I am very surprised to be writing that this movie starring Ben Stiller and directed by Shawn Levy (the Steve Martin Pink Panther remake, Just Married, Big Fat Liar) is really funny but that was before the credits rolled I saw the writers are Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon (Reno 911, The Pacifier) and understood. The starring role is well suited to Stiller’s style and strengths without allowing him to go far enough to be a self-parody as he’s done too often and Levy has developed a sophisticated control that appeals to kids and adults without pandering/condescending to either audience.

Night at the Museum looks at what goes on inside New York City’s famed Museum of Natural History after everyone but the might watchman leaves. Ever since the mummy of an Egyptian pharoah and his magical gold tablet arrived at the museum in the 1950s all the wax figures, animals and skeletons have come to life each night, trying to run amuck and escape even though being outside at dawn would reduce it to ashes. Management decides the three previous guards are two too many and well past retirement age but Dick Van Dyke, Bill Cobb and Mickey Rooney aren’t ready to go just yet—that magical tablet is keeping them young and energetic, on the inside at least—and hire Stiller, thinking he’s the perfect dupe.

Stiller’s character, meanwhile, is a dreamer unable to succeed in his entrepreneurial dreams or keep his marriage to the lovely Kim Raver (Bauer’s love interest the last two seasons of 24). Stiller takes the job as a desperate attempt to salvage his relationship with his 8/9 year old son (Jake Cherry) but can’t believe what happens his first night as the watchman. Van Dyke’s crew have barely prepared him for the wild goings on, just the opposite as they hope to make him their patsy, but with guidance from Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt and determination not to fail his son Ben succeeds. Heck, at the end he shows that in less than a week he’s understood the situation better than the three oldsters did in half a century.

There are plenty of star turns in cameos and, except for Ricky Gervais whose humor I just don’t get, they work fairly well. Carla Guigino is a docent (volunteer tour guide), Owen Wilson is a tiny cowboy, Steve Coogan is a tiny Roman emperor Octavius, Mizuo Peck is a sweet Sacagewea, Patrick Gallagher is Attila the Hun and Brad Garrett voices the large stone Easter Island Head (”Dumb dumb give me gum gum“). The T Rex and Dexter the capuchin monkey are lots of fun too.

recommended

This amazingly visual, funny, nonsensical science fiction thriller from the mind of writer/director/producer Luc Besson is one of the reasons I wish he would direct more often than he has lately, though perhaps he’s able to make more films by producing and sometimes co-writing and I ought to be happy with that. Some hundreds of years from now Earth has a single government and flying cars and regular interstellar travel, though life is not perfect and an active military force is required to protect us from some of the alien races we’ve encountered.

The title of the The Fifth Element refers to a powerful force that Humanity needs to defeat the ultimate evil, who is returning after being held off 5,000 years ago with the assistance of since forgotten aliens. Gary Oldman plays a sniveling, powerful misanthrope paving the way for the evil being by attempting to disrupt the delivery of the fifth element while Bruce Willis is a struggling cab driver and retired Special Forces soldier drafted in to prevent disaster. Willis gets calls from his yenta of a mom wondering when he’ll be a mensch and give her grandkids already.

Two actors got their first real public awareness here: Milla Jovovich is the embodied title character, this movie launching her into a series of asskicking heroine roles and Chris Tucker is terrific as media host caught in the middle—imagine an extroverted, taller Prince. Character actors Ian Holms (the priest), Tiny Lister (the president) and Brion James (the general) lead a huge supporting cast of humans, altered humans and barely past cartoonish aliens for two hours of true fun.

Easily a film that can be watched every two or three years without getting bored! Almost makes it on to my favorites list.

recommended

This 2005 effort from newcomer writer/director Thomas Bezucha had, I think, more potential than ended up on screen: the plot is wellworn but Bezucha brings a few good twists, recognizable/proven talents are in almost all the significant speaking roles and for the most part engaging chemistry. Oldest brother, successful career but disconnected from his true emotional self, brings home his even more successful and even more disconnected girlfriend for a snowy, small town New England Christmas to meet his mellow, wildly different family and then propose to her.

Over the 100 minutes of The Family Stone Dermot Mulroney (the brother) and Sarah Jessica Parker (the girlfriend) reach the lowest of lows and (this being a movie) rebound to true happiness. When Parker hits hers she reaches out to younger sister Clare Danes; somehow, never clear to me, stoner middle brother Luke Wilson is as smitten with Parker as Mulroney is with the nearly-glowing Danes as she steps off the bus.

The problem here for me is that Family is maudlin, nearly melodramatic. I say this because of the illness of mother Diane Keaton, the youngest brother is both gay and deaf, the youngest sister (Rachel McAdams) criticizes Parker for being an uptight phony and turns out to be nearly the same herself. Then there’s the final scene, a year after the main events, which was really unnecessary.

mildly recommended

This mildly amusing romantic comedy mainly works because of the two leads, Diane Lane and John Cusack. As the movie opens both are heartbroken after losing the respective longterm partner and in little mood to find another. Of course meddling family and friends will not leave them be and so the two meet (along with numerous others).

