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Category Archives: Hollywood Movies Reviews

The Vow (2012)

The Vow (2012)

  • Release Date: 02/10/2012
  • Rating: PG13
  • Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins
  • Genre: Drama
  • Director: Michael Sucsy
  • Cast: Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum, Sam Neill, Jessica Lange
By Thomas Leupp

The romantic drama The Vow is not adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, though I doubt its producers would be offended if you’d assumed otherwise. In fact, I suspect they’re banking on it. The film’s stars, Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, are both recognized veterans of the Sparks subgenre – she gave us the indelible (for better or worse) Notebook, while he starred in the somewhat less successful Dear John. Moreover, its premise, pitting love against the insidious after-effects of brain trauma, may be inspired by a true story, but its one-two punch of tragedy and sentiment is straight out of Sparks’ tear-jerking playbook.

It’s all there in The Vow’s opening montage, which first introduces Leo (Tatum) and Paige (McAdams), two desperately smitten bohemian-artist types (she’s a sculptor; he’s a musician/studio owner), and then rudely separates them, all in one slick, heartbreaking sequence. There’s the meet-cute at the DMV, the whirlwind courtship, the quirky marriage proposal, the kitschy guerrilla wedding (replete with vows scrawled on restaurant menus), and, finally, the brutal car accident, glimpsed in agonizing slow-motion, that leaves poor Paige in a coma.

When Paige awakens in the hospital, Leo is aghast to discover his wife doesn’t recognize him. While her girl-next-door beauty emerged from the crash remarkably intact, it seems her brain did not fare so well, suffering injuries that effectively wiped out her memory of the preceding five years – a span comprising the entirety of her relationship with Leo. Her mind’s clock rewound a half-decade, Paige assumes the identity of Paige from five years prior, like a rebooted computer whose owner neglected to backup the hard drive in a timely manner.

It soon becomes achingly apparent that the Paige from five years prior was markedly different from the Paige we met in the opening credits: a superficial sorority girl, on track for a law degree, averse to city-dwelling, partial to blueberry mojitos, cowed by her domineering father (Sam Neill), and engaged to a corporate douche (Scott Speedman). Upon emerging from her slumber, she finds the remnants from her old life all-too-eager to re-assimilate their lost lamb into the Bourgeois Borg, even if she does have one of those icky tattoos.

In danger of losing the love of his life to her former one, a heartbroken Leo resolves to win back Paige, even if it means starting from scratch and wooing her all over again. Aligned against him are the grim realities of brain damage as well as Paige’s family and former fiancé, whose cult-like efforts at re-education seem ever-creepier the more I contemplate them. (There are unintentional echoes of Total Recall in Paige’s arc, which I suppose would make Leo her Kuato.)

Cultishness and Total Recall allusions notwithstanding, The Vow flirts with a more unsettling notion, one seemingly at odds with the romantic drama mission, implying that what we know as love is simply the product of our memories, tenuous and transient, and not the profound, transcendent bond that Hallmark promised.

Fear not: The Vow is by no means a dense metaphysical treatise. Director Michael Sucsy (Grey Gardens) and is far more concerned with heart-tugging than thought-provoking. To that end, he steers admirably clear of grand epiphanies and other moments of high melodrama, preferring instead to apportion the sap relatively evenly throughout the story. The strategy is less manipulative but also less impactful. The script, from Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein, and Jason Katims, can’t maintain the energy of its opening act, and apart from its brain damage twist, is a tediously familiar romantic-drama slog. I found myself secretly rooting for some old-fashioned emotional overkill, if only to alleviate the boredom.

The two leads, for their part, form a charming pair. McAdams is as endearing as ever, working well within her comfort zone, and equally likable Tatum bears his character’s anguish ably, even if he’ll never be credible as a bohemian-artist type. Their easy, appealing chemistry might be enough to satisfy the Sparks-philes, but it’s not enough to sustain the film.

