CulturePulp.

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Jersey Girl'

Movie review in the Friday, March 26 Oregonian....

With "Jersey Girl," writer/director Kevin Smith has single-handedly created a brand-new film genre -- the Chick Flick with Poop Jokes.

The long-delayed movie (you can blame "Gigli" for that) stars Ben Affleck as a Manhattan PR hotshot saddled with single-parent duties after his wife (Jennifer Lopez) dies in labor. It's being billed as something of a departure for Mr. Smith, who enjoys geek-king status for a series of comedies ("Clerks," "Mallrats," "Chasing Amy," "Dogma" and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back") mixing comic-book references, scatological humor and paragraph-spewing, pop-literate slacker heroes -- including the stoner set's Hope and Crosby, Jay and Silent Bob.

"Jersey Girl" is Smith's first film without a Jay-and-Bob appearance, and it certainly lays on a trowel of Oxygen-channel sentiment missing from the director's earlier films. But reports of the death of Mr. Smith's potty mouth have been greatly exaggerated. This is the sort of movie about a single dad that traffics in jokes about diaper rash, complete with full-frontal diaper removal; that shows a 7-year-old girl sitting on the toilet; that features colorful cursing in front of children; that thinks "meeting cute" means having Affleck joust with a sexy video clerk (Liv Tyler) when he tries to rent porn while his daughter browses the children's section; and that features -- in the movie's funniest scene -- Affleck's daughter (Raquel Castro) mounting a production of the cannibal musical "Sweeney Todd" for her school's talent show.

All of the above will appeal to fans of Smith's earlier films -- scatology is, after all, what this writer-director does best. It's less certain whether that same audience will embrace the larger, sappier story, which concerns Affleck's character learning how to raise his daughter and re-build his life after burning all his bridges in the PR business.

Smith's "Jersey Girl" script embraces certain TV-movie clichés with a weirdly naïve enthusiasm -- at its worst, the film plays like a non-magical version of "The Family Man" written by one of those tiresome people who thinks they're the first to discover the joys of parenting. This is especially true of the first act, which clunkily dispatches of Lopez; her death scene plays out in front of a weirdly bright hospital curtain that makes it look like she's dying on the set of a 1970s game show. (Was that scene really shot by the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond?) And Affleck has a cringe-inducing scene where he talks to his infant daughter, crying and saying lines like "I'm gonna be the best daddy in the world." Really.

All that said, something surprising happens to "Jersey Girl" the minute the movie flashes forward seven years and Castro takes over as Affleck's grade-school-age daughter: The whole enterprise suddenly becomes rather charming. This has little to do with the script and everything to do with the cast -- particularly Affleck, Tyler and Castro, who have a warm chemistry that melts away much of the ill will engendered by the first half-hour. Even the sentimental rock songs on the soundtrack -- the rickety crutch of a movie that doesn't trust itself emotionally -- get a little less intrusive. By the time our heroes take the stage at the school talent show, warbling about a barber who slashes throats and eats the victims, you may find yourself laughing and, against the screenplay's will, caring.
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(100 minutes; rated PG-13 [on appeal] for language and sexual content including frank dialogue) Grade: C-plus

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Dawn of the Dead' (2004 remake, dir. Zack Snyder)

Movie review in the Friday, March 19 Oregonian....

"Dawn of the Dead" (the 2004 remake) has a tough act to follow.

A little history: George A. Romero wrote and directed the original "Dawn" back in 1978 -- and it's a surprisingly strange, influential horror film. (We'll get to the new version, which is utterly violent and cool, in just a sec.) The original's the second chapter in a zombie-movie trilogy that includes 1968's "Night of the Living Dead" and 1985's "Day of the Dead." It's about four people hiding from the undead in a shopping mall, and it's a bit like "Planet of the Apes" in that it works as a monster movie -- Tom Savini's head-splattering makeup is still bloody impressive -- but also boasts this whole other bizarro level of social commentary.

