Reviews and More

The end of the summer blockbuster season went out with a whimper, as the top-grossing film of the week, Tropic Thunder, earned just $11.5 million. This marked the third consecutive week that the Ben Stiller/Robert Downey, Jr./Jack Black comedy was the No.1 movie in America, and upped the film’s total revenues to $83.8 million in that time.

Second place went to Babylon A.D., the new Vin Diesel sci-fi thriller. With an estimated budget of $60 million, the movie managed to generate a meager $9.7 million in its opening weekend, which likely qualifies it as a bomb.

The Dark Knight continues to show incredible staying power, actually moving up a notch from last weekend’s standings to finish in third place this weekend. The second highest-grossing film of all time added another $8.75 million to its coffers.

Two other new releases managed to crack the Top 10, though neither of them made much of an impact on moviegoers. Traitor starring Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce earned $7.9 million, while the widely panned comedy Disaster Movie sold $6.17 million in tickets.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 8/31/08:

1. Tropic Thunder, $11.5 million
2. Babylon A.D., $9.7 million
3. The Dark Knight, $8.75 million
4. The House Bunny, $8.3 million
5. Traitor, $7.9 million
6. Death Race, $6.23 million
7. Disaster Movie, $6.17 million
8. Mama Mia!, $4.42 million
9. Pineapple Express, $3.5 million
10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, $3 million

I usually don’t go out of my way to watch movies that deal with police corruption — not because I don’t believe corruption is rampant in major police departments across the country (I do), but because I get a lot of these types of stories from books and television. However, being the Hugh Laurie fan that I am, I decided to make an exception for Street Kings, as I was eager to see Laurie playing someone other than Greg House.

That desire turned out to be a bust on two fronts: first, Laurie put the same flippant, sarcastic spin on his Street Kings character that he puts on House; and second, the main plot of the film was your basic corruption story with nothing fresh or original to offer the audience.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Detective Tom Ludlow (played by Keanu Reeves) is an LAPD officer who has long since stopped following the department’s rules and regulations. He routinely goes on undercover assignments where the dictum seems to be, “Shoot first, and let the Captain spin the right story to the media.” That captain is Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), and he does indeed take care of Ludlow — and the other guys in the unit, including Mike Clady (Jay Mohr), Cosmo Santos (Amaury Nolasco), and Dante Demille (John Corbett).

With Ludlow and crew cracking all the big cases in L.A., Wander is on the fast track to being promoted to Chief, and he promises to bring his boys along for the ride. The only potential obstacle standing in the way is Terrence Washington (Terry Crews), who used to be in Wander’s unit, but decided to go straight. Washington is now talking to Captain Biggs (Hugh Laurie) of Internal Affairs, which obviously could ruin a bunch of careers.

Then one day Washington is gunned down in a convenience store by two gangbangers. Ludlow happened to be there with him, and will likely get blamed for the incident since everyone in the department knew there was no love lost between the two former partners. Captain Wander is once again willing to destroy evidence to save Ludlow’s ass, but this time Tom can’t just let it go. The circumstances of Washington’s death make no sense to him, so he sets out to learn who put the hit on him and why.

The rest of the film then deals with Ludlow’s investigation as he races to find answers before Captain Biggs and Internal Affairs take him down. Along the way, Ludlow learns that corruption in the department runs even deeper than he thought, and no one’s loyalties or motives can be trusted.

My Reaction: Street Kings started off decently enough, and with a good cast involved, I thought the film had some real potential. The setup — that of Ludlow trying to get to the bottom of Washington’s killing — seemed intriguing and could probably have carried the film through to the end. But I didn’t like the actual handling of the plot (with the undercover agents, double-crosses, ulterior motives of the IA investigation, etc.) because it felt like too many other cop movies that have gone before this one.

As I mentioned above, I was disappointed in Laurie’s performance here. He was just Greg House with a different name and a different profession. I mean, when he first appeared on screen in the hospital, pulling the curtain to Tom’s room back and asking what happened, I felt as though I was watching House. Then he started popping gum (like Vicodin on the TV series), making wisecracks, and lying to the patient…. definitely House-like. I was hoping to see Laurie do something vastly different, as I’m sure other fans were. Oh, well.

I’m not even going to get into the corruption story and how Warden amassed all that cash and swag (or why he would build it into the wall of his house). I’m afraid that if I do, it will open my eyes to a bunch of additional problems and plot holes with the film.