Chronicle (2012)

Chronicle (2012)

  • Release Date: 02/03/2012
  • Rating: PG13
  • Runtime: Not Yet Available
  • Genre:Thriller
  • Director:Jay Alaimo
  • Cast: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly
By Thomas Leupp

Chronicle, a dark sci-fi thriller about teenage superheroes, is a “found-footage” film, and it counts as one of the rare instances in which in which the increasingly prevalent – and increasingly maligned – technique is appropriately deployed, and not merely a cheap gimmick for manufacturing tension.

The story begins with Andrew (Dane DeHaan), a pale, saturnine lad, switching on a camera and declaring to his drunken father, who fumes outside his bedroom door, that he intends to “film everything.” And so he does. Narrating in a gloomy, nasal drone, he documents the daily indignities of high school – being accosted by bullies, eating lunch alone on the bleachers – and crafts what by all appearances promises to be a smashing audition video for the Trenchcoat Mafia.

Andrew’s circumstances change considerably when he, his cousin Matt (Alex Russell, miscast as a cerebral egotist), and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), the school’s reigning alpha male, chance upon a hole in a forest clearing that leads them deep underground, where they encounter something strange and otherworldly. Soon thereafter, the boys begin to manifest powers of telekinesis that would make a Jedi envious.

Rather than don spandex suits and hunt criminals, the boys do, well, what you would expect impulsive, judgment-impaired teenage boys to do: They play pranks on unsuspecting department-store shoppers, try to one-up each other with increasingly hazardous stunts, absolutely dominate beer pong competitions, and otherwise prove the perils of mating great power with great irresponsibility. (Their more prurient impulses, it should be noted, are kept safely within PG-13 limits.) This is when Chronicle is at its freshest and most compelling, enacting the mischievous daydreams of sci-fi-steeped youths.

Of the three, Andrew emerges as the most gifted in the use of his powers, and he clearly relishes the newfound confidence they bring. But his less admirable qualities – emotional instability, hypersensitivity, and a troubling amorality – stubbornly remain, and when events turn against him, they lead him down the dark path all-too-conspicuously foreshadowed from the film’s outset.

Chronicle’s director, Josh Trank, making his feature-film debut, demonstrates a keen grasp of sci-fi theatrics as well as a gift for spectacle. He adheres strictly to found-footage parameters, refusing to cheat matters even during the film’s blistering climax, which cobbles together security-camera footage, cell-phone recordings, television news broadcasts, and other video sources without losing coherence. It’s a thrilling sequence, unlike any the genre’s seen before, and a testament to Trank’s technical flair.

It’s when the action slows that Trank’s hand grows exceedingly heavy, pummeling us with scenes of ham-fisted histrionics that undermine the sense of verisimilitude the found-footage format is designed to foster. The milestones along Andrew’s path to supervillainy are culled directly from the Handbook of Psychological Distress, from the taunts of his cartoonishly abusive father to the incessant hacking of his terminally ill mother to the varied humiliations inflicted by insensitive peers. Such on-the-nose storytelling results in a thriller that markedly lacks any real element of suspense. We know precisely what’s going to happen next because the filmmakers tell us, over and over again, using language as subtle as a jackhammer. Moreover, Chronicle’s vision is so determinedly bleak, so devoutly invested in “keeping it real,” that in the end the film comes across as a ludicrously overwrought emo fantasy.

source by hollywood com

 

Big Miracle (2012)

Big Miracle (2012)

  • Release Date: 02/03/2012
  • Rating: PG
  • Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins
  • Genre: Comedy drama, Romance, Adventure
  • Director: Ken Kwapis
  • Cast: John Krasinski, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Bell, Dermot Mulroney
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By Thomas Leupp
You’d be forgiven for assuming Big Miracle, the new film from Ken Kwapis (He’s Just Not That Into You, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), to be a made-for-TV movie. Its feel-good fervor and human-interest subject matter – the true tale of three whales trapped beneath the ice off the coast of Alaska in 1988 and the rescue efforts mounted on their behalf – certainly merit the Hallmark seal of approval, and its ensemble cast is littered with small-screen stars. But it opens this week not on the Discovery Channel or Lifetime but theaters – a few thousand of them, in fact. Perhaps that’s the “miracle” of which the title speaks.

