This week on the HomeVideodrome podcast, Hunter reviews Liam Neeson’s death-obsessed wolf-fighting-fest “The Grey,” Jim discovers “Blubberella” and extols on the greatness of “Adaptation” and the week’s releases get the usual treatment. Head on over to The Film Thugs and give it a listen.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” is the essence of crime cinema cool boiled down to its bones, combining the spartan feel of Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai” with the sheen of Michael Mann’s ’80s output like “Thief.” Throw in a protagonist reminiscent of Ryan O’Neill’s strong silent wheelman in Walter Hill’s “The Driver,” and you’ve got a shiny movie buff confection.

Ryan Gosling completely owns the nameless lead role, shiny scorpion jacket and all. The year Gosling had in 2011 effectively silenced his critics who wrote him off as a pretty face in “The Notebook,” with “Drive” standing at the head of the pack. His soft exterior makes his cool-yet-vicious character in “Drive” all the more potent whenever he has to stomp some poor henchman’s head in.

I love grizzled, masculine action heroes like Liam Neeson and Lee Marvin as much as the next red-blooded American, but Gosling steps up to the plate, points to the outfield, and knocks the ball straight into the spark-spewing lights. Don’t let his soft features or feathery surname fool you. Gosling brilliantly channels the brand of cool perfected by Alain Delon in Melville’s quiet heist & hitman sagas.

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“Birding comedy” is not a phrase you hear all that often. In fact, “The Big Year” may be one of a kind.

Here’s a blurb for the new film, out this week on DVD: “It’s the best birding comedy of all time!” Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean much.

“The Big Year” is about three very different men all struggling to juggle their personal lives with their love for birding … or bird watching for the uninitiated. A character corrects another when he says “bird watching” at one point, but I couldn’t figure out what the difference was. All three men are setting out to have a “big year,” which means they aim to see as many different species of birds as they can in one year to become the “greatest birder of all time.”

As two men with accents say early in the film, “Only Americans can turn birding into a competition.” Owen Wilson then proceeds to flip them his own bird. I actually laughed at that one.

Brad Harris (Jack Black) is a 36-year-old man who lives with his parents and hates his job. Stu (Steve Martin) is a rich businessman who just wants to retire, but his underlings seem lost without him. And finally there is Kenny Bostick (Owen Wilson) who holds the big year record of 732 birds and now returns to defend his title. Bostick struggles to keep his marriage alive while he constantly chooses the birds over his pregnant wife.

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It’s unfair to hold Woody Allen to the standard he set 35 years ago with “Annie Hall.”

Allen’s romantic comedy, which beat out “Star Wars” for the Best Picture Oscar in 1977, remains an unabashed delight in its newly minted Blu-ray format. You’ll fall in love with Miss La-dee-dah herself, Diane Keaton, and marvel how Allen could smuggle in so many laughs without sacrificing the film’s bittersweet core.

It’s that rare comedy that hasn’t aged a minute, even if we still scratch our heads over why a stunner like Annie would fall so hard for a neurotic comedian.

What’s more remarkable about re-watching the film is seeing how Allen the artist handled the political divide then … and now.

In “Annie Hall,” Allen’s Alvy Singer is a liberal stand-up comic who is seen at one point performing for an Adlai Stevenson fundraiser. It’s clear from that sequence, and from other stream-of-conscious bits, that he’s a man of the Left. Yet Alvy never rubs us the wrong way no matter how he kevetches about his inability to be truthful to his girlfriends or his unabiding hate for the Left Coast.

Contrast that demeanor to two of Allen’s more recent films, “Whatever Works” and “Midnight in Paris.”

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It was fairly obvious that co-directors John Lasseter and Brad Lewis decided that their follow-up to the original “Cars” (2006) — which Lasseter also-co-directed — needed to broaden its scope beyond the small town of Radiator Springs. While I found the original as touching and charming as anything else Pixar has done,  many found the original subpar, and my guess is that was at least in part due to the  provincial nature of the story. Much of Pixar’s magic comes from their wondrous ability to create a world and then take us on a dazzling tour throughout it. The world of “Cars” was indeed small, but the good news is that by contrast, the world of “Cars 2″ is as exotic and worldly as any James Bond film.

And I say that because “Cars 2” opens like a James Bond film, and this is quite intentional. The story as a whole can be summed up with the word “spy-jinx,” and the opener involving Sir Michael Caine as a sleek, British super agent is pure 007 in tone, style, and the way in which it sets up a diabolical conspiracy involving Big Oil’s willingness to kill in order to strangle in the crib a promising alternative fuel.

From there we are sent back to Radiator Springs, where Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) has returned home from a successful tour of the racing circuit for some relaxation  and to hang out with his best friend Tow Mater (a superb Larry the Cable Guy). One thing leads to another, most of it due to Mater’s buffoonery, and before you know it, Mater and Lightning are touring Europe for a World Grand Prix and Mater has been mistaken for an undercover secret agent who holds the key to the Big Oil conspiracy.

