‘Couples Retreat’ Satisfying if Unspectacular

You’ve met couples like this before: longtime marrieds approaching 40 and facing stress from fertility problems, work-aholism, lack of communication or just flat-out losing the spark and giving up hope. In fact, you might have lived through these problems yourself. 

But in the new movie “Couples Retreat,” which not only co-stars but is co-written by real-life best friends Vince Vaughn (“Wedding Crashers”) and Jon Favreau (a popular character actor who has also directed “Iron Man”), these average middle-class American problems are given hilarious voice through vivid performances and rapid-fire dialogue. Or, more accurately, the movie shines when it focuses on those aspects of life in the first half of the film, while disappointingly falling off a cliff for much of the unfocused second half. Yet, just like a real-life marriage that lasts, the ups outnumber the downs enough to make this a satisfying if not spectacular night at the movies. 

“Couples Retreat” kicks off with uptight couple Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristin Bell of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) begging their other friends – workaholic Dave (Vaughn) and his neglected wife Ronnie (Malin Akerman of the underrated remake of “The Heartbreak Kid”), and high school sweethearts-turned-bored middle-agers Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis of “Sex and the City”), and just-separated Shane (Faizon Love) and his ridiculously young new girlfriend Trudy (scene-stealing Kali Hawk) – to join them on a retreat to the Club Med-style resort of Eden. If they can get a group of four couples together, they can all go half-price – which sounds great to the three seemingly healthy couples, as long as they’re assured they won’t have to go through couples counseling.  (more…)

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Tags: "Couples Retreat", Jason Bateman, jon favreau, Kristin Bell, malin akerman
Posted Oct 9th 2009 at 8:23 am in Reviews | 24354215 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/10/09/couples-retreat-satisfying-if-unspectacular/%27Couples+Retreat%27+Satisfying+if+Unspectacular2009-10-09+15%3A23%3A21Carl+Kozlowski

‘Grateful Nation’ Debuts Tomorrow on ESPN2

On Saturday, October 3rd, a fantastic new show premieres on ESPN2.

“Grateful Nation is a unique and compelling outdoor adventure series that goes behind the scenes and into the field with American Veterans. Hosted by Airborne Ranger Tim Abell, this original unscripted program takes viewers inside the minds of wounded combat veterans and returns them to their traditional American hunting heritage.

Tim’s innovative interviewing strategy together with stunning HD videography launches Grateful Nation into a unique category that captures a whole new audience of sportsmen and patriots.”

The first episode of “Grateful Nation” follows actor and Army Veteran Tim Abell and Army Sergeant First Class Greg Stube on the hunt of a lifetime.

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with SFC Greg Stube via telephone and was immediately struck by his eloquence.  Greg has the unusual ability to talk about enormous concepts on a very small and personal level.  I sometimes find it difficult to speak clearly about the ideas of duty and sacrifice.  SFC Stube speaks of such things with deep understanding and with perfect clarity.  He learned first hand and up close what these concepts are all about. (more…)

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Tags: "Grateful Nation", ESPN2, SFC Greg Stube, Tim Abell
Posted Oct 2nd 2009 at 10:35 am in Military, Reviews | 23748215 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jrhead/2009/10/02/grateful-nation-debuts-tomorrow-on-espn2/%27Grateful+Nation%27+Debuts+Tomorrow+on+ESPN22009-10-02+17%3A35%3A24J.R.+Head

Michael Moore Kills Capitalism with Kool-Aid

A friend recently invited me to a private screening of Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. The September 16 invite, not surprisingly, leaned in a certain direction: 

“Moore takes us into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore’s ultimate quest to answer the question he’s posed throughout his illustrious filmmaking career: Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do?” 

Considering Moore was going to be there for a Q&A after (moderated by Arianna Huffington), I quickly signed on. Now before painting a picture of Moore’s new film, let me be honest: my belief set is essentially libertarian (”Government out of my bedroom and my pocketbook”). Not only do government solutions not excite me, they scare the living blank out of me. Remember when George Bush declared, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse”? He might as well of said, “Hide your money, kids — ’cause I’m coming to take it!” 

Oh sure, in theory I would like to see everyone with their own homestead, money in their pocket for regular shopping frenzies, and no health worries despite eating at Burger King 24/7, but arriving at those goals is not exactly doable unless government robs Peter to pay Paul and/or starts up the printing press.  (more…)

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Tags: capitalism, Capitalism: A Love Story., Donohue, friedman, michael moore
Posted Oct 2nd 2009 at 5:03 am in Featured Story, Film, Politics, Reviews | 23883067 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mcovel/2009/10/02/michael-moore-kills-capitalism-with-kool-aid/Michael+Moore+Kills+Capitalism+with+Kool-Aid2009-10-02+12%3A03%3A41Michael+Covel

‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ Targets Both Right and Left

Firing a red-hot cannon blast at both parties and the excesses of America’s capitalist system, filmmaker Michael Moore’s latest documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story” is also his most stylistically and emotionally mature work to date. Launching with a string of film clips that parallel the fall of the Roman Empire to our present societal hot mess, the film serves up big laughs with its harrowing vision of just how far off the rails our present economic crisis has taken the nation. 