John Krasinski, taking care not to stray too far from his Office persona, stars as Adam Carlson, a Barrow, Alaska, TV newsman dreaming of the big time when a local boy (Ahmaogak Sweeney) arrives with a story that just might get him there: On the eve of their annual migration, a trio of grey whales have become marooned under the Arctic Circle’s fast-forming ice sheet. Incapable of making the four-mile trek to open seas without running out of air, they cling to a shrinking hole in the ice, their only source of oxygen, as time slowly runs out.

No sooner has Adam filed his first report than Barrow is inundated with reporters, turning the plight of the whales into a media cause célèbre. A broad-based coalition is formed to free Fred, Wilma, and Bamm-Bamm, as they come to be nicknamed, bringing together such strange bedfellows as a headstrong environmental activist (Drew Barrymore), a scheming oil magnate (Ted Danson), a White House political operative (Vinessa Shaw), a native Alaskan tribe, and the Soviet navy.

Big Miracle is conceived as an inspirational family film, and as such there is the usual array of heart-tugging scenes, but there’s also an odd strain of cynicism that permeates it. Hardly a soul in the film, save perhaps for Barrymore’s character, embraces the whales’ cause with what might be deemed altruistic intentions. Krasinski’s anchor eyes the crisis as an opportunity to advance his career, as does a rival reporter, played by Kristen Bell, who arrives on the scene shortly thereafter. Danson’s oilman is seeking a public-relations boost, while Shaw’s politico hopes to burnish the eco-friendly credentials of George H.W. Bush in advance of his presidential run. Even Krasinski’s Eskimo sidekick makes a killing hawking souvenirs and accessories to visiting rubes. The whole thing ends up feeling like some kind of saccharine paean to the virtues of self-interest, a Hallmark special scripted by Ayn Rand.

Big Miracle never quite rises to the level of tear-jerker, despite the best efforts of Barrymore, who all but channels the whales’ suffering with her histrionics. Part of the problem, frankly, is that grey whales aren’t the most photogenic of species. (There’s a reason why their oceanic rivals, the dolphins, get the bulk of the plum movie jobs.) At any rate, their majesty is scarcely apparent when confined to a hole in the ice, depriving Big Miracle of those endearing “Awwwww…” moments so crucial to the success of animals-in-peril films.

Still, it’s hard not to feel bad for the poor creatures, unsightly as they may be, as their plight is gradually overshadowed in Big Miracle by the contrived human drama that ensues on their periphery. (They are, in many ways, surrogates for the audience.) In the end, when the whales finally escape their icy prison and take leave of their human “helpers,” one longs to escape with them.

source by hollywood com

The Grey (2012)

The Grey (2012)

  • Release Date: 01/27/2012
  • Rating: R
  • Runtime: 1 hr 57 mins
  • Genre: Adventure
  • Director: Joe Carnahan
  • Cast: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts
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By Thomas Leupp
Liam Neeson is that rare breed of actor who grows more badass with age, who, at the cusp of 60, appears quite credible besting men 30 years younger – or anyone else foolish enough to provoke him. In The Grey – a gripping but ponderous man-versus-wild epic directed and co-written by Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) – his foe is no less formidable than Mother Nature, in all her fury. She has met her match.

Neeson plays Ottway, a man whose sole job on an Alaskan oil rig consists of gunning down the occasional wolf that makes a run at an oilworker. (Fences, apparently, being in short supply in the Arctic.) Ottway is a hard, stoic sort, and one gets the strong sense that he tended toward irascibility even before his wife departed (for reasons not made clear till late in the film), taking with her his remaining purpose for living. He gains a new one, appropriately enough, when his flight home crashes down in the Alaskan wilderness, killing all but a handful of its passengers. Ottway, his survival skills honed in a previous life, emerges as the only person capable of guiding them to salvation.

