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17Sep

Drive

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These are a few things that Drive has going for it: 1) the hottest actor of the year, Ryan Gosling; 2) arguably the most promising actress of 2010, Carey Mulligan; 3) a director, Nicolas Winding Refn, who brings a distinctive European flavor to the project; 4) handsome production design and striking visuals.

None of that matters, because Drive goes nowhere thanks to a lackluster story and characters who are thinner than windshield-wiper fluid. It’s all very frustrating, because the film would seem to have so much potential. Yet once again, Hollywood puts polish and shine on a movie and neglects the most important element, good storytelling.

Gosling plays “the driver,” an enigmatic Steve McQueen type, a soft-spoken loner who is on the wrong side of the law but who harbors — you guessed it — a kinder, gentler side. Just in case we overlook this aspect of his personality, we are treated to scenes of Gosling watching cartoons with a kid. Somehow, I can’t picture McQueen taking time out in The Getaway to watch an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

The driver decides to bless a girl next door with his niceness, which leads to big problems. Mulligan, so good in An Education and in Never Let Me Go, has the thankless role of “the girl” in another example of lousy parts for women in Hollywood “A” movies. Mulligan plays a single mother (dad is in prison) whose main purpose in Drive is to cast sad looks at the men in her life: expressions of longing for Gosling, and looks of despair for her no-good husband, an ex-con called “Standard.” (I checked, but I could find no character in the film named “Automatic.”)

The supporting cast is also wasted. Bryan Cranston is the foolish sidekick whom any graduate of Movies 101 will tell you is expendable in a movie like this. Christina Hendricks looks fetching but comes and goes in no time at all. Albert Brooks, as a foul-tempered money man, is one of the film’s few bright spots. The undernourished plot is a heist-gone-wrong story that you’ve seen many times before.

Refn, who inexplicably took home a Best Director award from the Cannes Film Festival for this mediocrity, wants his film to be like Shane with car chases. Shane was cool and had lots of soul. Drive looks cool, but has no soul. Grade: C+

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn Cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Oscar Isaac, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Kaden Leos, Jeff Wolfe, James Biberi, Russ Tamblyn Release: 2011

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

13Sep

Lucky Jim

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by Kingsley Amis

Reading Lucky Jim is like watching a 1940s Hollywood romantic comedy, but with a British bent. The novel is polished, clever, amusing … and dated. I suspect that Amis’s tale of rebellious college instructor Jim Dixon had more resonance for earlier generations, although its puncturing of academic pomposity is a timeless pleasure. But speaking as a 21st century, American reader, I dare say that much of the book struck me as more peculiar than funny.

12Sep

Free Flick of the Week: “Obsession”

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Believe it or not, I’ve usually seen the movies I select for “Free Flick of the Week.” That’s not the case this week, in which I’m plugging Brian De Palma’s 1976 thriller, Obsession. But I want to see it, because I love me some 1970s De Palma, and this Hitchcock tribute, in which Cliff Robertson (who died last week) plays a man who loses his wife and child to kidnappers, looks intriguing. So let’s all of us go here and watch it for free.

12Sep

The Cottage (2008)

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Maybe the bar has been set so low for horror-comedies that I no longer expect much from them, but heaven help me, I liked The Cottage. I liked it more than the Scream movies, which are often too cute for their own good. I liked it more than the camp classic Motel Hell, which doesn’t live up to its reputation.

The Cottage is engaging mostly because of its characters. When teens take a pickaxe in the skull in most horror spoofs, I tend to silently cheer. But in this film, I actually wanted the people to survive the inevitable carnage. (I won’t say whether or not they do.)

Bug-eyed Andy Serkis, who’s made a name for himself acting in motion-capture roles (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Gollum in The Lord of the Rings), plays it straight as one of two bumbling brothers who make the mistake of kidnapping the foul-mouthed daughter (Jennifer Ellison) of a mobster. Reece Shearsmith, as the other brother, and Steven O’Donnell, as the mobster’s son, complete this Three Stooges redux.

