Be Kind Rewind

RATED: PG-13 for some sexual references.
RUNNING TIME: 201 MINUTES
PLOT: Jerry is a junkyard worker who attempts to sabotage a power plant he suspects of causing his headaches. But he inadvertently causes his brain to become magnetized, leading to the unintentional erasing of all the movies in his friend’s store. In order to keep the store’s one loyal customer, the pair re-create a long line of putting themselves and their townspeople into it.
STARS: Jack Black (Jerry), Mos Def (Mike), Danny Glover (Mr. Fletcher), Mia Farrow (Miss Falewicz), Melonie Diaz (Alma).

Gord Burt 3.5 Stars

Despite some solid laughs and a feel-good ending, Oscar-winning writer-director Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind exists far from the mainstream and its appeal will be limited to those who embrace the kind of awkward quirkiness that defines the production.

Be Kind Rewind rests on the idea that Jack Black’s 20-minute re-created movies could actually have market value.

The homemade movie idea allows for all manner of wacky solutions. The question of remaking a special effects-laden film like Ghostbusters is done in a fun way as proton streams become Christmas tinsel strung onto fishing poles. A ghost is achieved with a plastic bag and a flashlight and don’t ask about the slime.

The film has some flaws. The biggest is that the ‘let's save the store’ plotline feels extremely predictable, though Gondry’s visual style is certainly enough to hold our attention. We might know where the story is heading, but we have no idea what he’ll show us next.

In an incredible one-shot montage, Gondry knocks your socks off with clever low-tech recreations of 2001: A Space Odyssey, When We Were Kings, King Kong, Carrie, and Men in Black. When a studio lawyer, played by (wait for it - Ghostbusters alumna) Sigourney Weaver, shows up to stop the illegal filmmaking, the neighbourhood bands together to create an original movie to raise money to save the video store.

Gondry’s intentionally corny film won’t be for everyone, but those who let go and take the ride will enjoy a humbly charming, genuine celebration of the creative spirit, something akin to a live-action Muppet movie. Be Kind Rewind pits the globalized culture against the inventiveness of local community, sets lovably outmoded analogue against slickly soulless digital, and celebrates varieties of film made outside of the studio system. It’s an unfashionably good-natured film with real heart.

Erin Harde 0 Stars

Fittingly, the plot of Be Kind Rewind finds hair-brained Jack Black and hapless Mos Def making movies that have no budget, no script, and props that look they were pulled from a dumpster – right where this piece of garbage belongs.

Don’t be fooled by the amusing trailers that have Black parading around as a Ghostbuster; there isn’t a single funny moment in the flick. Even fans of Black’s erratic, ad lib style will be hard pressed to find his turn as a well-meaning moron anything but pointless and obnoxious. The plot, if you can call it that, meanders aimlessly offering nothing to tickle the funny bone or pull the heart strings, though it desperately tries to do both.

Be Kind Rewind combines the desperate plight of a video store shop keep trying to preserve the historic, but dilapidated building he works in with the antics of rambling paranoid Jerry. The owner leaves the store in the hands of his trusted protégée, who for some inexplicable reason is friends with trainwreck Jerry. The movie then turns from sentimentality to non-sensical plot devices courtesy of Black. Jerry gets himself electrocuted when he attacks a local power plant – reason being the writers needed all of the shop’s videos to be erased. Clearly, the movie was written during the writer’s strike, perhaps by desperate studio suits looking to make a quick buck.

Crazy Jerry feels some remorse for destroying the store, so hashes out the idea to re-do the classics, if you can call Robocop and Rush Hour 2 classics. The next hour of painful movie ‘tributes’ could easily be topped by any high school audio visual club. Heck, even the chess club could turn in a performance that would seem Oscar worthy compared to this.

When Sigourney Weaver shows up to shut them down, you’ll never be so happy to hear the film industry’s copyright laws.

Rambo

RATED: R for strong graphic bloody violence, sexual assaults, grisly images and language.

RUNNING TIME: 119 MINUTES

PLOT: In Thailand, John Rambo assembles a group of mercenaries and leads them up the Salween River to a Burmese village where a group of Christian aid workers allegedly went missing.

STARS: Sylvester Stallone (John Rambo), Julie Benz (Sarah), Paul Schulze (Burnett), Matthew Marsden (Schoolboy), Graham McTavish (Lewis), Tim Kang (En-Joo).

Gord Burt 3.5 Stars

It’s been 20 years since Vietnam veteran John Rambo was last seen and the years haven’t been kind. Sure he still looks amazing (at 60, Stallone puts to shame younger guys), but now Rambo ekes out a meager existence catching cobras and pythons in Thailand.

Rambo is the fourth movie in the popular franchise, and it is easily the bloodiest and most vicious of the bunch. But it’s also the best sequel by far. Like Rocky Balboa last year, this is a remarkably fresh take on an old storyline. Rambo, simply put, is old school action filmmaking at its best. That’s why it will be so jarring to this new generation, who’s used to fluffy PG-13 action flicks that only have the almighty dollar in mind.

