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Selasa, 28 Juni 2011

Review: Quarantine 2: Terminal

William Goss | e-mail | twitter

Film critic. Wisenheimer. Member of the OFCS and the FFCC. Down with OPP. He wouldn't go in there if he were you.

William Goss June 24, 2011

CAs good as something clearly destined to be a direct-to-video sequel can be.

Quarantine 2: Terminal is the best possible retread of a remake it could have been.

Stay with me now — the original [REC] was a brilliantly constructed found-footage horror film that took place entirely in a Barcelona apartment building as hyper-rabid neighbors began turning on one another. There was a sequel, [REC] 2, and a remake, Quarantine, which stuck well to the blueprints of the original and basically left success unmessed with. This sequel is not a remake of that sequel, though it decides to similarly expand on the first film’s mythos. The found-footage point of view and any familiar characters have been excised in favor of a relatively crafty repeat of the first film’s contagious claustrophobia.

This time, we’re trapped on a red-eye flight leaving LAX as the infection proceeds to spread among the stock roster of pets and passengers (the nice flight attendant, a potential love interest, the obnoxious guy, the old couple, the bratty kid, the even more obnoxious guy, the handy army medic heading home, and so on) before an emergency landing forces the action to move into a swiftly quarantined cargo hanger.

The production has the look and feel of a ‘90s NBC miniseries (the virus-on-a-plane antics of Pandora’s Clock specifically come to mind) crossbred with the bloodier fare that populates Syfy’s schedule every Saturday night, although the ensemble work here is a bit better than that comparison might suggest. The screenplay by director John Pogue is resourceful enough given the confined action (ex: making one of your passengers a golfer is excuse enough to have golf clubs around as a potential weapon), and while his introduction of infrared goggles is a transparent effort to duplicate [REC]/Quarantine’s night-vision climax, few other moments feel as beholden to this film’s predecessor(s). In fact, he even pulls off one nasty bit of business involving a needle and an eye that is perfectly squirm-inducing in a way that neither of those films even tried to be.

At the risk of damning with faint praise, Quarantine 2: Terminal is about as good as something clearly destined to be a direct-to-video sequel can be: a bit of the cheap side, hardly original, but rarely lazy, as much of its in-name-only brethren.

Quarantine 2: Terminal has been given a very modest theatrical release — most likely fulfilling some sort of contractual obligation — but is apparently already available on demand through some cable providers and on the Playstation Network.

Grade: C

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comments Ellis Garvin

Ouch. Wish there had been a spoiler alert on some of that.

BTW, this is also available on Youtube for $6.99

William Goss

If you’re referring to what I think you’re referring to, I don’t feel that I gave away too much. The moment should still prove effective.

(Looks like it’s available on Amazon On Demand as well.)

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jonathan-Dixon/561383726 Jonathan Dixon

Its up on Xbox Live too. I liked it quite a bit.

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Review: Bad Teacher Isn’t Sufficiently Funny

Review: Bad Teacher Isn’t Sufficiently Funny - Movies - Film.com .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;} Skip page navigation Home Movies TV Photos Authors Search for: Film.com Home > movies > Review: Bad Teacher Isn’t Sufficiently FunnyEric D. Snider · website | e-mail | twitter

Eric has been a film critic since 1999, and a beard wearer since 2008. He holds a degree in journalism and used to work in "the newspaper industry," back when that was a thing.

Review: Bad Teacher Isn’t Sufficiently Funny Eric D. Snider June 24, 2011

CShe's bad; she just isn't very funny.

Cameron Diaz has been in some funny movies, but she’s never been the funniest character in one of them. She’s never needed to be; in the comedies, she’s always been a supporting character or a co-lead. That pattern of being at most mildly funny continues in Bad Teacher — only this time it’s a problem, because the movie is all about her. The teacher is bad, sure, but not funny.

This unimaginatively raunchy comedy follows the Bad Santa mold by putting a reprobate in an occupation normally associated with saintlier types. Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, a middle-school English teacher who drinks, smokes pot, swears at her students, and spends every class period showing movies like Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds. A gold-digger by nature, Elizabeth is only teaching (well, “teaching”) until she can land a rich husband. In the meantime, she needs $10,000 for a boob job, so she steals from the school fundraiser.

