CLOUD ATLAS

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: A
Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Hugh Grant and Susan Sarandon
Based on the novel by David Mitchell
Screenplay by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer
Directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer

The Wachowski Brothers, Larry and Andy, made a huge name for themselves in Hollywood with The Matrix, a science fiction action film that was so unique and dazzling that it ended up making Star Wars – Episode I be remembered as the other sci fi movie on 1999. The two were hailed as geniuses, visionaries, and the next Stanley Kubrick and John Woo rolled into one (well, two, I suppose.). Naturally, this kind of meteoric rise to stardom and power would often leads to a spectacular crash, and being the overachievers that they are, Larry and Andy decided that they would crash not once, but three times, and in the most spectacular fashion. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions succeeded in making sci fi fans finally learn to appreciate Star Wars – Episode I, and the astoundingly awful Speed Racer left audiences saying “Actually, you know what else George Lucas did that wasn't really that bad? Howard the Duck.” In fact, the only truly interesting thing the brothers did after The Matrix was to produce V For Vendetta, a bold and interesting film that is remembered once a year, every year, on the day that by all rights should be spent honoring Back To The Future.

But it was inevitable that The Wachowski's would try again, this time without the aid of Larry's penis. To compensate for it's absence, the duo brought on director Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola Run) to help them tackle one of the most ambitious projects in recent memory: a film adaptation of David Mitchell's thoroughly unfilmable novel Cloud Atlas.

Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that range from the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future, and from the seas of the Pacific to Belgium and Korea. The film jumps from story to story, following the same actors playing a variety of characters, sometimes in very heavy makeup.
Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgeons) is a guileless American on an ocean voyage, who befriends a slave named Autua (David Gyasi) sometime in the 1850's; Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) is a penniless young English musician in 1931, finds work as an amanuensis to a a great composer (Jim Broadbent) living in Belgium; Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) is a young journalist is 1975 who investigates reports that a new nuclear power plant is unsafe; Timothy Cavendish, (Jim Broadbent) is a 65-year-old publisher who is forced to flee from the brothers of his gangster client (Tom Hanks) and gets confined against his will in a nursing home from which he cannot escape; (Doona Bae) is a genetically-engineered fabricant (a clone) in a dystopian Korea in the distant future, and Zachry (Tom Hanks), is a tribesman living a primitive life after most of humanity dies during "the Fall," who is visited by Meronym (Halle Berry), a member of the last remnants of technologically-advanced civilization.


We jump from plot to plot, time to time, and place to place, with what often seems like no warning or motivation, until eventually a cohesive rhythm begins to unfold, and a story begins to take shape, which is mirrored in the story of Frobusher composing his masterpiece, the Cloud Atlas sextet. The stories being to tie together not only by recurring actors, but by recurring themes (the oppression of the slave Autua is is intertwined not only with that of Sonmi~451, but of Frobusher, who is forced to hide his homosexuality in fear that that it will destroy his reputation and any chance of success.). Ultimately, each story joins together to make a statement about the nature of existence and the complexity, as well as the subtle simplicity, of mankind.


The film is complicated, grandiose, and sometimes quite maddening, but it's also completely mesmerizing. The three directors, who split up to tell different parts of the story, manage to create order out of chaos and bring this gargantuan epic together into something that is visually stunning and amazingly, quite satisfying as a narrative story. This may be the most expensive experimental film ever made, and it's likely to lose a lot of audiences. It asks for your undivided attention and patience, and for you to be willing to trust and feel what you can't quite explain. In short, Cloud Atlas is a symphony on screen.
Some plots are better than others – Broadbent's adventures in the nursing home are a movie that is worth the price of admission all by itself, while Berry's investigative journalist story never truly grabbed me – but there was never a point when I found myself thinking “drop this story and move to another one.” I remained thoroughly engaged throughout.
This is a movie that some will love, some will hate, and many will simply be confused by. It will , most certainly, not be embraced as an instant classic in its time – but neither was 2001: A Space Odyssey.



Cloud Atlas is rated R for violence, profanity, brief nudity, and sex .

