Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast

New Releases 2/08/08

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (PG-13)
Martin Lawrence, Margaret Avery, Joy Bryant, Louis C.K., Michael Clarke Duncan, Mike Epps, Mo’Nique, Nicole Ari Parker, Cedric the Entertainer, James Earl Jones
Directed by: David Newman
Long anticipated with several months of TV ads, the premise is that when a Self-Help talk show host returns home for his parents’ 50th Anniversary Party, he gets no respect. It includes all the required sit-com touches (such as the lost luggage, the pajama-style replacement pants, the shared bedrooms, the false teeth and flatulence jokes), and even includes the trite joke every city slicker who returns to the country must contend with “an angry skunk. But underneath, this movie has a heart and a positive message.
2 and 1/2 pieces of Georgia roots toast.

Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights – Hollywood to the Heartland (R )
Vince Vaughn, Ahmed Ahmed
Directed by: Ari Sandel
Vince Vaughn plays host to four stand up comics as they travel over 6000 miles on a cross-country comic tour from Hollywood to the heartland. But the result is surprisingly uneven. It has been heavily edited from dozens of different performances, but still has an amaturish, raw footage feel. Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco could be a break-out star, but I suggest you wait for the video so you can fast forward the dull, bits.
1 and 1/2 pieces of unfinished toast.

Fool’s Gold (PG-13)
Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland, Ewen Bremner, Alexis Dziena, Kevin Hart, Ray Winstone
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Screwball comedies take a director with a light touch and actors who spark onscreen. This however is created by a team of people who think that having the female lead hit her boyfriend with a full swung 9-iron is cute and endearing
1/2 piece of just plain rotten toast

Strange Wilderness (2008)
Steve Zahn, Allen Covert, Jonah Hill, Kevin Heffernan, Ashley Scott, Peter Dante, Harry Hamlin, Robert Patrick, Joe Don Baker, Justin Long, Jeff Garlin, Ernest Borgnine
Directed by: Fred Wolf
In the past decade, Saturday Night Live skits have gotten more and more sloppy and tried to cram in more and more tastelessness to cover the lack of talent. Now, just when you think it can’t get any worse, several SNL “graduates” have “winged it,” to create this immature, bomb of a film replete with skits about a turkey biting a man’s penis, and characters who giggle whenever they hear the name “Dick.” Avoid this like the plague.
0 pieces of toast

Persepolis (R)
2007 Academy Award Nominated Animated Feature Length
Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve
Directed by: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud
Graphic novels and underground comic books inspired this electrifying, heartfelt, and original portrait of a spunky 9-year-old Iranian girl who surmounts countless obstacles to grow into a wise young adult. Using a stark, spare animated style, the filmmakers adroitly create an animated adventure that is both a coming-of-age story, and an illustrated history lesson.
3 and 1/2 pieces of decidedly not Disney animated toast

NEW VIDEO DVDs

The Brave One (R)
Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews
Directed by: Neil Jordan
This is a vigilante movie, the kind Charles Bronson repeated over and over again. Only this time, the angry man who takes the law into his own hands is (gasp) a woman. We’re supposed to be shocked that a mild-mannered radio host could react this way after she and her boyfriend are attacked in Central Park and he is killed. But wait a minute. Isn’t that Clarice Starling under that shaggy haircut? Didn’t she make friends with Hannibal Lector and track down a serial killer? Well of course she did, no wonder she can be such a force of retribution.
3 pieces of vigilante toast.

Elizabeth: the Golden Age (PG-13)
Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen, Geoffrey Rush, Samantha Morton
Directed by: Sekhar Kapur
Hoping to capitalize on the success of the first installment in this queen’s “One Life o Live” style reign. the actors and filmmakers who made “Elizabeth” try a gain and fail miserably. This one’s all costumes and flounces, axe-wielding jealousy and rage, and simpering, whimpering “poor-liitle-old me” bombast drowned in a heavy-handed musical score.
1 and 1/2 pieces of English crumpet toast

Across the Universe (R)
Evan Rachel Woods, Jim Sturgess, Eddie Izzard, Bono,
Directed by: Julie Taymor
It’s nostalgic tunes galore as the director of “Frida” and Broadway’s amazing “The Lion King” tries a “Mama Mia” style story built on the Beatles songbook. Many of the music video sequences are inventive and fun, some (like Eddie Izzard’s) are bizarre, but what doesn’t work is the interconnecting story about a Liverpool born lad, a Boston bred girl, her Vietnam drafted boyfriend and Princeton attending brother.
2 and 1/2 pieces of great songs, bad story toast