http://www.mountainx.com/movies/ en webmaster@mountainx.com Copyright 2009 2009-11-04T05:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/breaking_in http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/breaking_in#When:04:00:10Z The Hendersonville Film Society will show Breaking In at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community (behind Epic Cinemas), 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville. Review: Despite containing one of Burt Reynolds’ best performances, Bill Forsyth’s Breaking In (1989) did no more for the Scottish filmmaker’s Hollywood career than Housekeeping (1987) had. Of course, it didn’t help that the film had about zero name value apart from Reynolds, was mis-marketed as a comedy/heist movie and came out through Sam Goldwyn. I suppose it was not exactly unreasonable to present the film as a caper comedy, since there is a caper and the film is amusing and doesn’t end with a tragedy. The problem is that the caper is neither particularly elaborate nor impressive, and the comedy is fairly tame. What you actually have here is a small-scale character comedy about the relationship between a seasoned thief, Ernie (Reynolds), and the young man, Mike (Casey Siemaszko), he takes under his wing as an apprentice. It’s a pleasant, shambling affair from the days before independent film became as formulaic as its mainstream … 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/h-man http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/h-man#When:04:00:10Z Classic Cinema From Around the World will show The H-Man at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, at Courtyard Gallery, 9 Walnut St., downtown Asheville. Info: 273-3332. Review: While not as iconic as his Godzilla (1954), the always interesting—and generally underrated—Ishirô Honda created one of his best works with The H-Man (1958), a strange mix of sci-fi, horror and gangsters. In some ways, the film is largely of a piece with much of Honda’s work—especially his 1950s output—in that it’s grounded in fears of the result of nuclear radiation. That preoccupation isn’t all that surprising given the country of origin where the specter of a nuclear attack was something more than a “what if” scenario. The film gets down to this point in its very first shot—a hydrogen-bomb test. Rather than awakening—and transforming—some gigantic mythical beast (as in Godzilla), The H-Man concerns itself directly with the possibility of the effects of nuclear fallout on human beings. In the context of the film, the fallout produces the H-Man—a kind of li… 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/one_crazy_ride_riding_solo_to_the_top_of_the_world http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/one_crazy_ride_riding_solo_to_the_top_of_the_world#When:04:00:10Z One Crazy Ride will be shown at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7, and Riding Solo at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 8, both at the Carolina Asheville Cinema 14. Riding Solo will also be screened at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, at Firestorm Cafe & Books. All screenings are free admission. Review: I cringed when I was asked to take a look at these two travel documentaries by Gaurav Jani done from motorcycles. They simply didn’t sound particularly appealing—and all the buildup I was given about Jani’s do-it-yourself filmmaking wasn’t helping matters. What a pleasant surprise the films turned out to be! Jani’s approach may be do-it-yourself, but what he does himself is more often than not visually stunning—even breathtaking. Both films are, as noted, travel documentaries. One Crazy Ride involves Jani and a small group of other motorcyclists as they make their way across uncharted roads in the Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India. Riding Solo to the Top of the World features Jani doing a kind of Survivorman shtick as he travels from Mumbai to the remote Changthang Plateau in Ladakh, bordering China. The films are both visual treats and offer some interesting insights into the peopl… 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/paris http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/paris#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A multi-storied film about the lives of a number of people in Paris. The Lowdown: An often brilliant drama—or series of dramas—that focuses more on characters than plot, resulting in a satisfying, if not quite great, work. Review: When I saw the name of the writer/director of Paris, Cédric Klapisch, I had to look him up and discovered that I had seen—and reviewed—one of his films, L’Auberge Espagnole (2002). That was a film I’d greatly enjoyed, but one that did not stick in my mind, which makes me wonder whether this film—which I also enjoyed a good deal—will linger in the memory. Though similar in tone to L’Auberge Espagnole—just replace the small space of the house with the much grander canvas of Paris—I have an idea that Klapisch’s multi-storied ode to Paris has greater staying power. Whatever the case, as it stands now, I really liked the film—even at its most convoluted and soapy. I didn’t even mind the predictable sudden death of a character on a motorcycle. (There’s a certain way that characters on motorcycles are photographed in some movies that tells you tragedy is literally around the corn… 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/coco_before_chanel http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/coco_before_chanel#When:04:00:10Z The Story: The early life of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, charting her rise from poverty to the very