Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast

New Releases 10/24/08

RocknRolla (R)
Starring: Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, Jeremy Piven, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges
Director: Guy Ritchie
With Cockney-accented violence highly choreographed to a headache-inducing rock score, this is a so-called “crime-comedy” is in the same vein as the director’s “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” but without it’s originality or shock value. And what is the point of the Russian billionaire who disappears almost before he arrives? Wait for the DVD, and fast forward the unnecessary bits.
2 pieces of just another violent cockney crime caper toast

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (R)
Starring: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Traci Lords, Jason Mewes
Director: Kevin Smith
If you care, the “hottest thing” in porn movies for the past decade has been ordinary couples (or triples of quadruples or-) who buy a digital camera, place it on a tripod, and shoot their skinny, paunchy, pimpled, wrinkled, balding, cellulited nakedness with poor lighting, using out-of-focus, cameras as they try out various postures found in the pages of the Kama Sutra. The premise of this movie is that the paunchy Seth Rogan and the hot Elizabeth Banks will become instantly rich when they film such a video. The problem is that couples are only paid about $500 for these amateur-night films “barely enough to pay the money they owe the Pittsburgh electric company. Released on Halloween, it should be noted that their porno is a “costume epic”called “Star Whores,” complete wlith characters named Hung Solo and Darth Vibrator (which gives you an idea of the film’s high level of Sophomoric humor).
1 and 1/2 pieces of wanted to be something else toast

What Just Happened (R)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, John Turturro
Director: Barry Levinson
The team that brought us the superb “Wag the Dog,” can’t get the dog to walk this time around. DeNiro sleepwalks through this supposedly funny, Hollywood expose’ about what it’s like to be a former big-time producer who now has to contend with two ex-wives, dozens of ex-girlfriends, a suddenly nubile daughter, a female boss, his agent, his randy screenwriter, and a director who refuses to edit the film that is due in Cannes in two days. Short quiz: Does this sound #1. interesting, or #2 pretty ordinary? If you picked #2, you win (The prize is the suggestion you see this one at home and go see an Oscar contender at a movie theater instead).
1 and 1/2 and pieces of wasted talent toast

NEW ON DVD

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (G)
Starring: Abigail Breslin, Stanley Tucci, Julia Ormond, Joan Cusack, Glenne Headly
Director: Patricia Rozema
The child star du-jour, Abigail Breslin, plays an American Girl toy doll who is modeled after a fictional Cincinnati 9-year-old growing up during the Great Depression. Her parents try to cope with hard times and take in a number of colorful boarders to help pay the bills, to avoid their friend’s fate when the bank forecloses and the family is cast into the street with their furniture. Pretty gritty material for a G-rated kid’s film, but think of all those traditional tales which begin by making orphans out of the children “gritty is an essential ingredient to strong storytelling.
3 and 1/2 pieces of my granddaughters loved this toast

Journey to the Center of the Earth (PG)
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem
Director: Eric Brevig
Forget the travesty of the same name starring Pat Boone, this newest version of Jules Verne’s pioneering fantasy is the first all-digital 3-D narrative movie ever made “and 3-D is the only way to see it. (NOTE: The DVD comes in a 2-D version and a 3-D version complete with special glasses to see the effects. I have not watched either DVD, but some have complained online that the glasses give them a headache. Let me know how they work for you.)
The story is of a geologist who heads to Iceland with a bored teenage nephew in tow. When they arrive, he hires a beautiful local guide whose father was a “Vernian” someone who believes Jules Verne wrote truth, “not fiction. Once underground, things literally pop up everywhere. If you haven’t had a dinosaur try to bite you up close and personal, you are in for a treat.
3 pieces of 3-D toast