Based on, but very different from, Robert Heinlein’s classic science fiction novel, Starship Troopers (1997) takes place a few centuries from now with Earth threatened with destruction by an alien arachnoid race. Four high school friends (Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris and Dina Meyer) join the military to see the universe and squash some bugs.

Heinlein’s politics were extremely right wing, at least in the ’50s when he wrote this, and the novel nearly comes out and says that perhaps America made a mistake defeating the fascists the decades before as that organizing principal could offer a better way of dealing with the issues confronting a technical society. Director Paul Verhoeven, though, turns that sentiment on its head and plays the politics for fun in the movie through a framing device of martial broadcast news clips interspersed thoughout.

The script by Ed Neumeier, who’s made a career on sequels and spinoffs from this and RoboCop (which he also wrote, and Verhoeven directed), is not the strong point though. The dialog and set pieces are thin, though overcome. The effects are decent, especially the bugs’ biological heavy weaponry, infantry training camp and starship interiors, and the happy, shiny people really drive home the political satire.

recommended

Note: The first sequel was nowhere near as good on any level.

Although numerous film festivals honored it, I thought Johnny Was never connected the characters from the two groups which formed its dramatic heart and, disappointed, I turned off after about 45 minutes or so. Vinnie Jones plays the title role, with Patrick Bergin, former boxing champ Lennox Lewis, Samantha Mumba, Roger Daltrey (still hopefully of an acting career, I suppose) and Eric LaSalle (from ER) rounding out the main cast.

Johnny Doyle (Jones) used to be a member of an IRA crew led by Flynn (Bergin, looking much older now but best known in the US, I suppose, for playing Julia Roberts’ nasty ex in Sleeping with the Enemy) but Johnny went straight, and under the radar, after Flynn was arrested for their last job together. He lives in a strange squat in the Brixton section of London, with the very serious drug dealer Julius (LaSalle) and his junkie girl Rita (Mumba) on the first floor and revered Rasta DJ Ras (Lewis) living and spinning on the third. Flynn has a thing for Rita but not the, err, cojones to act on his feelings.

Flynn breaks out of Brixton Prison with fellow soldier Michael after serving five years, expecting Jimmy, another IRA confederate, to meet and carry them away. The cops have other ideas though, and the two are blocked from reaching Jimmy. Scrambling through the streets and unaware that Johnny’s nearby, Flynn nonetheless stumbles on him at a market and pressures him for temporary shelter. Back at the squat Flynn and Julius intersect, a conflict which Johnny and Ras are barely able to contain.

So you can see that the script, by former journalist Brendan Foley, sets up strong possibilities. Unfortunately, neither the relatively weak cast–Jones is much better in supporting roles–nor director Mark Hammond take hold and realize them. I honestly don’t understand the film festival awards but c’est la vie.

not recommended

In director Alan J. Pakula’s last film (he was killed in a road accident the year after this came out in 1997), Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford face off after Pitt’s cover comes undone when thugs invade their home in search of Pitt’s cash. Despite the significant body count, The Devil’s Own is almost more of a psychological battle; either way a great drama.

Pitt is Frankie McGuire, a young but hard leader in the Provisional Irish Republican Army, determined to get back at those who shot his own father while they were sitting down to an otherwise normal family dinner when he was but eight. Twenty years on he’s doing a very good job of it and has a few dozen names X’ed out to his credit. Temporarily escaping the intense heat he flies to America to arrange for the purchase and transport of Stinger surface to air missiles from Billy Burke (Treat Williams), a bar owner with a less legitimate income stream as well.

A New York judge and active IRA supporter arranges for Pitt to stay with a local Irish family, headed by police sergeant Tom O’Meara (Ford), who are told McGuire is in the States to work construction and make a little dosh. In truth he and a confederate are prepping an old fishing boat to take the missiles home in a few months, and in the meanwhile their guest becomes almost a member of the O’Meara family when problems in the old country throw the necessary wrench into the plans.

Ford and Pitt are both more than competent actors, and ably supported by Margaret Colin, Natascha McElhone, Ruben Blades and a very young Julia Stiles as Ford and Colin’s eldest child. The script, by Kevin Jarre, Vincent Patrick and David Aaron Cohen, is pithy and angular.

But I really felt the main credit goes to Pakula for getting authentic emotions from the cast (especially Williams, who all too often seems to act is if he’d never heard the expression less is more), strong pacing with the action and interactions well balanced and doing a good job off lulling us into forgetting that McGuire is, without doubt, a hard, cold killer.

