.

I SHOULDN"T HAVE TO LEARN NORSE MYTHOLOGY TO GET A SUPERHERO FLICK

2011-07-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

‘Thor’ Review: Convoluted and Cold
by Carl Kozlowski

One of the greatest appeals of superhero movies lies in their ability to take ordinary humans and give them the ability to do extraordinary things, whether they’re a teenager flying through New York City by shooting webs in “Spider Man” or developing a super car and a kickass suit to fight crime in the “Batman” films. Even “Superman” and the “X-Men” films base a large part of their appeal in alien characters whose struggles parallel the daily angst we all face in our mortal daily lives.

Unfortunately, the latest superhero epic “Thor” doesn’t have that basic human appeal. Instead, it offers up the incredibly convoluted tale of a Nordic god who falls to Earth when his hubris makes him overstep his bounds and risk the safety of his home planet of Asgard.

The movie kicks off quickly with some impressive fighting between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and a team of Asgardian super-warriors against an evil race known as the Frozen Giants from the icy realm of Jotunheim. The Frozen Giants are hoping to exploit the fact that Asgard’s aging king Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is attempting to hand over his power to Thor, and wage an attack on Asgard during the coronation ceremony.

The sneak attack provokes a desire for revenge from Thor and his closest warriors, and things go haywire when they act on it. As punishment, he’s cast to Earth (aka Midgard), where he crashes into the desert amid a furious flash of thunder and is discovered by a team of scientists that includes an astrophysicist named Jane Foster (Natalie Portman).

The crash rendered him without his magical hammer named Mjolnir (what IS it with all the convoluted names, too? They’re hard to understand, which only adds to the emotional coldness of the film) It’s key that Thor regain control of it if he’s going to save Earth from destruction by the Frozen Giants and forces unleashed by his own ruthless brother Loki, who learns some dark secrets about his own origin.

Thor is a pretty buff dude with a six-pack that could draw stares from The Situation of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” so Jane is instantly interested in the guy for more than his mysterious entrance. It’s in these scenes in small-town New Mexico that “Thor” has its most purely enjoyable moments, as the Nordic god experiences some fish out of water moments that inspire some hilarious comments.

But as the bad forces of Loki and the Frozen Giants come to a head and threaten Earth with a giant metallic, fire-shooting creature, the fact that this movie’s Earth locations are all in a desert town just makes things seem rather unimpressive. It’s hard to fear for the fate of all humanity when you’re only seeing a couple hundred rednecks leaping into pickup trucks to get out of the way of a single alien warrior that looks barely advanced over the aliens from 1950s sci-fi movies.

It’s also hard to buy into the idea that Thor and Jane have some fantastic romance when they basically hang out for a couple of days. This isn’t the long-burning passion that Peter Parker harbored for Mary Jane in “Spiderman,” or the magical love of Superman and Lois Lane. It’s two cute people who are kind of nice and basically have a case of the hots for each other – not a dramatic enough angle to sweep us up, with neither Hemsworth nor this year’s Best Actress winner Portman showing much range either.

The movie does have a humongous budget, but most of it is spent in the confusing, overdone battles between Asgard and the Frozen Giants in their otherworldly realm. Director Kenneth Branagh, who has spent half his career making Shakespeare movies including a four-hour version of “Hamlet,” is an odd choice for a superhero flick that’s lacking in Shakespearean emotions.

If only he could have brought any emotion at all to this film, “Thor” might have been a classic on the order of “Iron Man.” But if Marvel Films, the company behind “Thor”, doesn’t dig deeper in the rest of its planned bevy of superhero films, they’re going to run the risk of seeming all too ordinary rather than awe-inspiring.

"FAST" FUN - The fifth "Furious" film is a surprising action classic

2011-04-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

“FAST FIVE” REVIEW

By Carl Kozlowski

I'll never cease to be amazed at which films manage to spawn a sequel, much less an entire series of followups. There have been a dozen versions of “Friday the 13th,” 10 versions of “Halloween,” three versions of “Porky's” and at least six variations of “American Pie” (counting the direct-to-video releases) balancing off more entertaining efforts like the five “Lethal Weapon” films and six “Star Wars” movies.

But I never thought I would possibly enjoy a “Fast and the Furious” film, with the seemingly mindless concept not even enticing me to see the first three movies in the series on television. But two years ago while visiting a friend in Boston, I was dragged into the fourth “Furious” film, “Fast and Furious” (inventive!) despite my complaints that I wouldn't understand the plot without having seen the first three movies.

“Don't worry about it. It'll be like you haven't missed a thing,” said my friend. And boy, was he right. The movie was indeed as stupid as I expected, but it also lived up to its name as fast and furious fun. .And my friend was right: despite having missed three entire films – six full hours – of the characters' prior lives and adventures, I understood it completely and without taxing my brain at all.

So imagine my surprise with “Fast Five,” the fifth film in the series, which opens today. Even after having liked the fourth film on a visceral level, I thought this would be just milking the cash cow dry. But instead, the filmmakers – including director Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan, who have now presided over the last three films of the series – have somehow decided to step up their game and establish the film as a classic of the action genre that will surely stand as one of the biggest and best entertainments of the year and hell, maybe even the decade.

It really is that good.

Now, don't get me wrong: this ain't Shakespeare. It's not going to win Oscars, although in a perfect world there would be much-deserved Oscars given to the best stunt work in films each year. But it is pure adrenalin-fueled, edge-of-your-seat insanity with enough twists, soul and charisma to make the audience of critics I saw it with burst into wild applause three times.

So what's the story? Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is, as always, the head of a gang of elite car thieves and racers. In the 4th film, he was sent away to prison before being rescued in the end by his friend Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) who's also Brian's girlfriend and the rest of his gang. O'Conner had been a deep-undercover federal agent sent to bring Toretto's gang down earlier in the series, but as he fell for Mia, he eventually befriended Dominic and now has crossed the line into the gang.

As “Fast Five” starts Dominic, Brian and Mia are on a train hurtling through the Brazilian desert and planning to help other criminals rip off some high-powered cars that are stored aboard it. They find that the cars were actually seized by US DEA agents, and Dominic quickly realizes there musts be something more at play than just another hot rod to resell. Our trio of antiheroes foil the robbery plan by deciding to drive the cars they steal to a different destination than planned, but they soon crash into a river.

Captured by the army of crime kingpin Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), who controls Rio with an iron fist and by giving the city's impoverished residents well-paying jobs in his criminal enterprises, Dominic and Brian manage to escape and figure out that one of the cars they stole has a computer chip with Reyes' entire business plans and network's files on it. They decide to rob him blind and wipe him out of the city for good – a plan that will enrich themselves but still serve the noble purpose of setting the terrified citizens of the city free from Reyes' tyranny.

However, things get complicated when a fiercely unstoppable US federal agent named Hobbs (played by Dwayne Johnson, aka “The Rock”) is dispatched with a small army of agents to capture the trio and bring them back to the US at all costs. The reason is that they were framed for the murder of the DEA agents who had been on the train.

At the same time, the trio comes to realize that the potential haul from their planned looting of Reyes' empire is way bigger than they ever imagined: a cool $100 million. They also realize that they need to gather a team of experts to help them, so they call in a full coterie of sidekicks from the series' previous films to form a de facto “Oceans 11” team. But even with the team in place, another problem presents itself: Reyes controls the Rio police force and has caught on to the gang's plan to rob him – so he stashes all his loot in the massive vault located in the center of police HQ.

So now our team of wisecracking, fast-driving experts has to take on a veritable army of police and crash the most secure building in the city if they are to pull off their plan. And they have to do it with Hobbs and his agents on their trail.

It may sound like I've given away the whole plot, but that's just the first half, and it doesn't reveal any of the absolutely awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping stunts that happen along the way. And if you think the first half has a surprising amount of twists for a film of this style, hang on for the ride through the second half, as the film improbably gets better and more wildly entertaining with nearly every scene, climaxing in one of the greatest car-chase sequences ever created.

Yes, stuff blows up real good. Fistfights, foot chases, shootouts and insane car chases occur. There's barely a line of dialogue that isn't so cliché that you can't finish the sentence before the character does. The guy who plays Reyes seems to be the same guy who's played Mexican baddies in a zillion other flicks, and is almost as big a cliché as Juan Valdes selling coffee. And liberal-minded filmgoers will likely have a laugh reading homoerotic undertones into every glowering face-off between Diesel and Johnson.

But damn, this film is fun..

EVERYBODY LOVES PHIL - Rosenthal, creator of "Raymond", that is

2011-04-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

PHIL ROSENTHAL Q&A

By Carl Kozlowski

Phil Rosenthal is the co-creator of one of the most successful family sitcoms of all time – the nine-season ratings juggernaut “Everybody Loves Raymond.” The show won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series twice along the way, and is still playing in reruns in nearly 150 countries around the globe.

But just when Rosenthal could have kicked back and counted his money the rest of his life, a Russian television network came calling and invited him to re-create “Raymond,” adapting it for Russian TV audiences. Russian TV had never featured a sitcom before (go figure), so Rosenthal saw it as an intriguing challenge and jumped in.

He was smart enough to bring a camera crew with him, filming a humorous documentary about the process and surprising ups and downs involved for the new documentary “Exporting Raymond,” which opens in limited release today and expands over the next few weeks. It's a funny film, of course, but also fascinating for its insights into Russian culture and how an American phenomenon has to change to be understood by a foreign, and formerly enemy, nation.

Rosenthal sat down for a one-on-one interview with me recently to discuss his film and the history of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” offering up both amusing anecdotes and surprising revelations along the way.

Q: How did you first meet Ray Romano?

PR: Ray did standup for 12 years and had been trying to do a show like Letterman, finally got on Letterman and on the basis of one six-minute appearance Letterman said “There should be a show for this guy.” He was looking for a writer to create the show for him. I met Ray at Art's Deli, they had seen some of my work. He met a dozen other people, I don't even think I was his first choice. But we did hit it off. We're both from Queens, and for every story he had about his crazy Italian family I had one too about my Jewish family. It just happened to work out that I was gonna create the show, and here we are.

Q: It was immediate for Letterman to take interest, but how long did the process take from getting the call and hitting the airwaves?

PR: I would say it was about six months, really fast.

Q: I also remember the drama in first season, starting on a Friday night where no one was watching and then moving to Mondays where everything blew up. What was that like?

PR: At first you're slightly disappointed that you get a bad time slot. There hadn't been a hit in that time slot since “Gomer Pyle.” We didn't change that, but the three people who watched kept coming back and CBS noticed. To. their credit, the network liked the show and supported it enough to stay there. They liked it so much that when something crapped out for them on Monday nights on their big schedule, [network head] Les Moonves said he'd put us on but that if we didn't do well that was it. So we were nervous. Now it's like we made the playoffs, but you can be sent home anytime.

That first Monday, our ratings doubled. Great, but now we were really nervous because we had been fairly sampled and felt we could only go down from there. When our ratings actually went up the next week, we knew that maybe we could stay a little longer at the party. So I do remember that. I clipped the story in Variety that said our ratings went up that second week, because I knew that meant something.

Q: “Raymond” was great because it was a solid, family show but wasn't gushy. They were rather harsh, yet people loved and related to that. Was it that people related, this is what families are really like, or was it 'look at those people'?

PR: Yes, it was that they related because there were moments where there was some gush. Not whole special episodes, but there were moments that you could tell that underneath it all we really loved and cared about each other as family. Not in a sentimental way, but in a real way – and I think in a way people related too. We argue and make fun of each other, but you're not allowed to. The finale is about all that. I think that people understood by how good the acting was on that show, and maybe some of the writing, that underneath this harsh exterior is love.

Q: Did you have definite lines about how far you could take things with them? How harsh they could go?

PR: Yes. I never wanted Deborah to hate her husband. We always wanted her to be frustrated with him, because it was quite reasonable to be frustrated with him, but never wanted it to cross over into 'I hate you.” And we made sure it never happened.

Q: Did you ever find out you crossed the line without knowing it – that the network or viewers complained anyway?

