New Releases for 5/17/13

Star Trek Into Darkness  (PG-13)

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Cho, Alice Eve

Directed By: J.J. Abrams

Opening with Kirk and Bones being chased by spear throwing natives while Spock is trapped inside an eruptive volcano on a planet labelled as forbidden by the United Federation of Planets, the crew of the Enterprise literally gets sent back to school. Not for long however. As soon as a British -accented villain makes Starfleet’s London database evaporate, all hands are on deck for a rip-roaring action adventure loaded with great characters, a strong script, and a little Spock/Uhura style romance.

3 and 1/2 pieces of still “Boldly Going” toast 

Kon Tiki (PG-13)

Starring: Paul Sverre Hagen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen,  Agnes Kitelsen, Tobias Santelmann

Directed By: Joacheim Ronning, Espen Sandberg

Reading Thor Heyerdahl’s true-life-adventure Kon Tiki was a rite of passage in my half-Norwegian family, so I am delighted that the incredible 1947 journey from South America to a Polynesian island on a balsa wood raft was made into a good movie. The sailors are rugged, Heyerdahl is obsessed with his human migration theory (since proved wrong by genetics), the sharks circle, storms howl, and people fall overboard with regularity. Problem is, Heyerdahl never learned to swim.

3 pieces of six men on a tiny raft in a gigantic ocean toast

Starbuck (R)

Starring: Patrick Huard, Julie LeBreton, Antoine Bertrand, Domic Phile

Directed By:  Kent Scott

A single sperm donor who has “fathered” dozens of children (some of who may be unknowingly dating their half-siblings), is usually the stuff of tabloids and talk shows, but in this French Canadian comedy, the story is played for  gentle humor and feel-good moments. The set-up is that a pot-grower perpetually short of cash, would regularly make deposits in the local sperm bank under the code name “Starbuck.” Decades later, several of his biological children file a lawsuit to discover who Starbuck really is. One thing leads to another, and the audience bonds with the disparate group of people who learn to call Starbuck “Daddy.”

3  pieces of imagine all the Father’s Day cards he gets toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

Cloud Atlas (R) 

Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent

Directed by: Tom Tyker, Lana and Andy Washowski
The list of actors (which includes four Oscar winners) is notable, and each must have been cajoled into this project with the conceit of getting to play multiple characters of differing ancestry in several different time periods. Halle Berry, for example is at one time a San Francisco newspaper reporter then an ancient Chinese revolutionary, a post-apocalypse primitive and the nude, red-headed wife of a 1930’s German-Jewish composer. Say what? Like 1963’s The List of Adrian Messenger, the audience spends to much energy trying to figure out who is under all that makeup, and the filmmaker’s secret reveals itself for the gimmick that it is. It’s Jim Broadbent, who has displayed his talent for playing dastardly villains and blow-hards before, who wears the least amount of makeup and turns in the most memorable performances.  The story? It’s like Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits on steroids, only without any sense of fun.

2 and 1/2 pieces of overly ambitious and way too gimmicky toast

New Releases for 5/10/13

The Great Gatsby is only okay, Peoples is funny

The Great Gatsby (PG-13)

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher

Directed By: Baz Luhrmann

The 1920‘s zeitgeist F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays in his classic novel The Great Gatsby has been carefully choreographed by 21st Century Australian director  Baz Luhrmann with a hip-hop soundtrack. There’s lots of glitz and glamor in the first half, and DiCaprio and Maguire take turns stealing scenes, but the second half, with it’s doomed downward spiral, is ounderwhelming. End result, instead of being “Great” its just an “Okay” Gatsby.

2 and 1/2 pieces of see it for DiCaprio and Maguire toast 

Home Run (PG-13)

Starring: Scott Elrod, Dorian Brown, Vivica A. Fox

Directed By: David Boyd

The ballplayer whose inner demons and alcoholism derail what should have been a stellar career is the stuff of headlines, but in this film, it gets relegated to the funny pages. We begin with flashbacks of a warped childhood, catch glimpses of a master of the diamond’s alcohol fueled self destruction, and end up with a faith-based, Bad News Bears advertisement for AA.

2 and 1/2 pieces of its a bunt instead of a home run toast

Peoples (PG-13)

Starring: Craig Robinson, Kerry Washington, David Allen Grier

Directed By:  Tina Gordon Chism

Meet the Parents has been recast with African-Americans in this formulaic (but still funny) sit-com. “He” entertains children with songs like “its OK to pee your pants.” “She” is a UN attorney whose wealthy family live in Sag Harbor. The “new”(but really long term) boyfriend gets introduced to a family with lots of assumptions on both sides, lots of things hidden in metaphorical closets, and lots of  well-timed laughs.

3  pieces of Tyler Perry should be taking notes toast

Aftershock (R)

Starring: Eli Roth, Andrea Osvart, Lorenzo Izzo, Selena Gomez

Directed By:  Nicolas Lopez

What starts off as a boozy tourists gone wild in Chile, takes a catastrophic turn when a massive earthquake strikes and audiences are forced to watch the characters die grisly deaths—in closeups, and with more blood than you thought a human body could hold.

1 and 1/2  pieces of gruesome disaster movie toast

Mumia (R)

Starring: Mumia Abu Jamal, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Angel Davis, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Peter Coyote

Directed By:  Stephen Vittoria

Fans of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, know how much fun it is to juxtapose the rambling ravings of Fox News commentators with clips of rationality. Here however, things are deadly serious, as that device is used to defend a self-described “revolutionary” who has spent most of the past 30 years in solitary confinement for murdering a policeman. Audiences who watched “The Central Park Five,” at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival know that a balanced, well-made film can be made about innocent men behind bars, but this doc throws all attempts at being balanced out the window. The result is an affront to audiences and to Mumia himself.