ALEX CROSS

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: F

Tyler Perry, Matthew Fox, Edward Burns, Rachel Nichols, Jean Reno, Carmen Ejogo, Giancarlo Esposito, Cicely Tyson

Screenplay by Mark Moss and Kerry Williamson 
Based on the novel "Cross" by James Patterson
Directed by Rob Cohen

Someone has to make Michael Bay look like a great filmmaker. And that's why we have Rob Cohen.

In the '90's, Cohen gave us such immortal classics as Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Dragonheart and Daylight, before fading into obscurity. This string of failures led to the belief that Cohen's career was pretty much over. But then, in the early 2000's, Rob surprised everyone with the release of the subtle, quiet, character based The Fast and The Furious, which turned out to be a surprise hit at the box office, proving once and for all that H.L. Mencken's famous quote “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” was, if anything, too kind. Cohen and his new found cohort, Vin Diesel, an actor who would go on to show considerable ability to grow even uglier over the years and sound like he not only smoked twelve packs of cigarettes per day but then apparently ate them, became a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. They immediately re-teamed for XXX, a new take on the spy genre in the sense that it explored the idea that there was no reason an intelligence agent had be able to pass the G.E.D. Somehow, despite approximately two thousand close-ups of the tattoo on Diesel’s neck and a series of clumsily staged action sequences that would fail to get Wyle E. Coyote to suspend disbelief, XXX did not succeed at dethroning James Bond as the top spy franchise.

But Cohen was not about to give up. Soon, he made the critics who doubted him eat their words when he gave us Stealth, a wickedly clever variation on Short Circuit and Blue Thunder that dared to pose questions such as “what if an airplane was like, alive or something?” and “Does Jessica Biel have large breasts?” Unfortunately for Cohen, the critics who had just eaten their words promptly threw them back up again all over his film. But let's be honest: a movie with such lofty artistic goals was of course, destined to be under-appreciated in it's time, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Tango & Cash. After that, Cohen was reduced to taking Stephen Sommer'shand-me-downs, and he gavesus The Mummy: The Curse Of the Dragon Emperor, which some praised as the best film of Cohen's career, much in the same way that one would praise tax evasion as one of Al Capone's lesser crimes.

But now, it's a new decade (name undecided at press time), and Rob Cohen has found a way to rise again, by once again teaming with a rising talent with a charisma that cannot be denied, unless you look up the word charisma in the dictionary, at which point there is no defending him. Yes, I'm talking about the white Eddie Murphy, Tyler Perry.

When it was decided that every beloved franchise had already been rebooted at least once already, Hollywood decided to tackle reinventing James Patterson's criminal psychologist hero Alex Cross, who had been so memorable portrayed by Morgan Freeman in That One Movie and The Other One. But of course, being a reboot, this time the character has to be younger, and cooler, and just getting started on his path to glory.

Alex Cross follows it's title character, who in this particular incarnation is a Detriot Police Detective, as he investigates a bizarre series of murders that appear to be the work of an assassin, who is working his way up the corporate ladder one killing at a time until he gets to jillionaire businessman Leon Mercier (Jean Reno.). This is not just a normal assassin, though: this guy takes pleasure in his work, much like a serial killer, and he has apparently watched Ralph Fiennes performance in Red Dragon too many times (once.). This killer is more than a match for our hero, despite the fact that Cross is both a Detective and a Doctor, a fact that is subtly reinforced to the audience every time one of the endless parade of smarmy supporting characters refers to him as “Detective Doctor Cross,” or when he casually drops references to his psychology degree to impress people he's apparently just met, such as his wife, or his partner/childhood best friend Tommy (Edward Burns). So it's a game of cat and mouse, with the killer playing the role of the cat and Cross playing the role of Sherlock Holmes as portrayed by Fat Albert. Every time the genius Detective Doctor expects this killer to zig, he zags, and when Cross has the epiphany to start expecting him to zag, wouldn't you know it, the clever little minx decides to zig.

But when the killer not only shoots down Cross's wife, killing her and the Detective Doctor's unborn child before it even has a chance at life, but also murder's Tommy girlfriend (Rachel Nichols of G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra and Conan the Barbarian) before she even gets chance to show us some cleavage, then it becomes personal. Alex and Tommy are not cops anymore. They're not even Doctors. Well, Alex is, but Tommy isn't. Actually they are both technically still cops and Alex is still a doctor (Detective Doctor, in fact), but the point is, they aren't acting as cops. In fact, anyone watching Perry and Burns' performances could make a powerful argument that they aren't acting at all. This isn't about justice anymore – it's about revenge.