PR: We got a note in the eighth season of the show. Somebody at the studio or network sent a note saying 'We tested the show and we think Deborah's being too harsh to Ray.” And we said, really? In the 8th season of the show – you suggest changing it now? We should change what we're doing, in the 8th season? We've been so successful, we should now go the other way?

Q: Transforming it to Russian, it looked like they were willing to follow the letter of the script but had a hard time getting the tone right. The actors were reading it like it was high drama. It must have been driving you crazy.

PR: Everything drove me crazy. Everything! But I realized it wasn't Russians, per se, it was the business. That's universal. I run into the same creative 'no' here that I did over there. It's just the action that's different. There's plenty of people who won't get what you're putting out. And it may not be their fault, maybe you're not bringing it out the right way.

Q: In America, the show was built around Ray's comedy. But in the Russian film, there's big fights over who to cast. Did you have any fights about who to cast for the supporting roles on the show in America?

PR: Of course. Lots of battles. I was told that the head of the network wanted a particular actress to play the wife. This was before we even knew who Patricia Heaton was, or that she was available. But I had three actresses picked out. And it came to me that “we want this person, someone outside the picture.” I said they were completely wrong for the role, but the exec said 'you didn't hear me. Les Moonves wants this woman for the role.” She was completely wrong for the part – not a bad actress, but blond and wispy. I went to my agent worried, saying 'what would you do? This could kill the show.” And he said “I would cast her.” I said, “I'm not casting her. I quit.” He said “Don't be an idiot. Why don't you meet with her?” I said I am being a little hasty, I'd love to be proven wrong and hire the girl who the head of the network wanted. We asked if she would read for it and she said no, because she was so-and-so and so-and-so doesn't read, but it was weird because she wasn't that big of a so-and-so. She met with me though – the morning of the afternoon that I was bringing my three actresses in to audition. I was told that at the end of the auditions that Les would ask me if I'd go with his girl. So I'm really nervous. I convinced her to read for me in the middle of the interview, and she's ten times worse than I thought she would be for the role. So I'm very sad, because this is the day I'm not going to have a show. My three actresses read, they're very good, and right on cue Les asked me what I thought about his girl. And I said 'I met her, I loved her, but I had her read and it's just not what I wrote. I think she could do it, but maybe we could do better. And Les said, “It was just an idea.” So he let me keep looking and two weeks later we found Patricia Heaton, who was probably the best wife ever on TV.

Q: Had she already been known for anything before?

PR: She'd been on 'thirtysomething,' but I'd never seen her.

Q: I've been to some events where Patricia Heaton and Doris Roberts were at pro-life events. It was always impressive to me that they were able to be outspoken about their views on an issue that was unpopular in much of Hollywood. Did you foster an open-minded set? Did you ever address whether it was an issue to speak up?

PR: We live in a free country, and everyone is free to say whatever they want – especially off the set. You do want someone's personal life not to interfere with the picture the audience has you in their head of the character. You don't want someone watching the show to be taken out of the character and the viewing experience because of a political view that they have in their mind about you. But other than that, everyone's free to say whatever they like.

Q: You have a great relationship with the Russian driver you had in the movie. What was your most unexpected relationship in Russia?

PR: I would say that because when he takes me to the museum, I got something I certainly never expected to get – this revelation about his life. I was just getting to know him and had no idea what was coming as in documentaries you don't know what's coming and you have to be lucky to have the camera on to catch it. He revealed something deep about himself and when somebody feels comfortable enough to do that with you, you develop a real friendship and I'm still in touch with him. That was the biggest surprise – making genuine friends over there. The translator came to New York for the first time two weeks ago and met my parents and saw the film. But I won't do this again. Poland took it, and Israel, England wants it. They may have the same language, but why did we need 'The Office?' I could take the show to Alabama and come up with a need to put a twist on it. There's cultural differences everywhere, but that said we're on the air in 148 countries in our original form – just dubbed or subtitled. We got a letter once from Sri Lanka saying 'That's my mother!'

Q: What was the biggest creative fight in Russia?

PR: For me, it was essential that the show play in front of a live studio audience. It was written and rehearsed like a play, and you needed the audience reactions because all that does for the acting and writing. The audience doesn't want many little scenes cut together like a movie. They want content. You could have two people sitting and talking in theater, or on the show, and hopefully it would be funny enough anywhere. In Russia, they refused to get a studio audience. They said “But we'll have to get chairs.” That's where they were coming from. So that was an argument.

Q: What was the most gratifying aspect of doing the show in Russia?

PR: Making friends. Always. That was the best part of doing the show here. It's a big reason to go into the business.

Q: What are you working on these days? Or do you just kick back and enjoy life?

PR: I work. That's what I enjoy. I love everything about the business except the business. I have two screenplays I might direct. I have an animated show. I have a show that England wants to bring me on. Raymond is done. Now i've brought it to somewhere else and tried. But if another country wants something new, I may be open to it. I even have a Broadway show idea and a reality show idea I'm working on.

Q: What do you think makes somebody stand out in comedy and be worthy of having their own show?

What makes a particular comic stand out from the sea of people who are pretty funny but not making it big?

PR: A clear point of view. A relatability. And a certain likability, I would say. That's all it is. It helps to have a point of view to your material and what you choose to say, but also how you say it. If you have a very abrasive manner that nobody likes, you're not gonna go far. It's the same in life. Larry David may be abrasive, but he's extra funny to make up for it.

Q: You had a very classy show. It wasn't reliant on dick jokes like “Two and a Half Men.” People of all stripes hate the sex obsession of comedy. How do you feel about the state of comedy?

PR: I think there's always been good and always been bad, and always more bad than good. It's always been that way. Some executive watched this movie and said “I love your movie but good doesn't really enter into it. I said, great. That'll be the title of my next book: “Good Doesn't Really Enter Into It: A Story of Hollywood.” You're always fighting the fight. How many books do you read that are wonderful? How much art really speaks to you? How many people do you really like? There's always more bad. If there was more good than bad, then you wouldn't know what was good.

WHAT ITS LIKE TO GET SMACKED DOWN BY TYLER PERRY

2011-04-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

TYLER PERRY Q&A

By Carl Kozlowski

Since exploding onto the nation's movie screens from seemingly nowhere in 2005, Tyler Perry has created a media empire that has been nearly unprecedented in movie history. Certainly no other African-American filmmaker has ever attained his level of clout, as Perry has written, directed, produced and starred in 11 films since his first: "Diary of a Mad Black Woman."

But with such wild success has come wild controversy, for the centerpiece of Perry's success has been his portrayal of a character named Madea. She's a wise-cracking, comedically abusive and pot-smoking older lady, which means that Perry is playing her in drag - a fact that some other black filmmakers like Spike Lee have criticized, accusing Perry of being too uncomfortably close to racial stereotypes of the past.

At a press event for Perry's newest film "Madea's Big Happy Family," which comes out today, Perry addressed Spike Lee's criticisms in a most unexpected fashion - by railing at me for a question I was making about a completely different kind of potential backlash. I wanted to know if the black churchgoing community that make up his strongest fan base - for Perry's films are all rooted deeply in Christian themes and values - are likely to give him a backlash over the amount of marijuana use and comments about the drug in the new film. (Such material is rampant throughout the movie, as a new character named Aunt Bam smokes more pot here than is consumed in a Cheech and Chong movie.)

The movie itself is hard to review, as it's filled with Perry's usual mix of wildly conflicting emotions of happiness and sadness, faith and despair, and is often over-the-top due to its prior history as a stage play in which the actors all played loudly to the back seats of theaters nationwide. Basically, look at the commercials and trailers and you'll know immediately if it's for you or not.

But Perry's outraged response - keyed to his misunderstanding my question - caused national news on countless film-related websites. So if you really want to know what went down, keep reading:

Q: You're in the character of Madea in costume more than any of your other movies. How challenging was it to direct at the same time?

TYLER: It wasn't challenging for me because I worked with a lot of the same people as before. So my team knows it's me calling the shots when in costume. But i'm sure for the new people it's strange seeing me stand there in the wig and costume going 'Ok move over here,' and then saying “Action!' and i'm in the middle of the scene with them. It's very interesting but it worked well.

Q:Why does everybody love Madea so much? Is it because she can say all the things regular people feel they can't? And have you ever discussed teaming up with Martin Lawrence as Big Momma?

TYLER: We had discussed it at one point, I thought it would be funny. As far as Madea goes, I think everybody white, black, Jewish Asian, of a certain generation you knew this woman. She said what she wanted to say and would smack your ass, but she's not around any more. She's that 100 year old tough-talking cookie.

Q: What considerations were made for the characters in this film? You're known for putting a lot of thought into who you wanted to work with.

TYLER: I use Old Spice, so I knew I wanted to work with Isaiah. (JOKING) When I wrote it I knew I had certain people I wanted to work with. Cassi I worked with on House of Payne and she was my sidekick on the road for years. I wanted a younger, more hype and exciting group so I had peple like Bow Wow. David and Tam I've worked with before, and Isaiah I was excited about doing something different with.

Loretta is one of the hardest working people around and is even working right now today. I just wanted to work with a really open cast.

Q: How do you decide is too much Madea – how do you balance giving the audience what they want with her while still telling your other stories in the film?

TYLER: This one was easy for me because I'd already done the show 125 times on the road in live performances. Cassi was right there with me in the first leg of the tour. The live audience told me what they wanted to see and what they didn't. But the truth is this is more Madea than any of them combined, because after Colored Girls and Why Did I Get Married Too I just wanted to have some fun and really enjoy myself.

Q: Is it harder to work with adults or kids?

TYLER: It depends, because some adults are worse than kids. It really depends on who you're working with.

MY QUESTION: Do you ever get any flack...?

TYLER: I knew this was coming – flack about what?

ME: Not about Madea. No, a lot of your audience is church folks, I was wondering if they give you a hard time about pot jokes?

TYLER: I was really ready to get you. I thought you was going to ask about Spike Lee. I'm so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee," Perry said during the press conference. "Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, 'this is a coon, this is a buffoon.' I am sick of him talking about black people going to see movies. This is what he said: 'you vote by what you see,' as if black people don't know what they want to see. Spike needs to shut the hell up...I'm so sorry I jumped on you.

ME: (Somewhat joking) I'm scared now.

TYLER: On this one I pushed the envelope a little bit. Something happens to you at 40, and when you lose your mother, you get to this place in your life where you're like, You know what? It don't even matter. Don't take things as serious as I used to. I pushed the envelope a little bit. I know some church folks are gonna be like oh, but I have some who have a problem every time I say “hell” in one of the shows. So there are some who will think it's too much, but then there are others who know that Madea is not the Christian in the movie, but the Christian themes are in there. So sorry so sorry! I just thought Spike Lee was in the air.

Q: You talk about some health concerns like diabetes and prostates. How challenging was it coming up with material that would satisfy old fans while still drawing the interest of new ones?

TYLER: People say where do your stories come from. Well, I”m black and I live in a neighborhood where I sometimes walk down the street and see things. For instance, with the fast food scene here, one time I drove up to a drive through at Burger King in Atlanta, pulled up the window and ordered a Whopper and the lady said, 'We ain't got no meat.' You can't make that stuff up, man. That's where the whole Madea fast-food scene came from. So being able to have all those kinds of experiences, be around people who are around all kinds of things and will tell you the truth. This was born out of me needing a place to release after my mother died. I wrote it and went on the road with it, and then many other things my family was going through at the time. I shut everything down and went on the road instead of shooting “Colored Girls,” nobody prepares you for turning 40 and for that kind of grief. And together is a combination.

Q: What inspired the letter yesterday?

TYLER: Going into this junket. I was writing in an open email about people and how hard people work to discourage people from seeing my work. This is where the Spike Lee thing comes from – that this is Stepin Fetchit, this is coonery or buffoonery. They try so hard to get people aboard with them in this mob mentality, to come against what i'm doing but this is what I want to make clear to everybody, especially black people: i've never seen Jewish people attack Jerry Seinfeld and say 'this is a stereotype,' I've never seen Italian people attack “The Sopranos.” I've never seen Jewish people complain about Mrs. Doubtfire or Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. This is not something I can undo.