1  pieces of grossly unbalanced documentary toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

Upstream Color (NR)

Starring: Shane Carruth, Amy Seimetz, Andrew Senseng, Thiego Martins

Directed By: Shane Carruth

One of the downsides of the “auteur” school of filmmaking, is the potential for self-indulgence. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, produced, edited, and created the music for Upsteam, and it is decidedly his personal vision of how the film should be made.  But…the movie is completely unintelligible. It involves (I think) a couple who were captured and operated upon by mad scientists who utilize pigs and psychotropic, glow-in-the-dark worms as part of the experiment. Are they harvesting organs? Messing with people’s memories? Messing with the audience’s minds? Whatever the plot, it’s sure to leave people shaking their heads in disbelief and perhaps even demanding their money back. (Shane Carruth envisions a different scenario, where people flock to see the film over and over again to unlock its mysteries).

1 piece of beautiful but confused, self-indulgent toast

Safe Haven (PG-13)

Starring: Josh Duhamel, Jlianne Hough, David Lyons, Cobie Smulders

Directed By:  Lasse Halstrom

“Take a lot of [beach] pictures…you’ll only regret the ones you didn’t take.” is the advice a southerner gives to a recently arrived Yankee. The beach is in sleepy Southport, South Carolina, a fictional froth dreamed up by midwestern novelist Nicholas Sparks. As anyone who has seen the previous films based on Sparks’ books knows, the characters have secret pasts that influence their romantic present, in a  winning formula sure to fill theaters with people who love this sort of thing. Swedish director Hallstrom tries hard to add a bit of “edginess” to the formula, but the with a Valentines’ Day release date, the suits would only let things evolve from a snail-mail greeting card moment to an animated e-card one.

2 and 1/2  pieces of Nicholas Sparks romanticism toast 

Mama  (PG-13)

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Megan Charpentier, Daniel Kash, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Directed By:  Andres Muschetti

Starring Jessica Chastain before she became a household name, this horror film about two young sisters who have gone feral (wild) after being missing for over five year is produced by Guellermo Del Toro, so I expected something more than the dark, sepia toned flashbacks of the two orphans’ perhaps not quite dead, stringy-haired mother. It’s still creepy though, and might be a good rental as a Halloween flick with all the lights out.

2 pieces of say BOO! toast

New Releases for 5/03/13

The Angels Share is whiskey sharp, Iron Man 3 wins box office

Iron Man 3 (PG-13)

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Colbie Smulders, Paul Bettany, Sam Elliott

Directed By: Shane Black

Imagine if an Old West gunslinger could stop the fight a a second past high noon, and ask his assistant to bring him a cannon. That’s the sensibility of Iron Man 3, supposedly last of the Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man films. Tony Stark’s latest suit of armor isn’t the Swiss Army Knife it used to be, but instead is a series of interchangeable suits clamped on like accessories on a Kitchenaid mixer. Paltrow keeps proving she is intelligent a well as beautiful, and Downey is still spot on with his one-liners, but the latest version of Tony Stark is less resilient, more neurotic and often depressed. In addition, the inclusion of a juvenile sidekick (presumably to appeal to a younger demographic) comes out of left field, the aforementioned multiple suits of armor lead to too many armor-donning sequences, and the bodies stack up like cords of firewood. Still, IM3 has already wowed audiences worldwide, and as a kick off for the summer blockbusters, it’s pretty good.

3 pieces of it’s got the “most beautiful woman in the world” in it toast 

The Angels Share (NR)

Starring: Paul Brannigan, John Henshaw, Siobhan Reilly

Directed By: Ken Loach

A young Scottish ne’er-do-well decides to do the right thing and visit his girfriend and their newborn at the hospital, and gets beaten up by the girl’s gangster dad. Recuperating in court-ordered community service, he is invited by his supervisor to learn to appreciate Scotland’s finest single malts. This leads to insider information about an upcoming auction of an ancient whiskey worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. A heist is planned, and the fun begins.

3 pieces of distilled Scottish toast

Disconnect (R)

Starring: Stellen Skasgard, Andrea Riseborough, Colin Ford, Frank Grillo, Hope Davis, Jason Bateman

Directed By:  Alex Rubin

A classic tale of despair and loss of identity is told in the modern-day mileu of smart phones, chat rooms and cam-sex. The concept shines in some sequences, but the script becomes to obvious and the question of “who are the grown ups?’ is answered in a morally dishonest and  unsatisfying manner.

2 and 1/2  pieces of smart phones, dull people toast

To the Wonder (R)

Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel acAdams, Javier Bardem

Directed By:  Terence Malik

Dreamlike in many respects, the director has made a film in a series of short takes that looks like it’s selling expensive perfumes or automobiles. In our dreams, we know (or at least pretend to know) who we are, and don’t question shifting suddenly from a Parisian street setting to a dry and dusty Oaklahma landscape. But when as Malik tries to share his own dreams or visions,  he makes a mistake by trying to get us interested in a self-absorbed couple with more beauty than sense. Perhaps he thought audiences would just absorb his wonderful images. But if so, why does he include the sequences with Javier Bardem as a priest with a flock of alcoholics and street people?  Bardem makes Affleck’s moo-cow expressions seem absurdly amateuristic, and makes this critic wish the film had primarily been focused on the priest and his group of real human beings instead.