Cusack is immediately smitten but the contrived plotting of writers Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties, Spin City, the similarly-themed though not nearly as good 1995 film Bye Bye Love) and Claire Cook (who also wrote the novel on which this is based) keeps them from finding happiness together. Goldberg also directed.

Lane, a kindergarden teacher, becomes intrigued by Dermot Mulroney, the father of a cute little student; in the end Mulroney proves to be the typical pig male. Cusack, more or less by default, takes up with a slutty blonde played by Jordana Spiro. Lane’s dad, the ever-elegant Christopher Plummer, is single again and content to enjoy his remaining time unencumbered by treating his lady friends with respect–in other words an older version of Mulroney’s character. Just with better style.

This is very much a Hollywood movie, so you should not be surprised or think I’m spoiling the movie by telling you that Lane eventually realizes she was a fool not to latch on to Cusack and rushes to let him know. The good of this movie is not the originality or plot, which are more than a bit by the numbers, but the acting. In addition to the previously-mentioned, the cast also includes good supporting performances by Elizabeth Perkins, Stockard Channing and Glen Howerton.

recommended

This 1999 movie about very religious (fraternal) Boston Irish twins never got much accord but seemed tempting so I watched the other night and enjoyed it quite a bit. Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus play the twins, who seem to be in their early 20s; their background is never really explained but despite despising violent criminals they sure know their way around guns and knives. This is the only film from writer/director Troy Duffy, so not much with which to compare it.

At the opening of The Boondock Saints the twins are enjoying a night in their neighborhood Irish bar with some pals when a trio of Russian gangsters show up to close the place down a few days ahead of schedule, to which the patrons object, violently. Two of the Russians end up dead in the alley and Willem Dafoe shows up as an FBI agent who takes over, since he’s already investigating the Russian gang.

The twins turn themselves in and are released as having acted in self-defense (which they were) after a wave of community pressure. When a message comes in one of the dead guys’ pager with instructions to show up at a hotel room, they gear up with guns, knives and rope and wipe out all nine local leaders. Acrobatcally. This goes on with several more slayings, with the addition of a low-level Italian mob flunky added to the ‘team’.

Did I mention that Dafoe’s character is gay? Not that he’s flaming but there is one bed scene and another with him dressed up as a hot chick. He’s rarely looked as much like Dennis Leary’s twin than here, I think.

Finally the Mafia boss gets nervous about it maybe being his turn next and pulls strings to get a dangerous killer (Billy Connolly) paroled. The thing is, Il Duce only kills killers. There’s a showdown with him and the youngsters, with no clear victor. Then Duffy throws in a pretty good twist.

As with War of the Worlds, I think the key to my enjoyment is the pacing. Saints never slows down to where you can wonder about how they keep getting away with it, nor are their any talky explanatory scenes. Not a classic but a decent movie.

recommended

Most of what I read or heard about this Tom Cruise/Steven Spielberg collaboration was negative so I avoided it until the other afternoon. Bad on me since War of the Worlds is not bad at all. Cruise does his generic grimace-filled acting (compare his running here and in Mission Impossible III, for example) but Spielberg, well he just knows how to make movies.

The story is updated to our times and technology, as well as our moviemaking style, with Cruise’s character Ray providing the focal point. Ray is decidedly lower (middle?) class, driving one of those huge container movers at a New Jersey port, divorced and not really grown up despite having two kids (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) with the much classier, remarried Mirando Otto (who you may remember as Eowyn from Lord of the Rings). Cruise does not do working class very well but Spielberg minimizes this factor by keeping him in motion for most of the film.

As in the versions by both Wells (HG and Orson), the invaders are far enough ahead of human technology that even the best the American military can throw against them is useless. We seem doomed as the massive numbers of the aliens combined with their merciless deathdealing leave little hope for survival. Even as Cruise, Fanning and Tim Robbins hide in a basement shelter (during which Spielberg gives us the only look at the aliens rather than their vehicles) the aliens begin to search doggedly for individuals and capture Fanning and then Cruise.

If you want a clue to the ending, watch the opening carefully. I missed the first two or three minutes and then caught them yesterday and the resolution made a lot more sense, as did hearing Morgan Freeman’s (who else) narration.

What I really liked about WotWs was the pace. Right from Cruise jumping in his car after a shift at the port and racing wildly home events just keep moving. There’s little time to wonder about the invaders, not that anyone knows anything, and stopping simply invites attention from a tripod’s death ray.

recommended

I can understand why Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke and even Delroy Lindo wanted to make this movie and I can see where it could have been great. Sadly, director Tony Scott and writer Richard Kelly did not deliver on the promise Domino had.

Then again Scott has been very erratic over the length of his career. He directed really good films like Top Gun, Enemy of the State, Crimson Tide, True Romance and Spy Game but also clunkers like Beverly Hills Cop II, Days of Thunder and The Fan and especially rail spike in the forehead bad Man on Fire. Kelly, a fellow Trojan alum, had only previously written (and directed) the cult classic Donnie Darko, which I’ve never seen.

