The Kid With the Movie Camera: Son of Rambow

When I saw that there was going to be a movie made about an amateur filmmaker recreating a major movie on home video, I thought I was going to be treated to a great, quirky movie. I got one half of that correct: it sure was quirky, but it was definitely not great or even good. It actually was quite mediocre. It seemed that the director, Garth Jennings, thought he could actually fool people by adding in Garageband sound effects (during many scenes there was Kids Booing). I mean, who is his target audience anyways? If you make a movie about making a movie, you are gonna get your share of Youtubers who want to see something about videomaking. If that's not the target audience, the crowd Jennings was probably aiming for was the sentimental ones who were looking for a nice, tearjerker movie. He probably won over those people, but not myself (I have dabbled in the craft of videos) and probably a lot of others. Anyways, to the plot. The story centers around Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), a kid who is in a religious brethren and can't watch certain TV programs that his teacher at his school makes the kids watch. During one of his sit-outs, he meets Lee Carter (Will Poulter) who gets into a fight with Will over Will's drawing book and ends up knocking over a fishbowl (the breakable thing law that has surfaced in movies lately). They are sent to the principal's office, and they bond in the waiting room. Already at this moment I was thinking that the plot was developing too fast. So, Lee takes the blame and demands the watch that Will is wearing in return. He also demands that he must help him shoot a sort of remake of Rambo for a contest called Screen Test. While he is over at Lee's place, Will becomes enchanted with the Sly Stallone character, and in a extremely garish and weird scene, "becomes the son of Rambo(w, as he thinks it is spelled)." He also comes up with the plot for Lee's amateur video. I have to mention something about the video. The stunts that Will ends up doing are outrageous and absolutely defy the laws of physics. When Lee propels Will backwards, he flies backwards 20 feet into the air, and it is sickening. Anyways, this business relationship interferes with Will's church schedule and his mom Mary (Jessica Hynes, in a terrible performance) becomes concerned. So she hires Joshua (Neil Dudgeon, another actor performing terribly) to help him stay faithful. While this is going on, at school, the "French Exchange Friends" have come to school, led by the idolized (he is followed around by many doting Brits) Didier Revol (Jules Sitruk), who compares himself to Patrick Swayze and thinks he will be a great edition to the movie. So Will hires him and Lee gets mad and they visit a glue-sniffing club and film more garish scenes and the watch is passed back and forth and on and on and on. Then, Lee gets nearly killed when a building falls down. At this point, the movie can go two ways: 1. Will edits the film and the movie wins the contest and there is a happy ending or 2. Will doesn't edit the movie in time, the movie doesn't win the contest, but the movie does end up on a matinee with "Yentl." If you guessed 2. you were correct. Some nerdy guy who apparently paid a lot more attention to time constraints and wasn't religious wins, but Will ends up editing the movie so Lee can see it at the local theatre as a short film before the Barbara Streisand "classic." During the film, which is crudely edited by Will and Lee's brother, Lee's brother (who looks a lot like Smosh's Anthony Padilla) makes a heartfelt speech, and the movie ends shortly after. This movie feels empty, and it doesn't seem like it can fill it's hole. Bottom line: great idea, bad writing, directing, and acting. The main problem, though, is that Will and Lee have more scope than the makers of this movie. C