No, really: Much geek ink has been spilled on the original's images of slow-moving, stupid zombie "consumers" wandering the mall as elevator music blares -- even as our heroes try (and fail) to create their own "American dream" in their hidey-hole. "Dawn of the Dead" was funny, clunky, cynical and mildly provocative in the late '70s -- a genuine work of satire. (See for yourself: The flick just came out in a beautiful "Divimax Edition" DVD from Anchor Bay, with a deluxe edition due later this year.)

Anyway. The bad news is that the 2004 "re-imagining" of "Dawn of the Dead," helmed by commercial director Zack Snyder, isn't working on nearly as many levels. It's more of a straight-ahead zombie thriller, in the vein of "Resident Evil." But the good news?

The movie totally rocks.

You can practically hear Snyder cackling as he bastes the viewer in tension and gore, working from a script by James Gunn  (a Troma Studios veteran who also wrote "Scooby-Doo"). The prologue -- in which a young nurse (Sarah Polley) flees suburbia as it's overrun by the undead -- is one of the best horror openings ever, with well-chosen spatters of nasty humor. (Be sure to watch how Polley's zombified husband chases after her car, then veers off when an easier victim presents itself.)

Soon enough, the nurse ends up in a mall -- but where the original focused on four well-sketched characters, here our heroine's joined by a cop (Ving Rhames), a reformed gangsta (Mekhi Phifer), a loser (Jake Weber) and nearly a dozen other cultural archetypes. (Smart-aleck? Bully? Girl who loves animals? They’re all here. It's like "The Breakfast Club" of horror.) If this remake has a problem, it's that too many cast members exist to serve as zombie fodder.

But most horror buffs won't mind, considering everything the movie gets exactly right. Where Romero played his zombies for laughs, Snyder is deadly serious. His late-model ghouls move as fast as the ones in "28 Days Later." His soundtrack choices (Johnny Cash, a Muzak version of "Don’t Worry Be Happy") are impeccable. His use of the camera -- particularly in overhead long-shots -- is sublime. There are nods to (and cameos by) key moments and players from the history of splatter. There are (literally) juicy sub-plots with a guy stuck across the street and a zombie pregnancy. Jake Weber is quietly solid. And, most important, the movie cranks up the tension all the way through the end credits -- which take their cue from "The Blair Witch Project" and end the movie on a bleak, freaky, wickedly funny note. If this is your sort of thing, take a bite.
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(98 minutes; rated R for pervasive strong horror violence and gore, language and sexuality) Grade: B-plus

MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Statement'

Movie review in the Friday, March 19 Oregonian....

If you're going to name your movie "The Statement," then you really ought to make one.

Mind you, director Norman Jewison's adaptation of Brian Moore's acclaimed novel has all the elements of a "message movie." There's genocide, for starters. The film centers on tortured Frenchman Pierre Brossard (Michael Caine, not even trying to sound French) -- a man who's been hiding for 40 years after helping the Nazis kill Jews during the Vichy regime.

Then, to stoke the message-movie fire, Jewison piles on the corruption: Brossard's been protected for decades by a right-wing Catholic order -- a conspiracy "at the highest levels of power."

Finally, Jewison throws in some hypocrisy. Brossard refuses to face justice for his crimes -- "I don't want to be locked up in a cell with the rest of my lot!" he gibbers -- but he also wants to remain in a "state of grace," forgiven by God for his sins. But it's impossible for the waddling, sweating Brossard to even look graceful when he's killing assassins from a Jewish revenge squad -- or fleeing a pair of French officials who want to bring him to justice (Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Northam, neither of them trying to sound French, either).

It sounds like a potent stew -- and it's being stirred by the director of "In the Heat of the Night," and "Fiddler on the Roof," which inspires hope. But "The Statement" ends up being a surprisingly tedious blah-inducer.

