Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast

New Releases 10/03/09

Whip It (PG-13)
Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig,  Drew Barrymore
Director: Drew Barrymore
I first saw the Bay Bombers when I was a cub scout, and for some reason that experience, with all its bruising, bone cracking tumbles, jumps and “crack-the-whips, has stuck with me. I am pleased to say, that the multi-talented Drew Barrymore has created a marvelously empowering film about the tattooed and rough-and-tumble world of Roller Derby that is as fast and slick as the wheels on these women’s feet.
3 and 1/2 pieces of Hurl Scouts toast

Toy Story and Toy Story 2 3-D double feature (G)
Starring the voices of: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Joan Cusack
Director: John Lasseter Lee Unkrich
As a build up to the release of “Toy Story 3,” Pixar’s first two stories about Woody the cowboy, Buzz Lightyear the astronaut, Jessie the cowgirl, Rex the dinosaur, Hamm the piggy bank, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky the dog, and the villainous Stinky Pete are available in Disney 3-D as a specially released double bill. Don’t miss it.
4 pieces of Pixar toast

Zombieland (R)
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Director: Ruben Fleischer
This energetic melding of a zombie movie and college-aged romance is refreshingly entertaining. The set up is that the world has been taken over by zombies, and two male survivors (including Woody Harrelson as a wryly amusing man who doesn’t want to know people’s names so he has everyone identify themselves by where their destinations), meet up with two female con-artists with terrifyingly funny results.
3 and 1/2 pieces of reinvented genre toast

Capitalism: A Love Story (NR)
Director: Michael Moore
In interviews, Michael Moore admits that this film was paid for by the very corporations he attacks because “they understand that I get people who would never go to a documentary out to the Cineplex to be entertained and even become a little indignant.” And that, in a nutshell, is what is accomplished in this 20-years-later bookend to “Roger and Me.” But perhaps the most interesting bit is a replay of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s state of the union address where he proposed a “second Bill of Rights, including the right to work, the right to a pension and the right to health care!
3 pieces Michael Moore toast

Invention of Lying (PG-13)
Starring: Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe, Louis C.K.
Director: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson
Tom Waites sings that “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed-man is king,” and it makes me think that Ricky Gervais got the idea for this movie by wondering if a liar would be king in a land where everyone tells the truth. Acknowledging that some parts of this comedy are left unfulfilled, the fact is that the timing of the actors involved is spot-on, and the section where religion is invented by that single liar telling his ill mother that life continues on after you die, is one of those subversive movie scenes which should become iconic.
3 pieces of pretty funny (and I’m not lying) toast

NEW ON DVD

Monsters vs. Aliens (PG-13)
Starring the voices of : Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen
Director: Conrad Vernon, Rob Letter
If you remember classics like: “The Creature from the Black Lagoon,”  “The Blob,”  “The Fly,” and “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” (which I admit my best friend and I traveled all the way to South San Francisco to see in the faint hope that The Woman would outgrow her clothing quickly enough for the teenage boys in the audience to see something they might not see elsewhere). Thankfully, the filmmakers of this animated extravaganza must have similar fond memories, for when The Woman (from Modesto no less) begins to grow larger and larger, her dress stays small  (in an acceptable PG way of course). All in all, it’s quite fun, with many jokes the kiddies will miss but will cause goofy grins to appear on the faces of the taller people in the audience.
3 and 1/2 pieces of 3-dimensional fun toast

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (PG)
Starring: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith
Director: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath
The animated creatures that escaped from New York’s zoo and hightailed it to an island off the coast of Africa star in a new film, and along the way, they have grown fur which ruffles in the breezes  (thanks to improved CG techniques).  Other than that, it’s pretty much the same old Dreamworks schtick—mildly amusing fare that’s safe for the whole family.  But the plot is based on the concept that sounds like it was “borrowed” from Disney’s “The Lion King”—for when they land on the African continent, Alex the lion discovers he is the long lost son of the aging king.
2 and 1/2 pieces of second-string animation toast