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois went through the exact same thing; Langston Hughes said that Zora Neale Hurston, the woman who wrote 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,' was a new version of the 'darkie' because she spoke in a southern dialect and a Southern tone. And I'm sick of it from us; we don't have to worry about anybody else trying to destroy us and take shots because we do it to ourselves.

THE GREATEST INTERVIEW EVER CONDUCTED: MORGAN SPURLOCK!

2011-04-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

THE GREATEST INTERVIEW EVER CONDUCTED: MORGAN SPURLOCK!
By Carl Kozlowski

Morgan Spurlock exploded on the American pop culture scene as the star, writer and director of the humorous documentary “Super Size Me” in 2003. In that film, he ingeniously shined a spotlight on the epic of obesity and the rampant fast-food eating habits of Americans by deciding to eat and drink nothing but McDonald's products for 30 straight days and documenting the results.

Basically, Spurlock's body went haywire, putting on nearly 25 pounds in a month while sending his body fat, blood pressure and cholesterol levels skyrocketing. The media response was immense, as was the public's, since “Super Size Me” quickly became one of the ten biggest documentaries of all time, and snagged an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature to boot.

So, Morgan Spurlock became the flip side to Michael Moore, since he was making films that had a point but didn't beat people over the head with their message, and since people were actually surprised when he wound up getting fat. He went on to make an insightful documentary series on the FX cable network called “30 Days,” in which people had to experience something they'd never normally endure for a month in order to understand others better.

For instance, Spurlock and his wife tried to live on minimum wage for 30 days and found it impossible to make ends meet. In another episode, a devout Christian agreed to move in with a Muslim family for 30 days and see if he could come to understand them better.

Meanwhile, Spurlock flopped hard with his followup film, “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” It was a classic case of a concept being too catchy for its own good, as Spurlock headed into the Middle East with a camera crew to search for the al-Qaeda leader and instead found nothing, despite pre-release hype that led some to believe he had actually gone toe to toe with the terrorist. The result was instead a feature-length plea for understanding of the Middle East and Muslims that fell flat and repetitive.

Some might have wondered if he could come back after “Where in the World” earned just around $100,000 at the box office. But Spurlock has come back swinging with what might be an even greater concept and film than “Super Size Me,” as his new movie “Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” takes on the world of product placements and over-the-top advertising that has overtaken so much of modern life.

He centers the film on an utterly ingenious concept: offering companies the chance to place their products in his film in exchange for paying a share of the budget – and scoring enough deals that the entire film was literally bought and paid for without his having to ask for a dime from Hollywood. For instance, he'll blatantly use Ban brand deodorant in the movie in exchange for the company giving him $50,000. For $100,000 he'll repeatedly eat a particular brand of pizza. And Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice bought the rights to have their name in the title for a cool million dollars.

The result is funny as well as fascinating, and harbors a sincere underlying plea for us to take a step back from the madness and consider how much advertising is too much, and whether we need to preserve some sacred quiet space in our minds as well as in society.

Spurlock sat down for a discussion of his new film at the Andaz Hotel on the Los Angeles Sunset Strip during the week of the film's opening. Even that location was ironic, as the Andaz is owned by the Hyatt Hotel corporation – a major sponsor of the film.

Q: Do you believe in guerrilla marketing?

SPURLOCK: I think it works. I came from before I started working in the film business, I worked for a grass roots events marketing company. I think guerrilla and grass-roots marketing are great ways to get ideas out there, get people talking about things and build buzz and excitement. I learned more than that time from one of my mentors than I did through years of film school.

Q: In the film, you show how the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has almost no publicity at all anymore. I knew it was like that in Cuba, but not there. It's surprising since this is a capitalist system in Brazil.

SPURLOCK: I think they wanted to deal with serious problems. Sao Paolo was a very dangerous place for a long time. Even when I was there in 2003 (to promote “Super Size Me”) people were getting kidnapped, I was being driven around in a bulletproof car, and there were guys stationed at the end of each block in some neighborhoods with machine guns to protect the people who lived or traveled in between from gang warfare. It was a very sketchy place. One of the things they wanted to do was to address these problems, so they said take away the advertising and the pollution it causes, take away the distractions and the noise and force people to look at the city head on, and look at the people they interact with and look at their neighborhoods. Crime's gone down, the quality of living has gone up and the only jobs affected were the people who actually put up billboards. Everybody else's businesses have had to focus on making better business, customer service and quality products. For me it's a fascinating example of where do we draw the line. How do we stop?

There's an idea called the broken-window theory. If you see a broken window, one will lead to more broken windows. You see an imperfect place and it keeps sliding. Now by doing it this other way, they're pushing to a much more perfect identity and place just because of the way people responded to it. I interviewed 80 people in that city, and not one said “man it would be so nice if there were more posters or bus stop ads.” If it's a political thing about why you're getting rid of this, every business owner would push against it. And that's not happening. It's not like there's a dictator running the country putting his picture up everywhere instead. It's a referendum by a city council that was voted on and passed. It's a remarkable thing that they pushed through, and it's pretty inspiring.

Q:It's one thing to make a movie about product placement, and another to show how strongly you think about it. How did you get the inspiration to make such a meta, self-referential movie?

SPURLOCK: Once we started talking about it, and we got the idea for the film after a terrible episode of “Heroes” where Hayden Panattiere is given a Nissan Rogue by her dad and he said “Nissan Rogue” 6 times while showing the car and it cut back to the car again. We thought it would be a great way to explore this world of advertising, marketing and product placement, and get companies to actually pay for it and to make this film be the journey. We didn't realize how interesting it was gonna be until we started shooting, getting into the rooms and the pitch processes. It was fascinating. People always say 'Nobody wants to see the sausage get made' but in this movie to see the sausage get made is amazing. You see conversations and negotiations in rooms you've never been in before. It was an amazing thing to see and I'm dumbfounded still every day that people even gave us the money to make this film.

Q: How did you decide on this one out of all the massive problems America has right now?

SPURLOCK: It all comes down to the idea, and if it speaks to me and my producing partner, Jeremy. I really thought this would be a great story to tell and a unique way of telling the story. We've been thinking about this ever since working on the 'Simpsons' anniversary special.

Q: What was the company that surprised you the most for being in it? And for turning you down?

SPURLOCK: The company I was most surprised was in the film was Hyatt. Hyatt is traditionally an incredibly conservative company and they made a point of trying to change the perception of who they are. We're staying in a Hyatt – the Andaz is a Hyatt. But just like with their boutique hotels, they're always looking to do something different. But it was also great for me because what their coming on did was it made a lot of other companies say, “Well, if Hyatt is doing it,” here's this Fortune 500 company with a blue-chip name with brand identity, then why not them?

The company that most disappointed me was In-N-Out Burger. I wanted a fast food partner so bad, we wanted to make a doc-buster – a documentary blockbuster. If you're gonna make a doc-buster, you gotta have a happy meal, you gotta have a kids' meal. We called McDonalds but they didn't call back. We called Burger King, they called and said 'thanks but no thanks.' We called Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, every fast food company you can think of and they all said no. I stalked In-N-Out, called them every week for weeks and weeks and weeks and said 'it'll be great and amazing, we can make an Un-Happy Meal, we'll make the box covered in how marketing and advertising works and why you bought it' and they said 'no, it doesn't sound amazing at all for us.

Q: Since you have a grass-roots marketing background, did anything you learned about marketing with this film surprise you?

SPURLOCK: You don't understand the influence the brands will start to have on the creative process until they're involved in the creative process. You have them say 'shoot here,' 'talk about us like this in the film or say these certain things,' 'we expect a certain amount of screen time in the film.' When you're expected to deliver on all these metrics of expectations, you start to realize 'wow i'm potentially going to lose control of the film I wanna make.' At what point do you push back so it doesn't become a commercial? What made it work really great for this film, because it did start to steer the course of the narrative, when I go pitch Pom and here's the commercial we want to make and they say “no! We want you to make it like this,' which is basically everything we want you to say about our company. For me, I love that because it does fall under the idea of truth in advertising. It's one of my favorite parts of the film. For me that's it. I thought there would be a way to push the brands back and not have them influence the decision-making process, but that doesn't happen. Once they're in, they're in.

Q: Are you afraid of backlash, like with McDonalds in “Super Size Me.” Were you afraid of dealing with these companies in making this film at all?

SPURLOCK: You're always afraid of backlash. There's always a chance that someone will pull out saying they don't wanna do this after all, or you might get a big scary letter from a lawyer like the one Volkswagen sent us but on a different scale as someone who you're already in a contract with. There's always a chance of that, but I made a point of making them all feel they were a part of this while maintaining our creative control.

Q: The eventual DVD or Blu-Ray release – what kind of features?

SPURLOCK: We shot 375 hours. There were so many amazing scenes we shot, the interviews we shot with Nader, Chomsky and all the great directors we spoke to were an hour each. There was a great scene where we took kids shopping and talked about how kids will basically buy anything once you slap a character on them. We had a great scene where we put Iron Man on motor oil and put Spongebob on a box of Tampax and Spider-Man on a package of Trojans. The kids started going down the aisles,grabbing these things simply because the characters were on them. It was a remarkable scene that just didn't make sense in the movie, but it'll be great on the video.

Q: At the end of the film, it says nobody had final cut. How did you make that happen especially when earlier in the film there were all these insane contracts where they're demanding final approval?

SPURLOCK: We'd push back and push back. They would want more, we'd say no, so what we agreed to with most brands was three things: we'd give them creative consultation where we would call them and talk about how we'd include them in the movie. They all got non-disparagement clauses where we agreed not to disparage their products. We will disparage your competitors all we want, but we promise not to disparage you. The last one is that they got the right to see the film prior to its theatrical release. Once the Sundance announcement happened around Thanksgiving, they said 'we need to see this movie before Sundance, immediately. Come to our boardroom and show our lawyers.” But we weren't done yet, and the last thing you want to do is sit in a conference room with their lawyers and executives who are looking at this film with narrow tunnelvision, dissecting every second their brand is shown and its minutiae. We said 'you should come to Sundance and see it there.' They said that's a release, and we said no it isn't it's a little tiny festival. Out of the 15 brands we have on board, 11 of them came. And it was fantastic, the film played through the roof and all of them were ecstatic because now they saw themselves as part of a bigger whole, and that they were being treated equal as everyone else in the film. They also got to see everyone else who helped make the movie happen, and that they were part of something larger.

Q: Do you feel with the finished film that you maintained the goal you set out to accomplish by making a film about advertising?

SPURLOCK: I think the fact that we were able to maintain creative control of the film was huge. That enabled us not to sell out but to buy into how these Hollywood films are made, and that you need these promotional partners to get a larger reeleases, attention or buzz. We did make the film that dissected the process, what goes on behind the curtain. The film works on a lot of levels, but the biggest is that after you watch this film, you'll never look at a TV show or movie the same way again. And I think that level of awareness is a great thing to have. What it also does is that once you leave the theater, you become even more hyper-aware of all the marketing and advertising that's in your life. Everything you see outside, even if it's on a billboard or poster – this will make you ask the question that Sao Paolo asked: where do we draw the line? How much is too much? Do we really need to live in this world where everything's brought to us by some sponsor? Or is there some place that is sacred, and what the film shows is that we live in a time where nothing is sacred and everything is for sale.

FROM "KILL BILL" TO KILLER ROMANTIC COMEDY: UMA THURMAN

2011-04-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

Interview With ‘Ceremony’ Star Uma Thurmanby Carl Kozlowski

Uma Thurman has been gracing the world’s movie screens with her ethereal beauty and unique presence for more than 20 years, ever since her breakthrough role in 1988’s “Dangerous Liaisons” opposite John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer. Since then, she’s helped bring all types of films to life, although perhaps her career peak came with her iconic star turns for Quentin Tarantino in “Pulp Fiction” and the two “Kill Bill” films.