The screenplay (by Ronald Harwood) only skims the surface of Moore's novel -- we never get a sense of what drove Brossard to evil. Instead, we get a sense of Brossard driving his car. As he putters from safe house to safe house, he blandly lurches between remorseful loser and stone-cold killer -- without any of the connective tissue that makes for a fully formed character. In one scene, for example, Brossard threatens to kill his estranged wife's dog, which he named after the dead brother he apparently sold out to the Nazis. But the very next time we see them, they're in bed together -- and the wife (Charlotte Rampling) is comforting him after a nightmare in which he's plagued by visions of dead Jews. It’s whiplash-inducing.

Meanwhile, Swinton and Northam go from one pointless meeting to another like they're in some chatty BBC telefilm. Even the Catholic-baiting conspiracy theory at the movie's center -- a charged issue, to say the least -- ends up being little more than dully offensive. (It doesn’t help that the drippy conspirators are led by actor John Neville -- who also led the drippy conspirators in "The X-Files.")

Swinton, a good actress, comes off here as a poor man's Cate Blanchett -- storming in and out of rooms, her early-'90s k.d. lang hair-don't flooping in her face. (And it's not just hair: The movie rings false on all sorts of little details -- right down to the way the word "STATEMENT" is stamped on a death warrant at a jaunty, overly-designed angle.) Every other actor in the film, including the great Northam, looks and sounds bored -- it really feels like they all took the gig so they could hang out in the French countryside, where much of the movie is set. None of the passion befitting the subject matter is onscreen.

In its coda, "The Statement" is dedicated to the 77,000 French Jews who died under the Vichy regime. It's a noble gesture, but it's also a little insulting -- given that the murder of Jews ends up being little more than a character prop in this profoundly dreary film.
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(120 minutes; rated R for violence) Grade: C

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London'

Movie review in the Friday, March 12 Oregonian....

The first "Agent Cody Banks" wasn't high art, but it's easy to see why it was a modest hit with the kids.

In marketing terms, it was a nicely designed piece of wish-fulfillment: It told the story of a teen spy (played by bobble-headed Everygeek Frankie Muniz) who dished out a surprising amount of kung fu -- all while flanked by pan-generational cuties Angie Harmon and Hilary Duff. And while the narrative was kind of gadget-choked and clunky, "Malcolm in the Middle" star Muniz smoothed a lot of wrinkles with his sitcom charm -- getting the girl, saving the world and convincing the CIA to do his chores. Maestro!

Unfortunately, "Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London" is less of the same.

This innocuous (if decidedly lower-wattage) sequel has less action, less danger, less interesting gadgets, less star power and a lot less production value. Although it's an MGM picture, it feels like one of those quickie Disney sequels that get dumped into theaters to boost DVD sales. It's a fiesta of filler.

The major difference between "Cody Banks" 1 and 2 is a difference of tone. The first film actually plays its adventure pretty straight -- with Agent Banks taking on track-suited supervillains who'd look perfectly at home in one of the Roger Moore Bond flicks. (The filmmakers even hired "Bourne Identity" composer John Powell to lend the soundtrack some spoofy heft.) "Destination London," by contrast, is a much lighter, goofier movie; it’s almost as if the producers grounded Cody Banks for kissing a girl and kicking too many people last year.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing; many parents will prefer taking their kids to a sequel where the hormones and violence are turned way down. But in child-proofing the sequel, they also drop its IQ. Muniz may be taller -- he's actually growing into his enormous head -- but his film franchise is getting younger around him.

This time around, Banks travels to Old Blighty to take on a pack of bumbling morons -- including his former CIA camp counselor (Keith Allen) -- who want to use mind-control software on world leaders. However, the villains' use of this bold new technology rarely extends beyond (a) making a dog play piano and (b) making the leaders of the free world kick each other on the fanny.