Artists Only: Matchstick Men

"Matchstick Men" shows up movies such as The Grifters because it is intelligent as well as slick. Nicolas Cage is Roy Waller, a veteran con man/OCD neat freak (stained carpets make him flip out), who is living a pretty routine life. In fact, routine is his life. His partner, Frank (Sam Rockwell, with a touch of wit), is a polar opposite, but still, they work well together and they get the job done. A pill problem sends Waller to his psychiatrist, Dr. Klein (Bruce Altman), who notifies him (after Roy tells him to call his wife for him) that he has a daughter, named Angela. Angela is played by Alison Lohman, who is convincing as a teenager, although she was not close to being one when she shot this film. She plays the part well, though, with a charming sense and a real chemistry with Cage on-screen. After a while (after his daughter starts crashing at his place), he breaks it to her what his real occupation is (he originally told her he was an antique salesman). She wants to help and so on and so forth. As a subplot, Roy and Frank are working on a long con to trick Chuck (Bruce McGill). Anyways, that's not exactly extremely important to this review right now. Just to tell you, the next part is a spoiler, and if you want to enjoy the full experience of the movie, I suggest that you stop reading. I am only including this for the purpose of discussion. My advice for those who decide not to keep reading is to view multiple times. What happens later is that Angela isn't Roy's daughter and that she is only there to get his coveted Safety Deposit Box passcode to take the money and run...to Frank. So basically Frank is a real son of a gun here (or to use the modern phraseology, a dirty rotter). So Roy is the (cigarette) butt of the joke and loses out on tons of money. He ends up (in a cheesy tack-on ending) being a carpet (ha, ha, ha) salesman and marrying a grocery clerk that he likes and making tongue-in-cheek parting remarks with his now grown up daughter (she's 15, so that's pretty darn old, ain't it?). I really wished they didn't do this. Anyways, Nicolas Cage is amazing in his part, and from this movie and The Family Man and Adaptation, he has proved to be the leading authority on the slick/nervous guy. Rockwell is at his smarmy best, playing a real smarty of a partner. The supporting cast is good, too. I also liked the many cons in this movie, especially the lottery ticket one (which I won't spoil). Bottom line: Ridley Scott is doing very well. A

The Grittiest Case Ever: My Cousin Vinny

A hilarious yet charming movie about lawyers and coming back. The plot: Two guys (Ralph Macchio and Mitchell Whitfield) stop at a rest stop in Alabama and buy loads of stuff. Macchio forgets to pay for a can of tuna and he and his buddy drive off in oblivion. Two minutes later, they are being hauled into the station on account of shoplifting (reasonable) and murder (obviously not). So Macchio calls his cousin Vinny (Joe Pesci), who is less competent than The Verdict's Francis Galvin on a drinking spurt. In fact, Vinny happens to be the worst lawyer ever, and he is so bad, he can't even plead guilty or not guilty. So basically a People's Court fan would be able to outdo him in a trial. Pesci is a great choice for this kind of character, because he is able to channel the humorous aspects of his role in Raging Bull and Goodfellas and lay down a great comedic performance. Also great is Marisa Tomei as his fiance Mona Lisa Vito, an eccentric car buff who is extremely funny. Anyways, the opposing side has three decisive witnesses and a judge (Fred Gwynne) who disapproves of Vinny's informal manner. For example, he makes fun of Vin's black leather jacket and ridicules him and makes it clear that he should wear a coat and tie. But don't worry: this is as funny as it sounds. In the end, though, Vinny realizes the consequences of a sentence and decides he should step up his game. And step up he does. He puts Denzel Washington's Philadelphia lawyer to shame. He kicks the crap out of the opposing by whittling each witness down one by one until they look foolish. This is hard to believe. I guess the notes that the opposing lawyer supplied helped. Plus, Vinny's experiences in Alabama have eerie effects on the success of his arguments. So as to say, his experiences help him out. This is a little too coincidental for me. I liked Tomei's final car argument to justify that there could be another car besides the Buick Skylark, but everything after that seemed too textbook. And also, the experiences were funny, but how much crap really can happen to two people when they are in bed? Excuse me, that was a dumb question. When it comes to movies, bad luck always happens to people when they are sleeping. How could I be so foolish? Another thing: the character development is a work of stupidity. But heck with that. This film is actually a very funny insight on courtroom dramas and actually is effective in what it wants to do. Case closed. B+