Yet despite her butt-kicking abilities and way with witty dialogue in those films, Thurman is actually a very centered and calm presence who’s regarded as one of the most pleasant actresses to work with in Hollywood. No doubt that fact has contributed to her longevity, as she has not only passed 40, but she’s doing it with style and a full resume that includes her latest work in the excellent new indie film “Ceremony” (available with On Demand from some cable services now, but in theaters starting April 8).

In the film, which is squarely in the quirky character-comedy vein of Wes Anderson films like “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Thurman plays a free-spirited and wealthy woman named Zoe who’s about to get married to her longtime fiancé. But when another past boyfriend – the much younger Max (played well by Michael Aragano, who replaced Jesse Eisenberg in the role) – shows up to declare his still-burning love for her, the weekend gets turned upside down as Zoe is torn between two lovers.

“Ceremony” is a fun and often touching romp, a coming-of-age film for Max that doesn’t succumb to sappiness or cliché. And Thurman hits a homer with it. She recently did a round-table interview at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills to discuss the role and some of her life philosophies.

Q: What was the attraction here in script and character?

UMA: I could tell it was no formulaic pitch for a studio film, it was clearly an independent voice and mind, which tells you it’s going to be a special experience.

What I like is that all of the characters, none are remotely clichéd, all contradictory, he renders people in a very lifelike manner unlike many female characters in film who are devices in plot, room to breathe, tell the truth or lie about it. Max’s characters are all not who they appear to be.

Q: Zoe never says in the movie that she loves her fiancé. Do you think she does?

UMA: I think that I’m sure she has loved her fiancé and has love for him. One of the beautiful things about the piece is it’s all about idealism and compromise, emotionally in some way. She’s been with him a long time, she’s not freshly in love with him, she knows him, and he knows her. She sees a path and a life for herself with with him. It’s different than falling in love with him, she sees him as a partner with her.

—–

Q: Are you as romantic in real life as you are in your work?

UMA: I’m a romantic, I think I’m actually quite an idealistic person in spite of everything. It gives one a good sense of humor, that’s for sure.

Q: You get the sense that neither guy was really right for her at the end of the day.

UMA: Is anyone perfectly right for anyone? How many people do you know like that? Part of his point is that these are multi-faceted characters who interact one way with one person and another with someone else And who’s going to be the best steward and husband. There’s a whimsy and idealism with falling in love with this younger man who’s passionate and sees only the girl with her but maybe what she needs is this less obvious person.

Q: This is Max Winkler’s first film. What’s Max like as director and did he remind you of any of the other directors you’ve worked with before?

UMA: Yeah. I guess I’ve worked with quite a few directors, and actors work with other directors all the time but directors only work with actors. Directors can’t rub off on each other and how they constructed a scene or shot. Directors are very unique, very different from each other. Max you would have thought made 300 films. He was implacable, very very focused and organized and yet completely available to be in the moment and work with the conditions given him. That flexibility and centeredness is very rare and many get completely stuck if they don’t get exactly one way. Max is a very dexterous dodger.

Q: Ever have that kind of strange moment with a fan?

UMA: I can’t make that relationship, sorry. It’s a performance, a character, a shock. It’s a man crashing her wedding party yet at the same time she’s somewhat thrilled by it. There’s a bit of a daredevil in that character, she’s self-destructive and hasn’t laid down her love of the thrill and the moment. She lives, and that’s something I liked about the character that she’s extremely present. Many characters have an agenda and determination but she’s a whimsical soul who’s lived most of her life without an agenda and now she’s trying to impose once because she’s afraid life is passing her by. Just jumping from one moment to the next without any anchor.

Q: How young do you think is too young for a man to be – how big a gap can a relationship have in age?

UMA: I have no idea how young is too young, I’m not a professional. Ask a doctor.

Q: You get to slap and kiss Michael Angarano, your costar. What’s better?

UMA: It was fun (slapping and kissing mike). I’m not really into slapping people, kissing is always better.

Q: You’re working quite a bit, while many actresses fear being over 40 will make them grandmother roles, but not you. What’s your secret to staying viable?

UMA: I have no idea, it’s a sheer miracle. I stay at home most of the time. They just find me. I’m a busy character with a busy life and I like to walk and that helps stay in shape. I have an active life.

Q: Shooting in Long Island seems like a summer camp experience with these guys.

UMA: It was for the boys. I had to drive back and forth because I have two children and don’t drop them and go off to have fun unfortunately. They’re in school but I went back every night. I love these guys and would love to hang out with them more but I have responsibilities.

Q: These people have a really odd take on life.

UMA: Max always wanted these people to be very whimsical and live in their own fantasy, skating through life trying not to pay bills or be affected by its causality.

Q: How do you find humor amid the rough spots Zoe is going through?

UMA: Humor comes from pain and experience, a good sense of humor is always hard-earned and you deserve your sense of humor. What kind of person would be all interesting if they sat around thinking how great they were. There’s only one superman and you can only play it once.

Q: Charlie Sheen seems to think he’s pretty great.

UMA: And he is, he’s highly intelligent and I hope he’ll be alright. I don’t’ enjoy people enjoying other people’s suffering. All of us suffer. The effort of being joyful is a good effort, but it takes effort.

Q: You have a reputation for being pretty green. What’s that involve for you?

UMA: I try to be more green. I’m ashamed not to be green enough. I’m in NYC, so that helps you walk. I try to recycle, be more conscious and more aware. I don’t know if you just cover entertainment but the whole world is exploding around us, seemingly out of control. I try not to be a mindless consumer, and am trying to consciously downsize my whole life. Who wants to build a life built around materials and worrying about that, or spend more time focused on your family, friends, spiritual side and community. Where’s your pride – accumulation of stuff, or acquiring a life of spirit and merit that means something to you.

Q: The film is full of surprises for all the characters. So what was it that surprised you about it?

UMA: The total lack of cliché surprised me. I think what surprised me and what I really enjoyed is I had not seen that much stuff with so much emotional intelligence. When I see the kids are all right or with max, my favorite kind of writing – on my resume I’m jack of all trades master of none – but my favorite is look at our lives today, an emotional investigation into who we are amongst all these explosions and changes in relationships. Life is really quite extraordinary and all the promises have been broken. TO live in this volatile time is fascinating. This is a small film about a weekend but it touches on how contradictory our values are, and can romanticism be preserved and carried on. I like someone taking on our emotional condition these days, that’s my favorite writing

FROM "PIGVOMIT" TO "WIN"-NER

2011-04-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

Interview: Paul Giamatti on His Work
by Carl Kozlowski

Paul Giamatti is one of the most unique actors working in films today, since he mixes a bug-eyed exasperation with an intense energy that can make him either immensely lovable or intensely annoying. Ever since he broke through to critical acclaim in 1997 portraying notorious radio host Howard Stern’s station manager and nemesis known as “Pigvomit” in the film “Private Parts,” Giamatti has become a frequent presence on the nation’s movie screens.

Despite his singular presence and offbeat appearance, Giamatti has been particularly strong in movies where he plays real people, whether in “Private Parts,” his starring turn as the depressed cult cartoonist Harvey Pekar in the 2003 film “American Splendor,” his Oscar-nominated role as a Depression-era boxing manager in 2005’s “Cinderella Man,” or his most famous role to date—the romantically hapless wine aficionado in 2004’s superb comedy “Sideways.”

Giamatti is in theaters nationwide in two movies now, as his Golden Globe-winning performance in “Barney’s Version”—based on a novel by Mordecai Richler about a man who always has his own version of the truth and who finds true love on his third marriage—is slowly leaving theaters. His newer film is “Win Win,” a character dramedy centered on the world of amateur wrestling and male bonding, now open in limited release.

Giamatti sat down recently for a one-on-one interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. Actually, “sitting” is the wrong word, for the actor is in constant motion—checking texts and pacing while engaged in conversation. It’s clear that the live-wire intensity he shows onscreen is rooted in his real-life mannerisms.

***

Giamatti: He’s actually a character with a very large heart, a very full heart. He’s a very complicated kind of guy with a very self-destructive streak in him. He’s a no-bull kind of guy. He’s blunt and forthright, but underneath it kind of a mess. I think he’s very interesting.

How does Barney change from his first marriage to when he finds what he’s looking for with the third?

Giamatti: He’s definitely trying to reinvent himself every time, but the third marriage is the authentic one. He’s becoming more authentically who he is. He’s a difficult man and a bit of a wreck, but he can be that with her even as it makes for a difficult life. But he’s becoming more himself, which is difficult because he wasn’t being honest with the first two wives.

Were you familiar with the original novel by Mordecai Richler?

Giamatti: I knew of it, but hadn’t read it. It was based on what really happened to him—he married a woman who became the love of his life, but he met her at his wedding to a prior woman. I hope he would have liked what we did. You always strive to honor someone’s intentions.

What is the dynamic of Barney’s relationship with his dad, played by Dustin Hoffman?

Giamatti: That’s one of the things I really liked about the script. They’re almost complicit, like siblings, or naughty boys. His father sees him as he really is and loves him just for that, and vice versa. Barney’s not shallow because he always defends him staunchly.

“Win Win” is a different kind of role for you.

Giamatti: Right, he’s a normal guy. [Director Tom McCarthy] had to keep steering me away from going to the offbeat places that weren’t right in this case. This is a guy who’s very up, no matter what happens to him. He doesn’t have those nooks and crannies that a lot of my characters use to hide in. It was a real challenge.

And the film has a great male friendship at the center of it.

Giamatti: Yeah, you don’t see that a lot in movies. These guys have known each other since high school, so they can open up to each other. He’s got the money, but I’ve got the family. His energy and knowing humor is a great for a guy like me who can’t get kooky. And each serves a need for the other by having these opposite qualities.

Did you learn anything about wrestling by making this movie?

Giamatti: That you can’t really hit people in the head with a chair in the actual sport.

Speaking of sports, your father was the commissioner of major league baseball for a brief time in the late ‘80s.

Giamatti: I never really took advantage of the perks the way that I could have and maybe should have. I had a real love of baseball that my father instilled in me, but I was much younger then and thought I’d have a lot of time to see the World Series and playoffs with him. And then you suddenly have that time taken away.

What was it like taking on a real-life role like Harvey Pekar?

Giamatti: It’s always an interesting challenge to play a real-life person, because you want to do that person justice. I was lucky to get to know Harvey, who died a couple years back, and really get to ask and see what makes him tick. And thankfully that turned out to be a role in which I was able to show I could carry a film on my own, that I wasn’t just a supporting character actor.

In “Splendor,” you got to spend time with the real Harvey Pekar. How did you manage to pull off as strong of a performance as John Adams [an Emmy-winning role in an HBO miniseries]?

Giamatti: Well of course, I couldn’t speak with him or his family or friends. But there’s certainly plenty of historical records and writings around. You just have to dig in and read as much as you can about someone like that and try to make them come to life.

"SOUL SURFER" WORTH THE RIDE, BUT "YOUR HIGHNESS" HITS LOWS

2011-04-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

Reviews: ‘Soul Surfer’ Affirming Tale of Surf & Faith, ‘Your Highness’ Crudely Wastes Natalie Portman
by Carl Kozlowski

Soul Surfer

These days, it seems everyone wants to be famous – and the younger the person, the more attention-obsessed they seem to be. But what if you garnered international attention because a shark literally bit off your arm?

That was the dilemma faced by Bethany Hamilton on Halloween of 2003, when the teenage champion surfer survived a surprise shark attack off the coast of her home in Hawaii. Yet unlike others who have made the news due to freak occurrences, Hamilton has continued to fascinate the media due to the fact that she not only survived and recovered, but has become an even bigger star surfer since then.

—–

Her odds-defying story is now the basis of the new film “Soul Surfer,” which dives in to Hamilton’s story by showing that her entire family has two big passions: catching waves and celebrating their Christian faith. Early on, the couple of church scenes seem like a gloss as the focus rests on surfing action and Bethany’s teenage social life.

