March 31st, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Spencer Berger, Brian D. Phelan, Gabriel Tigerman, Kerry Knuppe, Jennifer Batter, Ned Bellamy, Marta Martin
Director: Monty Miranda
Runtime: 88 Minutes
Distributor: Shadow Distribution
Rating: NR
In the world of Indie film the plotless ramble has been a staple for many years now, chiefly because they’re suitably cheap and suitably manageable. Dialogue heavy, character driven, they can be set anywhere you like, with whoever you like, about anything you like. And while some are outstanding and others just plain dreadful, most of them at least have the decency to be about something. It’s a relatively small, but relatively important detail that seems to have gotten lost somewhere with Skills Like This, which is maddening because it offers a quite unique and intriguing set up that’s positively bursting with possibilities.
During the final act of his latest stage opus, somewhere around the closing soliloquy delivered by the spaceman, the WWI fighter ace, and the Hispanic gypsy (which is so bad his grandfather has a coronary in the audience), Max (Spencer Berger) decides he’s an awful writer who’s never going to make it. For Max, who has never been able to do anything else this comes as something of a gut punching moment of clarity that leaves him bereft of both hope and options.
Joining his two buddies in a nearby diner for a little post-disaster dissection, Max is flanked by professional underachiever Tommy (Phelan), who, desperate to support his friend, is over the moon at Max’s decision to abandon all hope. Offering a slightly more centrist view is Dave (Tigerman) who preaches Max should straighten up, fly right, and get a job, despite the fact that he’s there because his own boss thinks he’s called Roger and therefore won’t notice he’s absent. Desperate for a mere ounce of self-determination, Max acts on his split second impulse to tear into the bank across the street, grab the guard’s gun, put it to his own head and demand all the money. Something he finds, feels pretty damn good.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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March 30th, 2009 admin
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March 30th, 2009 admin
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic, Jon Huertas, Seamus Dever, Tamal Jones, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, molly C. Quinn, Susan Sullivan
Created By: Andrew W. Marlowe
Network: ABC
Original Air Date: 09/03/2009 –
In yet another network retread of what’s already going on with a slight twist comes ABC’s newest midseason offering, Castle (Mondays, 10pm), a show that riffs on the buddy formula, splices in a bit of romantic comedy and drops it amidst a police procedural. Having been dicked around at Fox with the likes of Firefly and Drive (canceled after two episodes. Two!) Nathan Fillion trys his luck next door and their loss is our gain. Dubbed by some as a “seventeen percenter,” in that his involvement with something automatically makes whatever that something is seventeen percent better, Fillion is the television equivalent of something shiny and his megawatt charisma should ensure this one’s a keeper.
Fillion stars as author Rick Castle, a best-selling crime novelist and man child who has the mayor on speed dial, the press eating out of his hand, and adoring fans lining up for him to sign their breasts. But it’s not all roses. Rick can’t write and having just killed off his long running cash cow character needs some inspiration. His agent who is also his ex-wife says publishers are threatening to reclaim his advance. His live-in mother has a nasty habit of airing his dirty laundry to anyone within earshot and his daughter (a part so ripped out of Californication they should just give her a black wig and call her Becca) just looks on and sighs an oh so precocious sigh. So far, so formula.
Then as luck would have it a killer strikes, staging gruesome murders in exactly the manner of a character from one of Castle’s books. Detective Beckett (Stana Katic) naturally interviews Becket and finds him instantly obnoxious, so naturally the show wastes no time shackling them together as investigator and special advisor on her captains orders. He’s intrigued by her, she’s repelled by him and we’re off and running.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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March 29th, 2009 admin
Subtitled the “outstanding theater of thrills” this CBS anthology was originally, like so much old time drama, born from the radio. Running from 1942-1962 Suspense was a recurring weekly broadcast that for half an hour sought to hook the viewer into a murky world of mystery.
The original audition show (radio equivalent of a pilot) was interestingly enough directed by Alfred Hitchcock and taken from a short story he had filmed some years earlier. Save for a couple of forays into science fiction and other fantasy, such as an adaptation of H.P Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, episodes were stand alone and were grounded in the real world.
The television series, which began in 1949, coincided with the arrival of Elliot Lewis who took over as producer (he can be seen accepting an award during the intermission for the episode titled “Pier 17″) and the series took on a renewed air of sophistication with more emphasis placed on production values and utilizing his considerable connections to land higher profile names (including Orsen Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda and Cary Grant).
For the most part the television series was sadly never graced with such talent, although the series did provide an occasional paycheck to then largely unknown actors the likes of Leslie Nielson, Paul Newman, Anne Bancroft, Rod Steiger, and Jack Lemmon to name but a few.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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March 29th, 2009 admin
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March 22nd, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Zach Creggor, Trevor Moore, Raquel Alessi, Molly Stanton, Craig Robinson, Hugh Hefner
Director: Zach Cregor and Trevor Moore
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Rating: R
It might be difficult to believe that two young, not exactly hideous guys with their own TV show have trouble getting themselves laid. But based on this effort Zach Creggor and Trevor Moore of The Whitest Kids You Know have likely not only never been laid, but if they carry on like this never will be either. Coming out of this appallingly unfunny teen sex comedy, that’s as unoriginal as it is unnecessary, it’s clear these guys not only have no clue how to talk to women, they don’t know how to write a script either. In fact they don’t really have a script, they’ve got a couple of ideas for gross out set pieces (wouldn’t it be funny if some girl you were with spat out a mouthful of cum in front of your girlfriend’s conservative parents) and those dictate the resulting slew of directionless, tasteless, humorless, vaguely related vignettes that follow.