Moore has made plenty of claims that “Capitalism” is the summation of two full decades of work, harking back to the 1989 release of his seminal “Roger & Me,” and that this film is lobbing bombs at the figures involved.  Yet much of the time, the film has a mournful, yearning approach in showing Moore’s desire that America return to the capitalism of the pre-Jimmy Carter years: he shows that the system’s promises worked out splendidly throughout most of the nation’s history, and in particular from the boom years after WWII all the way through Ford before the nation hit Carter’s infamous assessment of “malaise” in the late ‘70s.  (more…)

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Tags: "Roger and Me", Barack Obama, bush, Capitalism: A Love Story., michael moore
Posted Oct 1st 2009 at 6:39 am in Reviews | 23412263 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/10/01/capitalism-a-love-story-targets-both-right-and-left/%27Capitalism%3A+A+Love+Story%27+Targets+Both+Right+and+Left2009-10-01+13%3A39%3A03Carl+Kozlowski

Fox’s ‘Glee’ Mocks Political Correctness

As overly serious police procedurals have begun to saturate the primetime network TV schedules, the FOX network has quietly but wisely been exploring alternatives. Introduced a few years ago, the highly popular House varied the formula by moving it to a medical setting, and last year Fringe interestingly revived the delight in adventure characteristic of mid-1960s network TV dramas. 

The new drama Glee (Wednesdays, 9 p.m EDT) represents another approach and a bolder break with current trends–and it may point the way toward a welcome increase in variety among network TV dramas. 

Produced by Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck), Glee tells the story of high school teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) a married high school teacher in his thirties, who wants to restore McKinley High School’s glee club to its former glory, achieved when he was a member during his high school years and the club won the nationals.  (more…)

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Tags: "Glee", fox, political correctness, review
Posted Sep 29th 2009 at 8:47 am in Reviews | 23213049 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/stkarnick/2009/09/29/foxs-glee-mocks-political-correctness/Fox%27s+%27Glee%27+Mocks+Political+Correctness2009-09-29+15%3A47%3A27S.T.+Karnick

‘Don’t Stop Believing’ in ‘Glee’

When the new Fox show “Glee” (Fox Wednesdays at 9/8 c)  had a special sneak preview premiere in the spring, many television critics loved it. It had a unique and exciting premise, quirky characters and a spirit of fun and outlandishness that is often missing in contemporary comedy shows. With its musical interludes, it also seemed like a great addition to the Fox schedule that will soon, once again, include the hit reality show “American Idol.” Unfortunately, the first three new episodes of “Glee” that have aired this fall have not lived up to the high expectations that the outstanding sneak preview premiere created for the show, causing some disappointment. However, “Glee,” even with its faults, is still a fun and unique comedy with a great cast and an engaging premise. 

As can be expected from the title, the show is about a high school glee club. The show began with a high school teacher Will Schuester (the immensely likable Matthew Morrison) realizing how much he loved performing in his own glee club and wanting to inspire a new glee club of students. The show revolves around that ragtag group of singers as they work together under the leadership of Schuester.  

The show itself is bursting with quirky and fun characters including the deliciously conniving cheer-leading coach Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch) who plots to destroy the glee club and Schuester’s well-meaning but manipulative wife Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) . In addition to Sylvester and Terri Schuester, the supporting cast is full of such unique secondary characters that it rivals shows like “The Office” for its strong ensemble cast.  (more…)

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Tags: "Glee", fox, Glee Club, Jessalyn Gilsig, Will Schuester
Posted Sep 25th 2009 at 4:43 pm in Reviews | 23041837 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jhanlon/2009/09/25/dont-stop-believing-in-glee/%27Don%27t+Stop+Believing%27+in+%27Glee%272009-09-25+23%3A43%3A37John+P.+Hanlon

‘Informant!’ Refreshingly Apolitical, Highly Entertaining

Mark Whitacre had a boring job as a scientist and executive at Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest food-processing companies. Trapped in small-town Illinois hell with his wife and kids after previously living with them in the capitals of Europe, he still loved to drive fast cars and pursue as much luxury as his rural life could afford, all the while reading Michael Crichton and John Grisham novels that he believed were all too realistic in their depictions of corporate and governmental intrigue and malfeasance. 

Stir all those factors together with his insider knowledge that ADM was colluding with overseas food companies in one of the planet’s biggest price-fixing schemes ever, and the fact that Whitacre became both one of the FBI’s best informants ever may not have seemed all that surprising. But the fact that he also hid a highly unstable tendency to lie or leak information as well also made him one of the Feds’ most nerve-wracking and unreliable head cases ever – and it’s this dichotomy that forms the center of director Steven Soderbergh’s head-spinning and comically offbeat take on the ADM scandal, “The Informant!”  (more…)

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Tags: Archer Daniels Midland, FBI, Joel McHale, John Grisham, Mark Whitacre
Posted Sep 18th 2009 at 8:59 am in Featured Story, Reviews | 22757454 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/09/18/informant-refreshingly-apolitical-highly-entertaining/%27Informant%21%27+Refreshingly+Apolitical%2C+Highly+Entertaining2009-09-18+15%3A59%3A15Carl+Kozlowski

PBS Drama Episode Centers on Evils of Communism

The latest episode of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery includes a surprise: criticism of communism.