1 and 1/2  pieces of watch it for Bardem toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

Broken City (R)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Barry Pepper, Kyle Chandler, Jeffrey Wright

Directed By: Allen Hughes

The director who did Book of Eli knows what to do, and the actors are all first rate, so why this film about  political corruption and dirty cops is so listless defies logic. The plot twists are revealed before they happen, the actors try hard in different scenes but never click as a team, the photography is muddy, and the characters talk on and on and on…ZZZZZ.

1 and 1/2 pieces of at least Russell Crowe doesn’t sing in this movie toast

The Guilt Trip (PG-13)

Starring: Barbra Steisand, Seth Rogan, Kathy Najimy, Colin Hanks

Directed By: Anne Fletcher

An insufferably nagging mother is trapped in an 8-day cross country car trip with her grown son. The result is supposed to be a comedy, but instead, it’s a cliched road trip movie with all the predictable plot points including the car breaking down.

1 and 1/2 pieces of mehh toast

New Releases for 4/26/13

Renoir (R)

Starring: Michael Bouquet, Christa Theret, Vincent Rottiers, Thomas Doret

Directed By: Gilles Bordos

“Flesh is all that matters” a 71-year-old August Renoir says several times in this film, and that pretty much sums up the celebrated French artist’s life. His current inspiration is a beauty named Andree who doesn’t mind posing nude for a painter so crippled by arthritis that the brushes need to be tied to his hand. But things become complicated when the war-wounded 21-year-old son, Jean Renoir arrives home for recuperation.

3 and 1/2 pieces of French artistry toast 

Mud (R)

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Tye Sheride, JAcob Lofland,

Directed By: Jeff Nichols

This Huck Finn tale of how a couple of boys spent their summer vacation contains some very dark elements (just like Mark Twain’s classic story). The title character is discovered living in a boat perched high in a tree by the river’s historic flood last season. “I’m not a bum,” the scruffy fellow insists. “I’ve got money, but I’m in a tight spot.” The tight spot is his mythically powerful love for  woman guarded by a trigger-happy man. The result is a Southern Gothic tale done so well you can almost smell the river mud.

3 and 1/2 pieces of Matthew McConaughey toast

The Company You Keep (R)

Starring: Robert Redford, Shia LeBeouf, Richard Jenkins, Chris Cooper, Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon, Terrence Howard

Directed By:  Robert Redford

A newspaper reporter tracking down a good story, discovers that several 60’s radicals have been living underground—in plain sight—as farmers, lawyers and college professors. There’s just one problem with this tale. There are frequent references to a “30 years ago” which in reality was 45 years ago, but the actors faces reveal that Redford and Christie and Nolte are septuagenarians. This conceit of the march of time is a fatal flaw no makeup can cover.

2 and 1/2  pieces of miscast actors toast

Pain and Gain  (R)

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Mark Whalberg, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Tony Shaloub

Directed By:  Michael Bay

When two losers decide to kidnap a Florida gym owner and have him sign over his bank account and properties to them, the flaws are obvious to everyone in the audience. Along the way, they recruit a fellow gym rat (Dwayne Johnson) who ends up stealing the movie. This wrestler-turned-actor deftly handles the improbable stuff  thrown his way with a screen persona that makes us like everything he does, even when it is a farcical caper film that has been littered with extraneous explosions and theme music with a deep, deep bass line, just because the director likes using them.

2 and 1/2  pieces of another movie worth seeing because of  Dwayne Johnson toast

No Place on Earth (PG-13)

Starring: Bal, Chris Nicola, D, Fruszina Pelik, Saul Sterner, Sima Dodyk

Directed By: Janet Tobias

Consider this a hybrid documentary. When a spelunker discovers artifacts deep within a Ukranian cave system, he learns they were left by Jewish families escaping from almost certain death during WWII. Asking local people about the cave-dwellers sets him on a historical mystery tour that eventually leads to survivors from those depths. The filmmakers have cast actors to portray some of the incidents which occurred underground 70 years ago, and then intercut these scenes with the spelunker’s quest for answers. Unfortunately, the result is clunky, and sometimes jarring as we rapidly shift from the past to today. Even so, the story of survival is a powerful tale—just not told in the best way.

2 piece of  a powerful story that needed more finesse in the telling toast

The Big Wedding (R)

Starring: Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Amanda Seyfried, Topher Grace, Robin Williams

Directed By: Justin Zakham

With the pedigree of this project—excellent actors, a story taken from a popular French farce, and the screenwriter from The Bucket List—this should have been funny. But instead of the fast-pace satire of the French original, we have a movie that needs Geritol or something. The pace is too slow, the set ups to long, the punch lines too obvious, and the end result is appallingly bad.

1 pieces of  absolutely unfunny toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

The Impossible (PG-13)

Starring: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland,

Directed By: Juan Antonio Bayona

The morning after Christmas, a family vacationing in Thailand is relaxing around the hotel pool when a speeding wall of black water rushes towards them. This is a film where the audience feels they are trapped by the tsunami along with the characters. Avoiding melodrama, the movie lets things evolve the way they did to the real Spanish family who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. NOTE: This is a tear-jerker that works at the core of your emotions. If you are afraid of water, stay far, far away from this film, it is truly terrifying and realistic.