Carnahan surrounds Neeson with an ensemble of familiar types, the most notable of which are Talget (Dermot Mulroney), the family man, Henrick (Dallas Roberts), the conscience, and Diaz (Frank Grillo), the jerk. They encounter the predictable male team-building hurdles, puffing chests and locking horns, before Ottway asserts himself as the Alpha Male. Figuring they’ll perish before salvation arrives, they agree to make the perilous trek to the nearest human habitat, braving any number of dangers, the most fearsome of which are the ravenous “rogue wolves” that roam the landscape. (The film, shot in British Columbia in conditions that were apparently every bit as brutal as they appear on-screen, certainly looks authentic – both beautiful and ominous.)

When they aren’t battling the predatory lupine menace, the men have time – far too much time – to reflect upon their plight and its existential implications. The Grey would have been perfectly enjoyable as a straightforward survival epic, the “Liam punches wolves” movie promised by the trailer, but Carnahan is intent on imbuing the film with a philosophical poignancy wholly unsuitable for a film featuring lines like “We’re in Fuck City, population five and dwindling,” and “We’re gonna cook this son of a bitch!” – the latter uttered at the capture of one of the wolves. As a film, Carnahan’s macho metaphysics leave The Grey feeling a bit overcooked.

source by hollywood com

Man on a Ledge (2012)

Man on a Ledge (2012)

  • Release Date: 01/27/2012
  • Rating: PG13
  • Runtime: Not Yet Available
  • Genre: Drama, Thriller
  • Director: Asger Leth
  • Cast: Sam Worthington, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris, Edward Burns
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By Thomas Leupp

In the cinematic desert that is the January-February movie-release schedule, one gains a greater appreciation for mere competence. And that’s precisely what you’ll get with Man on a Ledge, a mid-budget thriller with modest aspirations and genuine popcorn appeal. Sam Worthington (Avatar, Clash of the Titans) stars as Nick Cassidy, a former New York City cop wrongly convicted for the theft of a prized diamond. After exhausting all judicial avenues for exoneration, he takes the unusual and seemingly desperate next step of planting himself on a ledge outside the penthouse of midtown’s Roosevelt Hotel and threatening to jump. An NYPD psychologist (Elizabeth Banks) is summoned to talk him down, unaware that Nick harbors an ulterior motive. From his perch above midtown, he is secretly orchestrating a scheme to take revenge against the corrupt corporate chieftain (Ed Harris) who engineered his demise and prove his innocence once and for all.

Director Asger Leth, making his U.S. feature-film debut with Man on a Ledge, keeps the pace brisk and never allows the tone to stray into self-seriousness, which is crucial for a movie whose premise is so devoutly ridiculous. The script, from Pablo F. Fenjves, provides enough feints and twists to keep us engaged. Jamie Bell and Genesis Rodriguez aren’t the most believable of couples, but there’s a screwball charm to their comic routine as amateur thieves charged with aiding Nick’s scheme. (Leth can’t resist inserting an entirely superfluous – but nonetheless greatly appreciated – scene of the criminally gorgeous Rodriguez stripping down to a thong in the middle of a heist.) Worthington makes for a likable populist protagonist, even if his Australian accent betrays him on copious occasions, and Harris’ disturbingly emaciated frame lends an added menace to his devious plutocrat villain.
Source By Hollywood com

Underworld: Awakening (2012)

Underworld: Awakening (2012)

  • Release Date: 01/20/2012
  • Rating: R
  • Runtime: 1 hr 28 mins
  • Genre: Horror
  • Director: Bjorn Stein
  • Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Theo James
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By Thomas Leupp
After sitting out most of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the 2009 “prequel” to the Underworld saga, Kate Beckinsale returns to her trademark role as the face of the blockbuster action-horror franchise in Underworld: Awakening. The film finds Beckinsale’s vampire heroine, Selene, waking up in a research facility after a dozen years in hibernation, whereupon she discovers that both vampires and lycans, the traditional adversaries of the Underworld universe, are now nearly extinct – “cleansed,” as it were, by us good-old humans – and that her 12-year-old daughter, Eve (India Eisley), is imperiled. It seems that both the dreaded lycans and a mad scientist named Dr. Jacob Lane (poor Stephen Rea) are after the girl, on account of her special DNA.