The Cottage is a strange hybrid of genres. The first half of the story is a kidnapping caper; the second half is a bloody, stupid, and funny send-up of horror favorites like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho. The last half of the movie, nonsensical as it is (how in hell does the story go from crime thriller to slasher flick?), is nevertheless the most effective. The killer, a deformed farmer, looks like he’s wearing a rubber mask and makes noises that seem filtered through … a rubber mask. If that sounds ridiculous, rest assured, it is.

But I liked the characters, I dug the tongue-in-cheek tone, and there were just enough creepy scenarios and amusing one-liners to keep me hooked. Says one bumbling brother to the uncooperative kidnap victim as they flee the deranged farmer: “This is the worst night of my life. Not only have I met you, I’ve stumbled into the only house in the country with someone worse than you.” Grade: B

Director: Paul Andrew Williams Cast: Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith, Steven O’Donnell, Jennifer Ellison, Logan Wong, Jonathan Chan-Pensley, Dave Legeno Release: 2008

Watch Trailers (click here)

11Sep

The Weekly Review: September 4 – 10

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I’m no conspiracy buff and certainly no structural engineer, but it still seems odd to me — counterintuitive — that an airplane crashing into the upper floors of a skyscraper could bring the thing to the ground.

*****

“He’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders, quite literally.” — Piers Morgan, talking about Obama and proving that even the English don’t understand English.

*****

There is a TV ad for something called Micro Plus, a hearing-aid thing that supposedly lets you overhear conversations taking place at a distance. In the ad, a bikinied babe walks past two other women and knowingly smirks as one of the women says, “She has an amazing body!”

This gadget seems like a good thing, but what if you wear it, walk down the street, and hear: “Look at the pot belly on that loser!” or “Look — that guy has a brown spot on the seat of his pants!”?

*****

Dear Grouchy,

The Philadelphia Eagles have made dog-lover Michael Vick fabulously rich with a $100 million contract. Don’t you agree that it’s good to give people a second chance?

T. Woods

Florida

Dear T. Woods:

Everyone is in favor of giving people a second chance. But that isn’t the issue with Vick. The issue is awarding “second chances” that are lucrative beyond belief. There is a difference between being allowed to earn a living, and being handed the keys to paradise.

Grouchy

*****

I recently bashed Entertainment Weekly (again) for its politically correct agenda. Also recently, I championed the U.S. Postal Service, which is in danger of extinction. So what happens this week? You guessed it: My issue of EW got lost in the mail.

*****

So Oprah’s celebrity interviews are disingenuous? Why am I not surprised?

*****

Funniest show you never heard of: Hell Date. You haven’t seen it because 1) it’s on BET, and you’re white; 2) it went off the air in 2008. But hey, you can still catch reruns or see it on the Web. It’s funny. Unless it’s fake. I’ll have to ask Ryan O’Neal.

05Sep

Free Flick of the Week: “In the Line of Fire”

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Most movies have a scene or two that stick in the memory. What I enjoy recalling about 1993’s In the Line of Fire is the sight of poor Clint Eastwood, 62 and not so spry, sprinting after the bad guy (John Malkovich) – huffing, puffing, running his old heart out. I must be a sadist. But this thriller about a Secret Service agent (Eastwood) racing to halt a presidential assassination is mindless good fun. Click here to watch it for free.

03Sep

The Weekly Review: August 28 – September 3

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Men Behaving (and Dressing) Badly

Poor Bruce Jenner. We all know that his wife, Kris, wears the pants in the Kardashian-Jenner household, but this item in my local paper about daughter Kim’s wedding was simply too much:

I saw nothing about whether or not Wang also designed Bruce’s earrings.

*****

Gawker and The Huffington Post inform us that Fox’s Bill O’Reilly is just another aging cuckold. According to Gawker, O’Reilly was unable to satisfy trophy wife Maureen McPhilmy, who sought solace in the arms of a Long Island cop. Big Bill allegedly then pulled strings in an attempt to damage the cop’s career.

If you get your news from Fox, don’t hold your breath waiting for the all-spin network to weigh in on this story.

*****

Dear Grouchy:

Whatever happened to that story you promised about Arnold Schwarzenegger and a Japanese schoolgirl?