3 and 1/2 pieces of nature is powerful but the human spirit is too toast

Promised Land (R)

Starring: Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie DeWitt, Hal Holbrook

Directed By: Gus Van Sant

A male-female corporate sales team is sent to offer a struggling rural community a tremendous opportunity to make a bit of money or, destroy their family farmlands. This dichotomy is the driving force of this film about fracking—the underground injection of water and chemicals to release natural gas. Costars Damon and Krasinski co-wrote the screenplay (and Damon was originally slated to direct) and were perhaps a little to much in love with the words on the page in some of the longer speeches to make any cuts. The story ostensibly tries to show both sides of the issue, but a greedy multinational corporation is such an easy target, and photos of dead and dying farm animals are such a strong argument against fracking, that even-handedness quickly evaporates.

2 and 1/2 pieces of kinda simplistic toast

Gangster Squad (R)

Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Robert Patrick, Michael Pena, Givani Ribisi, Emma Stone, Sean Penn

Directed By: Ruben Fleischer

Fueled by gambling, gals and guns, and protected by the local police and politicos, mob boss Mickey Cohen rules post-WW2 Los Angeles. But an elite band of LAPD outsiders secretly plot to take Cohen down. There’s a load of talented people involved in this project, but choosing the director of  Zombieland to sit in the chair was a bad move. The result is very disappointing and what should have/ could have been a cross between The Untouchables and L.A. Confidential fizzles instead.

2 pieces of wasted talents and opportunities toast 

New Releases for 4/19/13

Filly Brown (R)

Starring: Gina Rodriguez, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jennie Rivera, Edward James Olmos

Directed By: Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos

This story of a talented Latina who aspires to lifting herself out of her hard-scrabble life through her musical ability has been portrayed before with different ethnicities and musical styles. Propelled by fine acting, great singing, and a realistic ambiance, the formula still works. The “tattoos as a way to make money, demand respect and reflect self-identity” sub-plot is fresh and well-played too.

3 pieces of see it for the breakout performance by Gina Rodriguez toast

The Sapphires (PG-13)

Starring: Chris O’Dowd, Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy, Mirana Tapsell, Shari Sebbens

Directed By:  Wayne Blair

Once a group of 60‘s Australian Aboriginal singers switch from country-western to Motown, their careers skyrocket (changing their names from The Cummeranjanga Songbirds to The Sapphires helps too). Based on a real girl group, and co-written by the real singer’s son, there is an honesty and vibrancy to a storyline which could have seemed overly familiar. Instead, the Aussie twist brings unexpected depth and the singing and familiar songs reach deep inside your core being.

3  pieces of talented Aussie toast.

Oblivion (PG-13)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo

Directed By:  Justin Zackham

In WALL-E, the cleanup guy for a post-apocolyptic Earth is a machine. In Oblivion, the clean-up guy is Tom Cruise, and both of them make a collection of artifacts that pique their interest. Both movies showcase outstandingly talented digital artistry, but where audiences bonded with the little robot, they have a difficult time warming up to a robotic human—especially one featured in so many tabloids and talk shows. Based on an unpublished graphic novel, the storyline involves the human clean-up guy discovering that not all of mankind was destroyed by the alien invasion, and that the people in charge “lied to me!” It’s all been done much better before—just not as beautifully rendered.

2 pieces of worth seeing on a big screen for the graphics toast

Upstream (NR)

Starring: Shane Carruth, Amy Seimetz, Andrew Senseng, Thiego Martins

Directed By: Shane Carruth

One of the downsides of the “auteur” school of filmmaking, is the potential for self-indulgence. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, produced, edited, and created the music for Upsteam, and it is decidedly his personal vision of how the film should be made.  But…the movie is completely unintelligible. It involves (I think) a couple who were captured and operated upon by mad scientists who utilize pigs and psychotropic, glow-in-the-dark worms as part of the experiment. Are they harvesting organs? Messing with people’s memories? Messing with the audience’s minds? Whatever the plot, it’s sure to leave people shaking their heads in disbelief and perhaps even demanding their money back. (Shane Carruth envisions a different scenario, where people flock to see the film over and over again to unlock its mysteries).

1 piece of beautiful but confused, self-indulgent toast

From Up On Poppy Hill (PG)

Starring the voices of: Sarah Bolger, Gillian Anderson, Anton Yelchin, Jamie Lee Curtis

Directed By: Goro Myazaki

My sister, who lives where movies are released sooner than they are in the North Bay, told me she saw “the new Myazaki film,” and was “disappointed.” This is probablly due to the fact that this Myazaki isn’t the amazing master Japanese animator Hayao  Myazaki (of Princess Mononoke fame), but instead, the son, Goro Myazaki. Eschewing Japanese mythology for a newer, anime-for-girls storyline, quaint, provincial-looking Yokohama settings contrast sharply with the modern concrete of Tokyo preparing for the upcoming 1962 Olympic Games. The Yokahoma kids attend school in a crumbling pre-war building, and their clubhouse is a wreck the school principal wants to bulldoze into oblivion. Instead, the kids use the school newspaper to rally support for the old “Latin Quarter” building. One odd thing is the suggestion that the teenl-aged boyfriend and girlfriend may secretly be brother and sister. An incest subplot is not uncommon in Japanese anime, but it could raise a few eyebrows over here.

3 pieces of  beautifully animated Studio Ghibli fare, but it could have been directed/edited better toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

Django Unchained (R)

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L, Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino

Because this is Quentin Tarantino’s movie, some (including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences) forgive all the revenge-fueled bloodshed, woman hatred, KKK-style racism, and distinctly un-genteel slice of Southern hypocrisy. The director loves old filmmaking techniques, and includes homages to spaghetti westerns, the picturesque rocks of the Alabama Hills (outside Lone Pine, California), and the old “Western” movie stars who dot the landscape. But (and this is a GIGANTIC BUT), the movie doesn’t work, and comes across as a racist smirk. The first third, featuring a bounty hunter searching out runaway slaves is good, but the plantation owner middle, needs intense cutting of scenes that go on way too long, and despite the big wink to the audience, the stereotypical caricatures aren’t funny either. The last section is just a blood-spurting series of body counts which the “riding off into the sunset” ending does not remedy. I agree with director Spike Lee’s summary of the film: “American slavery was not a Serge Leone spaghetti western—it was a holocaust!”