All of which is meant to provide a serviceable backdrop for a good 85 minutes or so of relentless carnage, orchestrated with relish by the Swedish directing tandem of Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein and meted out dutifully by Beckinsale. Nine years after she first portrayed Selene, the actress appears as comfortable as ever in her familiar black leather as she carves through waves of monstrous creatures and hapless henchmen, performing the odd acrobatic feat to better position herself for the killing blow. The bloodlust occasionally pauses to allow Beckinsale a moment to emote over lost love or seek a fleeting bond with her offspring, but soon more CGI beasts arrive on hand, and the soulless slaughter hastily recommences. Gorehounds hungry for splatter will delight at the myriad ways Underworld: Awakening finds to depict an exploding skull (in fabulous, brain-bursting IMAX 3D!), but in the end, they’re likely the only ones who’ll leave the theater sated.

source by hollywood com

Haywire (2012)

Haywire (2012)

  • Release Date: 01/20/2012
  • Rating: R
  • Runtime: Not Yet Available
  • Genre: Thriller, Spy film
  • Director: Steven Soderbergh
  • Cast: Gina Carano, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor
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By Thomas Leupp
According to official Haywire lore, director Steven Soderbergh chanced upon the woman who would become the star of his breakneck action-thriller one night while watching television. Which isn’t entirely unusual, except that Soderbergh wasn’t watching some obscure indie film or BBC miniseries, but a bout of women’s mixed martial arts fighting. So impressed was he at the sight of Gina Carano, an American Gladiators alum turned cage fighter, that he had the Haywire script, from The Limey writer Lem Dobbs, reworked to accommodate her casting.

In the film, a conventional spy-gone-rogue tale made unconventional by its director and star, Carano plays Mallory Kane, a black-ops freelancer who seeks vengeance against her betrayers upon being double-crossed. Watching her in action, it’s easy to see why Soderbergh was so enamored. Carano is a physical marvel: strong and agile, a skilled fighter and grappler with the face of a model and the shoulders of a linebacker. Having grown accustomed to waif-like action heroines played unconvincingly by the likes of Beckinsale, Jovovich, and Jolie, it’s refreshing to witness an actress who can deliver a knockout blow – and take one – with some credulity.

And Carano kicks a staggering amount of ass in Haywire. In the film’s many fight scenes, Soderbergh prefers wide angles and long takes, the better to showcase his star’s talent for violence. There are no shaky-cam close-ups to cheat the action, and the sound is almost strictly diegetic, lending each of Carano’s brawls (and they are brawls, messy and destructive) a brutal verisimilitude.

It’s when the action stops in Haywire that Carano’s deficiencies as an actress become apparent – she’s wooden and flat, well beyond the requirements of her coldly efficient character – and so Soderbergh labors conspicuously to ensure it hardly ever does. When Mallory Kane isn’t fighting, she’s running, a fugitive agent scrambling to find out who engineered her downfall even as threats amass against her. Each lengthy pursuit is stylishly photographed from a variety of exotic angles (my favorite being an extended tracking shot of Carano, facing the camera, in the center of the frame, as if to say, “Jesus, would you look at her?”), Hitchcockian chase sequences to cleanse our palate in between the film’s bloody skirmishes.