But once the film digs deeper into her story with the attack and a riveting sequence depicting her family’s desperate race to get her to a hospital, “Surfer” finds surer footing and its performances – including Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt as Bethany’s parents, and Anna Sophia Robb as Bethany herself, with “American Idol” champion and country singing superstar Carrie Underwood as her youth minister – also take root.

Aside from the inherent spectacle of surfing Hawaii’s spectacular coastline in competitions, “Surfer” proves affecting not only for its depiction of a family bonding through trauma but also for its portrayal of Bethany’s mission trip to the Indonesian coast after the devastating tsunami there. Her realization that there’s always a bigger crisis than your own to help others through is a timely reminder amid the ongoing tragedy in Japan.

With such a dramatic story to be told, it would have been nice if the film had attracted a heavyweight director and writing team to the project – and at one point, Oscar-winning writer Ron Bass (“Rain Man”) had his hands in the mix before the final product was written by a hodgepodge of six scribes. But director Sean McNamara is a veteran of teen TV sitcoms and it’s apparent that he and executive producer Douglas Schwartz (who earned zillions as the creator of ‘90s TV smash “Baywatch”) decided to aim their sights on reaching teenage girls and their families above other audiences.

It should be noted that “Soul Surfer” has a half-decent budget of $15 million and is being released in a full 2000 theaters nationwide this weekend. Sony Pictures has a Christian-film division called Affirm which is facing its first big test with this “Surfer” this weekend. For any one who complains that Hollywood doesn’t make solid live-action family films, or that Christian films rarely seem to have a budget or recognizable stars, then be aware that the studios are going to pay a lot of attention to how “Soul Surfer” does this weekend and this is one Christian film that’s actually entertaining and worth getting behind.

Your Highness

On the utterly other end of the moviegoing spectrum is “Your Highness,” an elaborate attempt at a comedy that also weaves in elements of knighthood, fantasy and science fiction spectacles and adventure films with its seemingly endless array of dick jokes, fart jokes and swearing. Featuring newly minted Best Actress Oscar winner Natalie Portman and her fellow Oscar nominee James Franco in what were supposed to be bawdily humorous roles, the film actually centers on a lazy loser of a knight played by Danny McBride (HBO’s “East Bound and Down”).

“Your Highness” follows a knight named Thadeous (McBride) as he embarks on a quest to rescue the bride (Zooey Deschanel) of his brother Fabious (Franco) from the clutches of an evil warlock after she’s kidnapped at their wedding. They and their men wind up meeting Isabel (Portman), a ravishing beauty who also happens to be an ass-kicking adventurer herself, and team up with her on their quest.

Facing numerous monsters and other dangers along the way, the rowdy band of misfit heroes should have had plenty of chances for creative humor as well. After all, while McBride’s HBO series “East Bound and Down” is almost relentlessly mean-spirited and outrageously profane, it’s also one of the sharpest portrayals of middle-aged loser-dom to ever hit the airwaves. But “Highness” almost exclusively relies on potty humor and foul language being used in inappropriate settings to score its relatively meager laughs.

Mixed with elaborate cinematography, great locations, colorful costumes and a terrific score, “Your Highness” had the chance to get everything right and become a genre-smashing comedy classic like “Ghostbusters.” But instead it serves as a prime example that even if you throw mountains of money to dress a film up, it still seems poor when the writing doesn’t deliver.

"SUPER" IS JUST THAT

2011-04-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

‘Super’ Review: Rainn Wilson Shines in Tale of Urban Desperationby Carl Kozlowski

At what point does the stress of modern living become too much to bear, so much so that it can cause a perfectly good person to snap? That question has been the focus of two of the most memorable films in recent decades – “Taxi Driver” and “Falling Down” – and now a new film called “Super” is adding its own potent and surprising answers to that question.

Starring Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute on the popular NBC sitcom “The Office,” “Super” follows last year’s “Kick Ass” as a film that explores what would happen if an average person without special powers donned a superhero costume and strived to fight crime anyway. Both films pack a subversive punch, as “Kick Ass” focused on children and teenagers swearing and battling their way through a crime wave, while “Super” walks a daring tightrope by mixing comedic moments with suddenly shocking violence and an unflinching and sympathetic depiction of a man’s wrestling with his faith and calling in life.

—–

Wilson plays Frank, an utter weakling who has been comically stepped on his entire life. The one good thing in his life is his gorgeous wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), but even she is caught up in a ravaging drug addiction and has started disappearing for hours on end.

When a mysterious and utterly sleazy guy named Jacque (Kevin Bacon) shows up at Frank’s house looking for Sarah a day before she clears all her stuff out and leaves for good, Frank reaches his breaking point. He has earlier revealed that he’s prone to humorously bizarre visions of Christ advising him on his life, but now he falls to his knees in a scene that’s almost difficult to watch in its sincerity and naked emotions.

Asking God why He allows some people like him to never catch a break in life and to always suffer, Frank vows that if he can just win his wife back, he will do anything for God and will never ask another favor again. He immediately feels the call to become a superhero, fashioning a suit and persona he names Crimson Bolt, and proceeds to fight the crime on his city’s streets.

At first, he overreacts to a couple cutting in line at a movie theater and sends the crowd running by beating the man with a wrench. Soon he steps up to fight bigger crimes, eventually drawing the attention of local news outlets and an obsessed fan in Libby, a girl in her late teens who creates her own sidekick persona as Boltie and then pushes their crime fighting to outrageous extremes that frighten even Frank. And they haven’t even begun to mete out their justice on Jacques and his henchmen for stealing his wife and polluting their city with drugs.

“Super” is the new film from writer-director James Gunn, whose prior movie “Slither” from 2006 also wedded the horror, comedy, action and sci-fi genres to create an utterly unique entertainment. But here, Gunn’s moments of lightness and dark are unforgettably stronger, drawing sympathy for Frank even as it forces viewers to consider whether he’s completely lost his mind.

Yet even at those moments where one might expect the film to indict Frank or mock his faith and sense of mission as both a spiritual crusade and an earthly battle against evil, the film offers its biggest surprises by maintaining its respect for Frank. He may take things too far at times, but ultimately he’s shown as a good man genuinely trying to uphold good values and shine one little light in an ever darker world.

Be warned that this film is loaded with profanity and surprisingly serious violence appears at times, plus a non-nude sex scene of very questionable circumstances, but trust me that it is a film that will offer plenty to talk about and consider about faith and right and wrong and what our responsibility to do good in society is, and i do believe that its heart and intentions are absolutely in the right place. And I believe that by showing a man who fights back using weapons when he feels society’s gatekeepers have abdicated their duty to protect us, it is an ultimately conservative film as well.

Wilson is stunning throughout, as he shatters the impression he has built among viewers through his beloved yet often one-dimensional portrayal of Dwight Schrute and delivers a completely unpredictable and wide-ranging performance that in a perfect world would be Oscar-worthy. Page offers up solid support in her meatiest role since her Oscar-nominated turn in “Juno,” and Bacon is sublimely sleazy as well. “Super” will be too extreme for many viewers, but for those who can handle sometimes disturbing material, it’s a heroic film indeed.

"ADJUSTMENT BUREAU" WILL ALTER YOUR VIEW OF REALITY

2011-04-23T18:13:00.000-07:00

‘Adjustment Bureau’ Review: Good Performances in Fascinating Storyby Carl Kozlowski

No matter what your background, everyone faces two of the same basic life choices: how to be sure you’ve found your perfect life partner, and how to find a life path that’s meaningful. But what if you think you’ve got it all figured out, and then suddenly you learn there’s a much bigger plan at work that contradicts everything you ever wanted?

What if God Himself was standing in the way of your deepest hopes and dreams, or your true love? Can you possibly change His mind and His plan for your destiny? And is it wrong to try in the first place?

——

These fundamental questions are addressed in fascinating fashion by the remarkable new film “The Adjustment Bureau.” The fact that it manages to do so in the context of a strong romance with plenty of thrills, stunning special effects, constant yet effective plot twists and outstanding performances by Matt Damon and Emily Blunt only adds to the appeal of this must-see movie.

Built upon the mind-bending work of legendary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, whose literary output also inspired “Blade Runner,” “The Adjustment Bureau” stands close behind “Inception” as one of the most original films to come out in years. A refreshing change of pace from typical Hollywood cookie-cutter fare, it stars Damon as David Norris, an idealistic young Democratic congressman who in the film’s opening minutes is scrambling to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, only to surprisingly lose on election night.

While prepping his concession speech, he meets Elise (Emily Blunt), a supremely talented ballet dancer whom he feels an instant love connection with, but who is chased away from him by mysterious men in hats. When David finds Elise again a few days later and develops an even stronger connection, he loses her in even more mysterious fashion – but this time, David stumbles across the mystery men in an entirely different setting.

They are erasing the memories of his colleagues at the law firm he now works at, forcing the hat men to explain that they work for “The Chairman” – an obvious reference to God – to keep certain important people’s lives running according to a strictly written plan. That plan is supposed to prevent David and Elise from falling in love, because each is meant to have a profound impact on the world in distinctly separate ways.

But this time, David doesn’t want to take “no” for an answer, and convinces Elise to make a literal run for their lives and destinies – setting off a complex chain of events and spectacular chases that force themselves and viewers to consider just how much of our lives are truly shaped by our free wills, and how much are predetermined by God or other mysterious forces.

Written and directed by George Nolfi, who previously worked with Damon as a writer on “Oceans Twelve” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “The Adjustment Bureau” weaves together action, humor, drama and romance all under universal questions that should leave viewers fully engaged in discussions about their own lives long after they leave the theater.

While the whiz-bang effects and top-notch performances are expected for such top-notch artists and actors, what’s truly surprising is how well the film handles the questions of free will versus predestination. Yes, God is an unseen “Chairman” here rather than straight-up Jesus, but “Bureau” is so adept with and respectful of the profound issues underlying its extremely entertaining core that the studio has engaged in a massive national outreach to Christian groups in an attempt to let them know that this film could be the kind of thing that kicks open the doors to inventive, intelligent work with a Godly bent. This is one film that merits such an outreach and isn’t just faking it, nor is it a religious film where the entertainment value is lacking beyond its message.

Damon and Blunt have instant, sparkling chemistry and handle the vast range of their roles with ease, while the film’s stunning visuals create an entire parallel vision of New York City that will likely make anyone who sees this film never look at the Big Apple the same way again. The only weak spot in the film is the character of one of the lead men in hats, played by John Slattery, who comes marching into some early scenes with blatantly expository dialogue that made me feel like a college freshman fiction-class writer had been handed the scenes while the rest of the film was being written by Shakespeare.

But after a couple such maddening moments, even Slattery and his character find their groove, slipping into the puzzle with ease and ultimately adding to the wonders at hand. I realize that this may sound like a studio press release, but trust me on this one folks: this could be a landmark film in the quest to have deeper films that respect the quest we’re all on for a Godly life and a meaningful eternity, and if it’s not supported, it will be a long time before Hollywood steps up to the plate on this level again.

"SUCKER PUNCH": SHOULD BE NAMED "GROIN KICK"

2011-04-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

‘Sucker Punch’ Review: Grim, Dark, Unpleasant, Nasty and Weirdby Carl Kozlowski

As a lifelong movie buff working my dream job as a film critic, I’m generally pretty easy to please. I go into every movie wanting to be entertained and willing to give the filmmaker a shot – in fact, so much so that some people have wondered if there’s anything I don’t like.

Well, have I got an answer for them: the new movie “Sucker Punch” is the worst, most agonizing and incomprehensible movie I have ever seen. Dark, grim and utterly unpleasant, it comes from the mind of Zach Snyder, who has directed the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” as well as “300,” “Watchmen,” and that weird owl movie from last fall. Tragically, he’s been announced as the director of an upcoming “Superman” reboot, which leads me to think it’s not Kryptonite that will kill the Man of Steel, but rather Zach Snyder.

——

“Sucker Punch” is dark, grim and utterly unpleasant from the get-go, as the opening scene shows a teenage girl learning her mother has died, as her stepfather sneers at the death and her sadness. He flips out when he finds that his wife’s will left her apparent fortune to her two daughters, and his abusiveness compels the young blonde pigtailed gal to whip out a gun and try to shoot him – only to miss and accidentally kill her sister instead.