The U.S. TV network PBS and the British Broadcasting Corporation, both government-owned, tend to soft-pedal the evils of communism while placing every imperfection of life in the United States under a microscope. Hence it’s rather noteworthy when those organizations air a program in which the central problems are traceable to communism. That’s what happened in last week’s episode of Masterpiece Mystery. (more…)

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Tags: BBC, communism, Inspector Lewis, Masterpiece Mystery, pbs
Posted Sep 17th 2009 at 6:22 pm in Reviews, Television | 22483048 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/stkarnick/2009/09/17/pbs-drama-episode-centers-on-evils-of-communism/PBS+Drama+Episode+Centers+on+Evils+of+Communism2009-09-18+01%3A22%3A32S.T.+Karnick

Movies We Like: ‘Anatomy of a Murder’ (1959)

There was a time when an “adult film” meant a movie by, for and about adults, not a tawdry tale of some tatted-up, dead-eyed 19-year old with daddy issues numbly coupling in front of a video camera for the gratification of leering, backward-hatted frat boys and twitchy loners with DSL.  They don’t make many truly adult films anymore – to see what you are missing, a good place to start is 50 years ago with 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder. 

Let’s start with the cast:  James Stewart.  George C. Scott.  Lee Remick.  Eve Arden.  Ben Gazzara.  Even Big Hollywood’s own Orson Bean in a supporting part as a doctor who plays a key role in the story.  If you love movies, you only needed to get to the word “George” before you were adding it to your NetFlix queue. (more…)

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Tags: Anatomy of a Murder, Arthur O’Connor, Ben Gazzara, Duke Ellington, Eve Arden
Posted Sep 16th 2009 at 11:51 am in Classic Hollywood, Law, Reviews | 22518661 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/09/16/movies-we-like-anatomy-of-a-murder-1959/Movies+We+Like%3A+%27Anatomy+of+a+Murder%27+%281959%292009-09-16+18%3A51%3A19Kurt+Schlichter

Aren’t You A Little Old To Watch Cartoons?

…Why, yes. Yes I am!

But considering the plethora of culturally and politically “controversial”  (read: “contrived to be offensive for promotional notoriety”) ‘toons currently offered up for consumption like a plate of live centipedes in Interzone, the silly stuff is more than refreshing.  It’s soul food.

YouTube Complete Opening Theme by Bowling For Soup with Fan Credits

–

Enjoyable as it is to see conservative and libertarian viewpoints deemed worthy of existence in “South Park,” and as side-splitting as the adult humor and pop cultural references, sans a blatant political agenda, may be in “The Venture Brothers,” there has long been a need in the human psyche for pure, unadulterated lunacy.  (more…)

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Tags: cartoons, disney, Entertainment, Phineas and Ferb
Posted Sep 16th 2009 at 6:48 am in Art, Entertainment, Reviews | 22404259 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sgraves/2009/09/16/arent-you-a-little-old-to-watch-cartoons/Aren%27t+You+A+Little+Old+To+Watch+Cartoons%3F2009-09-16+13%3A48%3A42Scott+Graves

Review: ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ Summer’s Greatest Movie?

Some guys never seem to catch a break in life. Lance Clayton is one of them. 

In “World’s Greatest Dad,” the recently-released, extremely dark and sometimes perverse new comedy from writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (we know, we’re just as surprised as you), Clayton (Robin Williams) is the epitome of the put-upon, browbeaten modern middle-class American man. He’s a high-school poetry teacher with hardly any students, a girlfriend who’s afraid to be seen in public with him, and a son named Kyle (played with an amazing level of scorn by Daryl Sabara) who surely must rank as the foulest, most awful teenager in the history of movies. 

Lance does have dreams of greatness, however. In fact, he’s in the middle of sending off his fifth novel for agent consideration, even though he’s never been published before. But ** SPOILER ALERT ** one night, after finding his son dead from a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation that occurred while watching porn on this computer, Lance suddenly feels a unique burst of inspiration: in order to cover up the shame of his son’s actual cause of death, he moves Kyle’s body, re-hangs him in his closet and writes the perfect suicide note so that the policeman who finds him will think that it was just another, normal teenage suicide.  (more…)

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Tags: Bobcat Goldthwait, Daryl Sabara, oscar, Robin Williams, “World’s Greatest Dad”
Posted Sep 12th 2009 at 10:44 am in Reviews | 21902217 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/09/12/review-world%e2%80%99s-greatest-dad-summer%e2%80%99s-greatest-movie/Review%3A+%27World%E2%80%99s+Greatest+Dad%27+Summer%E2%80%99s+Greatest+Movie%3F2009-09-12+17%3A44%3A36Carl+Kozlowski

‘Gamer’ Review: Hollywood, Step Away From the Shaky-Cam

You’re not using the Almighty’s name in vain when you mean it. So everybody all together now: God Damn the Shaky-Cam.   