The elements are all there: Knightley plays Domino Harvey, the daughter of ’50s film star Lawrence Harvey, who never fit with the fast, rich crowd into which she was born. Modeling and school bored her and instead of turning to drugs or sex she got into martial arts and action; she tossed the runway for bounty hunting, teaming up with Rourke and a smoldering hot Latino guy to work for Lindo.

The movie opens with FBI behavioralist Lucy Liu interrogating Knightley; the rest of the movie is a flashback as Domino tells Liu how things ended up with her all bloody and in custody. Honestly I turned off after 45 disappointing minutes so I’m not really sure how it all turns out but after consideration the problem for me was really down to Scott’s directing. After all these years you’d think he’d have the big action flick down solid but apparently not–trust me I won’t be spending money or time seeing his current release, Deja Vu, in the theaters or when it turns up on TV.

not recommended

I wanted to like this film, directed by star Tommy Lee Jones, and it was a close thing, but I just couldn’t get into it. The emotions, the core of the film, were too laid back to connect with me. Also, the nearly arbitrary and often confusing sequencing of the scenes simply annoying rather than suspenseful or revealing. So -1 to Jones, who probably ought to stick either with acting or directing less complex scripts.
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is titled quite literally, concerning the three times a Mexican cowboy named Melquiades Estrada gets buried. Mixed in with them are scenes that explain who Estrada was, the quality of the man who killed him, and the trip Jones, the killer and the corpse take to get to the third one.
Decent acting by Melissa Leo as a married woman who also keeps warm with the Sheriff and Jones, Barry Pepper as the killer and Julio Cedillo as Estrada. Not so good are a completely listless January Jones as Pepper’s wife and Dwight Yoakum as the Sheriff.

not recommended

This fast-paced sequel almost, but not quite, escapes from the middle of a trilogy syndrome. I enjoyed it, the focus was entirely on keeping the plot moving with the action properly serving it rather than big booms and blood used as irrelevant eye candy. Len Wiseman (director, co-writer and husband of star Kate Beckinsale) and Danny McBride (co-writer) even pretty much resisted the temptation to indulge the romantics between Michael (Scott Speedman) and Selene (Beckinsale)

Underworld: Evolution picks up right after the end of Underworld, with Selene realizing that Kraven will be coming for them to pay for Victor’s death. She’s right but Wiseman and McBride elevate the conflict by centering it on the history–the founding–of the Death Dealers (vampires) and Lycans (werewolves) and Selene’s place in it. Somehow (not explained here), two brothers in 13th century Central Europe become the first of each clan after being bitten by the respective animal. William, the werewolf brother, cannot return to human form nor control his violence and so their father traps him and imprisons him “for all eternity” in a secret location.

Marcus, the bloodsucking brother, infects their father (played here, 800 years later, by the elegant Derek Jacobi) and now decides (again, the rationale is not given) that the time has come to free William. He has the ability to take another’s memory by drinking their blood (unique to him? not sure, not explained) and so gets all caught up by drinking Kraven’s blood. Selene, it seems, is the key, the only person who actually knows the location of William’s prison.

The finale is a massive confrontation between Selene and Michael and William and Marcus. Plenty of blood but smartly done. Michael, remember, is a hybrid of both, er, hybrids and, before the end, Selene is transformed into one as well. Despite this seemingly final victory, the last scene left me feeling vaguely unfulfilled and hopeful that rather than the announced prequel McBride and Wiseman will finish this story next.
Beckinsale, of course, is ultrahot in her leather gear.

recommended

Daniel Craig, to answer your first question, makes a fine James Bond; I’d have preferred Clive Owen but apparently he didn’t want to take the role. I think the producers made a smart move by remaking this as the Bond origin story, more or less, since the original got taken in a strange (though funny) direction and was ripe.

What I think is perhaps less successful about this Casino Royale is the nearly complete humorectomy. Part of this series’ charm has been the implicit acknowledgment that its just a bit beyond believable by including a touch of camp, such as the circus scene in Octopussy and the Sheriff J.W. Pepper character in both Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. I think the idea is to update the series in the same manner as SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica but, well, idea is not execution.

Otherwise, except for the ending, I’m pretty happy with the film. Some good action sequences, including an amazing opening sequence where Bond chases Sebastien Foucan on foot through high rise construction sites and an embassy in an African capital, confronting the bad guy over a casino table where our hero also meets the CIA’s Felix Leiter for the first time and heartbreak over a woman taking me back to my favorite 007 flick, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Good but not great. Craig and producer Barbara Broccoli have given strong hints that Bond 22, coming Nov. 8, 2008, will be an original script as well as a sequel to this one, where Bond will seek revenge against those behind the tragedy here, and so perhaps the new tenor will be better handled the second time around. The same writing team, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, are doing the script and since the also co-wrote another of my favorites, Die Another Day, so I’m betting on better.

recommended