edge of being the name in fashion. The Lowdown: A nicely drawn, beautifully produced biopic that benefits from a clear idea of what it wants and a wonderful performance from its star, Audrey Tautou. Review: Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel—a film that purports to show how Gabrielle Chanel became the world-famous Coco Chanel—is a perfect example of a sound approach to the biopic. Rather than wander all over the place trying to stuff an entire life into a couple hours of screen time, Fontaine’s film settles on a defining part of its subject’s life and focuses on it. In so doing, Fontaine—with the help of a nuanced performance from Audrey Tautou—manages to create a film that captures both the essence of its subject and the times and circumstances that helped to shape her. Compare this with Mira Nair’s Amelia—a sprawling work that barely bothers to address what formed Amelia Earhart—and you’ll see all the difference in the world. The film traces Gabrielle’s life from the abandonment of her and her sister at an orphanage to the very point of her emergence on the fashion scene—with a… 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/play_the_game http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/play_the_game#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A twentysomething attempts to teach his elderly grandfather how to “play the game of love” while also trying to woo his own dream girl. The Lowdown: Dull, formulaic, uninspired, stylistically inert tripe that’s better suited as lower-tier film-festival fodder or maybe as an insomnia aid. Review: Marc Fienberg’s Play the Game is being billed as “Andy Griffith as you’ve never seen him before.” I can safely say this is true: I have never watched Andy Griffith feign an orgasm while having his, uh, Opie orally satisfied by Liz Sheridan after she slips him a Viagra mickey. The real question is, however, was this something I needed to see? The answer, of course, is a resounding probably not. Just don’t tell writer/director Fienberg and the film’s producers this—they’ve basically mortgaged the entire film on the idea people actually want to watch this kind of thing, so much so that it pops up again after the credits. It’s not so much a problem with sexual frankness in this particular scene or the movie in general, but rather how hammy and juvenile it is the way it’s handled. The film’s jokey sitcom humor and its sexual attitude of a pack of roaming high schoolers turns the movie into a … 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/thirst http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/thirst#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A Catholic priest recieves a blood transfusion that turns him into a vampire. The Lowdown: A long, unusual, thoughtful, bloody and frequently very funny horror film from Park Chan-wook that rethinks—or at least reshuffles—the vampire movie. Review: When I found out I was going to be subjected to 133 minutes of Korean vampire movie at a 10 a.m. press screening, I was, to put it mildly, able to contain my joy. I know Korean horror movies are highly prized in some quarters, but the few I’ve seen haven’t convinced me that they aren’t in many ways prized more for simply not being in English than anything else. You know, the old sense of feeling culturally inferior to everyone else. Of course, when our idea of vampires is Twilight (2008) and Sweden’s is Let the Right One In (2008), it’s no longer a feeling, it is cultural inferiority. That, of course, doesn’t immediately mean that every foreign-language vampire movie is golden, but in the case of Park Chan-wook’s Thirst we’re at least in some pretty interesting territory. Thirst isn’t in the same league as Let the Right One In. It is neither as radical a rethinking of the … 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/michael_jacksons_this_is_it http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/michael_jacksons_this_is_it#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Michael Jackson’s This Is It show that was nearly ready to be performed at the time of Jackson’s death. The Lowdown: While your taste for this will depend almost entirely on your fondness or lack thereof for Michael Jackson, the film itself is an intriguing look at his creative process. Review: I am not a Michael Jackson fan. This is not a movie made with me in mind. I watched Jackson’s career strictly from the sidelines. I saw most—maybe all—of the music videos from his Thriller album only because they were inescapable if you watched MTV at all in 1983. Even though I never owned a Michael Jackson album, it was impossible not to have some knowledge of his music—to say nothing of his well-publicized and downright peculiar tabloid-driven life. My overall take was that Jackson was talented, strange and troubled. He crafted catchy pop songs that were simply not my cup of tea—and still aren’t. So I approached Michael Jackson’s This Is It as a non-fan, who nonetheless recognized Jackson’s merits without having any personal investment in them. I must say I was surprised at how interesting—and well done—This Is It turned out to be. Actually, it’s something more than interesting: … 2009-11-04T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/all_that_jazz http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/all_that_jazz#When:04:00:10Z The Hendersonville Film Society will show All That Jazz at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community (behind Epic Cinemas), 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville. Review: It’s big, it’s colorful, it’s brassy, it’s as egotistical as movies get—and it’s pretty