I started off wondering how Street Kings could have fared so poorly at the box office despite starring Reeves and Whitaker, but the script speaks for itself. There’s nothing original here folks, so don’t bother wasting your time with it. I give the film 4.5 stars out of 10.

I’ve been wanting to read more “classics” than I have been, so I took a break from my usual entertaining reads to tackle Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens and The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence. Dickens, as always, put me back into a reading mood, and I decided to use that momentum to take on The Rainbow, a novel I had attempted to get through back in college, but soon put aside as being far too boring for my tastes. This time around, I still thought the story was extremely dull; however, at least I possessed enough self-discipline to finish the darn thing!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The Rainbow follows the lives of three generations of the Brangwens, a middle-class family living in rural England in the early 1900s. Beginning with Tom Brangwen, the patriarch, the novel traces the sexual passions and marriages of three members of the family as they struggle to find meaning beyond their mere animal existence.

Tom marries a polish woman, and inherits a stepdaughter named Anna, with whom he becomes close. Anna in turn marries a distant Brangwen cousin named Will, and those two have a hot-cold relationship whose temperature depends on whether or not Anna is pregnant. When she is, she can barely stand Will, doing her best to push him away. When she isn’t, her baser passions dominate and she can’t get enough of her husband.

Anna and Will’s eldest child is a daughter named Ursula, and Lawrence chooses to focus the entire second half of the novel on her. He chronicles her childhood, and her young adulthood, which includes failed romances with a soldier and a female teacher.

As Lawrence finally brings his novel to a close, not much is settled in Ursula’s life — which is why her saga continues in the sequel Women in Love.

My Reaction: Let me just say at the outset here that I realize my summary of The Rainbow and this Reaction section are rather simplistic and unsophisticated. I know that I’m missing out on a lot of the larger themes in The Rainbow, but bear in mind that I didn’t read this book as part of a literature class. I just read it on my own, and therefore my reaction is going to be that of a casual reader who got through the novel without the benefit of a professor’s guidance.

That being said, I was bored to tears in so many sections of this book that I’m surprised I made it all the way to the last page. Many people refer to The Rainbow as a “psychological novel”, which of course means that NOTHING HAPPENS in it! The pages are just filled with the characters thoughts and feelings about what’s going on in their lives as they engage in endless internal debates about how to handle typical problems involving family, career, and love. Big deal. I mean, seriously, would this novel stand a chance of being published today if it came from a no-name author instead of D.H. Lawrence?

Sure, many of the passages are well-written; but many are simply a waste of space as the characters think the same things over and over again.

The novel has endured for so long because of its “frank” treatment of sexual themes, which, in 1915 led to an obscenity trial and the book’s ultimate banning in England. However, those themes are decidedly tame by today’s standards, making it hard for a modern (casual) reader to see any intrinsic merit in the work.

Please save your emails telling me about all of the themes I missed: power, passion, dominance, religion, patriarchal vs. matriarchal rule, women’s lib, etc. etc. I know those things are in there; I just didn’t think Lawrence said anything particularly profound about any of them.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend reading The Rainbow unless it’s part of the curriculum of a college lit course — or unless you’ve got a wicked masochistic streak in you. Nothing happens in this book, the characters are uninteresting, and it doesn’t have much to offer modern readers. If you really want to read something by Lawrence, do yourself a favor and go for Lady Chatterly’s Lover instead!

It’s not often that I watch 60-year-old movies, and even rarer for me to pick up a foreign film. But when I saw 1948’s Bicycle Thieves (alternately known as The Bicycle Thief) available as a free rental from the public library, I figured I might as well give it a try. After all, the film is almost always mentioned on “Best of” lists and I do like to take a break from relentless CGI from time to time, so why not? As it turns out, I enjoyed the experience much more than expected.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): In post-World War II Rome, jobs are scarce and poverty is rampant. Eligible workers wait in throngs outside the employment office every day desperately hoping that their name will be called for a position. Antonio Ricci (played by Lamberto Magggiorani) is just such a man, and when he finally is offered work, he can’t help but think of all the nice things he can buy for wife Maria (Lianella Carell) and son Bruno (Enzo Staiola).

The work entails hanging posters around the city and requires the use of a bicycle. Ricci has a bicycle, but it’s in the shop being repaired. He doesn’t have money to get it out, but Maria soon solves that problem by pawning her wedding sheets for the cash. Ricci’s relief at the prospects of becoming financially stable again is almost palpable, and he eagerly looks forward to his first day at work.