Was it Spielberg with “Saving Private Ryan” who started the shaky-cam phenomenon or was it “NYPD Blue?” Whatever. My suggestion is that we build a time machine to locate and eradicate the host virus. Not through violence, through a plea to their humanity (unless it’s Paul Greengrass — we’ll ring his doorbell and run) and DVD examples of what their monster will become.  Then we’ll go back to 1941 where you can drop me off in front of Barbara Stanwyck’s house.

Maybe, possibly, inside the jittery mess that is “Gamer,” there sits an ‘80’s style actioner — an unpretentious time killer with an interesting premise,  lots of action and a little gratuitous nudity to get you through a slimmer than slim story. There’s just no way to tell because you can’t see anything, and the epileptic camera is only part of the problem. The cinematography’s completely washed out and every time you get any kind of fix on what’s happening a wavy, electronic-transmission effect is added for no reason other than to add it. (more…)

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Tags: "Gamer", "N.Y.P.D. Blue, gerard butler, Keith David, Saving Private Ryan
Posted Sep 5th 2009 at 2:28 pm in Reviews | 21859059 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/05/%e2%80%98gamer%e2%80%99-review-hollywood-step-away-from-the-shaky-cam/%E2%80%98Gamer%E2%80%99+Review%3A+Hollywood%2C+Step+Away+From+the+Shaky-Cam2009-09-05+21%3A28%3A07John+Nolte

‘Extract’ Review: Good Performances Aren’t Enough

Writer/director Mike Judge’s “Extract” is being promoted as: “The creator of OFFICE SPACE heads back to work,” but this isn’t exactly true in the purest “Office Space” sense. Our protagonist Joel (Jason Bateman) does spend time at the company he owns, a flavor extract plant, but for the most part those goings on are a subplot to what is essentially a relationship comedy — and only a mildly amusing one at that.

Joel’s problem is that he can never get home from work before his wife Susie (Kristen Wiig) puts on the sweatpants at the strike of 8pm … and once the sweatpants are on there will be no sex for the Extract King. What makes him late is the personnel and personality nonsense at the office; what slows him down is Nathan (a terrific David Koecher), one of those boorish nightmares of a neighbor whose lack of self-awareness eventually forces you to be rude to them. So Joel is frustrated — very frustrated, and taking advice from the exact wrong person: His buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), a long-haired bartender who has only one answer to every imaginable problem: Narcotics. (more…)

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Tags: ben affleck, Clifton Collins Jr., David Koecher, Dustin Milligan, Gene Simmons
Posted Sep 4th 2009 at 10:21 am in Reviews | 21793820 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/04/extract-review-good-performances-arent-enough/%27Extract%27+Review%3A+Good+Performances+Aren%27t+Enough2009-09-04+17%3A21%3A32John+Nolte

Movies We Like: ‘Enter the Dragon’ (1973)

“…but when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”

Uhm, no. The whole point of becoming an adult is not to do away with childish things but to get away with childish things. Yeah, sure, in my balding middle-age I’ve given up a few childish things like immunizations and optimism, but other than that most of my free time is dedicated to junk food, sitting too close to the TV and watching “things that are bad for me.”

And Bruce Lee movies. A regular rotation of Bruce Lee movies. Especially “Enter the Dragon.”

In the mid-to-late ‘70s this eleven year old would pack a lunch, grab his allowance, lie to his parents about going to the museum and jump on a downtown bus for a full day of losing himself in whatever schlocky, R-rated grinder was playing that Saturday afternoon. It was a glorious rotation of cheesy horror, kick-ass blacksploitation, urban actioners, and poorly dubbed kung-fu genre flicks, and before my family would move far away from the bus lines, the two best years of bang-for-the-buck movie-going I would ever experience. (more…)

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Tags: "Enter the Dragon", Bruce Lee, Jim Kelly, John Saxon
Posted Sep 3rd 2009 at 8:29 am in Film, Reviews, Today's Pick | 21715455 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/03/movies-we-like-enter-the-dragon-1973/Movies+We+Like%3A+%27Enter+the+Dragon%27+%281973%292009-09-03+15%3A29%3A39John+Nolte

Movies We Like: ‘Zulu’

The members of the ruling class of the British Isles seem to be committed to demonstrating that they are nothing but hopeless neo-socialists busy sacrificing their green and pleasant land on the altar of nanny-state multiculturalism.  It seems that every day there is a report of some new Labor assault on free speech, a fresh disaster in the decaying single-payer health care system, or another craven surrender to domestic jihadism. The latest atrocity is Scotland’s politicians’ ”compassionate release” of Lockerbie mass-murderer Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, a shameful maneuver that managed to combine greed, cowardice and self-righteousness all into one gutless package. I used to emphasize that I was 25% Scot and not mention my 12.5% French ancestry.  Now?  Well, can you say, “Bonjour?”  At least the “frogs” leadership will take their own side in a fight.

But the people of the British Isles – the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish – are a proud, tough bunch ill-served by their shabby politicians.  And nowhere on screen can you see their heart and glory displayed better than in 1964’s war epic Zulu.