Pakula first made his mark in Hollywood as a producer in the early ’60s with such hits as To Kill a Mockingbird, Love with a Proper Stranger, Up the Down Staircase and Sterile Cuckoo, which was also his directorial debut. He went on to make such impressive films as Klute, All the President’s Men, Sophie’s Choice, The Pelican Brief and the under appreciated Consenting Adults. He was nominated for three Oscars: for writing Sophie’s Choice, for directing All the President’s Men and for producing To Kill a Mockingbird, and actors in his films won three out of eight nominations (Jane Fonda, Jason Robards and Meryl Streep).

recommended

Will Ferrell was one of the better cast members over the decade he stayed with Saturday Night Live but for me his transition to movies was rocky; the less said about Elf, Zoolander, Old School, Bewitched or Kicking and Screaming the better. But Anchorman, which I saw but apparently forgot to writeup, and especially Stranger than Fiction Ferrell began to show that he was capable of bringing more to the table than just timing and facial expressions. More than, say, fellow cast members like Chris Kattan, Jimmy Fallon or Tracy Morgan and closing in on Adam Sandler (not that difficult) though still far short of Mike Myers, Dana Carvey or Eddie Murphy.

Aside: Has it really been 15 years since Wayne’s World and, other than the Austin Powers flicks and voice work for Shrek, has Myers been asleep all this time? Geez, talk about wasting talent.

Back to the point. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is a movie that could easily have gone down the Elf bin if Ferrell and co-star John C. Reilly had left it in neutral. Good supporting cast too including Jane Lynch as Ricky’s mom, Gary Cole as his estranged dad, Michael Clarke Duncan as the biggest, blackest good old boy you’ll ever see and Ricky’s crew chief and Leslie Bibb and Amy Adams as his two romantic interests.

I still remain unimpressed with Sacha Baron Cohen (best know as Borat and Ali G), who plays a gay French intellectual Formula One driver named Jean Girard come over to NASCAR to challenge Ricky Bobby’s dominance and I think this play on stereotypes, essentially the cardboard anti-Bobby, is the weakest part of the movie. Andy Richter, also using a pitiful accent, has a small bit as Girard’s boyfriend.

Rounding out my list of poor support performances are Greg Germann as the racing team owner and Molly Shannon as his alcoholic wife; Germann, who I thought was better than this, has gotten stuck in playing one role over and over and frankly it’s gotten tiresome and probably its the role rather than Shannon I have a problem with since her character’s drinking problem adds nothing to the story nor does it meaningfully illuminate any more significant character.

The script, written by Ferrell and Adam McKay (who also teamed on Anchorman), is about a boy who idolizes a good for nothing dad who ran off when he was a tot but shared with him the need to go fast. Dad imparts a life philosophy when he shows up for career day out of the blue when Ricky’s ten, which the kid keeps as a gem worthy of the Budda: “If you ain’t first, you’re last!” Ricky and best friend Cal (Reilly) get jobs working on a second tier NASCAR pit crew until one Sunday their driver decides to take a mid-race burger break and Ricky volunteers to finish the race. Talk about getting Lou Gehrig’ed!

He races right to the top, winning races and championships and bringing Cal on as the team’s #2 driver. Decidedly numero dos because, well, if you ain’t first you’re last and Ricky Bobby ain’t gonna be last. When Girard shows up, our good old boy gets into an ego-destroying crash and follows that up by having his wife and team sponsor dump him for Cal. Ricky really hits bottom until Dad shows up and teaches him how to climb back. This is the part where McKay and Ferrell really won me over because, while they never left the comedy too far behind, they didn’t drive to Stupid Town or Melodrama Mall and recognized that basic emotion can deliver more satisfying results.

recommended

There were several TV specials last month celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: A New Hope and one I watched explained how George Lucas employed the hero’s journey trope over the two trilogies, first from the positive side (Luke Skywalker) and then the negative (Anakin Skywalker). The protagonist must start from the small, face an initial challenge that draws him or her out of a comfortable, if drab, existence, gain a mentor (Obi-wan Kenobi in both instances) who provides a key push and then leaves the scene and then the hero must solve a major issue by mature application of that teaching and inner strength.