1 and 1/2 pieces of  tain’t my cuppa tea toast

New Releases for 4/12/13

42 (PG-13)

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Alan Tudyk, Christopher Meloni, Hamish Linklater, Lucas Black

Directed By:  Brian Helgeland

There are probably a couple of younger generations unaware of the significance of a baseball jersey with the number “42” on its back, but this film should help close that cultural void. For that was the number a New York Dodgers rookie named Jackie Robinson began wearing a couple years after WWII. The first African-American in major league baseball quickly proved his worth. His 12 home runs that first season helped the Dodgers win the National League pennant,  and the Rookie of the Year award for Robinson. The film depicts racism and it’s atavistic anger front and center—the individuals, teams, cities, and entire states which refused to  allow a “colored man” to play with or against them was legion, and several of the roles, most notably Chadwick Boseman as Robinson, Harrison Ford as Dodgers manager Branch Rickey, and Lucas Black as the team’s shortstop Pee Wee Reese, are truly memorable.

3 pieces of that’s the way it was toast

Trance (R)

Starring: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassell

Directed By:  Danny Boyle

When an auctioneer gets hit on the head during an art heist, he loses any  memory of where he put a $25 million painting. The gang tries threats and torture to overcome the amnesia, and when that fails, a hypnotist is recruited to help jog the little grey cells. For some unfathomable reason, actor James MacAvoy doesn’t react to these contradictory techniques with any obvious difference. This is the film’s fatal flaw, resulting in a movie about a guy we really don’t connect with—no matter how clever the script or camera-work.

2  pieces of lacks empathy toast.

Scary Movie V (PG-13)

Starring: Ashley Tisdale, Simon Rex, Charlie Sheen, Lindsey Lohan

Directed By: Malcolm D. Lee

The former “girl you love to hate” from Disney’s High School Musical franchise has made a career move to become a screaming horror movie spoof star in this film. Other than that, there’s little I know about the movie.

Not made available to critics

NEW DVD RELEASES

Hyde Park on Hudson (R)

Starring: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Samuel West, Olivia Coleman

Directed By: Roger Michell

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s affair with his distant cousin, Daisy, adds the spice to a choreographed for the press meeting at Roosevelt’s New York estate with the British king and queen before the U.S. entered WW2. Some critics whine that Bill Murray is more like himself than FDR, but I doubt any of them actually knew FDR. I enjoyed Hyde Park on Hudson as a farce with serious international consequences, and Murray is perfect for that type of film. My only real problem is how Eleanor Roosevelt is portrayed. She was a much gutsier woman than we see onscreen. (But what do I know—I never met her).

3 pieces of Bill Murray toast

New Releases for 4/05/13

Jurassic Park 3D (PG-13)

Starring: Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson

Directed By:  Steven Spielberg

The 20-year-old movie about reverse engineering dinosaur DNA and cloning the creatures to live free on a Pacific island, has been re-engineered to be a 3D extravaganza. No matter that the “kids in peril” (Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello) on the screen are now old enough to have kids that same age, or that the Spielburgian plot points are very, very obvious, this breakthrough film still manages to scare us down to the depths of our “we once lived in caves” heritage. This time, pay attention to the brilliant characterizations by Jeff Goldblum as the chaos-theory scientist, Wayne Knight as the money-mad thief, and Bob Peck as the hunter/gamekeeper soon to become lunch.

3 pieces of I’m not sure if it’s worth the extra bucks for 3D toast

Evil Dead (R)

Starring: Jane Levy, Jessica Lucas, Shiloh Fernandez, Lee Taylor Pucci

Directed By:  Fede Alvarez

The press notes say this is an homage to Sami Rami’s The Evil Dead, but what they neglected to mention is that it lacks any wit or intelligence or empathy with the multiple victims.

Gil doesn’t screen slasher films

The Place Beyond the Pines (R)

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Bradley Cooper, Ray LiottaRose Byrne, Bruce Greenwood, Ben Mendelson

Directed By: Derek Cienfrance

Well-acted, but still overly melodramatic with an unbelievable string of coincidences to hold things together, this tells the tale of a motorcycle stunt-driver who begins to rob banks when he discovers he has an infant son who needs  his financial support. The filmmakers have unwisely crammed in a couple other stories involving political and police corruption, and sons trying to impress their daddies, then spiced it up with motorcycle stunts speeded up to look more dangerous.

2 pieces of you need to suspend your disbelief big time for this one toast

The Revolutionary Optimists (NR)

Starring: Amian Gangguly, Kajahal Kahar, Priyanka Mandal, Salim Sheikh, Sika Patro

Directed By: Maren R. Monson, Nicole Newham

A story about a young girl forced to work long hours in a brick factory who repeatedly counts her meager savings hoping it has grown to be enough to let her learn to become a tailor, sounds like a fairy tale set in the distant past. But, it is today in the slums of modern India, where an attorney empowers children to become agents of change for themselves, their families, their community and their country. In a cynical age, this optimistic tale of hope is very rewarding.