Understand that Zulu is a true story.  In January 1879, a column of about 1500 poorly-deployed British troops was overrun at Isandhlwana by the 20,000-man Zulu army of King Catshweyo. After that slaughter – the Zulus did not bother with niceties like taking prisoners – the Zulus turned their attention to the nearby mission station at Rourke’s Drift, defended by about 100 Welsh infantrymen and their English officers. The desperate battle against overwhelming odds that followed became a legend. (more…)

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Tags: 2 Rifles, Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, Gladiator, John Barry, michael caine
Posted Sep 2nd 2009 at 8:37 am in Film, Politics, Reviews | 213774118 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/09/02/movies-we-love-zulu/Movies+We+Like%3A+%27Zulu%272009-09-02+15%3A37%3A11Kurt+Schlichter

Review: ‘Extract’-ing Laughs is Easy

Joel is just an average guy, a quiet yet well-to-do American living in a small town who happens to own a flavor-extract company. He’d like to sell the plant, retire early and get back to a healthier sex life with his bored, put-upon wife. 

But just as he seems prepared to make a deal with food giant General Mills to sell the plant for good, a freak accident occurs inside his plant that lops off one of a long-time employee’s testicles. The other is hanging by a thread, a metaphor that is apt for Joel’s life as it suddenly spirals out of control via a surreal round-robin of relationships that come unhinged and turn his life upside-down in the new comedy film “Extract.” 

Written and directed by Mike Judge, who has chronicled the modern everyman’s life in the long-running and brilliant Fox cartoon “King of the Hill” as well as in the short-running yet brilliant 1999 film “Office Space,” “Extract” takes a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued look at middle-class values in Middle America. But once again, Judge proves that he possesses a true love for the common, working-class Joe that translates into comedy that uplifts rather than demeans the lives of its characters.  (more…)

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Tags: "Extract", "Office Space", ben affleck, Jason Bateman, King of the Hill
Posted Sep 1st 2009 at 11:44 am in Reviews | 21483051 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/09/01/extract-ing-laughs-is-easy/Review%3A+%27Extract%27-ing+Laughs+is+Easy2009-09-01+18%3A44%3A19Carl+Kozlowski

‘Halloween II’: Bleak, Brutal and Numbing

Director Rob Zombie’s biggest mistake in 2007’s remake of “Halloween“ was in his desire to “explain” Michael Myers. Most of the narrative was spent building an unimaginative trailer trash mythology, which in turn drained off what made Myers so uniquely terrifying: the fact that he was just some suburban kid who snapped one night. The sequel takes this bad idea a step further, digging into the psyche of our Michael to explain why he’s so determined to kill his sister Laurie. Hint: He wants to bring the family together.

The original “Halloween II” (1981) picked up right where John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece left off. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is in the hospital after the previous night’s attack and Michael returns for another 90 minutes of mayhem. In a nod to the predecessor, Zombie wants us thinking things will go that way until he twists the plot forward a year, but the result is that he just kind of remakes the first one … again. (more…)

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Tags: Brad Dourif, Daniel Roebuck, Halloween II, Howard Hessman, John Carpenter
Posted Aug 29th 2009 at 5:09 pm in Reviews | 21393830 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/29/halloween-ii-bleak-brutal-and-numbing/%27Halloween+II%27%3A+Bleak%2C+Brutal+and+Numbing2009-08-30+00%3A09%3A00John+Nolte

‘The Final Destination’: Bloody 3D Fun

The “Final Destination” series really does have a genius concept. You cast a group of a half-dozen or so very killable twentysomethings, stage a big, gory opening set-piece where they’re the only ones who escape a grisly death, and then have an invisible Grim Reaper collect his debt using items we live with every day (ceiling fans, lawn mowers, shampoo, the escalator!) to knock them off one-by-one in the goriest ways imaginable.

If this is what you’re looking for, “Final Destination 4,” sorry, “THE Final Destination” delivers … and in 3D!

The concept’s so good there’s really no need for a story. The key to making it fun is how elaborate and creative each death is staged and “The” doesn’t disappoint. Each deadly chain of events — and they come about every seven minutes — is elaborately orchestrated: Pretty Young Thing (PYT) gives change to a bum. Bum scares off pigeon. Pigeon poops on PYT’s car. PYT’s sunroof is on the fritz. PYT goes to the car wash… All. Hell. Breaks. Loose. (more…)

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Tags: "Snakes on a Plane", "The Final Destination", 3D, David R. Ellis
Posted Aug 29th 2009 at 8:25 am in Reviews | 21368670 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/29/the-final-destination-bloody-3d-fun/%27The+Final+Destination%27%3A+Bloody+3D+Fun2009-08-29+15%3A25%3A47John+Nolte

‘Taking Woodstock’: Mythologizing the Worst Generation

In the late 1960s there were young people in college and starting families, young people far from home fighting and dying for the sovereignty of our allies in Vietnam, young people just starting to see results from their brave and noble fight for Civil Rights, and then there were the dirty, filthy hippies – the most spoiled, narcissistic, ungrateful species in the history of mankind – whose legacy of drug addiction, STDs, the misery of single motherhood and 2 million left dead on the Killing Fields of Cambodia, still reverberates forty years on.

Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock,” a halfway competent but ultimately erratic, unfocused story of how “three days of peace and music” came to the small town of White Lake, New York and changed for the better the lives of those who embraced “the spirit,” not only celebrates the drug abuse and loveless sex that defined the “Woodstock Generation,” but goes beyond caricatures and into outright anti-Semitism to condemn those who didn’t.

Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin), a young Jewish man in his early twenties, once again abandons his work as a struggling Greenwich Village artist to help his elderly parents (two Jewish stereotypes played by Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) through another summer season in the Catskills. Their “resort,” a filthy, dilapidated motel, is about to be foreclosed on and probably should be, but Elliott convinces an exasperated banker to give him one more season. But foreclosure is inevitable and Elliot knows it, and while his friends go to San Francisco with flowers in their hair, his dreams take a back seat to this annual guilt trip sponsored by his overbearing mother. (more…)

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Tags: 'Taking Woodstock', Ang Lee, anti-semitism, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber
Posted Aug 28th 2009 at 4:47 pm in Featured Story, Reviews | 213582208 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/28/taking-woodstock-mythologizing-the-worst-generation/%27Taking+Woodstock%27%3A+Mythologizing+the+Worst+Generation2009-08-28+23%3A47%3A08John+Nolte

Cult Classic ‘The Room’: So Bad, It’s Brilliant

It happens all the time in Hollywood: A friend has a dream of making a movie and wants to hire his friends as cast and crew. But most of the time, those dreams stay dreams, as the money to fund those projects rarely materializes.

For South Pasadena-based actor Greg Sestero, however, the dream became reality when his friend Tommy Wiseau managed to raise $6 million to write, direct and star in a movie called “The Room.” Keeping a promise he made years before when the two thespians met in a San Francisco acting class, Wiseau hired Sestero to be his co-star.

That should have been a happy ending, with the film either fading into oblivion or rising out of Sundance-style film festivals to become an indie sensation. Instead, “The Room” became wildly popular for an entirely different reason: it’s regarded as one of the great camp classics of all time, a movie considered so bad it’s brilliant.

Its monthly midnight showings at the Laemmle Sunset 5 theater in West Hollywood routinely sell out all five of the theater’s screens simultaneously, with crowds that have turned the viewing experience into the craziest interactive movie party since “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” (more…)

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Tags: "The Room", cameron diaz, Comic Con, Greg Sestero, John Hughes
Posted Aug 27th 2009 at 2:46 pm in Entertainment, Film, Reviews | 21195831 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/08/27/room-for-improvement/Cult+Classic+%27The+Room%27%3A+So+Bad%2C+It%27s+Brilliant2009-08-27+21%3A46%3A05Carl+Kozlowski

Movies We Like: ‘White Heat’ (1949)

Acting’s in the eyes and regardless of the role Jimmy Cagney’s eyes always screamed “caged.” Whether playing George M. Cohan or some middle-aged Coca-Cola executive, watching Cagney is like watching the lit fuse of a firecracker and whether it was with an explosion of song, dance or violence, Cagney never disappointed — he went off. In “White Heat,” director Raoul Walsh’s magnificent closing chapter in a magnificent two-decade series of Warner Brothers’ gangster pictures, Cagney again explodes …only this time, literally.

Jimmy Cagney in the early 1930s

Produced in 1949, within just a few minutes “White Heat” announces itself as something unlike anything that came before starting with the introduction of Verna Jarrett (29 year old Virginia Mayo), a striking, almost regal beauty shown fast asleep in a close up. Walsh immediately knocks the bark off his perfectly groomed leading lady by having her snore like a sailor after a three day bender. The message is clear: don’t believe everything you see. In just a few more minutes things will move even further beyond normal and straight into disturbing.   (more…)

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Tags: Cody Jarrett, Edmond O'Brien, gangster, James Cagney, Jimmy Cagney
Posted Aug 26th 2009 at 9:10 am in Reviews, Today's Pick | 21178638 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/26/movies-we-like-white-heat-1949/Movies+We+Like%3A+%27White+Heat%27+%281949%292009-08-26+16%3A10%3A46John+Nolte

Nothing Inglorious About Pro-American ‘Basterds’

Remember the children’s magazine, Highlights? Its motto is “fun with a purpose.” The motto for Quentin Tarantino’s latest flick, “Inglourious Basterds,” should be “violent with a purpose.”

It’s 1944 in Nazi-occupied France. Joseph Goebbels’ (Sylvester Groth) latest film triumph starring Germany’s latest hero, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), is set to premiere for the top brass of the Third Reich – including the big cheese himself, Adolf Hitler – and their guests. Funnily enough, the premiere is to be held in a cinema owned by Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a Jewish refugee with her own obvious reasons for hating the Nazis. Naturally, she plans her revenge for the fateful night.