As a result, she gets packed off to a mental institution that’s actually a weird sort of bordello in which teen girls are dumped off and trained to dress like tramps and dance whorishly for paying male customers who then apparently have their way with them. Our protagonist is renamed Baby Doll and is ordered by a ridiculous evil choreographer with an atrocious Eastern European accent (Carla Gugino in a rare misfired role) to start dancing or die.

But when the music – if you can call it that, as it’s an utterly obnoxious sonic atrocity that sounds like Trent Reznor attempted to write a burlesque score – starts, Baby Doll closes her eyes, starts to shimmy a little, and…

Here’s where it goes from a merely creepy pseudo-pedophilic fantasy to utterly insane and violent video game action. For instead of letting the audience actually see her dance, we see that Baby Doll is actually visualizing a fantasy world in which she’s suddenly standing outside a snowy Buddhist-style temple and is given a big sword and some cryptic instructions by the ugliest old man imaginable (veteran character actor Scott Glenn is not aging well.)

He basically tells her how to escape the institution, saying she needs to find a map, a key and some other random accouterments to get out. He then says “and be ready to fight them” and shoves her out the door, where she sees three giant monstrous creatures wearing those weird round pointy hats that are found in China. What ensues next is a completely incomprehensible battle royale in which they whomp and kick her around before she decapitates one, cuts another’s arm off and then shoots the third in the head.

She’s victorious, but suddenly she’s back on stage getting leered at by all the men and stared at with gape-jawed admiration by the rest of the girls. Apparently, while we were watching her kill the samurai beasties she was actually dancing the trampiest dance of all time.

This leads to the big escape plan, as she tells the rest of the girls that she’ll keep dancing to distract all the employees of the institution while the rest of the dancers sneak around grabbing the map and key and other stuff they need for the big getaway. They are all trying to get out before a supercreep customer named High Roller (inexplicably played by Jon Hamm, who should know better) shows up to really do some damage on them. Since there are five items to snag, we the audience get subjected to four or five more big, pointless, ugly, stupid action scenes including a World War II trench warfare-style sequence that again makes no sense and completely hides the actual dancing.

Throughout, we keep hearing the girls say or get told that they can escape if they really want to. And I assume most moviegoers unwitting enough to pay for this garbage can also make an escape anytime they want. Unfortunately, as a critic who needs to keep a relationship going with the studio that’s releasing this, I had to stay through the whole thing and just fantasize about regaining two hours of my life.

From top to bottom, this is one weird and nasty enterprise. The fact these are teenage girls makes it especially creepy, and the fact that a bevy of rising actresses including Vanessa Hudgens agreed to play these glorified strippers with silly names is just sad. Seriously, Vanessa, Britney Spears’ flipout four years ago was a saner career move than this.

One admittedly strange-sounding side note about all this is that none of the girls – not just Baby Doll – is really ever seen dancing. Now, as a Christian critic, I should perhaps commend Snyder’s attempt at some level of decorum.

But the fact is, if you’re going to make a movie where females are forced to strip or at least dance dirty and it’s a key part of what you’re calling a plot, then you have to show at least some dancing. It turns out that the studio was so terrified of the movie tanking as an “R” after Snyder’s owl movie bombed and “Watchmen” underperformed that they forced it to wind up as a PG-13 – forcing a whopping 18 minutes to get cut from the film. Even Snyder has been out in public touting the fact that the Blu-Ray will restore all that stuff, meaning he’s basically telling people wait for the video. I say, skip even that.

As I fled the theater the moment the credits started, I realized that the joke was truly on anyone who saw the movie. Come on, folks, it’s called “Sucker Punch.” It was so unpleasant it could have been renamed “Groin Kick.” And the producers have indeed sucker punched anyone who spends a dime to see this.

"WIN WIN" IS A WIN FOR AUDIENCES

2011-04-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

‘Win Win’ Review: Character Comedy With Heartby Carl Kozlowski

Mike Flaherty is a simple man, an average Joe living in the New Jersey suburbs with a schulbby body who’s prone to panic attacks, has a struggling law practice and with a wife and two young daughters to support. He coaches high school wrestling on the side, but his team is awful and hasn’t won a match in months. In other words, he seems like an all-around loser.

But when he finds a loophole in the paperwork of an elderly client named Leo whose Alzheimer’s Disease has left him in danger of having his care taken over by the state, Mike hatches a plan to make some extra money. He takes over the guardianship of Leo, a task that garners him an extra $1500 per month, and then sneaks Leo out of his own house and into residence at an assisted-living home. Suddenly, he’s got enough cash flow to survive – and no one seems to notice that he’s cheated a little to do it.

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Sounds like a win-win situation, right? Well, Flaherty’s the lead character in the new comedy “Win Win,” where things are hardly that simple – especially when Leo’s heretofore unknown teenage grandson Kyle shows up from out of state and turns the lives of Mike and his family upside down.

The Flahertys feel compelled to take care of Kyle until they can figure out exactly why he’s fled his mother in Ohio. But when Kyle reveals his amazing talent for wrestling, Mike feels like a winner for the first time in his life and like nothing can go wrong – yet Kyle can’t quite put his mysterious past behind him.

“Win Win” is a character comedy with heart, following in the tradition of films like “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Cyrus” and “Please Give.” Its ample pleasures don’t come from exciting twists and turns – although Kyle’s wrestling matches give the film jolts of energy – but instead lie in the quieter pleasures of a story well told and the fact that it respects the audience’s intelligence with novel-quality depth and feeling.

Following his prior films as writer-director “The Station Agent” and “The Visitor,” “Win Win” writer-director Thomas McCarthy offers another portrait of de facto families made of people thrown together by circumstance. A frequent character actor himself, McCarthy draws potent performances from an ace cast centered around the current era’s ultimate Everyman actor, Paul Giamatti.

As Mike, Giamatti gives full-blooded life to a man who’s living in denial of just how big a crisis his life has become. And as Mike finds himself gaining confidence alongside Kyle and his team, Giamatti is transformed as well in a role that may ultimately stand as one of his best performances. Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale and Jeffrey Tambor offer sterling supporting work as his wife and best friends, while newcomer Alex Shaffer a Kyle delivers a performance that’s unexpected in every way – mixing an innate sadness with a wiry energy that really makes viewers feel like he could tackle any one of the other characters at any time.

“Win Win” offers filmgoers an intelligent alternative to empty. big-studio spectacles like “Battle:LA” and “Sucker Punch.” Better yet, there are no political sucker punches, and the film subtly conveys in a church scene that the Flahertys are practicing Catholics with no sucker punches about that either. If you’re looking for a film that will make you care about its characters and provide some uplift in these dreary times, this movie is indeed a winner.

COMEDY DIRECTOR TOM SHADYAC DOES SOME SERIOUS SOUL-SEARCHING

2011-04-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

Interview: After Dropping Out of Hollywood, ‘Bruce Almighty’ Director Tom Shadyac Returns With ‘I Am’
by Carl Kozlowski

Tom Shadyac was a movie director who was on top of the world in comedy, thanks to his frequent blockbuster collaborations with Jim Carrey. Starting with the two “Ace Ventura” comedies and moving on through “Liar Liar” and “Bruce Almighty,” with detours to make “The Nutty Professor” and “Patch Adams” in between, Shadyac appeared that he could do no wrong at the box office and applied his fortune to owning a 500-acre estate on the eastern edge of Pasadena.

But then in 2007, a double-whammy hit him when his “Bruce” sequel “Evan Almighty” became one of the biggest comedic box-office bombs of all time, and then he suffered severe head trauma in a bicycle-riding accident. The side effects included blurred vision and severe migraines that never seemed to go away, and Shadyac – who had been a lifelong Catholic – thought he was going to die.

Then suddenly, his life-threatening symptoms miraculously healed, and Shadyac decided to radically transform his lifestyle. He embarked on a spiritual and philosophical quest that took him around the planet while he explored the answers that the various world religions and most famous philosophers had to offer. And as a result, he wound up feeling that his wealth and extravagant professions were a form of mental illness in a world where millions of people go to sleep hungry every day.

Shadyac decided to take radical measures to change his life and his mindset, and wound up selling off his land and his house – as well as his private jet – and downsized to live in a mobile home at a community on the Malibu coastline. He gave away most of his wealth, but also spent $1 million of it to finance a highly personal documentary called “I Am,” which put his quest on film and offers a heady yet often compelling mix of insights and analysis into the meaning of life and whether there’s an afterlife.

“I Am” is playing in Los Angeles and New York City now, but will be rolling out to theaters around the country in coming weeks. It’s a compelling look at Shadyac’s big changes, and offers plenty of fodder for viewers to consider their own lives as well. However, be warned that a lot of his interview segments are with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and the like. They aren’t focusing on bashing America but talk about the excesses of wealth in the West.

Shadyac sat down with BIG HOLLYWOOD recently to discuss his films and their meanings.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: Of all the great thinkers you spoke to, all but one of them hadn’t seen “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”?

SHADYAC: I agree. I agree! What is wrong with these people? They’re just busy solving apartheid, writing a People’s History. Chomsky was on a different path, man. When he was 12 years old, I think he was writing his first book about the Spanish American War while I was watching Brady Bunch reruns and snacking on Cheetos. But that’s why they’re doing the work they do. I was surprised and wonderfully fine with it. I think it was the way that ego left the room. We all want to come with our resume – I’ve written this, directed that – and they had no idea what it all was. So I was dealing with them without the crutch.

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BIG HOLLYWOOD: What I found interesting was that you start the film asking what’s wrong with the world and what do we do about it, and then you turn the tables and ask what’s right with the world and everything in it. Were you a person who was glass half-full before the project, and what do you consider yourself now?

SHADYAC: I think both perspectives – half-full, half-empty – can be valuable, but I just want to know what’s the truth. Truth can be a matter of perspective, but I also think there’s a truth that exists, that there are laws to the universe the way Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King believed. I moved from hope to faith. Hope is the belief we might get it done, and faith is the knowledge we will get it done. When you see the underlying story of who people really are and what the nature of reality is, I think it tells a very positive story.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: For you, having gone through a tragedy yourself to motivate you on this path, what do you think society will need to move forward?

SHADYAC: That’s why M. Scott Peck defined laziness as the first sin in the Garden of Eden. What you put off today you’re going to have to deal with at some point. We’ve put it off long enough. I had to deal with my own near-death, which is classic dark night of the soul experience. And I think that we’re seeing death in the world around us, the death of the natural world and we’re seeing such problems that we continue to pollute and to poison. We’re seeing a continual running stream of wars, a continual gap between the rich and the poor, we have an economy that’s broken. I think the crises are all around us. I don’t think that an individual has to face their own death, other than their death of perspective and the way they see things. Ray Anderson in the movie says we’re gonna have shock after shock after shock, and we are having that right now. You couldn’t see Egypt coming, but enough people have woken up to the idea of a different way for the Egyptian people, and suddenly like the Berlin Wall it fell. We don’t know how many people are shifting their viewpoints, and then one day the ideology like the Berlin Wall will fall.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: Some people resist this conversation. Have you run into haters or naysayers?

SHADYAC: I wouldn’t say haters, but people who don’t see eye to eye. And that’s to be expected and welcome. My father himself, whom I loved dearly, thought much of my vision might be Utopian. My father was a lawyer and I used his own life as an argument in court against his idea that it was Utopian and that we couldn’t build a compassionate world or business structure because he did it. My father built a huge business – forget charity – that takes care of people first, cures cancer first, ahead of profit motive.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: To that end, why did you go almost solely to left-wing radicals like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky who have a negative view of America and its history and not consult conservative or libertarian thinkers or Christian thinkers who could put the context of the quotes on love in a way that wasn’t just New Age?

