From the pages of Electric City and Diamond City, two of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s premier arts and entertainment publications, comes Richlier founder Jeff Boam’s weekly column: 

Previews (Opening this Weekend)

The Last House on the Left

Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter

Horror maven Wes Craven (yes, that DOES rhyme, dear readers) has become a strip mine of sorts for the film biz. His 1977 low-budget thriller The Hills Have Eyes was remade waaaaaay back in 2006 (long enough ago, at least, for an even shoddier sequel to hit screens as well). In an effort to plunder your childhood further, dear readers, Craven’s 1984 slasher classic A Nightmare on Elm Street will be remade in 2011. Now, it has been announced that his genre-eschewing Scream series will also get a reboot. In The Last House on the Left, an R-rated remake of Craven’s 1972 thriller of the same name, two ordinary parents (Goldwyn, Potter) exact revenge on the vicious psychopaths (Garret Dillahunt, Rhys Coiro) who left their daughter for dead. The Plus: The genre. Horror is often immune to the box office blues during the cold months. The Messengers and The Ring Two (among other thrillers) scared up some dough in March. The Minus: The unknown…and ‘unknown,’ of course, refers to just about the entire cast and newbie writer/director Dennis Iliadis (Hardcore, anybody?).  

 

Miss March

Zach Cregger, Trevor Moore

And so it came to pass that New York’s School of Visual Arts begat the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U’Know. And The Whitest Kids U’Know begat “Best Sketch Group” honors at the 2006 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. And the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival honors begat an IFC comedy sketch show called, well, The Whitest Kids U’Know. And this sketch show begat this R-rated comedy. Please don’t ask your reviewer to go further because he has never heard of The Whitest Kids U’Know. In Miss March, a young man (Zach Cregger) wakes up from a coma to discover that his once virginal high school sweetheart (Raquel Alessi) has since become a Playboy centerfold. The Plus: The genre. Raunchy comedies have done well since 40-Year-Old Virgin breathed new life into the sophomoric genre. Exhibit A.) Superbad; Exhibit B.) Step Brothers. The Minus: The odds. But not all raunchy comedies – specifically, those NOT attached to Virgin writer/producer/director Judd Apatow or Brothers star Will Ferrell - have faired so well. Exhibit A.) Sex Drive; Exhibit B.) Fired Up!

Race to Witch Mountain

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Carla Gugino

Race to Witch Mountain is not so much a remake as a revision. In the 1970s, the Disney films Escape to Witch Mountain and Return to Witch Mountain followed the adventures of the orphaned Malone children—two siblings with mysterious otherworldly powers. Though decidedly low budget, these films made some sort of impact on modern H’Wood…or else your reviewer would not be here writing this preview for no one to read. In this PG-rated family adventure flick, the bigger budgeted Race to Witch Mountain, a UFO expert (Gugino) enlists a Las Vegas cabbie (Johnson) to shepherd two young runaways with supernatural powers (Anna-Sophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig) away from an evil organization. The Plus: The players. Thanks to the gazillion dollar gross of The Game Plan, Johnson is currently Disney’s golden boy. And Gugino already has a hit family franchise under her belt (Spy Kids). The Minus: The competition. In a weekend with both a gory thriller and raunchy comedy also opening, the kids may very well get left with a sitter.

Reviews (Now in Theaters)

Watchmen

Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup

Ultimately, the breadth and scope of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s legendary adult comic book series Watchmen is much more epic than the running time of a film can accommodate. And your reviewer had never read this highly acclaimed work when it was first published in 1986-87 (sadly, he was cataloging boobies in Mad Magazine). But in viewing the short-sighted but unbelievably fascinating Watchmen, he felt like he was watching a man stuffed to the brim of his belt-line asking for seconds at Thanksgiving—a smorgasbord of discarded characters and sub-plots about to burst out from beneath. Call it a flawed success. The film is as close as cinema can come to realizing source material that is sprawling and seemingly unadaptable (your reviewer can relate having adapted post-World War II classic On the Road by Jack Kerouac for his master’s thesis). Hats off to director Zack Snyder and screenwriter David Hayter for having the vision and balls, er, moxie to reign in such a project.

In this R-rated action/thriller set in an alternative 1985 where the U.S. is edging close to nuclear war with the Soviets, former costumed superheroes are being killed off, causing those who remain (Akerman, Crudup, et al) to don their disguises and uncover the truth. With great vision, the film assumes an appropriately noirish look, feel, and tone in deconstructing the superhero mythos. The nearly perfectly cast characters are unflinchingly frank in their actions and dialogue (only one character – nude blue Adonis Dr. Manhattan – has actual powers). And just like the western, comic book superheroes are a uniquely American invention—subject to the same classifications as any genre (in this case, revisionist). Therein lies the problem though…as revisionism, Watchemen stumbles. For a film looking to explore the human flaws of realistic heroes, the Watchmen kicked as much ass (and in as heightened reality) as Snyder’s past comic book triumph 300. They ARE superhuman in an exaggerated sense.  

But the beautifully shot film does bait much discussion after the popcorn is digested—which is why audiences need more. Filmgoers have heard the ‘mankind sucks and is headed for an apocalypse’ idiom so often that it has become old hat (the post-Apocalypse is more common a location than NYC in film). When one remembers that this series was originally written in the ’80s (in film terms: before Tim Burton’s Batman began dissecting the tortured soul of heroes), however, this perspective changes.