pleased with its own cleverness. It’s Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979), and whatever else it is, it’s not exactly like anything else—even if parts of it are like a lot of other things. In fact one of its original reviewers tagged it as a combination of “the worst of Fellini, the worst of Ken Russell and the the worst of 1940s Hollywood.” It’s not hard to see why. The Fellini is inescapable. Fosse almost might have called the film 8 1/2 with its story of a director trying to pull off projects and deal with his increasingly tangled personal life—not to mention the various mystical embellishments that crop up. The Russell mostly lies in the tone of the fantasy sequences, though there are more specific references. And the ‘40s Hollywood—well, let’s just say that the &#822… 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/herb_and_dorothy http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/herb_and_dorothy#When:04:00:10Z Herb and Dorothy will be presented by the Asheville Art Museum for one show only Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m. at the Fine Arts Theatre. Review: Herb and Dorothy (2008) tells the fascinating story of a pair of art lovers without much in the way of means—he’s a postal clerk; she’s a librarian—who still managed to build one of the most important collections of contemporary art. This is one of those documentaries that isn’t going to set the world on fire as filmmaking (there’s little in it that’s especially creative or unusual on that front), but nevertheless succeeds by offering a unique and compelling story that seems almost incredible. Herb and Dorothy Vogel met in 1960, and he introduced her to the world of art—while learning about it himself. The two even tried their hands at being artists themselves, an idea that gradually gave way to collecting rather than creating. What’s most interesting about this is the way in which Herb views this change without any sense of feeling thwarted. Instead, he sees it as a natural transition. Of course, … 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/kika http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/kika#When:04:00:10Z Classic Cinema From Around the World will show Kika at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, at Courtyard Gallery, 9 Walnut St., downtown Asheville. Info: 273-3332. Review: One of the most underrated of Pedro Almodóvar’s films, Kika (1993) is nonetheless a great deal of not-exactly-wholesome fun of the kind that only Almodóvar can provide. Indeed, while it’s far from his best film, it stands a pretty good chance of being the filmmaker’s most gleefully twisted one—and if you know your Almodóvar, you know that’s saying a lot. Packed into one film we have a naive nymphomaniac, a lothario serial killer, a disturbed young man with bouts of catatonia, a lesbian housekeeper who’s constantly coming on to her employer, the housekeeper’s mentally-challenged escaped-convict-porn-star-rapist brother and a tabloid TV personality with a special videographer suit complete with movie lights for breasts. And, yes, of course, it’s all housed in a trashy plot of pop-culture contrivances—even down to a mystery that’s solved by watching Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (… 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/baader_meinhof_complex http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/baader_meinhof_complex#When:04:00:10Z The Story: The story of the rise and fall of the originators of the German terrorist group the Red Army Faction. The Lowdown: Unblinking in its violence and complex in its epic structure, this is powerful, unsettling filmmaking. Review: Do not be put off by a title that suggests some sort of psychological dissertation. Do not be cowed by the fact that Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex is in German with English subtitles (there are occasional outbursts of English) or that it’s two-and-a-half-hours long. This is one of the most compelling films to come along in a while—and, believe it or not, it’s also what could be called “action-packed.” Don’t, however, assume that “action-packed” means mindless explosions, car chases and shootings à la Michael Bay. The action here is brutal and, while often excitingly staged, is not a glorification of violence, nor is it used gratuitously. This is a richly detailed, emotionally complex, character-filled examination of the German terrorist group the Red Army Faction (RAF) from the late 1960s through the late 1970s. Its origins as part of the overall political turmoil of 1968 are sketched in, but t… 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/amelia http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/amelia#When:04:00:10Z The Story: Biopic of Amelia Earhart structured as flashbacks during her final flight in 1937. The Lowdown: A glossy, superficial bio that won’t frighten the horses, but might put them to sleep. Review: If you took out the tepidly explored notions of an “open marriage” and the vaguest reference imaginable to possible bisexuality, Mira Nair’s Amelia could easily have been made in 1945. Even the depiction of Amelia Earhart’s (Hilary Swank) extra-marital affair with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) is handled so decorously that it seems little more than our heroine making a faux pas by using the wrong fork at a formal dinner. In short, this is a rather dull, totally unadventurous biopic. The question arises as to just why someone would want to make an unadventurous film about an adventurous woman? That question becomes even more perplexing when you realize that this was done by Mira Nair, who