Miss March opens with youngsters Eugene (Creggor) and Tucker (Moore) in the midst of a life changing experience – the discovery of an elder brother’s Playboy. Flash-forward to senior year and Eugene is a slavering pervert while Tucker and his girlfriend Cindi (Alessi) preach abstinence to kids; scaring them with the aforementioned elder brother’s tale of debauchery resulting in teen pregnancy, retarded children, and a house full of people burned to death (don’t ask, really). On prom night when the pair pledged to do the deed Tucker instead accidentally knocks himself into a coma. Awakened four years later (Eugene cracks him over the head with a bat), Tucker is astonished to find Cindi spread across the pages of Playboy. Desperate to escape his rampaging epileptic girlfriend who he just stabbed in the face with a fork (again, really better to just not ask) Eugene suggests a fact finding road tip to the Bunny Mansion.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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March 21st, 2009 admin
2007
Starring: Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro, David Duchovney, Alexis Llewellyn, Micah Berry, Robin Weigert, John Carroll Lynch, Alison Lohman
Director: Susanne Bier
Runtime: 118 Minutes
Distributor: Dreamworks
Rating: R
Anyone who might have had his or her interest in Halle Berry piqued by the Oscar win for Monsters Ball (which despite the acclaim, let’s be honest, no one saw) and then went out and rented the triple-headed clunker of Gothika, Catwoman and Perfect Stranger could be forgiven for thinking that the statue win was just some sick joke. Thankfully her sublime, nuanced performance in Things We Lost in the Fire as a grieving widow clinging to her dead husband’s best friend shows not only that Ball was no fluke, but also that Berry is an actress that benefits from a strong director capable of eliciting delicacy.
On the face of it Audrey (Berry) and Brian (the impossibly amiable David Duchovny) have a blissful marriage in a nice home with two wonderful children. The only source of tension is Brian’s continued unconditional support of his old friend Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), a recovering drug addict whom, despite Audrey’s constant nagging and vehement disapproval, Brian still drives out to check in on with a bag of groceries long after everyone else in Jerry’s life has walked away. When Brian is tragically killed one night after trying to make peace in a sidewalk domestic dispute, Audrey, for reasons she can’t explain, reaches out to Jerry; together they form an uneasy bond as they struggle to work through the grief, their own issues and those of the other.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
Posted in Drama, Feature Films, Reviews | No Comments »
March 19th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Jason Spevack, Clifton Collins Jr.
Director: Christine Jeffs
Runtime: 102 Minutes
Distributor: Overture Films
Rating: R
Glancing at this latest offering from tiny indie production outfit Big Beach Films, it’s hard not to draw comparisons to their 2006 sleeper smash Little Miss Sunshine. From the comically misleading title, through the estranged siblings, to Alan Arkin acting as the blunt sage to a troubled, precocious child, the similarities are unmistakable. But earnest, committed performances from an all round stellar ensemble headed up by two young women destined for mega-stardom mean this is far from just a cheap imitation.
Yes, it does look like you’re garden variety Sundance movie (where it was unsurprisingly nominated for a Grand Jury Prize); the Anywheresville Midwestern setting (specifically Albuquerque); the acoustic indie soundtrack; familial dysfunction – a distilled amalgamation of every “colorfully quirky” indie you’ve ever seen. The film makes no bones about its intentions, announcing itself in an opening scene that sees a gentleman enter a sporting goods outlet, politely ask to inspect the 20 gauge in the display case, insert a shell from his pocket into the chamber, and promptly splatter his brains all over the store. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a black comedy. But beneath the wearily hip veneer is a deceptively simple ballad of decent, ordinary folk trying to do the best with what they’ve got, that unlike many of its kin is thoroughly unpretentious and that earns our appreciation rather than demanding it.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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March 17th, 2009 admin
Starring: Will Ferrell
Created By: Will Ferrell
Network: HBO
Original Air Date: 03/14/09
A HBO recording of Ferrell’s Broadway production written by him and directed by his long-time comedy partner Adam McKay, You’re Welcome America wastes little time with Dick Cheney informing audience that all cell phones must be switched ON for illegal surveillance, and that Haliburton are in charge of the washrooms meaning toilet paper is now $15 a sheet.
Condensing the last eight years under the reign of arguably the most failed president in U.S. history, Ferrell delivers a broad scattershot of lampoonery encompassing every aspect of number 43’s inimitable idiosyncrasy. In terms of body language, Ferrell has the man down cold; the constant nodding of the head, the waddle, the opened armed hunch forward that is somewhere between John Wayne and a guy who has just shit himself, the hand waving punctuation that accompanies everything he says. It’s all practiced to perfection.
As good at improv as he might be, Ferrell always works best with a script and time to prepare. Luckily (or should that be unluckily?), he’s got eight years worth of gaffs, blunders, clangors, misfortune, and bona fide national catastrophes to sift through and sharpen to needle point. Priding himself on being the president you would want to have a beer with, Bush was nothing if not amiable to folk he likes. He likes theater. Theater that’s that’s not faggy, you understand. You know, stuff like Rent. And he likes the “the Tiger Woods Guy,” who’s “a good speech maker.”
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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March 16th, 2009 admin
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