That’s only the beginning, something to set the tone. In general, the movie — directed by Jake Kasdan (Orange County, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) — has a pretty relaxed attitude about storyline, preferring to shamble along from one episode to another as it covers Elizabeth’s school year. She has her eyes on Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), a cheesy fellow teacher who comes from a wealthy family. She half-heartedly rebuffs the advances of the relatively decent gym teacher, Russell (Jason Segel), who’s broke. She is annoyed by her opposite, Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), the very picture of what a perky and dedicated middle-school teacher should be, and who is more Scott Delacorte’s type to boot. The thread running through it all is that Elizabeth needs to come up with $10,000.

There’s nothing wrong with a dark comedy about a transgressive character who never really learns anything. The problem here isn’t that Elizabeth is an unrepentantly awful person; it’s that she’s an uncreatively awful person. Diaz performs with gusto, but the screenplay (by Year One scribes Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg) doesn’t give her many funny things to say. She’s rude, petty, and shallow — but she rarely demonstrates it with anything better than a generic putdown. The very fact that she IS an awful person, by itself, is only amusing for a few minutes.

So while Elizabeth is clearly meant to be a funny character, most of the big laughs in the film — and there are some — come from the supporting cast. Lynn, a timid fellow teacher, is played by Phyllis Smith, better known as Phyllis on The Office; her delivery as a square who wants to be cool is pitch-perfect. Lucy Punch is likewise terrific as goody-goody Ms. Squirrel, who would be a fine enemy for Elizabeth if only Elizabeth herself were better defined. There’s John Michael Higgins as the nerdy Midwestern principal, Thomas Lennon as an easily duped representative of the state testing board, Matt Besser as a semi-enthusiastic Abraham Lincoln impersonator at a historical site, Molly Shannon as the mother of one of Elizabeth’s students — all sharp comic actors, all adept at shining during their few moments at center stage.

But we must return to the curiously underdeveloped parts of the film. The screenplay awkwardly implies that Scott Delacrote is a conservative prude, but doesn’t define it very well or give Timberlake much to work with, and Timberlake, grasping at straws, plays the role like an SNL character. When it comes time for Scott’s big moment — a bizarre sex scene — I was more puzzled than amused, because nothing had been done to establish WHY he would be acting this way. Similarly, there are oblique mentions of a mental breakdown Ms. Squirrel had a few years ago, but no payoff to it. Then there’s Elizabeth’s weird roommate (Eric Stonestreet), whose thing is that he’s … dumb? Intimidating? Crazy? He shows up in just a couple scenes, long enough for you to feel like he was supposed to be more fleshed out than he is.

That’s the movie in a nutshell: solid premise, good cast, not enough fleshing out. Bad Teacher is eager to wring laughs out of naughtiness, but doesn’t expend enough effort to get them. Just being bad isn’t sufficiently funny. You have to be bad in creative, clever, and original ways.

Grade: C

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comments Idontwantyourboringlife

i loves the movie, it was so hilarious!

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Review: Cars 2 an Improvement

William Goss | e-mail | twitter

Film critic. Wisenheimer. Member of the OFCS and the FFCC. Down with OPP. He wouldn't go in there if he were you.

William Goss June 24, 2011

B-Inspired in the moment and yet inconsequential in the scheme of things.

2006’s Cars was the first, and only, time that I had known disappointment from the house of Pixar. It was a feature steeped in nostalgia, crammed full of mawkish city-slicker-learns-to-appreciate-life clichés and a cast full of small-town archetypes. Gone was the sense of ingenuity that usually counterbalanced the studio’s standard sentiment; even with gorgeous animation, it was a lazy movie lovingly assembled, not to mention a slam-dunk for toy sales.

Now, Pixar has done the seemingly impossible: they made a better film, and did so while also making redneck tow truck sidekick Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) the lead. Yes, the fish-out-of-water tables have turned, with champion race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) offering to show Mater the world outside of Radiator Springs as McQueen competes in a globe-trotting grand prix organized by oil tycoon-turned-environmentalist Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard). However, sabotage is in the air, and as the crew travels from Tokyo (here, Towkyo) to Italy to London, the typically aloof Mater becomes increasingly mistaken for a deep cover agent by British intelligence operatives Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer).

At the total expense of the first film’s noble “slow down” message, Cars 2 is Pixar’s loving attempt to emulate the adventures of James Bond and an excuse to work in full-blown chases and fights alongside Lightning’s proper races (themselves as devotedly detailed as ever — check the exhaust vapors on the track). The opening escape sequence is a doozy, and although it’s surreal to see anthropomorphized automobiles wielding weapons at one another, director John Lasseter and co-director Brad Lewis treat the stakes as highly as they would in any other action film. The plot itself grows a bit convoluted, leading to patches of wheel-spinning (sorry), but it’s a generally inspired espionage riff all the same, bolstered throughout by Michael Giacchino’s game score.