Father Crime: The Godfather

Francis Ford Coppola made himself a film legend with this classic mafia movie, and for good reason. This film deserves much praise for every detail. It is a 175 minute opus, and it has some of the most grand scope of any movie ever. It switches from the rich backdrop of 1940's New York to the amazing country side of Sicily, and then back again in great fashion. The violence is handled perfectly, with a limited amount of the bloodshed for such a genre, yet there are still many scenes of it. And, of course, the acting is spectacular. Marlon Brando as the mafia godfather Don Vito Corleone is great, as he is serious and somewhat silly at the same time with his Italian lisp. Robert Duvall is also good as the foundling who was taken into the family and now is a major part. James Caan also deserves kudos for his portrayal of Sonny, who is much more interested in violence and strategy, and, because he is the oldest son, is sure he is the perfect choice as the successor of Vito. But it is Al Pacino who trumps the competition as Michael Corleone. The most disturbing thing in this movie, past the horse heads and stabbed hands and stranglings, is the transformation of Michael from the innocent young war vet (he even said to his sweetheart Diane Keaton that he had nothing to do with the family) to the family patriarch, basically taking the place of Don as the new senseless dealmaker. It probably wasn't his first hit, but in fact his trip to Italy, where his short-lived wife (Simonetta Stefanelli) was tragically car bombed. It's extremely sad to see such a nice young man turn terrible. Anyways, this movie also spawned the phrases "I'll give him an offer he can't refuse" and "He was swimming with the fishes." It also is obviously the inspiration for such movies as Goodfellas. There is not much to say about this movie, other than that it is one of the greatest films of all time and it deserves all the honors, if not more. Gangster movies nowadays lack the vision of such a director and are more urban thrillers than mafioso epics. This one definitely falls in the latter category, because it is epic. As I stated before, it clocks in at an astounding 175 minutes, something you don't see these days anymore. It is an intense experience to watch this movie, but if Don Corleone had been real, that would have made him proud, and for good reason. There will never be another film as rich, grand, and epic as "The Godfather." There are aspects of this film that can not ever be re-created, and no special effects will ever help that. A

Block Party: Do the Right Thing

An outstanding film by Spike Lee has great characters who I won't forget for a long time and great depth on race. From the start, this movie is about as informal as possible, and that is what seals the deal. You feel a part of the Bed-Stuy neighborhood, and you can relate to the characters. There really is no main character, but the movie mostly follows Mookie (Lee himself), a pizza delivery guy for the neighborhood pizzeria Sal's Famous Pizza, run by Sal (Danny Aiello, who plays the part very well) and his two sons, Pino and Vino (John Tuturro and Richard Edson). All the while, small racial conflicts are happening, such as with Bugging Out (Giancarlo Esposito) and Sal about the lack of pictures of "brothers" on the Wall of Fame and also with Sal, Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) about his "Fight the Power" spewing boombox that he blasts. Outside of the conflicts, there are Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), a usually drunken wise man, Mother Sister (Ruby Dee, amazingly), who is a mother figure, Mister Senor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), who is the local DJ who punctuates the action with bursts of his own radio and standard DJ stuff, Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith), a stutterer who keeps selling doodled-on pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. standing next to each other and a few others played by future major actors (Rosie Perez and Martin Lawrence to name a couple). There also a group of lounging old guys making stabs at Mike Tyson and the Korean business across the way. Oh, I've forgot to mention: it's blazing hot, and the heat has shaken things up a bit. This is basically a recap of a day, and it totally works. I can see how Crash was an imitator of this movie. The only difference: this film is hardcore racial greatness and Crash is a pampered, overrated Oscar darling which thinks race is an interesting subject. This movie not only is about racial issues, it knows it like the Brooklyn 'hood it's set in. And, sorry Mr. Haggis, but the same cops motif only works when you are in a certain part of the city, not over the whole city. And Crash is too frickin' serious. Ludicris is funny, but he isn't half as funny as Radio Raheem or Bugging Out or anyone in this masterpiece for that matter. The actors in Crash just played the part. These actors lived it for god's sake. This movie beats Crash to a pulp and then some. This is the definitive race movie. Its statement on violence (especially its epic final scene) and race are unparalleled by anything I have seen. This deserves its spot on the AFI Top 100 as much as Casablanca does, and it is amazing. A