SHADYAC: First of all, I don’t think any of the content is New Age. I think it talks about ancient ideologies and ancient ideas. I don’t consider the film liberal or conservative, and I didn’t go to people who were liberal or conservative, but to people who had moved me in some way and helped to change my life. I don’t know if you consider Desmond Tutu a liberal or conservative, or a clergyman or not, but I went to him because he walked in a powerful way that changed me. I didn’t go to Zinn for a left view or a right view, but because he woke me up to a certain kind of history that I was unaware of, and it helped to change me. I never viewed anyone in the film as having a political ideology, and I don’t think the film has a political ideology. It’s about my own personal journey.

I read a book called “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn that Morgan Freeman recommended to me, and it shattered a paradigm that I’d been walking in and showed me a different way. I just did an interview with Michael Medved, the conservative talk show host. and we met eye to eye on many of the principles in the film. When you start to look at things politically, that’s where you put walls up. When you look at things in principle, that’s where we build bridges. Michael and I had a wonderful hour on the show, he welcomed me to his home, and we stand differently but we both edify each other. He said you should have a different point of view, and I said that’s the film you could make. I see the differing point of view everyday when I turn on the TV, and it’s not liberal or conservative. It’s a philosophy that we are all separate, and we’re not brothers and sisters. I happen to believe we are. The human genome research shows we are. We’re all brothers and sisters in our DNA, and I choose to take care of my brothers and sisters. I think it’s that utopia, that this is wishful thinking and I don’t think it’s wishful. Gandhi said he chooses to walk in the meat and marrow of life, and that nonviolent change isn’t wishful, it’s more powerful and it’s lasting way of getting conflict resolved. Gandhi says it’s more powerful and long-lasting. When you do something in a non-violent way, people will die and there will be casualties. But you’re taking a different point of view that has a power. There are many causes I’d die for and that death will have a power, but I’m not willing to kill you to say that I believe in peace. .

There’s a reason we talk about Jesus still today, and it’s not in a dogmatic way. It’s because He said ‘no, you cannot kill me. There’s something in the meat and marrow of life, my spirit, who I am – the I AM – that you can’t kill. We wouldn’t have that story if we took our culturally accepted story, that somebody’s about to kill me, so I’m going to kill them first.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: What sort of spiritual practice do you have now – you used to be Catholic. And how does this change affect your career now – are you going back to comedies, are you looking for it, and is there a backlash from Hollywood for doing this?

SHADYAC: In my experience, the Hollywood people have been unbelievably supportive. My agency doesn’t stand to make a nickel off it, but they’re giving me the use of their screening room, their phone list and client list, people like Will.I.Am and Peter Gabriel who saw the film and were then incredibly generous in giving their songs at a great rate when I couldn’t afford their music normally. I’ll simply tell great stories and will gladly go back to studios, and I want to do stories that affect me. With how I view films, I think films are ways that we talk to each other and we deepen the conversation about who we are. I think laughter is a sacred act, I’d do a comedy again – if you’ve got an idea for “Ace 3,” I’m all ears.

I’ve been for years doing something I call Lectio Divino. If I had a previous life, I was a monk or a poet because I’ll read a poem and meditate on a passage that moves me. I try to eat what I call real food everyday, and that’s not buying into what the culture says is cool or wise but tuning into your heart for truth.

"PAUL": My favorite movie of the year so far (through April 23)

2011-04-23T15:22:00.000-07:00

‘Paul’ Review: Amusing Adventure Despite Christian Stereotyping
by Carl Kozlowski

With the Middle East in turmoil and Japan triple-whammied with problems, the whole world could use a laugh right about now. Thankfully, the new sci-fi comedy “Paul” is arriving in theatres Friday, packing more laughs per minute than almost any movie in the past decade – along with great performances, inventive twists and a sweet core of silly fun.

Written by and starring British comics Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, the dynamic duo behind the brilliant cult hits “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” “Paul” centers on two nerdy British tourists named Clive (Frost) and Graeme (Pegg) who have come to America to visit the sci-fi nerd mecca of Comic-Con before driving an RV across the US to visit sites where alien encounters have allegedly occurred. Even they realize that they’re just being silly, and there’s no way they’ll ever encounter a real alien – until a car races around them in the dead of night before careening off the highway and exploding.

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Looking for human survivors, they instead encounter a surly, wisecracking, dope-smoking alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen in one of the best voiceover performances I’ve ever heard) who’s on the run from federal secret agents (Jason Bateman and Sigourney Weaver) that he believes are out to kill him. Paul took his name from the dog his spaceship crushed when it crash-landed in rural Wyoming in 1947, and he’s spent the past 60-plus years being questioned at the clandestine Area 51 for his advanced alien insights and technological know-how.

Paul is just desperate to stay on the run and alive, but things keep getting more complicated as junior federal agents (Bill Hader and Thomas Lennon) get roped into the chase, and the on-the-lam trio also pick up a fundamentalist Christian named Ruth (Kristen Wiig) who’s desperate to make a getaway of her own: from her repressive life managing a desert RV park with her Bible-thumping father (John Carroll Lynch).

“Paul” is literally a wonder to behold, a smile and laugh-inducing romp from start to finish that is rated “R” for some profanity and a few dope-smoking scenes but which has such an inherent good-natured vibe that teens and even the children of liberal-minded parents should be allowed to enjoy it as well. Director Greg Mottola (“Superbad,” “Adventureland”) displays the best of his strengths from both those prior films as he weaves frenetically funny action scenes with revealing emotional moments that steer clear of sappiness.

Aside from its vast surface charms, the film’s brilliant script and perfect casting includes hilarious cameos from the likes of Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jeffrey Tambor and in the most truly inspired gag, the voice of Steven Spielberg himself. Pay close attention and you’ll find countless sly references to other classic alien films, including the fact that Weaver is fighting an alien again in a completely different fashion than her epic turns as Ripley in the “Alien” series of films.

One big caveat to Christian viewers is the fact that Ruth and her father’s characters are played for laughs, as they dive right into stereotypical jokes as gun-toting creationists who believe the world is just 4,000 years old. She has never drank, swore, kissed a man or traveled outside her limited desert radius – all aspects that are quickly rectified as she hits the road with the gang.

Yet she’s also depicted as having an inherently sweet innocence that is respected, and at one point Paul expresses sadness that he’s shaken her faith. He also invokes Scripture respectfully when he talks her into letting him use his healing powers to cure a lifelong eye problem in one of the film’s more serious moments.

I complained about the fact that last fall’s sharp comedy “Easy A” was painfully stereotypical in its depiction of Christian teens as moralistic harpies, but many responded by saying that they were fine with that film’s portrayal since many Christian teens are actually often overly judgmental of their peers.

Since “Paul” is so funny in every other respect and doesn’t seem as hateful as I found that aspect of “Easy A” to be, I think that most Christians should be able to laugh a little bit at themselves through this role. I mean, if you’re there, you’re already sitting in a movie about a profane, dope-smoking alien.

Hopefully, American audiences won’t be dissuaded by the fact the film stars Pegg and Frost, who are relatively unknown here. These are two men who are long overdue for a major break here, and if audiences give this movie a shot, it could well become a word-of-mouth sensation.

"RED CHAPEL" THE MOST DARING MOVIE EVER FILMED

2011-04-23T15:14:00.000-07:00

‘Red Chapel’ Review: Rare Opportunity Tonight thru Thursday to See Comedians Infiltrate, Expose North Korea
by Carl Kozlowski

Everyone of any political stripe knows that North Korea is one of the worst – if not the worst – dictatorship on the planet. For even as we have plenty of other hostile nations to choose from, extending from the overtly aggressive enemies of nations like Iran to the more subtle threat of Vladimir Putin in the questionably democratic Russia, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has ruled with such an iron fist and for so long that hardly anyone from the West ever gets to see inside the nation and no truly in-depth, legitimate footage or information of what life is like there ever seems to get out.

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But tonight through Thursday, anyone who is curious about what life is like in that insanely repressive regime can find a rare – literally one-of-a-kind – opportunity to see what goes on inside the borders of that nation, as LA’s Downtown Independent movie theater finishes a one-week-only run of “The Red Chapel,” a film that does not appear to be available on video in the United States. And better yet, the filmmakers behind this incredible film manage to do their expose in a way that blends the harrowing sadness of its citizens’ lives with staggeringly funny moments of outright satirical sabotage against the regime.

The fascinating and richly entertaining results parallel the work of “Borat” and “Bruno” mastermind Sacha Baron Cohen, but here the stakes are literally life and death if the filmmakers get caught. And the filmmakers pull off their achievement with taste rather than tastelessness, and do so in the service of a profound and daring mission: to shame the regime before the eyes of the free world.

In my nearly two years of reviewing films for Big Hollywood, I have never felt more compelled to encourage all those who love freedom to see a movie as much as I have this one. And due to the near-guerrilla nature of this film and the fact that the Downtown Independent is a nonprofit with almost no marketing budget, this film was hopelessly under-attended this weekend.

“The Red Chapel” is a 2009 Danish documentary in which a Danish native (a Caucasian man named Mads Brugger) roped in two South Korean-born men (Simon Jul Jorgensen and Jacob Nossell) who were adopted and raised by Danish families and are now popular Danish comedians, to pretend to be an arts trio called the Red Chapel. Even that name has a secret meaning, as it was the code name for Soviet actors who spied on the Nazis prior or during WWII by pretending to perform as a cultural exchange and reporting on German secrets from each of their tour stops.

Mads wants to sneak cameras into North Korea and show Pyongyang and anything else he can shoot to reveal on an unprecedented scale the pure evil of what he terms “the most evil dictatorship ever created.” At the same time, once they get accepted by the North Korean government, the performers reveal that their “show” is in fact a purposeful disaster.

Relying on fart noises from whoopie cushions, off-key singing, terrible acting of children’s fables like “The Princess and the Pea,” their goal is to humiliate the government officials who allowed them to enter, while acting like they have good intentions but simply lack talent. One of the comics, Jacob happens to be a “spastic” (his term, though his condition appears to be akin to Cerebral Palsy) and can not be understood by anyone but his friends.

The fact that he’s disabled helps them get into the country, as the North Korean government is eager to use him as propaganda showing they don’t hate disabled people. Mads’ narration notes that it’s long been rumored that the nation’s disabled babies get aborted or murdered right after birth, or sent to camps to die of neglect. The filmmakers’ advantage with having Jacob along is that he can say what’s really on his mind without the North Korean “minders” and spies understanding him, so he can say that their buildings look awful or food tastes like crap without getting busted, leaving the audience of the film to laugh later now that it’s translated on screen for us. (It’s like “Borat” with an anti-Soviet agenda).

They come up with shocking disturbing footage of daily life, and show how their spy/’minder’ breaks down wailing when asked how she feels about the founder of North Korea, Kim Jong Il’s father. While Mads’ narration explains that they know she’s saying she’s crying out of love for the man’s presence, but in reality is crying because she has to let out her true emotions sometime or go mad.

They also show how little kids are brainwashed in the schools, how the filmmakers are subtly spied on throughout their visit, and how Jacob gets more and more marginalized in his own show because the NK’s actually are deeply prejudiced against the disabled. And yet there is humor and hope and defiance running throughout, a strain of power that pays off triumphantly in the end.

Thankfully, this daring trio of filmmakers made it out alive and were able to share their vision with the rest of the world. Sadly, American filmgoers have received almost no opportunity to see the results.

If you’re really someone who cares about film but also cares about freedom and showing the truth and encouraging more such efforts like “The Red Chapel,” and you live in the Los Angeles area, it is very important to go support this film and the Downtown Independent theatre. Let your vote be heard at the box office and perhaps they can experience a turnaround that can bring the film back or garner it exposure elsewhere across the nation.

NO "ADJUSTMENT" NECESSARY: Writer George Nolfi makes the leap to directing with "Adjustment Bureau"

2011-04-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Interview: ‘Adjustment Bureau’ Director George Nolfi Reaches Out to Christian Audience
by Carl Kozlowski

George Nolfi has been one of Hollywood’s hottest rising writers of intelligent action films, having had a hand in the smash hits “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “Ocean’s Twelve.” Working with Matt Damon on both of those films, he developed a strong rapport that made him pick Damon as his first choice for his dream project and directing debut: an adaptation of legendary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Adjustment Bureau.”