The film is so over-the-top in just about every category. The violence, while disturbingly real when it comes to the details of genocide, turns into a cartoon once Rambo takes over. The final showdown is a veritable, brutal orgy of blood, limbs, and guts, and again, Stallone isn’t afraid to show what a 20mm gun will do to a body as we see severed limbs, exploding heads, decapitations, eviscerations, and bullet wounds the size of dinner plates. If you’re in it for the action, there’s no way you’ll be disappointed.

The plot is insanely simple: Rambo is approached by missionaries, who ask him to take them into Burma. He does, then later finds out they were captured. He helps some mercenaries try and rescue them. And that’s it. Stallone offers up some soul-searching in the early parts of the movie, where we see Rambo hiding from the world, convinced by one young missionary (Julie Benz) that helping others is good for the soul.

Rambo is about confronting and mowing down bad guys in the way only Rambo can - as a one-man-army. In that respect, Rambo delivers big-time and simultaneously offers a big, blood-covered middle finger to all the neutered action movies of late. Rambo is most certainly not for everyone, but for those who miss their action heroes of the past 20 years, it’s a must see.

Erin Harde 1 Star

Some middle aged men get hot sports cars to deal with a mid-life crisis. Some date women half their age. Not Sylvester Stallone, however. He celebrates his recent 60^th birthday with blood bath Rambo, in which he indeed proves he can still drop men half his age and run as fast as cheetahs, but there is no more dignity in this than a bald man sporting a new toupee.

This piece of trash constantly appalls and nauseates both with the quality of acting and the gory detail of genocide in former Burma. Like an x-rated film that feigns an actually story line, a weak story thinly veils the sole purpose of Rambo - to shower Stallone with the blood and guts of his enemies. Over the course of 90 minutes, sniper rifles tear people to shreds; limbs are hacked off, babies thrown in fires, women raped, and pigs fed live prisoners.

The plot is as full of holes as Rambo’s foes. The story situates kind-hearted, but ultimately stupid, missionaries in war-torn Burma. Minutes after they arrive, the village they’re in is destroyed by the Burma military, whose soldiers get a sick thrill out of torturing prisoners. When a priest pleads with Rambo to go back to Burma with some mercenaries to retrieve the lost missionaries, he agrees, no doubt because “killing is in his blood” more than his conscience.

Stallone is monosyllabic throughout the movie, speaking more with his fists and bullets than words. Unfortunately, none of the other cast members turn in performances that are any better. After playing the manipulative vampire Darla on Angel, Julie Benz is a surprising disappointment, through it could be the flimsy script she’s been dealt. CSI Miami alumnus Matthew Marsden also doesn’t get much of a chance to flex his chops, though he takes a beating with the best of them.

Finally, the gunfire ends and the blood is wiped from the camera, but instead of actually trying to make a point about Burma or genocide, the movie tidily wraps up on a picturesque country road in the U.S. as if nothing had ever happened. Happily, this movie will be as forgettable.

27 Dresses

RATED: Rated PG-13: For language, some innuendo and sexuality

RUNNING TIME: 107 MINUTES

PLOT: Jane is idealistic, romantic and completely selfless, a perennial bridesmaid whose own happy ending is nowhere in sight. But when younger sister Tess captures the heart of Jane’s boss, with whom she is secretly in love, Jane begins to reexamine her "always-a-bridesmaid..." lifestyle.

STARS: Katherine Heigl (Jane Nichols), James Marsden (Kevin), Malin Akerman (Tess), Judy Greer (Casey), Edward Burns (George).

Gord Burt 3.5 Stars

For the guys out there just dreading the thought of having to sit through yet another chick flick involving weddings, take heart; you may be pleasantly surprised because 27 Dresses isn’t that bad (and if all else fails, remember, Rambo is released soon and she’ll owe you one).

27 Dresses is a romantic comedy in which nothing the least bit surprising occurs, no disagreement or fight seems sufficiently serious to continue, and no one behaves in a manner that cannot be predicted by anyone who has seen more than two or three other romantic comedies.

When Jane and eventual beau Kevin reach that inevitable point in their ‘opposites attract’ relationship they’re put through their paces in a drunken sing-along scene that makes a fantastic use of Elton John’s Benny and the Jets. And after her less-than-stellar love interest in Knocked Up, it’s nice to see Heigl’s Jane end up with a more worthy companion.

An engaging actress with a flair for physical comedy and self-effacing humor, star Katherine Heigl is immensely appealing as Jane Nichols, an ever-helpful people pleaser who has the distinction of being a bridesmaid 27 times, fueling the old saying ‘always a bridesmaid never a bride’. Heigl effortlessly radiates the kind of charisma that can make anyone fall in love with her character.

The cast is solid overall; Malin Akerman is beautiful, difficult, and then surprisingly vulnerable, as Tess has to live up to her sister’s example only to find herself falling incredibly short, and Edward Burns is confident without being cocky. Even Judy Greer manages to pull off probably the most obvious formulaic character, that of the heroine’s snarky, sex-starved friend who steals virtually every scene she’s in.