Piano Man: Five Easy Pieces

Maybe the perfect movie. The reason I say that is that it is everything a screenwriter could do right. Great character development, amazing scene building, genius "simplicity", a touch of biting satire, and a mix of music, love, and the thought of life itself. Jack Nicholson brilliantly plays Robert Dupea, a slacker who has a job at an oil site, who, during his free time, just drinks beer and socializes with his girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black, with a great charm) and his friend Elton (Billy Green Bush, who has a hilarious laugh). This involves some great scenes, especially a fantastic scene where Dupea drunkly plays Chopin on a piano on a truck in the middle of a traffic jam. Then, he goes to see his recording artist sister (Lois Smith) in Hollywood, and she tells him that they're father is sick, and that he should go see him. He quits his terrible job, hops into the car with his girl, and heads for Washington. If you expecting an emotional, heartfelt road trip movie to follow, you are way off. This brief road trip involves many great scenes, though, with hitchhikers and toast being primary. When he finally arrives (after dropping his girlfriend off in a motel room), his past catches up to him, and the thought that he could have been a great pianist turns sour, as he realizes how much that they are isolated from the world. He has a brief affair with his sister-in-law (Susan Aspauch), who is another charming character, who has a great scene with a photo montage, when she asks Bobby to play the piano. Finally, his girlfriend does arrive, and he also finds he doesn't want his two worlds to collide. So he once and for all leaves and hitches a ride with a trucker, finally doing his girlfriend a "good thing." That's the whole story. There is nothing to spoil about it. You need to see the movie to get the full effect. The characters in this movie are extremely memorable, but not to an extent where they are not believable. The sort of on and off rhythm of long and short takes completely suits the movie. Nicholson blew me away yet again with another great performance, possibly his most humane he's ever done. He is sometimes extremely emotional, sometimes totally "Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack", and sometimes in between. Black's performance works in the way that it is eccentric and believable at the same time, all the time. Another thing: the direction, by Bob Rafelson, is outstanding. He crafts the movie to it's full potential, and he knows how to make an iconic, emotional, and amazing movie. Bottom line: this movie shows you the subtleness that There Will Be Blood tried to capture, and turns into a masterpiece of excellence and great cinematography (done by Laszlo Kovacs), writing, and characters, a great title, great acting, and a heavy shot of human emotion, making one of the best movies of all time. A

Man On the Run: 3 Days of the Condor

A very solid, but flawed film by master director Sydney Pollack about the CIA. Robert Redford stars as Joseph Turner (aka The Condor), a CIA worker who reads books and feeds the plots into a computer, which compares the fiction to real CIA cases. Sounds interesting, but if you're expecting a brainy film about books and the Central Intelligence Agency, then this movie will leave you hanging. Anyways, Turner leaves the office to pick up lunch and returns to find that his co-workers have been murdered. The murders were committed by a mysterious man (Max Von Sydow) and two others. This causes the Condor to panic. When he calls his station chief, Higgins (Cliff Robertson), things start to get weird. This involves a scene in an alley in which he is nearly gunned down by some guy he doesn't know from the CIA. This whole set of scenes reminded me much the decent movie F/X, another law crisis/man on the run movie. Another similarity: this experience makes the lead go on a rampage. Unlike F/X, the main character kidnaps a photographer (Faye Dunaway) whose photos are great, but that doesn't really matter. All these scenes between Redford and Dunaway are not very good, and Dunaway's acting seems to have suffered since her amazing turn in Chinatown, which only came out a year before. Anyways, the Condor basically makes her life hell (at least for the first couple of hours he is with her), seduces her (in an all-too-artsy scene), and gets her to help him. Unfortunately, Dunaway also spurts the stupidest line in the movie, something about being an "old spyf*****". What the hell is that? That is almost as bad as "testicle tag team". This movie doesn't deserve that line. Anyways, this plot is really implausible, as it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I don't need to tell you what happens next. There is nothing to spoil, except for an idiotic final scene that seems like it needs a Redford one-liner, but he doesn't deliver it, and it makes the movie feel incomplete. Bottom line: this is a good Pollack movie, but it seems kind of odd that I had to complain about bad writing in one of his movies. At least he improved 7 years later in 1982's Tootsie. But that's a different picture. Tootsie is great, and this just doesn't compete. Not just with Tootsie, but with other spy movies. B