The lessons at hand are typically pat, as Lightning learns to appreciate a friend he’s grown to resent (for acting like a complete buffoon), and Mater comes to understand how others perceive him (as a complete buffoon). Cable Guy still lays on his yeehaw mentality a little thick, but maybe it’s just the absence of lugnut jokes, the presence of lowered expectations, or the constant support of the always sage Michael Caine that makes his character slightly less insufferable than before. As for the logic of a world where cars eat sushi as well as conventional fuel and are forced to enter metal detectors at the airport (an initially amusing sight gag that invites more disturbing implications), forget it. Either the concept works, or it doesn’t.

I do consider Cars 1 to be decidedly minor in the span of the Pixar canon, and despite its pleasures, I’d rank Cars 2 similarly. If anything, it’s the closest the studio has come so far in cranking out something like a DreamWorks effort, a cartoon that is inspired in the moment and yet inconsequential in the scheme of things. Like many DreamWorks efforts of late, it’s a worthwhile diversion. The 3-D, while well-rendered, mutes the vibrant color palette — but let’s hope that Lasseter and friends soon return to the emotional ambition that has made Pixar such a reliable brand to date.

Grade: B-

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comments http://twitter.com/orzogen Dan Ruswick

I actually think that Dreamworks has been doing things at least on par, if not exceeding what Pixar has been able to muster as of late.

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Review: A Better Life Searches for the American Dream

William Goss | e-mail | twitter

Film critic. Wisenheimer. Member of the OFCS and the FFCC. Down with OPP. He wouldn't go in there if he were you.

William Goss June 27, 2011

B-A generally subdued depiction of class struggle.

There is little in Chris Weitz’s filmography to suggest that he might have a low-key drama like A Better Life in him.

Before his recent detours into big-budget fantasy franchises with The Golden Compass and Twilight: New Moon, Weitz’s sensibilities often skewed comedic, partnering with brother Paul to co-produce, co-direct, and/or co-write American Pie, American Dreamz, and the sublime About a Boy. The closest this film comes to any of those is a scene in which two girls belt out a song in their living room with plenty of sass, much to the delight of their family members, several of whom are heavily tattooed gangbangers. In that moment, it’s American Dreamz by way of the American dream.

When Luis (Jose Julian) first meets these local hoods, he and a friend are equally tempted by the possibility of dropping out of school and joining up, and once he sees their secure family interactions, it seems like an even more tempting alternative to his current home life. Mom is out of the picture — not dead, just gone — which means his father, Carlos (Demian Bichir), is either exhausted on the couch or off doing landscaping work just to make ends meet. Unbeknownst to Luis, Carlos is at a crossroads: if he could somehow afford his boss’ offer to sell their work truck, it comes with his client list to boot. But if Carlos gets caught driving without a license, he will likely end up deported to Mexico, leaving Luis behind in California with his aunt.

We know this can’t end well, and if you’ve seen 1948’s Bicycle Thieves, then you know what happens next: Carlos’ livelihood gets stolen right from under him, leaving father and son to scour Los Angeles for the precious truck and bond in the process. Weitz and screenwriter Eric Eason don’t dodge every cliché of urban pressures and cultural representation; from the moment Luis and his friend discuss the prospect of joining a gang, it’s apparent that at least one will give in, and a painfully distinct sampling of minorities wind up depicted in a montage as Carlos rides home from Beverly Hills to East L.A. It’s the stuff that bleeding heart op-ed columns are made of, but thankfully, a parade of handy heritage (“Oh, look! We’ve got time to enjoy this rodeo!”) isn’t all that A Better Life has to offer.

Though Julian is convincingly whiny and ungrateful in the film’s early stages, as he and Carlos spend an increasing amount of screen time together, their passive/aggressive rapport makes his performance easier to tolerate. The real standout is Bichir (Che), delivering a pitch-perfect performance of determination, defeat, and pride. In the face of great odds, and opposite his young co-star’s less nuanced turn, Carlos remains a steadfast individual whose struggles to survive become increasingly worthy of our emotional investment and remarkably universal in their implications.

Subtlety may not be Weitz’s strong suit, especially whenever the dialogue takes a turn toward openly espousing about the American dream, but the thorough sincerity of the father-son relationship and generally subdued depiction of class struggle ultimately keep this film more in line with intimate character studies like The Visitor and less like self-important social commentaries such as Under the Same Moon.

Grade: B-

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