isn’t typically associated with dull movies. Actually, Amelia isn’t as bad as the reviews would lead you to believe. There are, in fact, good things in it—not the least of which is Hilary Swank’s performance, and I am … 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/astro_boy http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/astro_boy#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A robotic boy attempts to save his futuristic city from the machinations of its war-thirsty president. The Lowdown: A run-of-the-mill animated adventure that’s gussied up with a sardonic sense of humor and political satire. Review: Sometimes, after weeks upon weeks of just watching the worst movies imaginable—the stupid, the puerile, the just plain awful—the simple act of watching a film that at least attempts to say something is something to applaud. No, David Bowers’ Astro Boy adds nothing new to the world of animated adventures, and its political undertones are a bit on the obvious, heavy-handed side. But Bowers (Flushed Away), nevertheless, approaches the material with enough good nature and heart that it makes it all mesh together. Based on Osamu Tezuka’s more than half-century-old comic book and the subsequent animated show that it spawned, the movie is an attempt at updating, modernizing (with CGI animation) and introducing the character of Astro Boy to a new audience. The gist is the same. Earth has become a polluted, undesirable place to live, except for one technologically advanced city that floats above the surface where robots have been created … 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/cirque_du_freak_the_vampires_assistant http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/cirque_du_freak_the_vampires_assistant#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A teen becomes a vampire and joins a traveling freak show in order to save the life of his friend. The two friends end up being thrown into the middle of a war between vampire factions. The Lowdown: Absolutely nothing new, but the movie does have an occasional streak of dark humor and is sufficiently stylish. Plus, it’s a reminder that John C. Reilly can actually be good on occasion. Review: With rampant Twilight hysteria running roughshod over pop culture and the subsequent reactionary knockoff-vampire-movie saturation that looks like it will mar moviegoing for the next few years, it’s nice to know that not all of these vampire flicks based on popular teen-fantasy novels are going to be bad. And while Paul Weitz’s Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is never anything groundbreaking, it is sufficiently stylish and entertaining. Based on novelist Darren Shan’s beautifully narcissistic, dozen-book strong Darren Shan Saga, the film is the story of a straight-laced teen named Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia), of course, and his best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson, Journey to the Center of the Earth). The friends sneak out one night to go to a freak show called Cirque du Freak—full of oddities like a bearded woman (Salma Hayek), a snake-skinned musician (Patrick Fugit, still looking for that career 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/paranormal_activity http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/paranormal_activity#When:04:00:10Z The Story: Observations on a young woman who is at the mercy of a demon that’s haunted her since childhood. The Lowdown: A slow-moving, low-budget affair that succeeds in being creepy without quite being terrifying. Review: Is Paranormal Activity the scariest movie ever made? Does it show us the new face of horror? Is Oren Peli this year’s new “savior of the horror movie?” No, no and no. Even on the sliding scale of cutting the movie some slack for being made on an $11,000 or $15,000 budget (both figures have been reported), I can’t call it more than a partially effective work that’s been wildly overpraised—often by people who see enough horror pictures to know better. I like the fact that it derailed the seasonal Saw juggernaut by coming in at number one on the opening weekend of Saw VI, but I’d be more impressed by that feat if I didn’t feel that it got there mostly on hype—and I won’t be sold on the staying power of its lead till after Halloween. Paranormal Activity is, however, an accomplishment. Any do-it-yourself movie that makes it all the way to a finished product is that much, but one that t… 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/saw_vi http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/saw_vi#When:04:00:10Z The Story: Jigsaw reaches out from the dead to exact revenge on a vile insurance-company executive. The Lowdown: More of the same, with a slightly more interesting plot than usual. Review: Saw movies and Halloween go together like ho and hum. That’s not to say that there’s nothing to be said in favor of Saw VI. It’s a good deal better than Saw IV (2007) and Saw V (2008), and while that’s not exactly what you’d call high praise, it’s something. Moreover, this entry appears to have something on its mind—or at least a sense of the topical, with its attack on the insurance industry. Unfortunately, none of this keeps Saw VI from being a Saw movie. In other words, a bunch of folks are going to be subjected to various complicated torture devices and—for the most part—expire in sundry gooey manners. At bottom, that’s pretty much it. Promoting Kevin Greutert—who edited all the other films in the series—to director seems to have neither hurt nor appreciably helped matters. A case could be made, perhaps, that he gave himself more coherent footage to h… 