Carano’s dialogue is wisely kept spare, her expressions limited exclusively to icy stares and Mona Lisa smiles. Most of the talking is done by her co-stars, an impressive lot that includes Ewan McGregor as her boss and former lover, Channing Tatum as a fellow freelancer, and Michael Fassbender as a British agent with whom she partners on a dubious mission. All three eventually end up in combat with her, and it’s hardly a spoiler to say they don’t fare well. Against a figure as formidable as Carano, Obi-wan Kenobi, G.I. Joe, and Magneto don’t stand a chance.

source by hollywood com

Contraband (2012)

Contraband (2012)

  • Release Date: 01/13/2012
  • Rating: R
  • Runtime: 1 hr 49 mins
  • Genre: Action
  • Director: Not Yet Available
  • Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi
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By Thomas Leupp

The nautical heist thriller Contraband is a remake of Reykjavik-Rotterdam, an Icelandic film from 2008 which, admittedly, I’ve yet to see. (It’s curiously difficult to find stateside.) Presumably, there must have been something about it that was compelling enough to warrant the effort and expense of an American adaptation. Whatever it was, it didn’t survive the no doubt complicated process of translating it into a proper Mark Wahlberg vehicle.

Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, once a legendary New Orleans smuggler but now happily law-abiding as a home-security contractor. The same, however, cannot be said of his punk brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), who runs illegal shipments for a tattooed hoodlum named Tim Riggs (Giovanni Ribisi). When Andy makes the unwise decision to dump his valuable narcotics cargo in advance of a Customs raid, earning the dreaded pay-up-or-die ultimatum from his unsavory boss, Chris tries in vain to intervene on his behalf, only to be rudely rebuffed. Which leaves him with only one option to save Andy’s skin: One Last Job.

The director of Contraband, Baltasar Kormakur, actually starred in Reykjavik-Rotterdam – a piece of trivia which, unfortunately, proves far more interesting than anything found in his remake. It seems his familiarity with the material bred banality, if not necessarily contempt. His approach is a kind of Bourne-lite: the shaky-cam is restrained enough to minimize audience headaches, but the ultimate result is stultifyingly generic.

Essential to any successful Mark Wahlberg film, from Boogie Nights to The Fighter, has been to surround Wahlberg with more accomplished and versatile actors, thereby allowing him to focus on his core competencies of scowling, cursing, and otherwise radiating his unique brand of low-watt charisma. Kormakur assembled capable-enough performers for Contraband, only to saddle them with uniformly bland characters.

Having grown accustomed to Kate Beckinsale as the leather-clad heroine of the Underworld films, I found it odd – and a bit disappointing – to see her reduced to the role of the protagonist’s fretful wife. Ribisi’s novel strategy for transcending his miscasting as a clichéd white-trash villain is to adopt a bizarre, high-pitched accent, presumably Southern in origin but unlike any Southern accent I’ve ever witnessed. Ben Foster plays Wahlberg’s best friend, an ex-con and recovering alcoholic who seems doomed to relapse on both fronts, if only because he’s being played by Ben Foster. Diego Luna, J.K. Simmons, Lukas Haas are underutilized in one-note roles.

I confess to be unfamiliar with the vagaries of illicit foreign-goods transport, but I have to think it’s more exciting than what unfolds in Contraband. No one expects it to rival the glamour and of, say, casino robbery, but Kormakur depicts smuggling with all the verve and panache of a tax audit. The film’s lone fireworks occur on land, during a stop-off in Panama City, when Wahlberg’s character is forced by the local crime boss (Luna) in an armored-car hold-up. A heist-within-a-heist, if you will. But soon it’s back on the boat, where the momentum ceases, and the movie sinks.

source by hollywood com

The Devil Inside (2012)

The Devil Inside (2012)

  • Release Date: 01/06/2012
  • Rating: R
  • Runtime: 1 hr 23 mins
  • Genre: Horror
  • Director: William Brent Bell
  • Cast: Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth, Suzan Crowley
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By Thomas Leupp
The opening credits of the found-footage excretion The Devil Inside include a helpful disclaimer advising us that the Vatican “did not endorse this film, nor aid in its completion,” just in case we might be inclined to believe the Holy See were in the business of making schlocky horror flicks. One’s heart goes out to Satan, whose involvement in the film is pretty clearly implied by the title, but who received no such disclaimer. Even he deserves better than to be associated with this dreck.