Very early in Ricci’s shift, he meets with a major setback: someone brazenly steals his bicycle right there in broad daylight on a crowded street. Ricci gives chase, but soon loses sight of the thief, dejectedly returning home to explain what happened. A few of his friends tell him that if he doesn’t find the bicycle that day, there would be no hope of ever recovering it again, as the thief will strip it down and sell the parts as quickly as possible.

The rest of the film then shows Ricci and Bruno grimly going from market to market in a futile attempt to find the stolen bicycle. After it becomes clear that they will never get the bicycle back, Ricci, in an act of utter desperation, steals a bicycle himself. He’s caught, however, and humiliatingly threatened with arrest right in front of his son. Realizing that he ended up no better than the first bicycle thief, Ricci dejectedly returns home.

My Reaction: Sometimes the simplest stories can be the most powerful, and I think Bicycle Thieves definitely fits into this category. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like a whole heck of a lot transpires during the 95-minute running time, but Ricci’s character arc is the obvious focus. The way he is reduced to a thief himself, the way he suddenly sees how a man can be driven to such actions is a telling statement about human nature, and is beautifully handled in the film.

Certainly, Act II of Bicycle Thieves will seem incredibly boring to many modern viewers, so I doubt that this title gets much play outside of film school or snobbish viewing groups. More’s the pity, as the basic precept of this story is every bit as applicable today as it was 60 years ago.

Overall, Bicycle Thieves is deserving of its place on all of those “Best of” lists that directors and film societies release every few years. So-called classics are often hard to sit through, but that’s not the case here. I give the film 8.0 stars out of 10.

I’ve recently been struggling with my 5-year-old son, trying to get him to spend more time reading books. Well, I take that back since he doesn’t actually read much yet. However, I am trying to get him to at least sit down on his own with a few of his books and just look at the pictures or something. It’s a real struggle, though.

But then last week I had something of a breakthrough. I borrowed the Corduroy DVD from my library, and while we were watching it, my son sat with the book in his lap, pointing at the different illustrations as the matching scenes unfolded on the television. The same thing happened when we watched Curious George, which gave me an idea. Why not get my son as many of these stories on DVD as possible? That way, he’ll be more inclined to open his books as well.

So I started shopping around, and saw this wonderful collection called the Scholastic Treasury of 100 Storybooks over at Buy.com. This is a 16-disc collection that brings to life 100 classic storybook tales that children have loved for ages. The stories include such instantly recognizable titles as Where the Wild Things Are, The Snowy Day, Harry the Dirty Dog, and many, many more. In addition, each one is narrated by celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker and James Earl Jones. Pretty cool!

The Scholastic Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics usually retails for almost $100, but because it’s one of Buy.com’s Weekly Deals, it’s currently on sale for just $44.99 with free shipping.

That’s definitely a bargain, and I haven’t seen the set offered at a lower price anywhere else, so once again Buy.com proves to be better than the rest. I can’t wait to order this set and finally get my son interested in all the books he has!

Most superhero movies are content to show viewers only the positive side of the hero’s actions. We see the bus full of commuters getting saved, but don’t linger on the resulting damage to 40 passenger vehicles, three fire hydrants, and a small building or two. As long as lives are saved and criminals are thwarted, everyone is happy. There will be plenty of time and money for the cleanup later.

But the 2008 Will Smith film Hancock actually pauses to examine that residual effect of superheros’ actions. Is it worth stopping a couple of petty crooks if the damage to the city runs into the millions of dollars? Maybe not.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Smith stars as John Hancock, an antihero who reluctantly uses his amazing strength, bulletproof body, and flying abilities to save the city of Los Angeles from the usual menaces of high-speed car chases and bank robberies — all with a bottle of booze in hand. Right from the beginning, it’s clear that Hancock would rather not be bothered by all the superhero stuff, and he doesn’t expend any extra effort trying to minimize property damage while performing his heroic deeds.

But the citizens of L.A. are fed up with footing the bill for Hancock’s carelessness, and they decide to file suit against him. In steps PR man Ray Embrey (played by Jason Bateman), who was saved by Hancock when his car stalled at a railroad crossing. Ray says the surly Hancock needs a PR makeover, and offers to handle the case as a thank you. At first Hancock is resistant, but as he sees just how much everyone is starting to resent him, he accepts Ray’s offer.

