“The Fountain of crap.”

 Trailers are designed to look cool to get viewers into the seats, this is a fact.  I buy into that fact often.  Sometimes I’m dissapointed, sometimes I’m not.  It’s the gauntlet run by anybody who watches movies in the theater as a hobby/activity.  I find that I’m rarely so dissapointed by a movie after being excited or interested so much as to want to leave the movie.  Ladies and gentlemen, it has really happened in a bad way here.

Before I begin this review, let me say this: In some of my earlier reviews, some movies got off the hook big time.  The Lake House and POTC2 definetely caught me in a weird state of mind.  These are movies though that I wouldn’t mind watching again, but still are not very good.  I do judge replay value on movies.  I understand that The Fountain went through some sort of production hell.  I understand that Darren Aronofsky, the brilliant film-maker behind Requiem for a Dream and Pi, was really drained upon making this film.  I can only imagine how frustrated he was.  He sought to make a movie and it blew up in his face once, only to have to come back and make a semblance of a movie he really wanted to make.  And man, did his anguish really show.

I apologized to my girlfriend 15 minutes through this borefest.  She then apologized to my sisters and their friend for me.  I felt bad subjecting them to this experience.  It was a very dull experience.  I’ve never wanted to get away from a movie in recent memory as bad as this.  I wanted it to end.  This is how I saw it: it looked like a student film that benefited from a good amount of money and special effects.  That isn’t to say visually that the movie was sub-par; on the contrary.  It was really well done visually.  Aronofsky’s visual abilities are certainly on point, but his story-telling methods are pretty boring.

I felt very bored throughout this whole movie.  A movie has to be more than dialogue and relationships.  There has to be some sort of current and energy that brings the two together.  I read another review, specifically from EW who really liked it, saying it was a “mood movie”.  “Mood movies” therefore aren’t good movies.  I should never have to be in a particular mood to enjoy something.  A movie if it is good has a withstanding hold on my emotions throughout the story.  This movie felt jumpy and ill-contrived.  I feel bad for Aronofsky to have not been able to make the movie he initially sought to make, but not for boring me with whatever he salvaged.  Jackman and Weisz are obviously good, but even preformances don’t save me from this junky love story.

I can’t give this a good grade.  Maybe that makes me an action junky or a fan boy, in that I only give movies with guns and actions good grades as it seems, but this movie didn’t connect with me.  It really seperates the viewer from the experience.  While it offers a “figure it out for yourself” ending, I couldn’t have cared less. Maybe seeing it again will change my mind, but even then…I shouldn’t have to see something twice to like it.  I give this a Bones Report low of 3 out of 10 Bones, for really junky story-telling and shoddy attempts at giving the audience a chance to really relate.

RATING:

“Felt like a big kid being preached to”

 It’s a movie about dancing animated penguins.  What’s not to like? Can I say frankly, what is it with these damn penguins nowadays?  How many movies are about penguins these days?  I mean sure they’re cute, but so aren’t beavers.  Why aren’t there movies about beavers? Anywho, back to dancing and singing animated penguins.  It’s fodder for kids.  The key in animated movies these days is to entertain the kids while not boring the adults.  Sometimes they take it too far.

Let’s keep something in perspective here, if we’re not already there.  This is a movie about dancing and singing penguins, voiced with hillarity and charm by Robin Williams, Elijah Wood, Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman to name a few.  That sentiment alone, makes it ok for me to check it out.  I don’t need an underlying message to the whole movie if it really doesn’t fit.  If it does fit, then super.  In this case, the movie tried to say a whole lot about relationships, fitting in or not fitting in, friendship, acceptance and eventually….pollution.

 That’s right.  Theres this whole build up with the main character and how will he get friends and gain acceptance, which is really leading towards a nice message with the audience.  It then goes into garbage about garbage.  Stick with one theme.  I consider myself a partial adult, and I was annoyed at it’s attempt.  I was happy watching penguins belt Queen and harmonize “In My Room”.  I liked seeing the penguin dance.  I knew the movie was ascinine but hey, where else can I see birds dance and not feel like a complete moron for wanting to? The movies!