The film’s humor alternates between the obvious and the sly, but even the obvious stuff is pretty amusing. Any bridesmaid who has ever had to cram herself into an orange nightmare with pink flowers and lots of frills can appreciate the montage of Jane giggling and showing off her collection of bridesmaid gowns. The movie is like Jane’s perfect wedding: it delivers everything you expect on a timetable you can predict to the minute but is still an enjoyable flick.

Erin Harde 4 Stars

Any woman who’s been a bridesmaid will empathize with the protagonist of 27 dresses, who has been tortured by bridezillas and their ideas of a nice dress. As the brides in Catherine Heigl’s Jane’s life say, “the best thing about the dress is you can just shorten it and wear it again.” We’ve all been there, and as such are immediately sympathetic to Jane.

With its many clichés, 27 Dresses shouldn’t have been as good at it is. But thanks to another great performance by Heigl, this romantic comedy earns way more laughs than one expects. And she’s not even the funniest one in the movie – the best friend, played by a hilarious, snide ___, says what normal women really think. Heigl’s a little too perfect and kind to be real, yet every bride-to-be in the audience will wish they could rent her for a day.

The same could be said for dreamy James Marsden whose bone structure and bedroom eyes make us want to slap Jane and tell her to just go out with the guy already. Kevin is a journalist who covers weddings and happens to be writing a feature on Jane’s sister, who’s marrying the man Jane’s in love with – her boss. Kevin woos Jane as he pretends to write about Tess, though he’s fascinated by the woman who’s been a bridesmaid 27 times. Who wouldn’t be?

Less fascinating is the sister, who is so shallow and self-centred that you’ll want to reach into the movie and strangle her. Watching Jane put up with Tess is nearly unbearable. When Jane finally snaps, it’s an immensely satisfying moment. The gratifying moments are actually so plentiful that you’ll be surprised to hear yourself laughing out loud so much, and that’s including the men who are dragged to this chick flick by their better halves.

The movie isn’t without its eye-rolling moments, like the scene in which Jane and Kevin get an entire bar full of people to sing Benny and the Jets, or when Kevin admits to crying like a baby at one of the weddings he covered. But overall, as romantic comedies go, 27 Dresses is one of the better candidates to say “I do” to.

Atonement

PLOT: Fledgling writer Briony Tallis, as a 13-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.
RATED: R for disturbing war images, language and some sexuality.
RUNNING TIME: 130 MINUTES
STARS: Keira Knightley (Cecilia Tallis), James McAvoy (Robby Turner), Saoirse Ronan (Briony Tallis).

Gord Burt 1.5 Stars

The trailer for Atonement gives the impression it was going to be a truly epic love story (move over Princess Bride) that spanned time, distance, war and betrayal. What it turned out to be is a pretentious turd of epic proportions.

Everything about this film is off putting, but the film’s fatal mistake is we get very little build up to the great romance at the heart of Atonement. Instead we get endless close-ups of Briony’s vacant and oft-stunned face.

There are an abundance of long slow shots without dialogue like when the camera silently pans a character walking twenty, thirty, sixty feet without a word. There are also too many up close face shots that indulge the screen far longer than needed. So long, in fact, that the viewer might get lost in thought to fill the bland emptiness that consumes much of the film’s more than two hours.

The first half of the movie is where the film looks amazingly beautiful but finally after 50 minutes of meandering we get to the crux of the story but by then it’s too late as you’re bored to tears.

The scenes in France during the evacuation from Dunkirk beach look as real as any modern war movie and are arguably the most interesting parts as there is a very real sense of danger in them.

The acting is good but not spectacular. Most of the people have blank, expressionless faces. Even the beautiful Keira Knightley who, in just about every appearance, is framed to make her look like the epitome of desire (and there is a certain value to seeing her soaking wet in a slip) that still isn’t enough to keep the interest up.

The movie’s final nail in the coffin comes from the incredibly bad ending where the director couldn’t figure out if he wanted to give the audience a sad or happy ending, so he splits the difference and settles on both.

Erin Harde 4 Stars

If you’ve ever wanted to rewrite a chapter of your life to make up for past wrongs, Atonement will resonate deeply - especially if you were the one to commit the injustice.

Set amongst an English countryside that is so lusciously colourful and bright, with young people so vibrant and beautiful, it’s a wonder the film could turn down a tragic path.

During a sweltering summer, the wealthy inhabitants of a country estate languidly pass the time, writing plays, playing in the garden, and for Keira Knightley’s Cecilia, frolicking with the help’s handsome son Robby, played by a dashing James McAvoy.

One fateful day undoes the magic of the summer, when young Briony, an imaginative 13-year-old, twice catches her sister and Robby in acts she doesn’t understand. The audience is given an all access pass when the same scenes are replayed from different perspectives.

One instance is innocent, the other – a passionate tryst in the library, hardly so, especially to Briony who is frightened by her discovery. A violent act later in the evening leads her to tell a whopper of a lie, which is supported by a sexually graphic letter mistakenly sent earlier from Robby to Cecilia, one of the few comical moments in the film.