2009-10-28T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/seraphine http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/seraphine#When:15:37:56Z The Story: Biopic about the French painter Séraphine de Senlis and her patron Wilhelm Uhde. The Lowdown: A leisurely-paced biographical drama that benefits from strong performances and a respect for the mystery of both the creative and appreciative process. Review: Prior to Séraphine, I’d never heard of filmmaker Martin Provost, the stars of his film or, for that matter, the subjects of the movie, painter Séraphine Louis/Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau) and art collector/critic Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur). As a result, I was approaching this biopic with no preconceptions—other than the slight hesitance that accompanies the prospect of the biographical genre. At its best, the biographical drama is as good and as valid a genre as any other, but there’s a tendency for such films to fall into the falsely reverential or the simplistically silly. Thankfully, Séraphine does neither, though it might be a little too slowly paced for some tastes—at least for its first 30 minutes. The film explores the life and work of the primitive painter known as Séraphine de Senlis, especially as concerns her relationship with the man who discovered her, Wilhelm Uhde. The first part of… 2009-10-21T15:37:56+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/dantes_inferno http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/dantes_inferno#When:04:00:10Z Dante’s Inferno, part of a series of Classic Cinema From Around the World, will be presented at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, at Courtyard Gallery, 9 Walnut St. in downtown Asheville. Info: 273-3332. Review: No, it’s not an adaptation of The Inferno, it’s Ken Russell’s biographical film about painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Oliver Reed) and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Made in 1967, the film is the most ambitious, longest and in many ways the most daring of the films he made for the BBC. It may also be the most conflicted, because Russell has a kind of love-hate relationship with his subject—not as intense perhaps as those he had with Richard Strauss (Dance of the Seven Veils (1970)) or Richard Wagner (Lisztomania (1975)), but not entirely removed from them either. Russell admires the basic revolutionary stance of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their attitude against academic art, but he can’t help but decry their excesses and the inescapable level of silliness—or at least pretentiousness—that marked much of their movement. As a result, Dante’s Inferno partly praises Rosetti and his f… 2009-10-21T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/man_hunt http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/man_hunt#When:04:00:10Z The Hendersonville Film Society will show Man Hunt at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25, in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community, 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville. (From Asheville, take I-26 to U.S. 64 West, turn right at the third light onto Thompson Street. Follow to the Lake Point Landing entrance and park in the lot on the left.) Review: Until I had to review it here, I’d never had much interest in Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941). Try as I may, I’ve never been able to get that enthused by most of Lang’s post-Fury (1936) American films. And this one had the added drawback of starring Walter Pidgeon, who gets my vote as the dullest leading man of Hollywood’s Golden Age. (That Pidgeon ever became popular absolutely mystifies me.) So I was quite surprised to find this film version of Geoffrey Household’s novel Rogue Male compelling viewing from beginning to about 30 seconds from the end. I guess I hadn’t reckoned on how well even the Hollywood-constrained Lang would respond to the story’s pulpy melodrama—and if there’s anything Lang responded to it was pulpy melodrama. The story, set in the late 1930s, is built on the intriguing premise of a British big-game hunter, Captain Thorndike (Pidgeon), who—just as a matter… 2009-10-21T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/it_might_get_loud http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/it_might_get_loud#When:04:00:10Z The Story: Three rock guitar masters—Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White—discuss their beginnings and get together to discuss their art. The Lowdown: A simple concept that works because the film at least offers the feeling that you’re seeing its subjects at their most unguarded. Review: It might not snag Davis Guggenheim another Best Documentary Oscar, but his It Might Get Loud proves that Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White make for livelier viewing than Al Gore. Of course, that probably wasn’t open to serious question in the first place. What was open to question in my mind was just how well this documentary on three guitarists from different eras and with different styles would play out. The idea of putting the three of them in the same setting had merit. And Jack White’s claim early in the film that he plans on tricking them into showing him all their secrets sounded promising. It also sounded just a little bit ominous, since it would have been easy for the proceedings to quickly devolve into three guitarists talking shop and jamming. From a non-musician standpoint, that could have proved deadly. Thankfully, that never happens. Guggenheim’s film is cleverly structured to cut back and forth among the three—without