3 and 1/2 pieces of documentary as optimism toast

The Playroom (NR)

Starring: John Hawkes, Molly Parker, Olivia Harris, Ian Vateto

Directed By: Julia Dyer

The teens who live in the suburban house in 1975, routinely empty the ashtrays and pick up the emptied glasses left by the parents the night before. When a neighborhood couple drop by for an adult Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?-style evening, the kids head to the attic playroom to share their fantasies of escaping their dysfunctional parents.

2 pieces of feels like a stage play toast

Island President (PG)

Directed By: Jon Shenk

The incredible tale of President Mohamed Nasheed and his struggle to save his beloved Maldeves Islands from disappearing as the sea levels inexorably rise. This special Thursday Night at 7:00 event is a co-presentation of the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival and Rialto Cinemas, and is followed by a discussion led by SSU professor Shepard Bliss and the deputy director of the Climate Protection Project, Barry Vessar.

3 and 1/2 pieces of the world is changing toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

The Kid With a Bike (PG-13) 
Starring: Thomas Doret, Cecile de France, Jeremie Renier, Fabrizo Rongione

Directed by: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

An abandoned youngster named Cyril breaks out of the orphanage and sneaks back to his father’s apartment house to retrieve his bicycle. When the authorities arrive, he clings to a woman neighbor named Samantha, and refuses to leave until he can see his old (and now empty) apartment. Samantha finds the bike and returns it to the boy, and Cyril asks to visit her on the weekend. The mercurial Cyril is a handful—running, jumping, racing, fighting, yelling, and constantly demanding attention. In contrast. Samantha is a free-spirited individualist who sees life as a glass half-full. The two work well together, especially when confronted with the stark reality of Cyril’s unloving and unrepentant father.

3 and 1/2 pieces of beautifully identifiable French toast

By Gil Mansergh

Those of you familiar with my film columns in-print, on-air, and on-line may not know that the “tell it like it is” style I use comes directly from advice I received from Roger Ebert. I had already been writing my Screenings column for several years when I was introduced to Roger at a book festival in Los Angeles. I explained I was a fellow film columnist and had read his latest movie yearbook from cover to cover before I penned my first column (which was about the Australian film Muriel’s Wedding).

I recall Roger looked at my name badge carefully before replying: “You know Gil,” he said. “You can only write about what you see and hear onscreen—but what you see is influenced by everything else you have ever seen and read and heard and felt. If you can share that unique perspective on the page—share what you see and hear through your own set of experiences, then you can provide your readers with a valuable point-of-view. That’s what I try to do, and what people tell me encourages them or even angers them sometimes. It is what Gene [Siskel] does as well, and it is why we respect each other’s opinions about a particular film—even when we think the other one is completely wrong.”

Following his own advice, Roger Ebert wrote the following words on his blog two days ago: “So on this day of reflection, I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.”

New Releases for 3/29/13

On the Road is beautiful, The Host is too plastic

On the Road (PG)

Starring: Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Tom Sturridge, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Alice Bragga

Directed By:  Walter Salles

The Brazilian director who did the Che Guevara road-movie The Motorcycle Diaries, manages to bring Jack Kerouac’s “unfilmable” novel to the screen by avoiding reverential excess. Instead, he explores the geography of time, and place, and thought by taking us on the road again in a ’49 Hudson, and showing flashbacks of the checklist of wives and lovers left behind. The film took a couple years to film, with at least two coast-to-coast road trips punctuated by the stars’ offscreen visits with talk show hosts in “major markets” along the way. The challenges of making the 21st Century look like 1957 were tackled head on, and the result, combined with some very fine acting, is astoundingly beautiful. However, deciding if these icons of the Beat Generation are worthy of adulation—that’s a very personal decision.

3 pieces of beautifully wrought toast

Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (PG-13)

Starring: Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Lance Gross, Kim Kardashian, Vanessa Williams, Robbie JOnes

Directed By:  Tyler Perry

The studio says that an ambitious married woman falls for a handsome billionaire and determines to seduce him (in a PG-13 way of course).

Tyler Perry doesn’t screen his movies for critics

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (R)

Starring: Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis, Dwayne Johnson, Adrianne Palicki, RZA, Jonathan Pryce

Directed By: Jon Chu

Snake Eyes and Jinx return to the big screen to battle the ninja-warriors of COBRA in an attempt to replace POTUS with an impostor in this wants-to-be-louder-than-Transformers movie. But it is wrestler-turned actor Dwayne Johnson who resurrects a dying movie franchise from death by shrinking box-office. The man formerly known as The Rock, adroitly turns a minor character named Roadblock, into the only guy we watch and the one we miss when he’s offscreen. Even so, it’s a movie best left to the youngsters of all ages who like this type of popcorn-fueled frenzy.

2 pieces of yet another action-hero sequel toast

The Host (PG-13)

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Jake Abel, Max Irons, William Hurt, Diane Kruger, Frances Fisher

Directed By: Andrew Niccol

1 and 1/2 pieces Twilight wannabe toast

The We and I (NR)

Starring: Michael Brodie, Teresa Lynn, Lidychen Carrasco, Brandon Diaz

Directed By: Michel Gondry

A group of Bronx teens board the bus on the last day of the school year. Bragging, ragging, gawking, confessing, preening, strutting, cajoling and bullying their peers with harsh realities and winsome wishes, truth and dares, vulnerabilities and a lifetime of opportunities.

3 pieces of school is OUT! toast

Happy People: A Year In the Tiaga (NR)

Directed By: Werner Herzog

300 indigenous people live in the remote Siberian village of Bakhtia on the river Yensai. Accessible (when weather and ice permit) only by boat or helicopter. The camera follows one hardy trapper for all four seasons of one year in his life. Herzog wrote the narration with his distinctive sense of wonder.