Words as Weapons: The Great Debaters

An amazing piece of filmmaking that plays the predictable line well and overcomes stereotypical pitfalls of similar movies. Denzel Washington's previous big racial feature that he was in, Remember the Titans (by director Boaz Yakin), is considered a great sports movie. But the truth: it is only great in the way that it helps other filmmakers to avoid its mistakes. It is too sentimental and too Disneyfied. This movie can be the former sometimes, but it really not just a stand up and cheer movie. It is actually a real, serious take on racism and actually features a brief but disturbing lynching that shakes things up. Anyways, Denzel Washington is at the helm of this picture and plays debate coach Melvin B. Tolson well, as a ballbusting leader who will not take crap. Forest Whitaker is the second-biggest name, as James Famer, Sr., a big cheese at Wiley College, the school that this is all taking place at. John Heard co-stars briefly as the racist sheriff, who is seemingly laid back for such a man, but when you see what he does, you can erase that from your mind. All three of these men turn in good performances, but the movie belongs to the young actors led by Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, and the amazing Denzel Whitaker (who was named after Denzel but has no relation to Forrest). Parker and Smollett are extremely good, but it is Whitaker's charm and poise during his final monologue that is enough to seal the deal on this movie. These actors are real finds, and they really carry the movie. The thing is, Denzel is the supporting character, but these guys (and gal) are up to the task of leading. And their performances are polished like the floor of Harvard, the school in which they debate. But this movie isn't perfect. The racism isn't dealt with extremely perfectly (especially Heard's character), and some of the subplots could have been better. But this movie doesn't need to be perfect to get its message across. It's good enough the way it is. Bottom line: when I picked this movie up at the video store, I wasn't expecting much more than an average tearjerker movie. But this movie, laced with humor and extreme thoughtfulness, blew me totally out of the water. It isn't worth a debate: this movie is outstanding. A