e… 2009-10-21T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/i_hope_they_serve_beer_in_hell http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/i_hope_they_serve_beer_in_hell#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A womanizer takes his two best friends on an ill-fated trip to a strip club for a bachelor party. The Lowdown: A dull attempt at R-rated comedy that’s crude in every sense of the word. Review: Tucker Max is a writer who has made a very modest name for himself in the world of blogging, rattling off stories of drunken frat-boy debauchery and sexual escapades. Now, three years after his novel I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell hit bookstores, the film adaptation has hit theaters. And it’s nothing more than your usual attempt at an R-rated raunch fest, but tarted up with some phony sentiment and recycled insight. The film’s point is unfettered offensiveness and rampant un-PC-ness, something that’s theoretically supposed to be shocking and thought-provoking at the same time. In practice, however, it’s neither. While Max’s ideas of women are either sexist or misogynistic (under the guise of trying to rattle the cages of the square haircuts), he still manages to be unrepentantly dull. Max—who co-wrote the screenplay with first-time screenwriter Nils Parker—thinks he has a knack for dialogue, but really, it all ends up … 2009-10-21T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/where_the_wild_things_are http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/where_the_wild_things_are#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A young boy runs away from home after a fight with his mother and travels to a magical island inhabited by fantastic creatures that mirror himself and his real life. The Lowdown: An ambitious, not entirely successful attempt to flesh out the children’s book by Maurice Sendak. Rarely less than fascinating, but somehow not quite what it seems to want to be. Review: I cannot honestly say that I have ever been as conflicted about a movie as I am with Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. It’s been over two days since I watched it, and I know now only slightly more about my feelings on it than I did when I walked out of the theater. What I knew then was that it was odd and interesting. What I didn’t know was whether I actually liked it. All that can be added to that now is that I can’t quite stop thinking about the film. That clearly says something about the movie, but I’m not sure what. The film is an expansion of—perhaps a meditation on—Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book. Considering that the book is only about 40 pages long and has nine sentences of text, expansion was inescapable. In doing so, Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers have stuck remarkably close to the original, while offering their own take on the material, as all the best book-to-film adaptations do. 2009-10-21T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/law_abiding_citizen http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/law_abiding_citizen#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A seemingly ordinary man takes revenge on the justice system that let the murderer of his wife and daughter walk free. The Lowdown: Pointlessly gory and patently absurd, the movie might have worked as pulp, except that it’s too full of itself to even work as mindless entertainment. Review: In some ways, I should probably be happy about Law Abiding Citizen, simply because it’s an attempt at bringing the evil genius character back into the movies. Once—with the likes of Dr. Mabuse and Fu Manchu—the cinema was rife with evil madmen. Here, we get a little bit of the same thing—an insane genius (Gerard Butler) tries, through a series of improbable evildoings, to wreak havoc on the justice system that let him down—except with all the pulpy fun taken away in exchange for a sheen of self-seriousness. The movie would like you to think it has something on its mind, namely, what does justice really mean? And for a bit, director F. Gary Gray (Be Cool) appears to actually have something to say, when he juxtaposes a young girl’s (Emerald-Angel Young) cello recital with an inmate (Josh Stewart, The Collector) being put to death. But whatever Gray is attempting to convey about “the death penalty as spectac… 2009-10-21T04:00:10+00:00 http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/stepfather http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/stepfather#When:04:00:10Z The Story: A serial killer marries into “perfect” families, and when his plans go awry, resorts to murder. The Lowdown: Idiotic, unpardonably slow and totally lacking in thrills. Review: What exactly is there to be said about this utterly worthless, incredibly dull, addle-brained waste of 101 minutes except that it’s an utterly worthless, incredibly dull, addle-brained waste of 101 minutes? That pretty much says it all. The 1987 original may have been no great shakes, but it was at least amusingly subversive exploitation trash. This, on the other hand, is simply trash that pretends to be something else. It’s kind of like the Weekly World News claiming to be the New York Times—and about as persuasive a pose. The story line is roughly the same as the original. You have a homicidal nutcase, David Harris (Dylan Walsh, TV’s Nip Tuck), going around marrying into what he imagines to be perfect families—or families he can make “perfect.” When the families turn out not to meet his standards, he casually offs them and moves on to the next one. That’s about it. When it was made 22 years ago, i… 2009-10-21T04:00:10+00:00