3 and 1/2 pieces of astoundingly, harshly, beautiful toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

Lincoln  (PG-13)

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, John Hawkes, Hal Holbrook

Directed by: Stephen Spielberg

A yarn-spinning President, with a high-pitched reedy voice is not what most of us see when we picture Abraham Lincoln, but with Daniel Day-Lewis’s stunning new portrayal, we may change our minds. In the works for over a decade Stephen Spielberg’s vision of the Great Emancipator is above all a man—a  humane, wise, brooding, politically savvy, moody individual who seems to have a quip or wisecrack available at the tip of his stovepipe hat. Focusing on the last few months of his presidency, we delve into the deal-making, arm-twisting, political favoritism and “call it anything but a bribe” realities of Lincoln’s crusade to make Congress enact a Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States of America. “We’ve been chasin’ this whale a long time,” Lincoln explains, and the hunt for victory is on.

3 and 1/2  pieces of a whole new Abraham Lincoln toast

A Royal Affair (PG)

Starring: Mads Mikelsen, Alicia Viklander, Mikkkel Boe Felsgaard

Directed by: Nikolaj Arcel

Denmark in the mid 1700’s is seldom considered part of the Age of Enlightenment, but as this marvelous historical drama shows, a love triangle involving the Denmark’s dull king, his vibrant young bride, and the smoldering court physician reveal that still water runs deep. The doctor’s “modern, egalitarian” points of view are at odds with the stodgy, Bible-thumping Royal Court, and the affair just adds lots and lots of fuel to the fire. This film has ben nominated by Denmark for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category, and it’s a very strong contender.

3 and 1/2 pieces of a there’s something fresh from Denmark toast 

Killing Them Softly (R)

Starring: Brad Pitt, Ben Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini, Ray Liota, Richard Jenkins.

Directed By: Andrew Dominik
This gritty, down and dirty film about hit men eschews any attempts on romancing or sanitizing their deadly deeds. There is any edginess to everything onscreen—an edginess that uncovers the underbellies of guys doing something to other guys before it will, inevitably, get done to them. Since I have complained about the glib, cavalier attitudes of previous gangland movie psychopaths I should probably appreciate the honesty shown onscreen, but I don’t.  It just made me feel like I needed a long, very hot shower or a swim in a soul-cleansing ocean.

1 and 1/2 pieces of just because I appreciate the film’s honesty doesn’t mean I recommend it toast 

The Collection (PG-13)

Starring: Josh Stewart, Thierry Neuvic, Emma Fitzpatrick

Directed By: Marcus Dunstan
In this sequal to The Collector, the connection between tortuous mutilation of victims and sexual perversity are explored in the same campy way of the original film. The collection of slicers and dicers for human flesh has grown, but the sense of watching a well-made horror film has dessicated into dry nothingness. Apparently the victim from the first film teams up with some professional killers hired to release the collector’s newest (and female) victim.

Gil doesn’t watch slasher films

Parental Guidance (PG)

Starring: Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, Marisa Tomei

Directed By: Andy Fickman

The man who directed Reefer Madness: the Movie Musical, has ploddingly lead this attempted comedy down a lane of predictability. The set up is that two 20th Century grandparents babysit three rambunctious 21st Century grandkids. Obviously written by a computer taught that hitting grandpa in the groin with a baseball bat is funny, the heavy-handed message that love will conquer all gets lost in all the schtick.

1 and 1/2 pieces of Crystal and Midler deserved better toast

New Releases for 3/22/13

Stoker (R)

Starring: Dermot Mulroney, Nicole Kidman, Lucas Till, Mia Wasikowska

Directed By:  Chan-wook Park

Cult Korean director Chan-wook Park shows American audiences why he is so popular as he combines a melodramatic tale of deaths, inherited money and a long-lost, lustful uncle with unsettling (and delightful) feeling of dread that comes to a clever and unexpected conclusion. It starts with a funeral, moves forward with a “lets-meet-the-relatives” exposition reminiscent of those old Perry Mason TV shows, and then masterfully slides into something much more interesting in a creepy sort of way. Once again, “less is more.”

3 and 1/3 pieces of  “is this a murder mystery?”  toast 

The Croods (PG)

Featuring the voices of: Nicolas Cage, Ryan Reynolds, Katherine Keener, Emma Stone, Cloris Leachman

Directed By:  Christopher Sanders, Kirk DeMicco

Apparently the feisty teenage heroine of today, had a prehistoric ancestor named Eep. Her family is headed by a terrified father who repeatedly intones “Never, not be afraid,” and shivers alongside his family members in the relative safety of their cave. But Eep likes to venture outdoors where she meets a hunky young male who has “discovered” fire, and pointedly shares the danger of living in a cave when it’s earthquake season. On cue, Eep’s home collapses and the fur-clad group heads out on a road-trip of sorts, where they repeatedly (as in over-and-over), encounter never-before-seen creatures and landscapes.

2 pieces of might keep the younger set amused toast

Spring Breakers (R)

Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudges, Ashley Benson, Harmony Korine

Directed By: Harmony Korine

Four pretty coeds don’t have the money to take a trip to Florida for Spring Break, so they pull on ski masks and holdup a diner. A diner! Obviously the quartet are not the sharpest knives in the drawer (although they do make nice window-dressing in their bikinis). Think of this as Girls Gone Wild meets Bad Girls, only without any reason for being other than cameras repeatedly focusing on specific portions of female anatomy during a week-long bacchanal of sun, sand, booze, drugs and sex.