Despite its short run time and eagerness to rush through character development in favor of moving the action along, Alex Cross felt like the most brutally long movie I've sat through all year. The script is clumsy and insipid, and the action is staged with a lack of style that is matched only by its lack of realism (the final showdown between Perry and Fox has to be the least exctiting, and least credible, knock down drag out fight sequence of the year. Despite Fox's tiny, emaciated frame, the character is rather unconvincingly established as a UFC caliber fighter, and yet we are meant to believe that the good Detective Doctor, who displays all of the motor coordination of an epileptic manatee, is able to overpower him through sheer rage. ).

And then there's the acting: Matthew Fox as the assassin, who calls himself “The Butcher,” gives a performance that is equal parts posturing and histrionics. Someone seems to have convinced Fox that this was a really good role and it was worth dropping a significant amount of weight in order to play the character in such a way that he can both physically and characteristically resemble a garden snake. Fox chews through the scenery like it was made of Bubble Yum, and his performance evokes not only the aforementioned turn by Fiennes in Red Dragon, but also Andy Serkiss as Gollum, Robert De Niro in both Taxi Driver and Cape Fear, and, in a particularly bold choice, Donald Duck in the cartoon where he gets magic powers and goes insane and starts shooting lightning bolts from his fingertips. In contrast, Perry and Burns seem so mellow that it almost feels like they don't realize the cameras are rolling and they are just hitting their marks to run through blocking. Cohen seems almost afraid to direct the two, realizing that they are both experienced directors (though apparently forgetting that they are not particularly good directors.). One also has to wonder how it is that these two have lived in Detroit as best friends since Kindergarten, but at some point one developed a Louisiana drawl and the other a Queens dialect.

The twist at the end isn't much of a twist, and even if it was, it wasn't worth the time it takes to get there. By that time, the film has already failed both as a mystery and as an action-crime thriller, and as the ending credits rolls, one can't help but suspect that meetings on how to completely reboot the reboot are already taking place. But I have a feeling that we haven't seen the last of Rob Cohen. Like a cockroach after a nuclear holocaust, he always seems to survive even the most terrible of things.

Alex Cross is rated PG-13 for violence, torture, sex, profanity, partial nudity, drug references and disturbing images (and yet The King's Speech is still an R.)

HERE COMES THE BOOM

HERE COMES THE BOOM

GRADE: C –

Reviewed by Paul Gibbs

In my recent review of the Clint Eastwood vehicle Trouble With The Curve,  I stated that the reason for using storytelling formulas is that they work. I should have specified that I doesn’t mean you can just drag one out and expect it to automatically work without any effort. The Kevin James vehicle Here Comes The Boom is a mix of two of  the most reliable  and overused formulas out there: the inspirational teacher movie, and the boxing movie (yes, it’s UFC mixed martial arts, but as far as conventions go, it’s a boxing movie).

            James stars as Scott Voss, a high school (or it might have been a middle school, I  couldn’t quite tell and the movie is nonspecific) biology teacher who was once committed and dedicated, but is now just going through the motions. But Scott sees in music teacher Marty Streb (Henry Winkler) the fire he use to have. Too bad Marty is about to be let go as the music department is being eliminated because of budget cuts, and just when Marty has confided that his 40-year old wife is pregnant. So, naturally , the apathetic guy who a mere two scenes ago told his students that school doesn’t matter steps up and offers to raise the $48,000 needed to keep Marty and music at the school. This eventually leads Scott to take up mixed martial arts fighting, figuring that, while he’ll probably always lose, he’ll stil make $10,000 per fight, and this is a movie so as long as he wears a Band Aid over his left eye after every fight he won’t have any lasting injuries. Of course Scott starts to win. Of course he becomes an inspiring teacher again.  Of course he wins the love of the hot school nurse (Salma Hayek). While this is obviously about as formulaic as a movie can get, it should make an engaging, innocuous bit of fluff, especially when played for laughs. But, as much as I wanted to  laugh, I didn’t. Not even small chuckles came forth.