Tone Deaf: Music Within

I know now that Steven Sawalich has created a movie so flawed, that no movie this year has compared to it's badness. Sure, it's not the worst movie I've seen, but in a year of moviemaking brilliance, this piece of trailer-trash looks and feels like an unedited mess. I should have known that a blurb by Larry King was the kiss of death. Of the two movies I had seen before, 1 was great and 1 sucked. Those two movies were Friday Night Lights and Ladder 49. I must say that this one belongs with the latter in the category of dumb, horrendous movies. The first twenty minutes are some of the most cruel I've ever heard. Ron Livingston, the actor who plays the main character Richard Pimentel, is reading off the occurrences of terrible events with a very disturbing tongue-in-cheek voice, such as that of his father's death. He's saying what everybody's Kryptonite is, and he reads for his dad "Soy sauce" in that very manner. It's extremely depressing, and it sets a tone that the movie doesn't want to set. Also, the titles are uncoordinated, but that's the least of this movie's problems. The next problem: the Vietnam sequence. Every Vietnam sequence made by an inexperienced director includes the following cliches: the helicopter panning shot, the tall grass shot, and the 60's music playing in the background. This movie uses those cliches and has nothing to offer. Anyways, a bomb blast deafens the lead character and sets off a chain of extremely stupid sequences known as the second act. The movie repeatedly disregards the fact that the lead character is deaf, as in certain bits Pimentel can "hear" people without even looking at them. It's as if you are making a movie about someone with one leg, and the person is suddenly walking with two legs. It's that dumb. I know that this movie is based on a true story, but if the movie keeps straying from the facts, it might as well be a fictional film. Another problem: the movie seems like one huge montage, and it feels as if you could sum the movie into 5 minutes. The narration impairs this movie because it keeps it like an overview and therefore a montage. It's just that you could watch the trailer and get more satisfaction then watching the whole 94 minutes of the movie. Another pitfall: the acting sucks. Ron Livingston, known for his comedic genius in Office Space, plays Pimentel like a robot, spewing lines woodenly and sleepwalking through his role. The problem is he trips and falls down the stairs. Melissa George gives bad girlfriend, as she is a predictable presence. Michael Sheen is the only person that gives the movie watchability, as the cerebral-palsy-suffering friend Art, who gives a performance that would make Daniel Day-Lewis clap. It would have been a wise decision to make him the lead character and Pimentel the supporting character, but judging on the terrible quality and lack of scope this movie possesses, I doubt the filmmakers even thought of that. Another thing: the movie said the mom had died towards the beginning, but apparently not, because she makes an appearance later. I guess the words "she left us" now mean she went to a nursing home. Another thing: for a movie called Music Within, the music choices in this are only 70's hits, really uninspired choices for such a movie. At a certain point, you wish the music was only within and you were deaf to it. One last problem: the stupid writing. Any movie that uses the phrase "testicle tag team" is extremely uninspired. In fact, that phrase should go down in history as a landmark pinnacle of stupidity. Actually, write this movie down for that spot instead. D+

Man in the Machine: Iron Man

Here is a movie that Transformers doesn't hold a candle to. In fact, it doesn't even hold anything to it. An exhilarating blast from not only the past but the future as this great summer movie employs techniques used before and mixes them with extreme landscapes, architecture, and action. Robert Downey, Jr. is at his absolute best as Tony Stark, a billionaire weapons dealer whose father apparently built the atomic bomb. The son isn't doing to badly either, rolling in big bucks, with a huge, gorgeous house in Malibu and some great cars. Then, during one of his trips to Afghanistan to demonstrate his new missile creation, the "Jericho", the tank he is traveling in explodes, and he is almost killed, and is also kidnapped by a terrorist group (The Ten Rings). He is forced to build another Jericho but instead, with the help of the guy who saved his life by keeping the shrapnel out of his heart (Shaun Toub), he builds a supersuit which he uses to escape. He makes it back to America with a whole new mindset about weapons and their dangers, and decides to build a bigger, better suit to destroy his weapons. But, of course, there has to be a villain, and that villain comes in the form of Obadiah Stone (Jeff Bridges), Stark's longtime partner who gets angered when Stark makes a speech that makes the stock drop 56 points. He decides to go to Afghanistan and resurrect the suit to fight off Stark. This proves to be an on target plot to add up to greatness. Gwyneth Paltrow co-stars as Pepper Potts, Stark's associate. She has some great scenes, and hits her spots very well. A great thing about this movie is the stylization. "Back in Black" at the very beginning when the tanks are coming forward fits the movie perfectly and sets the whole adrenaline rush in motion. Although Tony Stark's amount of "toys" is a bit on the exaggerated side, it still fits well with the movie. The only scene that I was impartial to was when Potts is performing a sort of surgery on Stark's body. It is the worst written scene in the movie, and it is the stupidest. You only hear the sounds of Potts' hand sloshing through the hole in Stark's body, plus it is dumb that Potts doesn't know what Operation is. The jokes, especially about Stark going into cardiac arrest briefly, are off target. This scene is the only scene that does not flow. Bottom line: this is an extremely humane and personal summer movie that is about a picked destiny instead of some sort of inflicted powers. Downey, Jr., as said before, turns in a wonderful performance, and Jon Favreau has a great vision of FX that few directors have achieved before. A-

Iron Man has violence, and a brief scene of sensuality.