The pseudo-doc-style story centers on a young girl, Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade), whose mother, Maria (Suzan Crowley), murdered three people twenty years prior during what was later revealed to be an exorcism gone awry. Seeking to learn more about the tragedy that consumed her mother, Isabella travels to Italy, where Maria is currently housed in a Vatican-run mental hospital. The doctors prove frustratingly insensitive to her mother’s affliction, causing Isabella to see out a pair of young renegade exorcists (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) for help.

Maria is one creepy bird, a frazzled cat-lady whose eyes blaze with penetrating, high-octane craziness even under heaviest of sedation. An early scene, in which Isabella meets with her near-catatonic mother and gently tries to ascertain whether her insanity is of the conventional or demonically-inspired variety, oozes tension as we wait for her whispered ramblings to explode into full-on Satanic mania. It’s a terrifically fraught scene, by far the best in the film, and, sadly, the only point in which we ever come close to being scared.

The film proffers a variety of different narrative threads and chooses to resolve none of them. What happened to the English priest’s uncle, or Isabella’s baby? And what of that poor possessed gal with the hemorrhaging vagina? Was she ever able to get that under control? God only knows. Even crazy-eyes Maria, the film’s MVP, makes an all-too-hasty exit, never to be hear from again after a half-baked exorcism attempt.

Director/co-writer William Brent Bell’s clear aim is to mimic the wildly successful Paranormal Activity films, but he ignores the found-footage standard-bearer’s most important precept, which is to keep the story simple, rely as little on the “actors” as possible, and pile on the cheap scares, one after another. Instead, we’re handed an abundance of character details we never asked for, and which never really amount to anything, save for some choice over-acting in the third act when the devil’s machinations turn everyone against each other. The film devolves into a kind of exorcism-themed Real World episode, replete with “confessionals” in which the characters tearfully air their frustrations — as if we gave a damn. Perhaps it’s a good thing we don’t, because The Devil Inside concludes with what might be the least-satisfying horror ending in a decade.

source by hollywood com

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011)


  • Release Date: 12/16/2011
  • Rating: G
  • Runtime: 1 hr 27 mins
  • Genre: Children’s/family
  • Director: Mike Mitchell
  • Cast: Jason Lee, Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney
Click here for Full Cast Info
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By Thomas Leupp
As with its two predecessors, the animated/live-action hybrid Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked is positioned to open during the holiday season, when demand for family entertainment is high and standards are grievously low. How low, you ask? The first two episodes in the franchise, 2007’s Alvin and the Chipmunks and 2009’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel earned over $800 million worldwide combined. It hurt to write that last sentence.

You’d think such success would instill a certain pride of craftsmanship in the filmmakers, but almost everything about Chipwrecked suggests the opposite, from the hackneyed screenwriting to the lazy acting to the cheap-looking production design. The only aspect that truly impresses is the animation of the CG characters, who are crisp and detailed and vibrant – a far cry from their human counterparts.

After sitting out much of the Squeakquel, Jason Lee, his schedule freed up following the cancellation of My Name Is Earl, returns as the Chipmunks’ beleaguered manager, Dave Seville. Also back for another quick payday as the primary nemesis, Ian, is David Cross, no doubt ruing the three-picture contract he signed.

Dave, Ian, the Chipmunks, and their female counterparts, the Chipettes, are aboard a luxury cruise liner when a mishap triggered by the ever-disobedient Alvin (Justin Long) casts them overboard and onto a remote tropical island, where they embark on a series of sub-comic misadventures, finding time in between for the odd ear-splitting rendition of a contemporary pop tune. Songs covered include Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” Pink’s “Trouble,” Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor,” Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair,” and LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem.”

What’s always amazed me about these films is the impressive roster of actors recruited to voice the Chipmunks and Chipettes – including Long, Anna Faris, Amy Poehler, and Christina Applegate – when digital helium added in post-production renders them all but unrecognizable. Aside from differences in pitch, the characters’ voices are nearly indistinguishable from each other.

For those parents who find themselves forced to endure Chipwrecked, the best thing I can say about it is that it will keeps your child’s brain occupied without doing serious damage to yours – provided you don’t get a concussion from repeated face-palming.

source by hollywood com