M. Shriver, Los Angeles CA

Dear M. Shriver:

Never let it be said that we here at The Grouchy Editor are slothful researchers. In our May 22 review, we incorrectly reported that embattled movie star/governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had once been photographed fondling an underage girl. Maybe that assertion was the result of, ahem, someone’s early-onset Alzheimer’s, or perhaps it was simply a case of overzealous journalism, but whatever the case, we’ve since located the photograph in question … and it is not of the former governor.

It’s an image of fellow action star Steven Seagal, who is captured getting his jollies at a smiling lass’s expense (the caption reads: “Feeling up a Nipponese schoolgirl!”). The photo was published in a 1995 edition of Celebrity Sleuth, and here it is. Our apologies to Arnold.

*****

I was channel surfing and landed on two hefty, middle-aged women discussing the economy — and it was so refreshing. No kidding. CNN anchor Candy Crowley (above left) and economist Christina Romer (above right) might not be typical TV eye candy (pun intended), but somehow I put a lot more weight (pun intended) into what these two were saying than I do when I’m forced to listen to the usual gang of pretty bubbleheads. You go, fat girls!

*****

So Obama caves, again, and bumps his Big Speech back a day to Thursday evening. This guy is like the smart kid who sits in class and has all of the right answers — but who then gets beat up by bullies and has his lunch stolen. Those of us who voted for him thought we were getting a guy with some balls, but we picked the wrong kid; we should have voted for the woman with balls.

31Aug

Julia’s Eyes

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I wanted to like Julia’s Eyes, really I did. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good blind-damsel-in-distress movie, maybe since Audrey Hepburn turned off the lights in 1967’s Wait Until Dark. Alas, despite a handsome production, nifty direction, and some good acting, Julia’s Eyes is … dumb.

The thriller begins promisingly with the death of Julia’s twin sister Sara (both played by Belen Rueda), apparently by suicide. Both women suffer from a degenerative eye disease. Sara had gone completely blind, and it’s just a matter of time before Julia does, as well. But was Sara’s death really a suicide? Julia doesn’t believe so, but can she convince anyone else? Have we seen this plot before?

Director Guillem Morales’s film goes wrong where nearly all films of this type do: far-fetched storytelling. The first half of the movie is basically a whodunit, but Who Did It becomes obvious early on. Once we have that information, the movie turns into a routine killer-chasing-heroine exercise, with stale elements borrowed from The Silence of the Lambs, Rear Window, and yes, Wait Until Dark.

Unlike its esteemed predecessors, Julia’s Eyes lacks originality. Instead, it has an abundance of clichés: When Julia has an opportunity to stab the killer with a knife, she jabs him in the leg — that way, he won’t die and can continue to chase her. We are asked to believe that the bad guy, played by an actor blessed with movie-star looks, is angry at the world because he feels “invisible” in day-to-day life. And then there are the scary scenes that turn out to be — you guessed it — nightmares.

Some people will be drawn to this movie because one of its producers is Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth). But as we’ve learned from Steven Spielberg, attaching a big name to a film project is no guarantee of quality. Julia’s Eyes is frustratingly stupid. Grade: C+

Director: Guillem Morales Cast: Belen Rueda, Lluis Homar, Pablo Derqui, Francesc Orella, Joan Dalmau, Boris Ruiz, Daniel Grao, Clara Segura, Catalina Munar Release: 2010

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

29Aug

Free Flick of the Week: “Notorious”

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Some film scholars think that Notorious is Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest movie. I don’t agree; I think the “master of suspense” reached his peak about ten years later, beginning with Rear Window and continuing through 1963’s The Birds. But hey, Notorious is still top-notch filmmaking, and it has Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. What more do you want? Watch it for free by clicking here.

29Aug

Someone Like You

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by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was, at times, too gifted a writer for his own good. Dahl’s short stories in this collection (by the way, not written for children) are so devilishly entertaining, so artful at building suspense, that some of their endings can’t possibly live up to what precedes them. But often they do. Dahl’s tales of murder and the macabre are a showcase for colorful characters, locations and – above all – black humor, and so when some of the twist endings fall a bit flat, all is forgiven.