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Dick’s books and stories have served as the fodder for some of Hollywood’s most striking films of the past three decades, including the timeless classic “Blade Runner.” In them, he addresses issues of free will and consciousness, and how much control we really have over our lives and destinies. That theme has never been laid out as strongly as it has in “Bureau,” which is a must-see film not only for film buffs of any stripe but especially for Christian filmgoers who wonder why Hollywood doesn’t deal with spiritual matters in a deep and meaningful way and bemoan the lack of entertainment value in independent Christian films that often don’t know how to entertain.

Nolfi has hit this one out of the park, and he has been involved in a massive national outreach to Christian churches and colleges designed to alert them to this extremely worthy film. He sat down for a phone interview with Big Hollywood and discussed the magic of his movie.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: How were you drawn to this subject matter? Were you just a fan of Philip K. Dick, or was there a spiritual element?

GEORGE NOLFI: I’ve long been fascinated with the question of how much we control our own destiny or how much we’re controlled by larger forces. When I think of that question it’s not explicitly theological, though I think that’s one of the answers. I studied philosophy in grad school and it intertwines with theology. Is it social forces, like what family you’re born into, or God’s plan for you that shapes your life most? We’re set on a path by something much bigger than ourselves, and yet we also know we have choices and that they matter.

BH: Are you spiritual or religious yourself, and if so, how did that tie into the project, and if not, how did you find a grasp on this and did you realize this would resonate with Christian audiences in addition to secular ones?

GN: I’ve not talked about my personal views because of this reason: I want the movie to be viewed by people whether religious or not or whatever religion they are. I want them to engage with the central question bringing their faith and views and grappling to the table. So when they leave, the question of how much of your life is handled by outside forces and how much by you is key, and that has been around since the ancient Greeks. I just want to have people have a great time at the movies in a romantic thriller with a sci-fi tinge to it all, leaving with their own questions brought to the table.

As a kid I’ve been interested in this issue. I studied it in college and graduate school, and studied various ways people grapple with that. My own family background dealt with it as well. I was also fascinated with the problem of evil in theology and if there’s a higher power that’s all powerful, benevolent and all knowing, then why do bad things happen to good people?

I think that for religious people period, but certainly Christian audiences, it is a part of their daily life to engage in discussions of why are we here. I don’t think that necessarily people who are completely secular deal with those issues, but I think it’s almost impossible to be a religious person without struggling with this issue. It’s ultimately a movie about a character going through character changes. It’s a thriller, a sci-fi tinged one, and hopefully you’re on that ride. But it does have these issues, and i thought it would have extra interest to those who struggle with it on a daily basis.

BH: What do you feel the message of the film is regarding free will vs. predetermined life? What are your own opinions on that? Matt Damon has done two big films in the last few months about these heavy metaphysical/spiritual topics, with this and “Hereafter,” so do you know what the appeal is to him and if the films have affected his view of life and death?

GN: I’ve never found a satisfactory answer that it’s one over the other, it has to be both. It doesn’t make sense to me to say the path for me is set and cant’ change it, and can’t say that I’m superman and can make my life exactly what I want it to be. There are forces that affect us, be it a Higher Power or social class of our family – a wealthy family in Connecticut vs. a poor family in Egypt. There are a lot of ways to view the things that affect the path we’re put on.

I can’t speak for Matt’s personal spiritual life, but Matt is a complex and engaged person who cares about raising complex questions and making the world a better place. He should never be pigeonholed.

BH: What has been the response of Christian audiences? Was it what you expected or are you surprised? How are the debates it sets off?

GN: They’ve responded very strongly. I’ve personally been at 5 screenings and nobody leaves the theater and the discussion goes on for an hour or more.

BH: Did you get a lot of challenges from studios or producers about touching this kind of subject matter? It seems that as Christians have embraced “Passion of the Christ” and I think more importantly “The Blind Side,” studios are starting to open up and be more willing to release films appealing to that audience.

GN: Nobody interfered with the vision of the movie at all, which surprised me. Matt Damon backed me and believes in backing the director’s vision. The studio was also aware of the movie they signed up for, crossing genres.

"HALL PASS": GOOD, CLEAN RAUNCHY FUN FROM THE FARRELLYS

2011-04-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

‘Hall Pass’ Review: Farrelly Brothers Return to Form
by Carl Kozlowski

Being a married guy is a tricky proposition. On the one hand, they have the security and stability of domestic life. And on the other hand, many men often wish they could still roam wild and free, ogling or even hitting on anything that moves. But what do you do when 20 years of marriage start to grate on you?

Do you slide into silent resentment of each other? Or do you possibly give yourself and your spouse a “hall pass’ – a week off from marriage that’s designed to let you take a walk on the wild side in the hopes of making you appreciate each other again?

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That’s the intriguing premise of “Hall Pass,” the latest outrageous comedy from writer-directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly. The film follows the antics of Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis), good family men who are nonetheless horny and bored from years of family life.

Their wives (played by Christina Applegate and Jenna Fischer) encounter a psychiatrist (Joy Behar), who suggests the “hall pass” to save their marriages. But as the guys are cheered on by their chorus of buddies, they find that hooking up is way harder than they remember.

And as their wives head off on their own weeklong vacation, they find surprising temptations of their own.

“Hall Pass” is easily the funniest movie the Farrelly Brothers have made since their trio of classics in the 1990s: “Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin” and “There’s Something About Mary.” It’s a welcome return to no-holds-barred yet clever raunch after they fell off track into sentimentality with “Stuck on You” and “Fever Pitch.”

Here, they have struck comic gold with a universal dilemma and aren’t gunshy about exploring nearly every comedic angle, from outrageously funny dialogue through at least three shockingly funny setpieces that give “Mary” a run for Its money.

They also expertly walk a daringly fine line: we’re supposed to root for them to “score,” yet the moment they would actually cross the line, they would lose most of our sympathy. The inventive array of complications our guys encounter keeps things zipping along, while the ace cast makes the audience wonder what they themselves would do each step of the way.

"UNKNOWN" KEEPS VIEWERS GUESSING

2011-04-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

‘Unknown’ Review: Great Action and Neeson Make This a Winnerby Carl Kozlowski

We live in an age where it’s almost impossible to get truly lost. Between GPS systems, the ever-growing presence of surveillance cameras, the ability to track credit-card purchases instantly around the globe, and cell-phones that can connect us via calls and texts to nearly anyplace in the civilized world, a person can feel pretty confident that they can’t ever truly lose contact with loved ones in a time of need.

But what if that sense of security suddenly disappears? And even worse, what if you can’t remember all the things that are important to you, and those around you are claiming they don’t know you either?

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That is the harrowing dilemma at the heart of the terrific new thriller “Unknown,” a film that updates classic Hitchcock thrillers like “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to the modern world but still relies on timeless foundations of solid performances, inventive writing, perfectly moody atmosphere and a reality-based sense of location that makes every moment feel all too real. And at its core is the essential idea of an Everyman who is thrust into a terrible situation and must find the inner strength and cleverness to find his way back out.

Following Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and his wife Elizabeth (January Jones) as they go to Berlin for an important botany conference, Martin quickly finds he has to race back to the airport after forgetting a vital briefcase with classified information. He goes back so quickly that even his wife doesn’t know where he went, and when he suffers a four-day coma after a taxi accident, Martin finds that his wife claims she doesn’t know him, another man (Aidan Quinn) is claiming to be him, and that he can’t even remember what secrets he was bringing to the conference himself. He turns to his cab driver (Diane Kruger) and a former East German secret policeman to help him figure out the mystery, one that spirals ever more complexly through a series of shocking twists.

“Unknown” marks the second foray into action-hero status for Neeson after the slam-bang thriller “Taken” in 2009, and he again fits the role well. “Unknown” is an even better – if less wildly entertaining – film because its more complex story stays mostly in the realm of plausibility, and because the performances and writing of the characters across the board are three-dimensional.

Director Juame Collet-Sera does a superb job building a low-boil tension to heightened levels at key moments in the film, while he and screenwriters Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell masterfully use amnesia and the stranger-in-a-strange-land motif to keep both Martin and the audience on their toes for the entire running time. Their vision of Berlin as cold, grey and utterly baffling to an American man with no knowledge of German sets the film in a netherworld that has a constant sense of dread, and their detailed side story of Kruger’s plight and hope for a better life is uncommonly affecting for a thriller.

All told, “Unknown” is a rare modern thriller that takes its time to unspool its story and keeps viewers hanging on for the ride right alongside their hero. Let it be known that this is one film well worth seeing.

"I AM NUMBER FOUR" NOT QUITE NUMBER TWO

2011-04-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

‘I Am Number Four’ Review: Solid Thrills, Good Performances Overcome Story Flaws
by Carl Kozlowski

High school outsiders have it rough enough already, feeling like aliens in the social universe around them. But for John Smith, the alias of the lead character in the new sci-fi thriller “I Am Number Four,” things are infinitely worse.

John’s the new kid in the Norman Rockwell-esque small town of Paradise, Ohio, having just moved there after fleeing his previous home near a California beach. In fact, John’s constantly running because in reality, he actually is an alien known as Number Four, who is one of only a few specially-gifted members of his species to survive a vicious attack on his home planet from an evil alien race known as the Mogs.

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The Mogs have seized control of John’s home planet, and live in fear that the specially-gifted young aliens such as John may someday lead a rebellion to take back their planet. Therefore, vicious Mog killers are tracking the heroic young aliens down around Earth and killing them – with John’s number literally coming up next.

With only a fellow alien warrior named Henri (Timothy Olyphant) to protect him, John must keep his identity secret while blending into yet another small town high school. But things get extra-complicated this time because he falls in love with Sarah (Dianna Agron), a good-girl cheerleader whose ex-boyfriend is the school quarterback and lead bully and who wants to kept the two new lovebirds apart.

John teams with the school’s long-established nerd Sam (Callan McAuliffe), whose father mysteriously died while investigating alien and UFO appearances, to fight off the Mogs and save Paradise. But can they do it alone, or will the hot blond girl (Teresa Palmer) who keeps walking away from explosions have to help them?

Got all that? This is easily the longest explanation of a plot I’ve had to dish out in ages, and it truly offers just the setup for what’s to come rather than everything but the ending. This means that there’s an awful lot going on here, and while it’s often enjoyable, it ultimately feels like too much to digest – kind of like the giant turkey you regret having a fourth helping of at Thanksgiving.

Blending teenage identity issues, slam-bang action sequences, solid performances and a sweetly written romance with often-impressive special effects, the inventive “I Am Number Four” theoretically should prove to be both a blockbuster and a teen-movie classic. Yet in trying to juggle multiple genres into one slick show, writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (TV’s “Smallville”) and Marti Noxon (a top writer from the late great series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) wind up dropping the ball at a few key points.

The main problem with “Number Four” is that the Mogs’ attacks and action scenes often seem like jarring afterthoughts rather than integrating fully into the story. The final battle scenes have so many sets of lasers zapping and objects getting destroyed, plus dozens of Mogs and their monster sidekicks seeming to come out of nowhere, that the film nearly goes off the rails. The appearance of a character who’s able to help save the day comes happens so randomly that it almost makes the film feel like it has a laughable deus ex machina ending.

“Almost” is the key word there, thankfully. The quality of the performances from all the young leads – particularly Alex Pettyfer as John/Number Four – is solid, and seems likely to portend big careers ahead. And the small-town aspects of the film are nicely rendered, with the central romance between John and Sarah a refreshing throwback to the positive teen relationships of John Hughes’ teen films in an age when MTV is trying to shove teens-in-heat garbage like “Skins” down our throats.

With most of the film’s other suspense and action scenes thrillingly directed by D.J. Caruso (“Disturbia,” “Eagle Eye”), “I Am Number Four” may not quite merit four stars. But thankfully, the many elements that work ensure that no one will consider it “number two” either.