Atonement then fast forwards to different times in Briony’s life. The more it focuses on her and her guilt, the more the hard line between fact and fiction is blurred. Scenes that we’re meant to accept as part of the real story are revealed to be as fantastical as Briony’s imagination.

Director Joe Wright cruelly and skillfully makes us feel as robbed as Cecilia and Robby, who should have had a life of happiness. Briony suffers nearly as much with the shame of her actions, and tries to give the lovers the happy ending they deserved. But whether she really atones for her crimes is up for the viewer to decide.

I Am Legend

PLOT: Three years after a doctor thinks she has cured cancer, nearly the entire population of the world has been wiped out thanks to a virus that infects people like rabies. Military virologist Robert Neville, who’s still trying to cure that sickness, is the only survivor in New York City, but there are plenty of ravenous, infected creatures to keep him company.
RATED: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence.
RUNNING TIME: 100 Minutes
STARS: Will Smith (Robert Neville), Alice Braga (Anna), Salli Richardson (Zoe), See full castWillow Smith (Marley).

Gord Burt 4 Stars

I Am Legend is based on Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 sci-fi novel and stars the always-watchable Will Smith as Dr. Robert Neville. Neville is apparently the last man on Earth who spends his days foraging in an empty New York City, a vast, intricately detailed, computer-altered vision of an eerily depopulated and decaying metropolis with weeds and wild animals retaking its streets.

To say Neville is all alone in the city is slightly misleading as there are still creatures roaming the city at night. The creatures in question were once human but have been ravaged by a man-made disease that was once thought to be a cure for cancer. The mutants’ arrival onscreen ought to be the big payoff, but they are curiously unsatisfying, mostly CGI images that look like they came from the reject pile at Skywalker Ranch; standard movie monster uglies that howl incessantly and move with ungodly speed and agility wanting to feast on the flesh of the living.

Carried for most of the picture by Smith’s sheer force of will, I Am Legend is three movies in one: a futuristic effect-laden popcorn flick, a zombie thriller and a survivalist epic. Each part is better than average, and the experience is fairly gripping though the sum of all parts doesn’t equal a classic.

In I Am Legend, Smith gets to incorporate his formidable acting skills much like Tom Hanks did in Cast Away. Smith accurately shows what it might be like to be the last person on Earth as his Neville has a need to create some semblance of normalcy while combating the deep-seated loneliness that permeates his days. Instead of a volleyball, he sets up mannequins all over the city, especially in his favorite video store (he’s made his way through the letter G), and talks to them every day. But mostly, Neville deals with his personal demons over what has happened with the help of his dog, a German shepherd named Sam, who almost steals the show.

So go for the thrills, for some nerve-gnawing suspense, for the wonderful production design and for the opportunity to spend some time with Will Smith. But this one is not the stuff of legend.

Erin Harde 2 Stars

In I Am Legend, Will Smith once again finds himself leading the plight to save humankind, but try as he might, Smith’s one-man show can’t save this film. Unlike other apocalyptic action movies like Independence Day, Men In Black and I, Robot, this end-of-the-world thriller moves at a snail’s pace; at times, it’s effective when creating tension, at others it’s just boring.

For three-quarters of the movie, Smith is the only actor, unless you count his faithful German shepherd Sam and the mutated, flesh-eating monsters - former humans who turned into zombie-ish beings when the cure for cancer turned into a viral plague and wiped out civilization. Smith is the last survivor, a scientist who experiments on the “dark-seekers” as he tries to find the cure.

Even though suspension of disbelief is absolutely required, the plot’s premise isn’t bad, and neither is Smith’s acting. He sweats bullets and so will you when he stumbles upon a lair of the creepy critters. The film is expert at building suspense, but fails to impress in every other regard.

The humanoids are hardly a feat in CGI, achieving only a slightly eerier look than the tin cans in I, Robot. There’s also apparent confusion on the director’s half about whether they’re just mindless meat-eating zombies or cognitive beings with a plan. At one point, they manage to snare Smith’s Neville, and at times look like they might speak but then just violently gnash their teeth instead.

The flimsy plot also inserts another survivor and her son to rescue Neville when he goes suicidal and tries to take out a hive. Her character, a zealot who insists there is a survivor’s camp, receives no development. She just shows up for the cure, and tidily wraps up the film in under two hours.

Outstanding films often leave us wondering what happens next, leaving the possible outcomes to our imagination. In this case, fleshing out the story of humankind’s demise, and not just in flashbacks, would have been much more satisfying.

No Country for Old Men

RATED: Rated R for strong graphic violence and some language.
RUNNING TIME: 122 MINUTES
PLOT: Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.
STARS: Tommy Lee Jones (Sheriff Ed Bell), Josh Brolin (Llewelyn Moss), Javier Bardem (Anton Chigurh).

Gord Burt 3.5 Stars

At first glance, you will either love No Country for Old Men or really like it a lot. It has received almost universal praise and acclaim from reviews and critics, but it is misplaced as the movie has some serious flaws that become apparent at the end.

There are three major characters in No Country. In the opening scene we are introduced to Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran who is out hunting in the backcountry of Texas. He happens upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad, with dead or dying Mexicans lying on the ground. After Moss notices a briefcase containing two million dollars, he absconds with it and sets the movie in motion.

Hired to track down the cash is one Anton Chigurh, a hit-man who is occasionally inspired to play with his intended victims, allowing them to toss a coin to decide their fate. His character is a mixture of the Samuel Jackson hit-man in Pulp Fiction and the first Terminator (the unrelenting evil version)

The third major character is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, the elder statesman of the movie who adds some class.

Since most of the movie plays out in silence, the actors have to convey everything in body language. From crazy-eyed Javier Bardem to cool and calculated Josh Brolin, these guys move the plot and tell us all we need to know.

It’s in the third act where the entire film falls apart. When one of the three main characters is killed (off screen no less!) you lose interest in the film entirely. Defying the normal audience’s appetite for a meaningful resolution, No Country ends with a sad and unsatisfying whimper rather than a bang. The movie actually moves along quite nicely until the final fifteen minutes or so.

No Country for Old Men isn’t an easy or predictable movie, but it’s the kind of experience that is very hard to shake regardless of liking or disliking it. You may have seen films you liked better in 2007, but you’re unlikely to have seen one more memorable.

Erin Harde 4.5 Stars

If you’ve ever longed for the simpler times - times when it was okay to let your kids run around the neighborhood after dark, times when cold-blooded murders weren’t a mainstay on the newspaper front page, or times when people earned a good honest dollar – No Country for Old Men will challenge that sentimentality with a simple truth. Those times never existed.

Such is the cold, hard reality Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) must face after chasing down a deranged, but methodical killer, played by a blood-curdling Javier Bardem. His story occupies the majority of the film, while Jones hovers on the fringe, talking to other old-timers about the ‘good-ol’ days’ when psychopaths didn’t murder countless innocent people to steal a briefcase of money.

The conversations are interspersed between Anton’s rampage, though he hardly breaks a sweat while hunting down Josh Brolin’s yokel Llewelyn Moss. Jones clings to the idea that human beings used to be decent to each other, but is crushed into retirement when he can’t protect the hapless Llewelyn. As ‘Welyn’, Brolin is surprisingly endearing, but maybe that’s just because you’d feel sorry for anyone with Anton on their tail. Llewelyn’s not an idiot, but his arrogance and sense of invincibility lead to the inevitable disastrous outcome.

These are breakout performances for both Bardem and Brolin, worthy of Oscar nods. Jones is formidable as the cop who manages to live (few make it through this film alive), but is broken on the inside by the crimes he has witnessed. Woody Harrelson also makes a brief appearance as a fixer; his confidence mistakenly leads one to believe he will get the better of Anton, but this killer has the tenacity of the Terminator, and cannot be undone by anyone or anything, even a car accident that forces his shattered bones through his arm. Bardem will continually raise the hair on your arms in his relentless pursuit of the cash, and fulfillment of promises to dead men.

Beowulf

PLOT:In the age of heroes comes the mightiest warrior of them all, Beowulf. After destroying the overpowering demon Grendel, he incurs the undying wrath of the beast's ruthlessly seductive mother, who will use any means possible to ensure revenge. The ensuing epic battle resonates throughout the ages, immortalizing the name of Beowulf.
RATED: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity.
RUNNING TIME: 113 Minutes
STARS: Ray Winstone (Beowulf), Angelina Jolie (Water Witch), Anthony Hopkins (King Hrothgar), Crispin Glover (Grendel), John Malkovich (Lord Unferth).

Gord Burt 4.5 Stars

Beowulf is based on the Old English epic poem written around 700AD and has remained popular in the ensuing 1300 years. It’s a simple tale about the Geatland warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) who arrives on Danish shores to rid them of a monster known as Grendel (Crispen Glover).

Beowulf is designed first and foremost as a visual spectacle of the first degree and it is a resounding success. This is the sort of movie where the viewer can sit back and become immersed in the splendor of the wild, savage, colourful world that the Dark Ages were.

There’s no doubt that it gives the filmmakers unparalleled creative freedom; they can age characters without makeup and Winstone gets a major physical makeover as the six-foot-plus Beowulf (the actor is shorter and pudgy) and looks a bit like Sean Bean. Most of the other key actors look pretty much like they do in real life except they have dead, soulless eyes. But once you have acclimatized yourself to the animation style, it tells a cracking good story.

The actors were perfectly cast with Winstone’s measured roar the perfect expression of Beowulf’s bravado and Angelina Jolie, Grendel’s hot mom, a vengeful creature appearing nude from the fiery lake and swathed in gold. Her voice is also impressive, whether speaking modern English or the antique version, which she uses when speaking to Grendel, purring with the promise of paradise when seducing Beowulf, and murmuring with the tenderness of a mother’s breaking heart as Grendel dies.

The story lacks neither scope nor complexity, relying on the ancient poem for its basic structure. Beowulf gets a slight tweak when film and comic writer Neil Gaiman decided the best way to make the 50-year leap the poem requires was to create a link between the two halves of the story. Beowulf’s three battles are brought together in a tight new storyline that puts desire, betrayal and lifelong guilt at the centre of Beowulf’s psychological makeup and gives the dragon’s battle a new significance.

Beowulf delivers everything one could reasonably expect from it. It’s the kind of film that will appeal immensely to the 300 or Lord of the Rings audience. Spectacle and action highlight the movie’s two most impressive fight scenes: Beowulf’s battle with Grendel and the soaring, dipping, weaving sequence with the dragon near the end. The viewer isn’t just watching the action from a safe distance; they’re put in the middle of it.

Erin Harde 3.5 Stars

Plucked from the lines of an Old English poem, Beowulf makes its first pop culture appearance in cinema’s most advanced form. There’s no debating this incredible feat of stop motion technology, but director Robert Zemeckis’s motivation for using the format seems to be for no other reason than to satisfy his own fascination with it.

Certainly, it’s an extraordinary accomplishment, but the story and characters are no more enhanced by the technique than using real actors. Besides, this ensemble cast of Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie and Robin Wright Penn are nearly lifelike anyhow. Why not use the originals? Zemeckis also used this technology for the Polar Express, but with Chris Van Allsburg’s artwork as their inspiration, stop motion animation made sense.

In effect, Beowulf is a cartoon; calling it such may sound gauche to the digital set, but even as a sophisticated cartoon, the audience is cheated of the raw power and emotion only real people can express. As the monster Grendel’s mother, Jolie’s naked body looks pretty darn real, but when you see her eyes, there is no sparkle.

The character who benefits the most from the technology is Grendel, whose bone-crunching, flesh ripping habits render this film unsuitable for children. He is wonderfully hideous, everything a monster should be, though it’s a bit nauseating when he chews off his foes’ heads.

With kings, heroes, monsters and dragons, there’s no question as to why Beowulf has endured centuries to be taught in English classes and now shown as a film. However, Zemeckis does take liberties with the poem; no doubt stimulated by Jolie, he revolves a curse around her seductive beauty, which is passed from Hopkins’ King Hrothgar to Beowulf to his successor, or so we’re led to believe. While the script doesn’t outright give away the secret, it’s not hard to read between Hopkins’ foreboding lines.

For the most part, the actors speak in Scandinavian accents, but occasionally a slave or the monster breaks into Old English, which may as well be gibberish to contemporary audiences. Zemeckis should be credited for his imagination and courage to give a medieval text modern form, but Beowulf moves into the future too quickly, and would be been better presented as a peer to Lord of the Rings.

Michael Clayton

RATED: R for language including some sexual dialogue
RUNNING TIME: 119 MINUTES
PLOT: An attorney known as the "fixer" in his law firm, comes across the biggest case of his career that could produce disastrous results for those involved.
STARS: George Clooney (Michael Clayton), Tom Wilkinson (Arthur Edens), Tilda Swinton (Karen Crowder), Sydney Pollack (Marty Bach).

Gord Burt 4 Stars

George Clooney stars as Michael Clayton, a fixer for a slick law house who makes big money covering up particularly nasty scandals for clients. He spin-doctors his way through the legal muck until he hits the urgent matter of the firm’s own brilliant senior litigator (Tom Wilkinson, worthy of Oscar consideration) who’s gone off his medication as well as the deep end.

Smooth-as-silk Clayton is dispatched to do damage control, but it appears that Arthur (Wilkinson) was on to something big before his drugless psychosis: turning the tables on a giant toxic cover-up and $3 billion class-action lawsuit against super-client (and corporate villain) U North.

George Clooney is in full-on movie star mode resembling Cary Grant in both looks and charisma giving an Oscar worthy and arguably career best performance (O Brother or the first Ocean film are also contenders). Usually when there is that kind of central performance, it’s easy to lose track of the other characters, but Sydney Pollack, as Clayton’s boss, is great as is Tilda Swinton who’s calm, cold and calculating as U North’s legal shark.

The real stand-out is Wilkinson, the one who goes crazy. As a manic depressive, his performance is perfect. It’s perhaps even more commanding than Clooney’s but when the two are together, they are even more amazing. The two are on such a level that when they’re working opposite each other we forget about the rest of the characters.

Clayton feels like a throwback to the political thrillers of the 1970s: slick, smart and loaded with dramatic paranoia, though is as intriguing as a John Grisham novel. Smart set-ups, pay-offs, corporate shenanigans and revenge are showcased in absorbing shades of grey with little in the way of moral right and wrong.

An engrossing intellectual thriller with a shrewd grasp of crowd-pleasing storytelling, Michael Clayton is the kind of Hollywood movie we could use a lot more of. The layered narrative uses a morally ambiguous lead character to explore a system where ethically-challenged behavior leads to major financial rewards and it’s easier to go with the flow than to take a stand for what’s right.

Erin Harde 5 Stars

Amidst box office heroes like American Gangster and Lions for Lambs, Michael Clayton stealthily rises amongst the competition to puts in its bid for Oscar.

With three lawyers at the forefront, the movie circles around the courtroom but never sets foot in it. Instead, it wisely focuses on the shady dealings that happen leading up to the trial about a class action suit against a company that has poisoned thousands with its fertilizer. Like the courtroom, though, the case is beside the point. Michael Clayton digs into the minds and actions of three people in various stages of moral distress.

As the eponymous protagonist, George Clooney is a conflicted fixer in one of the world’s biggest law firms. He excels at his job, but the nature of his work begins to seep into his moral fabric. His friend and colleague, played by powerhouse Tom Wilkinson, has what his co-workers perceive to be a complete breakdown after he spends years trying to defend a company responsible for killing innocent people. But the question is whether it’s truly a symptom of going off his meds or a moment of clarity, maybe moral superiority.

Swinton, in a far cry from her role as the queen of Narnia, commands every frame in her turn as a lawyer with U North. She shakes things up for Clayton’s firm in her desperation to save the company and her job. Steven Soderburgh gives us the vantage point of Karen in her most private moments, sweating profusely as she makes unthinkable decisions. She struggles with the weight of her choices, but not long enough to make her a sympathetic character.

Soderburgh also triumphs in his storytelling. Like a good book with an ending so riveting the reader is forced to re-read from the beginning, Soderburgh provides a snippet of the ending before telling the whole tale. The final scenes are that much more powerful because of his approach; without explosions, gunfire or even raised voices, the ending packs a huge punch. With its quiet brilliance, Michael Clayton is sure to be loudly heard amongst the 2008 Oscar nominees.

American Gangster

RATED: R for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality.

PLOT: Based on the life of drugkingpin turned informant, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country in the coffins of soldiers returning from the Vietnam War.

RUNNING TIME: 157 MINUTES

STARS: Denzel Washington (Frank Lucas), Russell Crowe (Richie Roberts), Josh Brolin (Detective Trupo), Cuba Gooding Jr. (Nickey Barnes).

Gord Burt 4.5 Stars

Denzel Washington portrays Frank Lucas, the real-life Harlem druglord who made a fortune in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s selling heroin on the streets of New York. His product was half the price but twice the potency of his competitors and he smuggled it into the US in a rather ingenious way to save his customers money. He was the Sam Walton of smack.

Washington sheds his normal good-guy persona for a rare turn as villain and the viewer benefits because the nastier his character grows, the better his acting becomes. We’re disgusted at seeing small children wallow in the filth of their heroin-addicted parents, yet we can’t help but be charmed by his aristocratic courtesy, amiable nature, and impeccable appearance. Washington is so convincing, he’ll force you into an uncomfortable struggle with your own moral beliefs. Is a crime-riddled world acceptable if it’s kept neat and orderly by a man of wealth and integrity?

Russell Crowe is Richie Roberts, the persistent NYC cop who, through honest police work, brings down Lucas and a swath of on-the-take cops. Roberts is the yin to Lucas’ yang. A messy divorce proceeding, infidelity and custody battle reminds us that Roberts is a less than an admirable husband and father. Lucas’ rise and fall is perfectly balanced by Roberts’ fall and rise.

Gangster movies have never offered actresses much to do outside of playing the moll, the femme fatale or the suffering wife/girlfriend. American Gangster is no exception, with Carla Gugino and Lymari Nadal playing the suffering wives of Richie and Frank.

Director Ridley Scott takes a cue from the structure of Michael Mann’s Heat or the classic French Connection, and plays out parallel stories of equally fascinating cop and criminal characters, setting up the climactic room-shaking confrontation. As with Heat, Scott keeps his superstars apart for the better part of the film’s running time and when they finally get face-to-face it’s worth the wait.

Washington and Crowe are both dynamic presences on-screen, with neither actor outweighing the other’s importance to the story. American Gangster is not perfect despite the cast or production (which is fantastic) as it’s skimpy on the backstory that would better explain what drove its title character.

Erin Harde 4 Stars

With its tale about corruption and heroics through two decades of drug trafficking in New York, American Gangster is riding high on box office sales and early Oscar predictions.

It helps that Oscar alumni Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe light up the marquee, but they’re given quality material to work with. They represent good and bad, right and wrong, though Washington’s Frank Lucas certainly blurs the normally hard line of drug lords being evil.

He is generous with his illegal fortune; he buys his family houses, expensive clothes, and even hands out turkeys to the neighborhood at Thanksgiving. Even though he still possesses the merciless qualities of his peers, like shooting disrespectful rivals in the middle of a market, he’s a likeable guy. Director Ridley Scott even has to throw in clips of the personal destruction the drug causes to remind us that Lucas is pushing heroin, not a line of washing machines.

Fighting the good fight is Crowe’s Richie Roberts, an anomaly in a corrupt police force that ostracizes him for turning in $1,000,000 in unmarked bills. He is the righteous character, the one who Scott dares us to support, even though his personal life is as reprehensible as Washington’s day job. He loses his child in a custody battle because of his reckless promiscuity. It’s not an easy movie to pick sides, which perhaps makes it so interesting as Frank’s long, confident reign loses ground when his family becomes careless.

Pushing three hours, Gangster’s not a fast moving movie, but every scene is as deliberate and calculating as the two main characters. It’s also nice to see effective use of violence. American Gangster is not a blood-spattered throwback to Scarface. The violent scenes, if graphic, aren’t gratuitous. Washington will earn accolades for his articulate delivery of the character, not the bullets.

There are also some powerful statements about racism during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Frank’s business thrives not only because he removes the middle man, but because he knows no cop would ever believe a black man is running the biggest heroin circle in New York. As a Jew, Crowe stays somewhat more open-minded, which is why he’s able to close in on the elusive target.

Even though the film doesn’t offer firm conclusions on any of the questions it raises about morality, or even the plot, its inevitable finish is still satisfying.

We Own the Night

RATED: R for strong violence, drug material, language, some sexual content and brief nudity.
RUNNING TIME: 116 MINUTES
PLOT: New York, 1988: A new breed of narcotics has swept the great city, bringing with it a ferocious crime wave more terrifying than any in recent memory. A New York nightclub manager tries to save his brother and father from Russian mafia hit men. Together, the brothers will try to prove the NYPD's '80s rallying cry in the war on drugs: We Own the Night.
STARS: Joaquin Phoenix (Bobby Grusinsky), Mark Wahlberg (Joe Grusinsky), Robert Duvall (Burt Grusinsky), Eva Mendes (Amada Juarez).

Gord Burt 2.5 Stars

Set in 1988, We Own the Night starts out full of promise and ends up a competent, semi-profound but ultimately well-worn tale of familial loyalty. Mark Wahlberg is the good brother, a policeman in New York. Joaquin Phoenix is the bad brother, a sleazy nightclub owner whose patrons include the Russian drug lords the police are trying to shut down.

The material is engaging enough and the solid cast also includes Robert Duvall; Eva Mendes is in it too, but adds little. Yet this dramatic crime-thriller never lives up to its potential. In fact, it’s considerably less than the sum of its parts despite much of the film’s inspiration coming from a long tradition of crime dramas like The Godfather, Heat, Force Of Evil, Dirty Harry and the French Connection.

Phoenix has to play both sides to save his brother’s life, going undercover as a police mole despite initial reservations. Writer/director James Gray doesn’t draw out his ethical and moral dilemma long enough to be dramatic or shocking. It’s dropped too soon, which leaves We Own the Night an aimless, predictable soap opera.

Most of the film’s problems have to do with Gray’s uninspired direction. Case in point: a car chase and shootout sequence in a thunderstorm should be thrilling but instead it never really engages our interest. We Own the Night (the title comes from the late-‘80s motto of the NYPD’s street crimes unit) gets sillier and sillier as we move down the quality scale from great to passable to predictable to unbelievable twists that seem ever more improbable.

The characters are all underdeveloped and one-dimensional although the efforts of Phoenix and Wahlberg nearly overcome that problem. Phoenix tries his best to make us care about his character even when the material isn’t there, while the interaction between him and Wahlberg provide the movie’s best moments. Wahlberg and Phoenix are good enough as the cop and the playboy, though given past roles, one wonders what the film would look like if they switched roles.

Erin Harde 3 Stars

Carried by two Hollywood tough guys, Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix, We Own the Night has the short-lived aggressive endurance of a junkie on PCP. The film gets off to an unrestrained, dangerous start, but can’t maintain the high longer than an hour.

Set in New York’s drug-ridden nightclubs in the ‘80s, the story pits two brothers, one a cop and one a club manager, against each other as the war between a drug ring and the NYPD becomes vicious. Normally busting with muscle and machismo in his movies, Walberg’s cop appears meek, even pathetic, next to Phoenix’s sexy Bobby who knows his way around a woman (as we see in the very first scene with Eva Mendes) and gets loaded with the city’s coolest.

But it only takes on attempt on his life to neuter this alpha dog. In a disappointing move by the director, Bobby is absolved of a spine once he and his family become a target of the same men he once called business partners. He’s not even a good informer, completely cracking under the pressure of a wire.

The character is much more appealing when he thinks he’s invincible and lives without a sense of responsibility. Once Bobby becomes a snitch, the film and audience bear the heavy weight of the inevitable, that he or his family will get knocked off by the drug lords who have no respect for the law, and contempt for those who enforce it.

Phoenix and Wahlberg do the best they can with these characters who are all bark and no bite. After being shot, Wahlberg’s Joe crumbles on the job. From any other actor in any other movie, it would be acceptable; in this situation, one expects more heroics and bravery out of this pair, and it doesn’t materialize. Robert Duvall’s character outdoes both of his boys in that regard. This tough old cop knocks them around every chance he gets.

We Own the Night paints a good picture of the nightmare cops faced 20 years ago, but doesn’t give two great talents a chance to own this picture.