Ray’s plan is to have Hancock turn himself in and serve time in jail. In less than two weeks, he says, the city will be clamoring for Hancock’s release as crime rates skyrocket. Failing that, Hancock can simply fly away from the prison anytime he chooses. Hancock agrees.

From there, the film goes on to show that Ray’s assessment of the situation was spot-on. A kinder, gentler, more careful Hancock emerges from incarceration, and immediately starts winning back the hearts and minds of Los Angelinos by successfully resolving a hostage situation. But the villain that Hancock thwarts in that episode comes back to wreak havoc on the superhero, exposing his vulnerability and putting his life in serious danger.

My Reaction: I enjoyed the first half of Hancock because it seemed that the filmmakers were intent on taking a fresh approach to the whole genre. I loved the idea of making Hancock accountable for his actions, and thought the film would have been terrific if the writers had been able to sustain that theme throughout. But as soon as the plot twist (don’t read further if you don’t want to know) was revealed, the film changed directions, becoming silly and boring.

Having Charlize Theron’s character be a superhero of the same mold as Hancock simply didn’t make sense to me. Why was that necessary? To present Hancock’s backstory? To reveal his Kryptonite? Whatever the reasoning behind it, I didn’t like it. As soon as Mary Embrey started zooming around and breaking things like Hancock did, I was taken out of the film and began to realize how ridiculous it all seemed. With the Smith character, I was willing and able to suspend my disbelief. With Theron’s character, not so much.

Hancock would have been a terrific film if the writers had stuck with the original premise and run with that for the entire 90 minutes. Changing directions midway through was a massive miscalculation that doomed the movie and knocked it down to mediocre status. I give it 5.0 stars out of 10.

An age-old complaint of teenagers everywhere is that no one “gets” them, no one listens to their problems. That’s probably because most psychologists and such are adults who have long ago lost the ability to see the world through teenage eyes. So wouldn’t it be better if teens had a peer counselor to talk to, someone their own age who is going through the exact same things they are?

That’s the basic premise of Charlie Bartlett, a 2007 comedy starring Anton Yelchin and Robert Downey, Jr. I really liked Yelchin’s work in Alpha Dog, and have been a fan of Robert Downey Jr. since the 1980s, so I decided to give this film a try despite the mostly lukewarm reviews I read about it. Unfortunately, even these two terrific actors couldn’t save Charlie Bartlett from itself.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Charlie Bartlett (played by Yelchin) is a 17-year-old misfit with a penchant for getting kicked out of private schools. His wealthy mother Marilyn (Hope Davis) is anything but a disciplinarian, so she thinks nothing of simply moving Charlie from one school to another, even when public school becomes the only alternative. Charlie’s father is in prison, and serves merely as a source of angst and embarrassment for Charlie.

Charlie is the type of kid who wears suits to school, quickly making him the target of resident bully Murphey Bivens (Tyler Hilton). When Charlie tires of getting his head dunked in the toilet and getting his beatings filmed for YouTube, he decides to try a different tack: he talks to Charlie about the source of his anger. Then he makes a deal with Charlie: they’ll go into business together selling prescription meds to kids at the school.

Charlie sets up shop in a bathroom stall, listens to kids spew their problems, looks up their symptoms in psychology textbooks, and then goes to his mother’s long list of shrinks pretending to have the symptoms in question. Once he gets the ’scripts from his doctors, he brings them back to Murphey to divvy up for the kids.

The racket is a resounding success, and Charlie becomes one of the most popular boys in school. But Principal Gardner (Downey Jr.) eventually realizes what’s going on, and moves in to break up Charlie’s business enterprise. Gardner has additional motivation to take Charlie down, considering the fact that Charlie is sleeping with Gardner’s daughter Susan (Kat Dennings).

The film then wends its way towards the inevitable confrontation between Gardner, Charlie, and Susan, before arriving at the happy ending that Hollywood demands.

My Reaction: As I said, I thought the premise for Charlie Bartlett sounded pretty good, and theoretically should have presented the filmmakers with lots of opportunities for laughs. After all, the film was marketed as a comedy, so I was expecting to laugh at least a little bit during the story.

But that didn’t happen. The only scenes that were clearly supposed to be funny (for example, when Charlie and Susan are singing in dumb accents while playing the piano) just came off as out of place and ridiculous, while the rest of the time it seemed as though the writers actually wanted to treat the subject matter seriously — except for the drug dealing part, which was quickly brushed under the rug thanks to a principal that was willing to overlook everything. Yeah, right.