Of the original's supporting cast, only Keith David has much screen time as the cranky CIA director; even Banks' family (which includes the great Cynthia Stevenson) is reduced to a money-saving drive-on. Meanwhile, Banks' new "handler" is played by Anthony Anderson ("Kangaroo Jack") -- and you can't help feeling a little embarrassed for Anderson as he zips through the back streets of London (which he refers to as a "backwater") on a scooter that's too small for him and delivers lines like, "Never interrupt a brother who's breaking down the apothecary table!"

Embarrassed, that is, if you can remember anything about the story an hour after you leave the theater. "Cody Banks 2" is an utterly forgettable piffle -- the sort of quickie kid's film where there's almost an hour between action scenes; where a supervillain breaks wind in an elevator; and where Banks, under mind control, flings food on classical-music prodigies. If you have a low opinion of the first "Banks" and your kids drag you to this one, you may be tempted to do some food-flinging of your own.
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(98 minutes; rated PG for action violence and some crude humor) Grade: C

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Secret Window'

Movie review in the Friday, March 12 Oregonian....

So exactly how many times will Stephen King put a tortured writer at the center of one of his thrillers?

A partial -- partial -- list of filmed adaptations of King's work includes 1980's "The Shining," 1990's "Misery," 1993's "The Dark Half" and the forthcoming "Bag of Bones." All of them feature men of letters in peril -- and now we can add to that self-loathing literary dogpile "Secret Window," adapted by David Koepp from King's novella.

"Secret Window" stars v. hot Johnny Depp as Morton Rainey -- a best-selling author suffering, in a lakeside cabin, from cases of writer's block, post-marital grief and Phyllis Diller-caliber bed-head. Within minutes, Rainey's visited by a sinister hayseed (John Turturro, doing an encore of his "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" performance with just a dash of the crazy preacher from "Poltergeist 2"). The hick accuses the hack of plagiarism -- setting in motion a bloody chain of events that draws in Rainey's lawyer (Charles Dutton), his estranged wife (Maria Bello) and the man who broke up Rainey's marriage (Timothy Hutton, who, coincidentally, played the troubled Stephen King stand-in in "The Dark Half").

First, the good news: Depp is, as usual, a lot of fun to watch, punctuating his performance with a repertoire of gestures, tics and annoyed looks that will, on occasion, ring familiar to "Pirates of the Caribbean" fans. The movie's best scenes actually have nothing to do with the mystery plot -- they involve Rainey taking naps, rolling his eyes and marinating in that weird mix of procrastination and misanthropy that makes up "the writer's life."

But is a thriller a good thriller if its most thrilling parts involve Johnny Depp fighting the urge for cigarettes and glaring at his dog? Um, probably not. After a strong first hour, "Secret Window" falls into several narrative traps that ultimately make the film a pretty sizable disappointment.

For one thing, writer/director Koepp ("Stir of Echoes," "The Trigger Effect") makes one too many moves out of the cheap-scare playbook: "Secret Window" is funny, handsomely shot and has some really creepy stuff involving reflections in mirrors -- but it's also packed with a few too many false scares, obvious red herrings and mayhem you can see coming from a mile away.

It’s disheartening to watch the movie devolve into this: The opening scene, in which we see Depp at the wheel of a car muttering to himself, is masterfully done -- revealing the locale, situation, and what, precisely, Depp is muttering about with a series of careful reveals. Koepp never lives up to the promise of that introduction.

Even worse -- and it's tough to write about this without spoiling anything -- "Secret Window" hinges mightily on a narrative surprise that isn't terribly surprising. At all. Especially if you've watched any psychological thrillers in the past few years. Once "Secret Window"'s "twist" is out of the way, the movie actually regains a little juice -- there's a sick thrill in rooting for someone you shouldn't -- but it's just too little too late.

"The only thing that matters is the ending," says Rainey toward the end of the movie. He's talking about the writers' craft. Mr. Koepp, despite the best efforts of his cast, sends this comment soaring into the ether of irony.
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(93 minutes; rated PG-13 for violence/terror, sexual content and language) Grade: B-minus

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Hidalgo'

Movie review in the Friday, March 5 Oregonian....

