Queen Latifah starred in last year’s remake of Last Holiday, playing a shopgirl misdiagnosed with a terminal illness. Cashing in her retirement funds for a dream trip to a European five star ski resort, she’s mistaken for a mystreiously wealthy woman by the owner of the department store chain where she’s employed and some American congressman.

Timothy Hutton, looking almost anorexic, plays the asshole entrepreneur, Alicia Witt looking hotter than ever as his latest MBA/mistress and Giancarlo Esposito the House member for Latifah’s district, LL Cool J plays her dreamlover/co-worker, plus a chubby Gérard Depardieu is the resort’s chef who loves her zest for food and life. A good cast but other than the chef there isn’t much chemistry or energy.

Honestly it was moderately entertaining, and Latifah is pretty good in what is otherwise a low energy affair.

As part of our third anniversary celebration, we saw Mission Impossible 3–get it? Three, third? LOL. Seriously, we both enjoyed 1 & 2 and are JJ Abrams fans so, bad reviews and disgust with Tom Cruise’s Scientology-inspired antics aside, there was never any doubt we’d go.

You know what? We liked the movie. Cruise was more or less generic middle aged action hero, most of his attempts at emotion delivered by cliched facial expressions, but the rest was decent. Abrams (he created TV’s Alias and Lost if the name is unfamiliar) must have been a fan of the original TV series, and who wasn’t, after all, but apparently more so than the directors of the first two films, John Woo and Brian Depalma, because for the first time I really felt the connection to it.

For starters, the theme music doesn’t sound like a mutation of Lalo Schifrin’s original. Second, there’s a scene where Cruise’s boss assembles a team for him with quick dossier shots of each member. Third, while still employing very modern high tech assists, and a bit more big bang than really necessary, I felt the IM team used finesse and brain power to reach their goals, something necessary in the 1960s with the limited tech available.

Not a perfect or even great movie, to be sure, as some aspects were too predictable and others unbelievable. For instance, on the ground in Shanghai with no resources Cruise is able to out together a bunch of fairly obscure equipment and get the plans of a highly secure corporate office tower in under two hours. While on the run from his own agency.

Bottom line, though, is that this is a fun big budget modern thriller. Jerry Bruckheimer could learn something from watching it.

recommended

I expect that smart planes are not too far off though I don’t believe any American military officer would be so cavalier with the destructive power Tinman has in Stealth. Then again, Hollywood is not the Pentagon and overzealous military men are stock movie characters. Someone has to create (or exacerbate) the crisis, though, and Sam Shepherd is more than grizzled enough for the role.

Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx pay the three hottest young pilots in the Navy and after a training period with a hot new fighter jet are deployed to a carrier somewhere to the south of China. Arriving just after them is a variation on their planes with no human pilot, driven instead by a brand-new artificial intelligence.

Another thing Hollywood rarely worries over in these big budget actioners is realism so over the remainder of the movie the jets fly thousands of miles in a single mission. But really that’s besides the point, which is flashy, fast, tight flying over varied, rugged terrains and lots of big explosions. Some sexy skin from Biel and Foxx.

I actually think, as long as one ignores the ridiculous exaggerations (did I mention the deathdealing North Korean soldiers?), Stealth is a moderately enjoyable movie. The pace is decent and the visuals sharp but in the end it doesn’t have enough originality or sustained excitement.

I can just hear the studio executive after hearing the pitch: “Jane Fonda matched up with Jennifer Lopez in her return to Hollywood moviemaking after 15 years as Ted Turner’s wife, talk about box office magic!” And so Monster-In-Law was greenlighted as fast as the exec’s fingers could move the pen.

Let’s make it better by casting hot from Alias Michael Vartan as the stunning doctor who they fight over. Funnywoman Wanda Sykes can add some yucks as Fonda’s long-suffering assistant and cute Annie Parisse (the most recent Law & Order assistant DA) puts a patch of blue dye in her hair to play J. Lo’s stereotypical quirky bestfriend. Monet Mazur is the hot dizzy blonde who won’t give up on winning over Vartan and Will Arnett (Gob from the much more entertaining Arrested Development) has a cameo as Vartan’s bestfriend.

I was expecting more from director Robert Luketic, whose previous two movies were Legally Blonde and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, but this was exactly as formulaic as it sounds. The catfights, sending Vartan away so Fonda and Lopez can fight, the faux-farce final straw and teary happy ending, everything you expect precisely when you expect it.
not recommended

Surprisingly TS1 had never seen this 1973 Al Pacino movie despite it being on so many top 100 films of all time lists. So we borrowed it from the library but the disc was bad and we had to wait until one of the TV channels aired it, fortunately not too long. Worth the wait, anyway.

Serpico is the film version of Frank Serpico’s career with the NYPD, shortened considerably by his refusal to go along with the casual corruption of (apparently) many of the detective squads and the refusal of the corrupt detectives to share Frank’s live and let live attitude. After a few years, while he attempted to go through channels to expose the problem or just get to a safe posting, they simply set him up for a bullet from drug dealer. There probably wouldn’t have been a movie except the dealer was a bad aim and ran away after only one shot.

Made on the heels of the first Godfather movie, this performance earned Pacino an Oscar nomination and established him in the top ranks of the post-Method stars with Robert DeNiro (remember, their co-starring roles in Godfather II were still a year off) and Gene Hackman (who Pacino only worked with in Scarecrow, a small, obscure production also from 1973). Sidney Lumet, starting a fine decade-long run, directed from Waldo Salt and Norm Wexler’s adaptation of Peter Maas’ bestselling biography.

Serpico actually has a fairly large number of speaking roles but Pacino is essentially the focus of every scene, even when he’s on the hospital operating table–most of the movie is told as a flashback while we wait to see if he lives–and the transformation from eager police academy graduate to cynical, yet unwilling to be corrupted, detective really is a tour de force. His career choice was inspired by a kid’s idealistic view of a neighborhood beat cop but he was always different from the other men in blue, involved and inspired by the music and politics of the ’60s where his colleagues only wanted shut of the hippies.

definitely recommended