I didn’t like how they treated the attempted suicide so blithely either. I mean, there are definitely kids out there who try to swallow handfuls of pills because of all the problems they have, and I think the film does a disservice by making light of the situation. Charlie didn’t get in trouble for selling Kip drugs and everything will be fine as long as Kip can put on his original play at the school? Um, okay….

Overall, Charlie Bartlett is doomed by an identity crisis as the filmmakers couldn’t decide whether to treat this as a comedy or a drama. As a result, the lighthearted parts come off as out of place while the more “serious” aspects are dealt with much too casually. I give the film just 4.0 stars out of 10.

I just read that Miley Cyrus, hero to tween girls everywhere, will hold her Sweet 16 birthday bash at Disneyland in Anaheim on October 5. What’s more, the public is actually invited to attend, with a limited number of tickets being sold for $250 each. Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit an organization called Youth Service America.

Miley doesn’t actually turn 16 until November 23, so she’ll probably have to wait until then to get her presents. What does the movie and singing starlet want? Well, according to People Magazine, her Wish List includes a new car (one that’s “big enough for all her friends”), a Wii Fit, and a puppy. That’s right, no air tools or sports equipment for this girly girl!

Anyway, I wonder how many kids are going to guilt their parents into taking them to Miley’s birthday party. I can understand attending if you’re local to the greater L.A./Anaheim area, but I’d be willing to bet that tons of out-of-towners show up as well. Thank goodness I don’t have tween girls!

The action-comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black was the No.1 movie in America for the second consecutive week after hauling in an estimated $16.1 million despite competition from a bunch of new releases. The controversial film has now grossed a total of $65.7 million in the 12 days since its debut.

Second place went to the Anna Faris comedy The House Bunny, which earned $15.1 million over the weekend — somewhat surprising given its dismal 41% aggregate freshness rating over at RottenTomatoes.com.

Other new releases to crack the Top 10 included Death Race ($12.3 million, third place) and The Longshots ($4.304 million, eighth place), while Rainn Wilson’s new comedy The Rocker didn’t generate enough revenue to appear on the list.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 8/24/08:

1. Tropic Thunder, $16.1 million
2. The House Bunny, $15.1 million
3. Death Race, $12.3 million
4. The Dark Knight, $10.3 million
5. Star Wars: The Clone Wars, $5.7 million
6. Pineapple Express, $5.6 million
7. Mirrors, $4.9 million
8. The Longshots, $4.304 million
9. Mama Mia!, $4.303 million
10. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, $4.1 million

I’ve been trying to put together a timetable of all the primetime shows I plan on watching this fall so I can get my TiVo fired up and ready to go, and I’ve noticed that a coulpe of my favorites are premiering very late in the season — like mid-October or later. What’s up with that? Is this a lingering effect of last year’s WGA strike? I thought that most shows premiered in September, but some are starting way later than that. Here’s a quick rundown of the series I’m sticking with this year:

Desperate Housewives — Season 5 premiere is scheduled for September 28 (Sunday), which I think is normal for the show. I can’t wait to see if things improve over a dismal fourth season now that we’ve got that 5-year flash-forward to deal with.

Grey’s Anatomy — Season 5 premiere is scheduled for September 25 (Thursday) — so again, a normal date for this ABC show. I can’t even imagine what’s on the slate for this program in S5… it’s been getting boring though, so I hope something changes.

House — Season 5 premiere is scheduled for September 16 (Tuesday). I wonder how they’re going to follow that tremendous two-part S4 finale from last season. This is one show I’m actually excited to watch!

How I Met Your Mother — Season 4 premiere is currently scheduled for September 22 (Monday). This is another show that I’m looking forward to, more for Barney than for Ted, though!

30 Rock — Season 3 premiere is slated for October 30 (Thursday). October 30?!! I don’t know if I can go that long without seeing any new adventures for Jack and Liz! Plus, how is Kenneth supposed to get his Halloween invitations mailed out on time? I guess that means there won’t be a party this year with Liz’s Harry Potter costume or Kenneth’s Austin Powers getup. So sad!

CSI — Season 9 premiere is set for October 9 (Thursday). I’ve pretty much written this show off, but I might tune in just to see what Laurence Fishburne adds to the cast. I can’t stand Grissom anymore though, so I’m going to have to figure out when his last ep is and come back after that.