            Without the laughs, it becomes very difficult to overlook the plot holes, Marty is  supposed to be such an inspiring teacher that the kids need him there. But we only see about one minute of what appears to okay teaching, and for the rest of the film Marty is portrayed as such an ineffectual oaf that it’s difficult to think of him as an inspiration to anyone.  Scott’s character arc is haphazard. And the romantic subplot is half-hearted at best. Director Frank Coraci dashes off most of the film in a very perfunctory fashion, then seems to have watched Raging Bull or Cinderella Man before shooting the climactic fight because he suddenly tries to get creative.  The screenplay, by James and Allan Loeb, could have been written by a computer program.

            The cast, particularly James and Winkler, are likable, and they make the film just barely engaging enough to watch. And, to be fair, most of the audience seemed to enjoy the film a lot more than I did.

Here Comes The Boom is rated PG for mild vulgarity and profanity.

ARGO

ARGO

GRADE: A+

Reviewed by Paul Gibbs

Okay, seriously: Forget about Gigli, Pearl Harbor, Daredevil, etc. Anybody who is still thinking of Ben Affleck as the early 2000s star of bad movies is missing out on the evolution of one of the great filmmakers of his generation. And Argo is his most accomplished film yet, the one where he moves definitively out of the “It’s looking like he’s turning out to be a good director” category into just plain being a terrific director.

            In 1979,  the American Embassy in Iran was overrun, leading  to one of the biggest hostage crises in history. Six people escaped the embassy and managed to hide out in the home of the Canadian ambassador. CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez hatched a plan to get them out of Iran, using a non-existent sci-fi movie called Argo as his cover. Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio have fashioned this story into an exceptionally compelling  and often uproariously funny thriller. Aside  from directing, Affleck gives a solid leading man turn as Mendez (fudging the characters ethnicity a bit in order to accommodate casting himself) and he is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast. Bryan Cranston, as another CIA agent, is finally given a chance to play a big screen role that doesn’t seem like a waste of his immense talent, and John Goodman, as a Hollywood make-up artist, is excellent as always. But it’s Alan Arkin as a cynical movie producer who steals every scene he’s in, making Terrio’s already witty dialogue infinitely funnier with his flawless delivery.

But the real star is Affleck the director, who creates a sense of tension and excitement that keeps the viewer riveted from the first scene to the last. Affleck has cited the great films of the 1970’s as an influence, in particular the work of director Sidney Lumet, and it’s easy to see that in the fly-on-the-wall style of the film, which recalls Lumet’s classic Dog Day Afternoon.  The film also recalls Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, in the sense of being an edge of your seat thriller despite the fact that we already know how it ends. Several sequences are likely to become thought of as classics. Affleck and his design team have also paid a great deal of attention to the look and feel of 1970’s sci-fi, both in creating the look of the fake Argo and Mednez’ son Ian’s sci-fi memorabilia, which helps inspire the idea. Screenwriter Terrio also very nicely explains the nature of the specific conflict with Iran, giving us a clear idea of why this is taking place but avoiding getting excessively political.

Hollywood rarely seems to make sophisticated “grown up” movies these days, because, frankly, there’s no money it. Argo is a gigantic step in a positive direction, and is almost certain to be one of the very best films of 2012.  However much you may dislike Affleck from his “Bennifer” days, give it a chance. Not because he needs it (he doesn’t). Because if you like quality cinema, you do.

Argo is rated R for violence and profanity.

TAKEN 2

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: B +

Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Rade Šerbedžija

Screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen
Directed Olivier Megaton

Liam Neeson, the Academy Award nominated star of Schindler's List, after flirting with attempted blockbuster leading man roles in film ranging from Rob Roy to Star Wars: Episode 1, seemed to be firmly settled into being a perennial prestige player in films like Kinsey, Gangs of New York or Kingdom of Heaven - the kinds of films that strive for Oscar gold but never reach the finish line. There was the occasional foray into more commercial projects like Chronicles of Narnia or Batman Begins, but there he was a supporting player, still included in order to add prestige and sense of Oscar cred. But his career took a dramatic change in direction when he showed off a “particular set of skills” in the surprise hit Taken in 2008. 