Fans of Viggo Mortensen's performance as Aragorn in "Lord of the Rings" will find at least one thing to like about "Hidalgo": The movie's a veritable Viggo-tasm.

Make no mistake -- as an adventure film, "Hidalgo" has its problems. But Mortensen lends his great big heart to nearly every scene, playing the Aragorn-esque Frank T. Hopkins -- a real-life dispatch rider who reputedly raced his horse across the Arabian Desert in the 1890s. And the movie also serves as a nicotine patch for addicts mourning the end of the "Rings" trilogy.

Need proof? See if "Hidalgo"'s storyline sounds in any way familiar: Scrappy, angst-ridden guy (Mortensen) shuns his heritage -- until he suddenly finds himself on a long-distance quest set against epic scenery. During said quest, he gets mixed up with a daughter of royalty, kills a few faceless bad guys, sings mournful songs in a non-English dialect, and even wears a culturally significant little necklace. Oh, and he rides a scrappy horse brimming with "personality."

It's been a good year for movies about scrappy horses brimming with "personality"; one colleague jokingly refers to "Hidalgo" as "Sandbiscuit." TJ -- the horse who plays Frank's Mustang, Hidalgo -- gets the movie's first close-up, and he instantly earns the right to have a movie named after him. He gives the camera this sidelong, eye-rolling glare that says nothing so much as "What have you gotten me into now?" He gives that look a lot in "Hidalgo," as Hopkins dodges bullets, sandstorms, locusts and leopards -- and it's so bloody charming that you almost forget that galloping across a blazing desert is actually kind of a cruel thing to force on a horse. There's a certain sub-genre of horse fiction aimed squarely at 'tween-aged girls -- and TJ and the artfully smudged Viggo should reduce that audience to quivering mounds of jelly.

That said, the movie's got issues. The supporting cast of fellow racers and hangers-on is way too big to keep track of -- and some of the actors play their roles too broadly for "Hidalgo" to succeed as the gorgeous epic it longs to be. Also, while director and former storyboard artist Joe Johnston  ("Jurassic Park III ") has a real knack for camera placement, the relentless Marlboro-ad cinematography leaves you wondering if the entire horse race took place against sunrises and sunsets.

More troubling, "Hidalgo" can't quite decide exactly what kind of adventure film it wants to be -- every time the story starts settling into a certain narrative rhythm, it shifts gears like an overcaffeinated Student Ed driver. The movie introduces us to Hopkins during a surprisingly harsh recreation of the Wounded Knee massacre that wouldn't be out of place in "Dances with Wolves." Then, just as suddenly, we're summoned to the Middle East, where the sun-dappled race initially looks like it might take on the poetic tones of 1979's "The Black Stallion." Except that the filmmakers suddenly decide that sun-dappled poetry is kind of boring -- so we meet an evil nephew (Silas Carson) of a noble sheik (Omar Sharif) who's dead-set on sabotaging the race and stealing the sheik's daughter (Zuleikha Robinson). When it's good, this final phase of the story plays like "Indiana Jones"; when it's not -- like when the sheik's daughter does that lame movie-foreigner thing where she never uses contractions in her sentences -- it's more like " Young Indiana Jones."

That said, Viggo caulks most of the narrative cracks -- his leading-man turn eases those pesky Aragorn cravings and lends "Hidalgo" way more soul than it deserves. He's so good you even forgive the film its more complicated sins: There's been some flak from a group called the Long Riders' Guild, charging that the real-life Hopkins embellished most of his autobiography. But really -- can anyone watch Hopkins fight off evil jungle cats in the middle of the desert and not think this is a tall tale, no matter what the film's advertising tells us?
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(133 minutes; Rated PG-13 for adventure violence and some mild innuendo) Grade: B