All in all, the animation is almost life-like.  The voice acting ranges from really good(Robin Williams and Elijah Wood) to meh (Hugh Jackman).  The visuals of the movie were truely spectacular and overall the movie gave me a good chuckle, if not for the stupid last 30 minutes.  Lovelace is hysterical.  The makers really had a nice little film on their hands, that ended up going into waters that you should’ve remained uncharted for this particular movie.  See it if you want to giggle and such.  I give this a 6 out of 10 Bones for charm and cuteness but loses some for really preaching.

RATING:

 “A time bender that just doesn’t work”

 The other day I played a game with some people called “How many times has Denzel played a cop?”.  I realized that he has literally played a cop for almost all of his roles.  I know there are roles where he hasn’t, but he’s pretty much typecasted.  Following up a pretty gripping preformance in Man on Fire, Denzel re-teams with Tony “Super-cuts” Scott for Deja Vu, a sci-fi thriller involving a post-Katrina New Orleans.  The trailer looked badass, so of course I was in.  I even got to see it for free, via advanced screening pass.  Thankfully I didn’t spend the dough on this wad of junk.

So thats the formula of my reviews, you read a quirky intro, that segues, usually in the last line to the next paragraph where I discuss my emotions.  It’s kind of the way Deja Vu makes me feel.  It was very formulaic.  It had some clear rip-offs of other sci-fi time benders.  It’s hard not to be attracted to the action and to the effects and even a semi-decent story, but this movie ends up being on the drabber kind.  I feel like I may look back years from now and say how this movie was underrated, but it’s hard to say.  The concepts seem too played out, and even Scott’s flair for visuals doesn’t help get this off the ground.

Denzel plays a cop.  Val Kilmer’s kind of cool. You stick around for the action and the decent little story, but in the end it feels very formluaic and not reminiscent of anything unique and original.  I’d probably watch it again because it’s cool.  But it’s really not worthing shelling the money out to see in theaters.  Some scenes are frantically trying to be different and end up being pretty lame i.e. the car chase that happens 4 days apart.  The third act was obviously a way to try and tie up the movie’s loose ends.  It didn’t work.  The movie’s pretty drab, with no real over the top cool action.  I give this a 5 out of 10 Bones for just being pretty entertaining, thoughtless fodder.

RATING:

 “Gritty and tense; oh and Justin Timberlakes in it”

 A movie with Justin Timberlake can’t be good.That was the impression in my head as well. Ok so thats surface content.  Suffice it to say that while I was impressed with the trailer, which had aired about 1 year ago, I kind of lost track of where this movie was going and what had happened.  And like most movies where that happens, it resurfaced in the form of a news story claiming that the movie, based on actual events, had now got caught in some sort of litigation with the actual subject of the movie, Jesse James Hollywood, known fictionally as Johnny Truelove.  I get this advanced screening pass all of a sudden, that features a Q&A with Nick Cassavetes, the films director and writer, and bang…I’m there.  And let me tell you cherubs, a movie with Justin Timberlake can be good.

Alpha Dog worked for me on many levels.  It was humorous, thrilling and even gut wrenching.  Cassavetes really got some great preformance out of a very talented cast.  This along with The Departed shows that films cast with loads of talent under the right direction can really shine.  The story movies along in a pretty structured narrative form, jumping from different character perspectives and doing so quite well.  I was entertained at the relationships between the teenage characters and the darker side of what was apparently their easy life.  The story of Jesse James Hollywood is an entirely tragic one; really for both parties involved.  And the movie doesn’t feed you the answer to where your loyalties should lie.

The acting, specifically Ben Foster and the kid playing the younger brother, was pretty much on the mark.  The one person I couldn’t get around to liking that much was Johnny Truelove, played by Emile Hirsch.  He’s a talented young actor, but his preformance was pretty pedestrian here.  Justin Timberlake, was surprisingly pretty decent.  He has good comedic timing and even captures some emotions.  But all in all, he does come off over the top throughout a good deal of the film.  This movie reminded me of  typical teenage movies but with a really good story (not the open mosaic of KIDS or Havoc).   Cassavetes did a good job researching his material and making these characters unique yet life-like.