Suddenly he was the new Harrison Ford, and on the top of everyone's must have list for action blockbusters. Ten years ago if someone told Neeson would be starring in a big screen version of The A-Team you would have laughed in their face. But his commanding presence, imposing build, deep voice and sad intensity proved to the ideal mix for a more mature action hero. Unfortunately, these films failed to ignite the box office the way they were expected to, and the question of how much longer Neeson's action hero phase would last was becoming a major question . . . until now.

Bryan Mills and his family are adjusting to normal life, or at least as normal as it gets for them. Bryan daughter Kim is still traumatized by the experience of being kidnapped in Paris, and his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) is dealing with her second marriage falling apart. Bryan suggests that Kim and Lenore join him in Istanbul, where they can vacation together after Bryan gets done with some work.

Kim has plans to help her parents rekindle their relationship, and stays back at the hotel while they two of them spend time alone. While they are out, they are pursued by mysterious men and a chase ensues. But these men aren't random kidnappers: they are after Bryan specifically, and they want revenge. Despite Bryan's efforts, Lenore is captured, forcing Bryan to surrender, and the two are taken. Get it? Two taken? Taken 2? It works on so many levels!

This is a disposable popcorn film, another sequel to movie to a movie that should not have had a sequel, but much like Die Hard 2, it's so much fun that it doesn't matter. The swift pacing, well staged action and likable performances make for a film that is a bit lighter and more briskly entertaining than the original. Director Olivier Megaton and the writers are clearly using The Bourne Supremacy as their role role model, and it's a great choice. Unlike Die Hard 2, this isn't just a rehash of the first film; it follows a story of it's own that may be a bit far fetched but is hardly the same ludicrous “how can this happen to the same person twice?” kind of set up. What's more, where the first film was carried almost entirely by Neeson, this time around actress Maggie Grace, as Kim, is allowed to do more than just scream and cry, and becomes something of a sidekick to Bryan in what is by far the most entertaining section of the movie.

Unfortunately, the final section feels a bit rushed and some of the fights are a little choppy. The conscious choice to keep the film under two hours is mostly a good one, but there are few moments where it would have been nice to let things take their time to truly resolve, and the light, happy ending fees more than a little forced. Still, there is so much that does work about the film that the complaints are easily forgotten, and Taken 2 proves to be one of the most satisfying sequels of the year. Not to be confused with great art, this is still a wildly entertaining night at the movies. 
 
Taken 2 is rated PG-13 for violence and profanity.

FRANKENWEENIE

FRANKENWEENIE
GRADE: A –

Reviewed by Paul Gibbs

Finally, Tim Burton has made a truly good film again. While I found Dark Shadows relatively entertaining,  of his last 8 live-action films I only considered Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be truly good (I know Charlie has a lot of detractors due to the understandable backlash against Hollywood’s obsession with remakes, but between  tone I found to overall closer to the book than that of the musical, and Freddie Highmore being a much stronger actor than Peter Ostrum, I liked the film). But Burton’s latest animated film reminded me just how good the quirky filmmaker can be when he’s actually “on”,.

                Victor Frankenstein is a young boy who loved science and his dog Sparky. When Sparky dies after a tragic accident, Victor is devastated. Soon, Victor hatches a plan to use his talent for science to bring Sparky back. Obviously, the plot is a reworking of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein, and this is actually a feature-length remake of a live-action short that helped get Burton fired from Disney for his weirdness. But Tim gets the last laugh, as Disney is the studio behind this version.  The stop motion animation is as terrific as it was in Burton’s previous efforts The Nightmare Before Christmas (directed by Henry Selick) and Corpse Bride, and screenwriter John August has fleshed out the characters, and also added a great deal of humor. The biggest laughs come from Victor’s science teacher, voiced by Martin Landau. In fact, these may be the biggest laughs I’ve gotten in a movie this year. The rest of the voice cast which includes Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder, is also strong.

But  what really makes the story work is its heart. The vast majority of Burton’s best films have a genuine sweetness beneath the gothic weirdness, and Victor provides Burton with one of his most likable heroes. The film loses a little bit of its charm in the more frenetic third act (though there is quite a bit of entertainment value to be found there), but, thankfully, in the end the warmth comes through. Burton has created  touching, hilarious and all around entertaining film that is up there with his strongest efforts, and will become a new Halloween classic. Welcome back, Tim.  Please stay a while.