Meanwhile the Basterds, a crack group of Jewish-American soldiers under the leadership of Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), is undercover in France and “in the business of killing Nazis, and business is booming.” Those Nazis who manage to escape death are given meaningful souvenirs of their time with the Basterds. The paths of these two groups cross in a way that only Tarantino, master of gory coincidence, could imagine.

A good ol’ boy and Jews brutally mowing down Nazis. What’s not to like? It’s probably one of the few times you’ll see a redneck positively portrayed in Hollywood. (more…)

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Tags: Adolph Hitler, brad pitt, Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds, Melanie Laurent
Posted Aug 25th 2009 at 3:40 pm in Reviews | 20981866 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pmeister/2009/08/25/nothing-inglorious-about-inglourious-basterds/Nothing+Inglorious+About+Pro-American+%27Basterds%272009-08-25+22%3A40%3A52Pam+Meister

Music Review: The Shazam’s ‘Meteor’

Nashville’s The Shazam have been around since 1993, delighting audiences with anthemic, hook-laden rock in the spirit of their two poles, The Who and The Move.  They moved beyond those obvious influences on ‘03’s stunning Tomorrow the World, a blast of rawk big enough to fill the Grand Canyon. 

The Shazam are part of the underground independent pop scene, the guys who gather for the Charlottesville Power Pop Festival, International Pop Overthrow, or SXSW.  Shazam have been with Not Lame since 1999’s masterful Godspeed the Shazam.  Meteor is the first disc Not Lame has produced in three years, not counting their annual International Pop Overthrow compilations. Meteor is a titanic yawp of hard rock anthems alternating with hooks so sweet they take your breath away.  Hans Rotenberry, who wrote and sings the songs, has carved a unique and immediately identifiable style from hard rock dynamics crossed with his sweet, supple voice.  (more…)

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Tags: "Don't Look Down", "Meteor", "So Awesome", Godspeed the Shazam, International Pop Overthrow
Posted Aug 22nd 2009 at 5:55 pm in Featured Story, Music, Reviews | 20927811 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mbaron/2009/08/22/review-the-shazam-meteor-not-lame/Music+Review%3A+The+Shazam%27s+%27Meteor%272009-08-23+00%3A55%3A02Mike+Baron

‘Inglourious Basterds’ Review

“Inglourious Basterds,” writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s very satisfying but longish WWII revenge fantasy, opens with one of the finest sequences you’ll see all year – one, that for good and bad, sets the tone for what the auteur has in store over the next 153 minutes. The quiet, green countryside of Nazi-occupied France is broken by the sight of approaching motorcycles. Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) has arrived for a visit with the stoic but gentle patriarch of a quiet, unassuming farming family. Landa is both accommodating and unfailingly polite. He’s also reptilian, purposefully unsettling and nicknamed “The Jew Hunter.”

With spare camera moves, very little score and two superb actors using their eyes to interpret the ominous subtext of intentionally banal dialogue, for nearly twenty minutes Tarantino tightens the suspense well beyond the snapping point and then well beyond that. Never does the encounter play in the way you expect, nor will the many plot-points this sequence sets up play out in the way you expect… Tarantino cherry-picks what he likes from certain genres, the whole is always something of his own. (more…)

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Posted Aug 21st 2009 at 6:43 pm in Featured Story, Reviews | 20969092 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/21/inglourious-basterds-review-2/%27Inglourious+Basterds%27+Review2009-08-22+01%3A43%3A55John+Nolte

Movies We Like: ‘Office Space’ (1999)

Transcending what objectively qualifies as “a great movie,” there is a rarer film still — a special kind of drug, tonic, and comfort blanket that guarantees a couple hours of escape from punishing reality. In 1999, “Office Space” died at the box office but something about it wouldn’t be denied and on DVD writer/director Mike Judge’s sharp, savage, right-on take of suburban office life found a ready-made audience desperate for that tonic – for anything that proved someone somewhere understood and sympathized with their own personal Cubicle Hell.

It was on a Friday night and I was in the Wal-Mart DVD aisle desperately searching for anything that might help to take the edge off a particularly brutal week of corporate bill collecting when the tagline “Work Sucks” caught my eye. Normally the thought of paying retail would’ve worked against such an impulse buy, but the comfort gained from those two words were alone worth $19.99, and home with me “Office Space” went. (more…)

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Tags: "Kung Fu", "Office Space", "Superman III", Diedrich Bader, Gary Cole
Posted Aug 21st 2009 at 6:35 am in Film, Reviews, Video | 209006103 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/21/movies-we-like-office-space-1999/Movies+We+Like%3A+%27Office+Space%27+%281999%292009-08-21+13%3A35%3A02John+Nolte

Top 15 Films of the New Millennium

Using reader scores, IMDB ranked their top 15 films produced since 2000. Other than “The Departed,” which along with “Mystic River,” “Crash,” “Crash,” and “Crash,” ranks in the top 5 over-rated films of ever, there’s little to quibble over. Taste is a subjective thing.

My personal Top 15 are ranked as my favorites always are — based on nothing more than re-watchability. “Rocky Balboa” might not be better written, photographed or acted than any number of films not on this list, but I’m going to watch it a helluva lot more, that’s for sure.  