Now for the bad stuff.  There are some parts that make this movie slow down and really miss some marks.  Granted, this is a true story, but some of the added material maybe could have been left out.  The dialogue really keeps the movie going, but certain scenes really leave the viewer feeling bored, right after they had been wowed.  The final segment of scenes toward the end of the movie, then being bookended with an interview serve as my prime example.  Totally sucked the moment I just watched right out of me.  Some spotty and over the top preformances as well as a mis-cue on some of the representation, hindered this film for me.  When I say mis-cue I mean, the viewer is sent the wrong message at times about characters and their intentions.  Maybe that’s also in the way one takes the movie.

My favorite scenes were any with Ben Foster and the final scenes towards the end with Timberlake, Elvis and the kid.  Really powerful and tense scenes that I take away from this movie.  Again, the final scenes really held my attention and made me feel really tense, so be in for a badass ending.  Those are my lasting impressions of the flick, with it’s few chinks in the armor.  This movie get’s a solid 8 out of 10 Bones for being a really cool adaptation and pretty strong film-making.

RATING:

 Let me also comment to this and say that the Q&A really was an awesome experience.  Being in the presence of a director/writer so amiable and so in-tuned with his experience made my movie-going experience ten times better.  I was able to seperate this sentiment from my review, but Nick Cassavetes is truely a cool guy as well as pretty damn good director.  He discussed many aspects of the film with the audience and entertained all questions with an F-bomb and a smile.  Really cool guy.

 ”Too bright to miss. Charming and relatable.”

 Summer blockbusters aren’t always the hits.  It’s sometimes an underdog movie about an underdog that really hits the mark with people.  With word of mouth and critcal rave reviews, Little Miss Sunshine didn’t need a push start to break into the hearts of movie-goers in this fall season.  As many readers of this delightfully tright rag may have already recognized, I’m very cautious around independent movies.  I like to read reviews and get word of mouth from reliable sources before I drop the bills to see them.  While I support the idea of doing films that are personal and on your own, I will not fund stupidity. Happy to say, I funded a truely charming and wonderful film in Little Miss Sunshine.

While some say that the only independent film genre is about dysfunctional families(i.e. Lonesome Jim, Garden State, Squid and the Whale)  this generation of humans truely lives in a dysfunctional time.  These movies resonate with audiences because they are human characters that could be you or the person next to you.  Little Miss Sunshine does a pristine job exemplifying this ideal.  While their relationships are as screwed up as the situations they get in, you cannot help but feel not only bad, but almost heartfelt relation to their problems.  Each character also exemplifies general qualities in most families.  It’s the heart strings they play upon that make this movie move so to speak, but never take’s itself so seriously.

Oh yes, it’s very funny.  Steve Carell may be the funniest man in movies and TV at the moment, and truely delivers a very special preformance.  Greg Kinnear nails it again as well as the other actors, including the little girl, who plays naivety like it was the only thing she knows.  But the truely great preformance, one in my opinion that should be nominated for an Academy Award, is the grand-father, played by Alan Arkin.  He stole scenes, had the best lines, and resonated throughout the entire film, not just through his preformance, but his presence in the characters life.  He was truely the strongest part of the movie.

The story moves along very well and really delivers to the audience while not giving everything away.  The more I’ve thought about this movie, the more I realize that the ending was effective.  At first I was kind of dissapointed, but I think that’s because it has too much charm going for it. Some scenes were so doused in hillarity that I doubled over crying.  I haven’t done that in awhile.  Beyond a sour tasting ending, I really liked what this movie offered. I’m not the guy who always wants a happy ending, but I do believe in some sort of answer.  Ambiguity can work, but for some stories, the smallest tie in/shot can really finish the movie off right. The filming captured it’s setting wonderfully and aesthetically linked the images to the feelings(i.e. the dumpy bus).

In this story of unfortunate’s fortunately bringing together a dysfunctional family in it’s own screwed up way, the audience is looking in a hyperbolized mirror. The reflection is never too serious, but just serious enough to only feel for the characters.  You only want to see more, but may have to settle with only the bits of the characters that you most relate to. Your also left to wonder the future of the family after everything.  A bit too respective of the audience, but perhaps it’s that broad of a question.  Little Miss Sunshine offers a laugh and thought, neither of which are very far behind the other.  This movie get’s a 9 out of 10 Bones, with 1 Bone for the sour-taste at the end.

RATING: