Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast

New Releases 5/29/09

UP (PG)
Starring the voices of: Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer, John Ratzenberger, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo
Director: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
The curmudgeonly old man is a movie staple. Walter Matthau play a great curmudgeon, and Ed Asner, on Mary Tyler Moore’s TV show was great as her curmudgeonly boss. Well Asner is back and still curmudgeonly so in Pixar’s newest film, and what is enjoyable, is that the first part of this animated treasure bothers to explain how he got to be that way, why he wants to escape in his house, and why he uses helium-filled balloons to do so. By the way, the Boy Scout they show in the TV trailers isn’t officially sanction by the BSA, so he is correctly called a “Wilderness Explorer” (but then you’re not supposed to call facial tissue Kleenex unless you attach the trade mark logo).
4 pieces of up, up, and away toast

Drag me to Hell (PG-13)
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, David Paymer, Lorna Raver, Gileep Rao
Director: Sam Raimi
Other critics seem to like Sam Raimi’s deft touch with a hatchet, and the press notes say this is “an original tale of a young woman’s quest to break an evil curse,” but you’ll have to find out how original it is on your own.
Gil doesn’t screen or review slasher films

Brothers Bloom (PG-13)
Starring: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi
Director: Rian Johnson
The concept is “The Royal Tenenbaums” do “The Sting” in an up-to-date style, but underneath all the fancy patter, shuffling footwork, and down-to-earth heiress, it’s still a con (they even show you alternative endings).
2 and 1/2 pieces of the director forgot where he was going toast

Tyson (R)
Director: James Toback
This artful documentary points an alternative reality of the ear-chewing, former heavyweight champion of the world. Based on the assumption that the public already knows everything bad there is to know about Tyson, this film only offers a blatantly unbalanced portrait of a man wronged by the system, exiting his three-year imprisonment for a brutal rape as a paranoid, depressed but still very angry man.
3 pieces of unapologetic moviemaking toast

NEW ON DVD

New in Town (PG)
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Harry Connick, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, J.K. Simmons
Director: Jonas Elmer
Formerly titled “Moonlighting in Miami,” and “Chilled in Miami” this is really like Bridget Jones moves to Fargo with disastrous results. Trying to be Capraesque, the producers unwisely hired a Danish director who actually has the actors pause to wait for the howls of laughter (which never come). Perhaps something got lost in the translation or buried in the tapioca from the tapioca fight.
1/2 piece of tapioca fights aren’t funny “you betcha” toast