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) – Ever since the lights came up after that first screening, like a drug this lyrical, gorgeously photographed piece of myth-making has tugged me back for another taste. This isn’t easy to admit, but I think I admire Andrew Dominik’s directorial debut even more than John Ford’s “Young Mister Lincoln” (1939), which it resembles in so many ways. Were this also a listing of the greatest performances of the new millennium, Casey Affleck’s portrayal of Robert Ford would rank #1, as well.

2. The Passion of the Christ (2004) – Easily, the purest and rawest emotional cinematic experience I’ve ever had. The Left’s bigoted, venomous attacks combined with the film’s eventual blockbuster success were almost as satisfying as the re-election of George W. Bush. (more…)

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Tags: 28 Weeks Later, 300, A.I., Amelie, Assassination of Jesse James
Posted Aug 19th 2009 at 12:12 pm in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Reviews, Top 5 | 207866220 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/19/top-15-films-of-the-new-millennium/Top+15+Films+of+the+New+Millennium2009-08-19+19%3A12%3A10John+Nolte

‘District 9′ Review

While offering up one of the smarter political allegories to hit theaters in a long time, after an imaginative and compelling opening based on an imaginative and compelling premise, the second half of “District 9” doesn’t live up. The idea-bottom drops completely out of what was looking to be a potential sci-fi classic when the story suddenly turns and devolves into a B-grade, actioner – most of it photographed by that infernal shaky-cam, which is guilty of ruining more movies than Julia Roberts.

High above Johannesburg, South Africa, a lifeless spaceship hovers in the haze. No one knows where it came from or how it got there and for a while everyone seems content to wait for something to happen. But as time passes and nothing does, a decision is made to investigate. Once inside, investigators find the ship’s cargo: thousands upon thousands of alien beings who will come to be known as “Prawns.”

Twenty years pass and by now it’s become obvious that these 1.8 million aliens are unable to care for themselves or integrate into human society. Like animals, they scour garbage piles for food, are hostile towards equally hostile citizens and have had to be segregated in District 9, a ghettoized internment camp guarded by Multi-National United (MNU), a private corporation involved in everything from military contracting to medical experimentation. (more…)

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Tags: Apartheid, District 9, Neill Blomkamp, Peter Jackson, South Africa
Posted Aug 18th 2009 at 2:35 pm in Reviews | 20748282 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/18/district-9-review/%27District+9%27+Review2009-08-18+21%3A35%3A47John+Nolte

‘Mad Men’ Season 3 Premiere Disappoints

I became a “Sopranos” fan about three or four years after the show first aired. I thought it was great. I went back to rent the first four seasons to catch up and thought they were great too. I would write reviews of each show for fun and follow certain blogs. One theme of the blogs was how the show “changed” and it was no longer as good. I did not understand what they were talking about. I figured they were over thinking the show.

Welcome to my first reaction to Season 3 of “Mad Men.” I was surprised they skipped seven or eight months in time. The opening flashback scene of Don Draper’s childhood was linked to Betty’s pregnancy, but seemed perfunctory. They have a big firing scene about the head of accounts who had never been on the show before. He must have been hired after “Duck Phillips” was fired. But this made no sense, because it means the Brits would have already approved it and been involved. Pete Campbell’s wife undergoes a personality transplant and is suddenly a power person. The usually sharp eyed Betty misses the meaning of the Stewardess’s pin her daughter finds, as Draper pretends it is a gift. (more…)

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Tags: mad men, political correctness, the sopranos
Posted Aug 18th 2009 at 10:44 am in Reviews | 20663832 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mrulle/2009/08/18/mad-men-season-3/%27Mad+Men%27+Season+3+Premiere+Disappoints2009-08-18+17%3A44%3A40Michael+S.+Rulle+Jr.

‘Inglourious Basterds’ Review

Take a ruthless Nazi leader who can order the deaths of a Jewish family with the same dispassion with which he requests a glass of milk. Mix his story with that of a Jewish woman who flees the slaughter of her family only to grow up and discover an opportunity to kill Hitler himself. Add in a cocky American Lieutenant named Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who leads a secret mission in which each of his men are ordered to scalp 100 Nazi, and you’ve got the combustible mix of lead characters who cross paths with explosive results in Oscar-winning writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, “Inglourious Basterds.” 

Bringing together his usual strengths as a director of intense performances from sterling casts, an amazing score pasted together from classic scores of past films, incredibly sharp and catchy dialogue and a warped time frame that that will throw viewers through a satisfying series of loops, Tarantino has easily made his best film since “Pulp Fiction.” Coming off a humiliating misfire with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which was half of the box-office disaster known as “Grindhouse,” Tarantino has admitted that he felt the need to double down on his strengths and prove that he was just as relevant and inventive as ever.  (more…)

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Tags: brad pitt, Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds, Nazi, nazis
Posted Aug 18th 2009 at 8:55 am in Reviews | 207186111 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/08/18/inglourious-basterds-review/%27Inglourious+Basterds%27+Review2009-08-18+15%3A55%3A03Carl+Kozlowski