But Watchmen is as much about time as setting. For instance, Rorschach (a masked ‘hero’ bordering on criminally insane psychopath) jibed with your reviewer as unsettlingly authentic—especially as realized by the brilliant Jackie Earle Haley. He condoned one lesbian hero’s demise as vindication for her perverted lifestyle. As eyebrow raising as this attitude is, however, it does serve to reflect the Right Wing conservativism permeating both the Reaganomics-affirming Me Generation of the ‘80s and, worse, another recent U.S. administration (watching the sexually repressed American filmgoers squirm upon seeing Dr. Manhattan’s glowing bits and pieces only compounds this notion). The film concentrates on the Vietnam War as an impossible struggle save for the intervention of a superhuman force and its source material seems almost prescient seeing as the U.S. has since engaged in another dubious struggle since the work was first published. 

But John Q. Filmgoer is left with table scraps as opposed to the actual feast. We live, however, in the DVD age, a time when films-as-art are either deified or vilified in longer cuts. Warner Brothers has already announced that there will be 3 cuts of the film come DVD time—a theatrical, director’s, and extended cut. Perhaps, more – not less – will be more.

Down-to-the-Wire: Watchable.

 

Friday the 13th

Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker

 

In this R-rated remake, a hockey mask-wearing killer sets out to slaughter randy teenage campers. Earning the distinction of being the best of the Friday the 13^th films is no small matter…er, actually, the bar is so unfathomably low that only the guy from A Beautiful Mind could measure it. Still, this film was more entertaining that any of the other 11 entries in the series and produced so much splatter that filmgoers will be wont to check their popcorn for gray matter…presumably their own. It is a slasher classic reinvented with renewed verve for the torture porn generation. There is really nothing new here, but director Marcus Nispel knows how to throw a fresh coat of blood on a dilapidated old shack.

Down-to-the-Wire: Creaky Friday.

 

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience

Joe Jonas, Nick Jonas

In this G-rated 3-D concert film, the Jonas Brothers’ 2008 ‘Burning Up’ concert tour is chronicled…in three dimensions. Such films are only as good as their music—and for Jonas devotees, this cinematic event must have been a loo-loo. For others though, there are enough theatrics to fleetingly catch – though certainly not captivate – filmgoers’ attention. Tailor-made for the tween-aged Disney audience, however, the film is nothing more than a glorified music video with a dubious 3-D tie-in. Even when the Jonas Brothers are seen clowning—sadly, it seems that they are very aware of the camera…like when they throw things toward the audience to warrant a 3-D upcharge.

Down-to-the-Wire: 4-Fans.

 

Slumdog Millionaire

Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor 

In this R-rated drama, a Mumbai orphan (Patel) damns the odds and appears on a popular game show to win the heart of his dream girl (Freida Pinto). Director Danny Boyle expertly makes the setting a character in Slumdog, capturing the kinetic verve of India as both thriving metropolis and overrun slum. This palette provides the perfect backdrop for a wonderfully rousing story with more energy and optimism than all of the other award contenders combined. The film ultimately forgoes what should be its true ending and lets the action play out a little too long, pandering more to H’Wood fluff than heart by film’s end. Still, the toe-tapping Bollywood closing credits sequence earns the film high marks.

Down-to-the-Wire: Feels like a million bucks.

 

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein 

In this poorly directed actioner structured like a modern video game (and as interesting to watch as video games for non-gamers) a female martial arts fighter (Kreuk) embarks on a quest for justice in Bangkok. Scenery gets chewed, butts get kicked, and the whole she-bang comes to a predictable conclusion. This would all count as acceptable entertainment were Andrzej Bartkowiak’s execution not so shoddy. For the most part, the actors snarl their way through every line of formulaic dialogue. Some action sequences are shot such that filmgoers cannot tell what the hell is going on. And worst, the ending baits a sequel…or another video game—the reference is THAT vague.

Down-to-the-Wire: Game over.

 

Taken

Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace

In the PG-13-rated action thriller Taken, Neeson plays a former government operative who uses his training to rescue his daughter (Grace) from a slave trade operation. Neeson believably kicks arse with the best of them, leaving all takers lying in the corner in a fetal position and crying like Nancy Kerrigan. If filmgoers thought Taken to have the emotional and intelligent resonance of a Kurosawa film, however…well, they may find themselves in much the same state. To say that the film strains credibility is to suggest that a film about a man who can easily infiltrate heavily funded, foreign, underworld organizations and kick their arse actually ever had credibility.

Down-to-the-Wire: Taken with a grain of salt.

 

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail

Tyler Perry, Keshia Knight Pulliam 

In this PG-13-rated humorless dramedy, the anger management issues of an overbearing Southern mother (Perry) lands her in the clink, while the loved ones rallying behind her learn the value of – wait for it - family. In another storyline, a prostitute (Pulliam) comes back into the life of the public defender (Derek Luke) assigned to her and Madea’s case. Even TV staples Dr. Phil and Judge Mathis struggle to wring humor out of a script in dire need of redrafting. Perry’s problems, however, go beyond weak acting and writing—specifically, everything between the opening and closing credits. Some actors actually look into the camera while the principals, Pulliam and Luke, look lost without some strong direction.

Down-to-the-Wire: Lock it up and throw away the key.

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