2 pieces of beach bimbos gone bad toast

Olympus Has Fallen (R)

Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo

Directed By: Antoine Fuqua

The body count reaches for the stratosphere in this first of the “terrorists take over the White House” movies scheduled for release in the next few months. Confronted with missile-blasting bad guys, this President doesn’t go without a fight, and his Secret Service agents die defending their boss—except for one guy. A slightly disgraced good guy survives the initial carnage, and in this script written by a committee stealing from other, better films, he single-handedly goes up against a literal army of martyr-seeking zealots.

1 and 1/2 pieces Die Hard wannabe toast

Admission (PG-13)

Starring: Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Michael Sheen, Gloria Rubin, Wallace Shawn, Lily Tomlin

Directed By: Paul Weitz

The by-the-book admissions officer at Princeton has a “comfortable” life until the head of a less-than-stellar high school arrives making unprofessional overtures, and a genius-level applicant who doesn’t do well on standardized tests but still deserves a chance both begin to complicate things. The humor comes from unexpected directions in this surprisingly original film. It’s quite enjoyable.

3 pieces of it’s not just a high SAT score toast

No (R)

Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers

Directed By: Pablo Larraine

Bowing to international pressure, the Chilean dictator August Pinochet held a national vote in 1988 to determine if he should stay in power. The ballot was a simple “Si” or “No,” and the anti-Pinochet advertising campaign adopted a surprisingly effective tactic. Instead of showing mass graves and tortured prisoners, the “No” campaign featured happy children, beautiful sunsets, and joyful celebrations—a promise of what Chile could be without Pinochet. Nominated for an Academy Award, this film, with it’s 1980’s feel, is a comedy of sorts, but a very serious comedy sharply focusing on that old advertising tag-line: “What is real, and what is Memorex?”

3 and 1/2 pieces of thoughtful, artful, must-see toast

NEW DVD RELEASES

Zero Dark Thirty (R)

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerto, Mark Strong, Jennifer Ehle, Kyle Chandler, Edgar Ramirez

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

Our search for definitive answers is partially resolved in this dramatically satisfying (but fictionalized) account of the hunt for and death of Osama Bin Ladin. Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal proved with The Hurt Locker that they are in the elite cadre of really, really good action/suspense directors and writers, and they top that tour de force here. Some of the scripted action has been criticized for being too “revealing,” or “incendiary,” or even”disloyal,” but from a story telling point-of-view, these moral ambiguities only make the film more powerful.

4 pieces of must see to be able to discuss it toast 

Rust and Bone  (R)

Starring: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure, Celine Sallette

Directed By:  Jacques Audlard

Like Ariel the mermaid and Prince Eric, the human in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, the characters in this film come from different worlds. Here, the female is a whale trainer at Marineland, and the male is a single father who works as a bouncer at a nightclub. They meet by chance, and when she ends up in a wheelchair after a tragic work accident, she inexplicably turns to the rough-hewn man for help and the will to live.

3 pieces of suspend disbelief for this fairy tale toast 

Les Miserables (PG-13)

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter

Directed By: Tom Hooper

The Broadway musical, based on the Victor Hugo’s classic, 1500-page novel of the same name has been made into a screen version that is over two and  a half hours long. The story is complex, the timeline covers decades, the coincidental meetings  are numerous, the characters are remarkable, and the ending is tragic. This film also thrums with movement as the camera glides, slides, and floats among the actors and settings. We are in the surf as prisoner 24601 helps haul a huge ship into drydock, we are close by as wee Cossette is abused by the inn keepers, and we are manning the barricades as the soldiers fire their muskets our way. The entire stroy is done in song, and audiences seemed to want subtitles for some of the less familiar lyrics. The singing, in an artistic triumph, is done by the performers as they act their parts, adding an immediacy lacking in other movie musicals. People who love the stage version should delight in the movie. Those who don’t already know the story and songs may find the movie goes on too long, especially since so many good people end up dead.

3 pieces of an exceptional experiment toast

The Hobbit (PG-13)

Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom

Directed by: Peter Jackson

I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit when I was in junior high, and I recall it as a rollicking adventure filled with humor, wizardry, Norse-style gnomes, elves and trolls, and some quite bloody fight scenes. There was also a magical gold ring of invisibility to be stolen from a very hungry dragon. The title character is Bilbo Baggins, a halfling Hobbit who is perfectly content to live in The Shire, put his furry feet up at the end of the day, and smoke a pipe or two. I enjoyed the detail of how Bilbo’s home was constructed, of how he likes to wet his finger before turning the page of a book, and how many puffs it takes to get his pipe to draw correctly. In the attempt to make a billion dollars out of his newest voyage to Middle Earth, Peter Jackson decided long ago to do two things—and the results are mixed. First, he would make this book into three films. Second, he would film it in 3-D at 48-frames-per-second. He made the film longer than necessary by focusing on all the little details in the book and giving  “barely mentioned-in-passing” characters (like Gandolf’s nature-loving brother) several minutes of screen time. The 48-frames technology means that everything our brains process is much more detailed, so the Hobbit-hole architecture, damp-fingered page turning and careful pipe lighting are shown in meticulous visual detail. Initially, the “look what we can do” aspect of all this technology drowns the story, but once the quest begins, (about an hour in), things roll right along. In the end, it’s too long, but the bits with Gollum—sixty years younger and even more devious—are worth the price of admission.

3 pieces of it doesn’t need to be three long movies toast