The story itself is disappointing, far below Pixar’s usual imaginative and emotional standards, which is a disappointment. The emotional wallop is lacking due to a weak, predictable subplot involving the friendship between Lightning and Mater. Laziest of all is the Big Oil bad guy. You might have been able to forgive the preachier moments if there was any imagination at work.  Big Oil, really? I dislike big business almost as much as big government, but what I really dislike is lazy storytelling.

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Audiences lining up to see the new bird-watching comedy ‘The Big Year’ probably couldn’t tell a pink footed goose from a stifftail duck. The niche hobby of bird watching is far less popular than most leisure pursuits.

And when they leave the theater they won’t know much more about the wonderful world of birds.

‘The Big Year’ illustrates the pitfalls of being a “birder” – the sudden travel, the pricey hotel fees and the risk of alienating the ones you love. But where’s the joy, the sense that we’re watching nature’s handiwork up close and personal?

We’re left with a trio of comic actors rummaging for narrative scraps, let alone enough laugh lines to justify their respective paychecks.

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It’s difficult to dislike a Pixar movie because the studio is well-known for telling great stories with wonderful animation. After all, this is the studio that released the “Toy Story” trilogy and the heart-warming “Up.” “Cars 2,” the newest Pixar film to hit theaters, continues the studio’s tradition of great animation but its story falls short and fails to capture the wonderment of some of the studio’s earlier films.

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The flaws in “Cars 2” are especially evident because the feature-length story is preceded by a short “Toy Story” film.  The short film displays the creativity and imagination that is sorely lacking in “Cars 2.” Despite the fact that the “Toy Story” crew has already been featured in three films, the new story about Ken and Barbie missing out on a Hawaiian vacation is inventive and extremely funny. The feature film that follows can’t hold a candle to it.

In “Cars 2,“ Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is challenged by European opponent Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) to compete in the World Grand Prix, an international racing competition. After prodding from girlfriend Sally (Bonnie Hunt), McQueen decides to bring his friend Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) along with him. Mater, who acts like he’s never been on a vacation before, quickly begins embarrassing his friend overseas. Mater also becomes mixed up in a spy plot that involves two secret agents, voiced by Emily Mortimer and Michael Caine respectively.

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Director Woody Allen is responsible for some of the most interesting feature films ever made, and some of the worst.  His latest work doesn’t fit into either category.  It actually fits somewhere in the middle of his oeuvre.  Comparatively, it is similar in tone to his 1985, “The Purple Rose of Cairo.”  That is all I want to say, as I do not want to give away the big spoiler.

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Owen Wilson portrays Gil Pender, a Hollywood screenwriter on holiday in Paris with his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents.  Gil is on vacation from being a Hollywood Hack and in the process of writing his “Great American Novel;” the theme of which is being enamored of the past.  You can tell from the beginning that he is not happy with either his life or his fiancé and wishes to be part of a better generation and era.

Inez, the direct opposite of Gil, is a materialistic ambitious character who is pretty much unlikable from the beginning.  Her mother is such a bitch that you cannot help but expect the same of her.  Her father is portrayed as a right-wing “tea bagger” who is constantly getting into arguments with the liberal Gil, mostly over politics.  There is never a point in the film when you feel the slightest sympathy for anyone in Inez’s family.  You just simply know that Inez will do something during the course of the film that will allow Gil to get out of the engagement and relationship.

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“Hall Pass” is the first truly terrible motion picture of 2011. Filled with gross-out comedy and a lame plot, the story feels like a sitcom gone bad. Diehard fans of the Farrelly Brothers and their brand of lowbrow humor might enjoy “Hall Pass” but most viewers should take a pass on this disgusting film.

The Farrelly Brothers, who previously directed “There’s Something about Mary” and “Shallow Hal” (which are both highly superior to “Hall Pass”) , directed this comedy and helped write the screenplay.  Unfortunately, the writers couldn’t come up with anything better than a few lame jokes and crude humor that falls flat.

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Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis star as Rick and Fred, two longtime buddies who have an affinity for saying and doing offensive things in front of their wives. Although they’re married to two beautiful woman, played by Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate, the men still like to check out other women in front of their wives. Their wives are disappointed and disgusted with them so Joy Behar, who plays their friend Lucy, offers them a suggestion. She tells the women to give their husbands a week off from marriage. During that period, the men are allowed to do whatever they want and sleep with whomever they choose. Both wives begrudgingly agree and give their husbands “hall passes.”  The story then chronicles the week of freedom in the men’s lives.

If the premise isn’t cringe-worthy enough, the lame attempts at comedy should be. There is, as seems to be commonplace in comedies like this, a sequence where different characters in the story take drugs and viewers are expected to laugh at their outrageous behavior. (I wish comedy writers could come up with something better than giving characters drugs and then watching how stupid they act.) In “Hall Pass,” one of the men who takes drugs decides to go to the bathroom on a golf course. That, along with much of the comedy in this film, might be funny for twelve year old boys but few others would probably laugh watching a grown man humiliate himself.

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Being a married guy is a tricky proposition. On the one hand, they have the security and stability of domestic life.  And on the other hand, many men often wish they could still roam wild and free, ogling or even hitting on anything that moves. But what do you do when 20 years of marriage start to grate on you?

Do you slide into silent resentment of each other? Or do you possibly give yourself and your spouse a “hall pass’ – a week off from marriage that’s designed to let you take a walk on the wild side in the hopes of making you appreciate each other again?

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That’s the intriguing premise of “Hall Pass,” the latest outrageous comedy from writer-directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly. The film follows the antics of Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis), good family men who are nonetheless horny and bored from years of family life.

Their wives (played by Christina Applegate and Jenna Fischer) encounter a psychiatrist (Joy Behar), who suggests the “hall pass” to save their marriages. But as the guys are cheered on by their chorus of buddies, they find that hooking up is way harder than they remember.

And as their wives head off on their own weeklong vacation, they find surprising temptations of their own.

“Hall Pass” is easily the funniest movie the Farrelly Brothers have made since their trio of classics in the 1990s: “Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin” and “There’s Something About Mary.” It’s a welcome return to no-holds-barred yet clever raunch after they fell off track into sentimentality with “Stuck on You” and “Fever Pitch.”

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In addition to its well-publicized, disastrous experiment with moving Jay Leno to primetime, NBC has done some good things this year. Perhaps the best of these is the new sitcom Community.

The concept is simple but rich in characters and potential comical situations. Suspended lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) has been sent back to college because his academic degree was discovered to be phony. Now he’s stuck at the local community college—which he describes as a “school-shaped toilet.”

The show includes at least a few genuinely amusing moments per episode, but it also takes its characters seriously to some degree, which makes it more than just a string of gags. In the first episode, Winger ends up leading a Spanish-language study group even though he has little grasp of the language. The various members of the group are comically beset by a multitude of emotional, social, and functional problems.

Winger, however, very quickly (and somewhat implausibly) turns the group into what he describes as a “community.” The tables are soon turned on him, however, as he is revealed to all as a shallow, selfish, conceited moral relativist. This is not characterized as a good thing. (more…)

If the first “Night at the Museum” was weighed down with a cookie-cutter plot involving the stale idea of a single dad desperate to redeem himself in his son’s eyes, “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” has no weight whatsoever thanks to a flat story loaded with monstrous plot holes and a cast of dull, one-dimensional characters.

There’s also only one laugh — one — and all the special effects in the world simply can’t make up for a single chuckle over 105 very long minutes. The only good news is that Ben Stiller appeared to be even more bored than I was.

If you remember, Larry Daley (Stiller) was once a night guard at the Museum of Natural History in New York City where after the sun went down, thanks to ancient artifact, the exhibits all came to life. Mayhem ensued, adventure was had and lifelong friendships were formed.

A few years have passed (between films and for our characters) and today Larry has managed to tinker his way into fortune and some fame as a highly successful entrepreneur hawking inventions, like his glow-in-the-dark flashlight (so you can find it when the power goes out, duh), on infomercials.   (more…)

Hollywood is off to a staggering, record-breaking start in 2009 led by Clint Eastwood’s most successful wide opening ever, a French action import and a chubby guy on a Segway. Hot on the heels of the biggest January in history with over $1 billion in domestic sales, February has exceeded $750M in the US. The industry’s all-time best January followed by the all-time biggest February on the books puts total domestic box office for the year at almost $1.8 billion.

“Everything is working.” That’s what one studio exec told me today. “With the exception of the Jonas Brothers, it seems like almost every release is out-performing expectations.” January 2009 has gone down as the all-time 8th-best month in modern box office history. It started with excellent holiday holdovers. Six movies, technically released in 2008, did major chunks of their business after New Year’s.

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Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

SUNDAY MORNING: Dog lovers everywhere united to make Fox’s Marley & Me the #1 Christmas weekend movie with an expected $51.18M in the Thursday-thru-Sunday period for a Per Theatre Average of $14,888. Pre-opening industry tracking pointed to a clear win for Bedtime Stories (Disney), but it was the lovable lab who finished on top.

As an aside, all of us who read John Grogan’s extraordinarily well-written novel should have seen this coming. The book is a joy, and anyone who has a dog, or has ever had a dog, could easily identify with the struggles and pleasures of having a 4-legged member of the family.

The success of Marley slightly mitigates a disastrous year for Fox. Its year started out well enough riding the huge success of 2007 release Alvin & the Chipmunks into January ($70M of Alvin’s gross landed in this calendar year). The January 18 release of chick-flick 27 Dresses scored for Katherine Heigl ($76.8M in the US), then Jumper was a good solid February hit, topping $80M, followed by the wildly successful Horton Hears a Who ($154.5M domestic). Little did Fox know that when the Ashton Kutcher-Cameron Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas played solidly to the tune of $80.2M domestic starting in May, it would be its last legit hit until Christmas’ Marley & Me. This is a huge, redemptive win for Fox, and its sentimental tear-jerker of a dog movie could near $100M domestic by Sunday.

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