Waitress is a chick flick version of the hero’s journey though on a much smaller scale. Jenna (Kerry Russell) is a waitress and baker of wonderful, creative pies trapped in abusive marriage to Earl (Jeremy Sisto, showing again how well he plays twisted parts). She works at Joe’s Pie Diner, an odd restaurant where all the dishes are served in the form of pies, alongside Dawn (Adrienne Shelley, who also wrote and directed), Becky (Cheryl Hines in a role as far removed from the wife she plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm as seems possible) and Cal (Lew Temple), the manager and main cook.

The diner is owned by Joe (Andy Griffith), an octogenarian who puts his name on all the businesses he owns: Joe’s Gas Station, Joe’s Supermarket and so on. Everyone else thinks he’s a miserable old coot but other than being a bit impatient and fussy about his orders, we only see Joe as a man who’s probably a bit peeved about being so close to the end of his days. In any case, he is the mentor guiding Jenna.

A night of drinking with Earl, a most unusual event, results in pregnancy and thus she meets Dr. Pomatter (Nathon Fillion, of Firefly/Serenity) who is the new OB/GYN in this small semi-rural Southern town. Despite being married himself the two find themselves unable to resist the spark and, over the course of her pregnancy, combine normal checkups with passionate intimacy. Earl, meanwhile, never uncovers the affair but remains a menace Jenna yearns to escape.

Shelley has Jenna constantly inventing new pies to convey her emotional state; the names are quite expressive, akin to the way Iain Banks names his Culture starships: bad baby pie, I don’t want Earl’s baby pie and so forth. Pomatter even sneaks over to her house one morning after hubby’s gone to work to get a pie baking lesson.

Just as the lovers are about to run off, the water breaks and they have to go to the hospital instead; meeting the doctor’s wife, an intern, is enough to have her break off with him. Joe is there as well for some work on his kidney and he drops off a card for Jenna before she goes to delivery. Sitting forgotten until she’s forced to leave the hospital–Earl has refused to pay the bill because she’s finally told him to get stuffed–inside is a sweet pencil drawing of her by the now-deceased old man and a presumably large but unspecified check. As he urged, Jenna’s journey is complete and she can make a fresh start.

This movie is a chick flick, a term I do not use pejoratively, for obvious reasons but it’s a step above most of these because it treats the characters warmly, with intelligence and humor. The small town setting is used well for rich, natural visuals and not a redneck stereotype.

recommended

Note: As you probably know, Adrienne Shelley was murdered in her Manhattan office six months before Waitress was released; the Adrienne Shelley Foundation has been created in her memory to support aspiring female filmmakers. I’m saddened that we won’t see Shelley’s potential for growth fulfilled in future movies.

Some circles in which I usually find myself are very high on this Bruce Campbell/Ossie Davis 2002 flick but in this instance I’m on the outside looking in. Karina Montgomery captured my feelings well when she wrote “If you tilt your head just right, it looks like a beautifully shot student film with a bunch of community theatre actors having a great time.”

Campbell, who seems to play the same lovable rogue in every movie and TV show but does it really well, is the still-living Elvis Presley and Davis claims to be a transformed John Fitzgerald Kennedy with an all-over tattoo to change his skin color and a “bag of sand” where his brain was. Elvis says it wasn’t him who died in 1977 but a really skillful impersonator with whom he traded places shortly beforehand because he got tired of his life.

The title character is a revived mummy from ancient dynastic Egypt and the source of the intended horror in the film, as he stays alive only by sucking the life force from living people. He preys on the elderly–this is set in an old age home–because while their life force is weak, meaning he must feed frequently, they’re weak enough for him to handle. And to add to the horror, he often sucks a soul out through the anus. There are also oversized scarab beetles involved.

Elvis and JFK team up to defeat the mummy before he can get them. The former president is confined to a wheelchair so he’s the bait, carrying a tank of vile, flammable liquid. Elvis, feeling alive (with his first erection in eight years to show for it), plans to spring out and finish the job.

This was the second time I watched Bubba Ho-tep; the first I couldn’t get past 15 minutes and this week I only watched to the end because there wasn’t anything else on, plus I was mainly working on the computer. It never really got me laughing nor frightened and director Don Coscarelli never got the pace moving at a decent speed.

not recommended

Caught up with this light buddy/romance romp from 2006 on HBO the other night; actually it was pretty close to chick flick territory except for Owen (’I'm the blonde one’) Wilson’s whack job of a best friend character. Plot is fairly basic: In a beautiful ceremony on a beach in Hawaii, Carl (Matt Dillon) marries Molly (Kate Hudson) with Dupree (Wilson) as best man and the whole fancy thing paid for by Molly’s real estate mogul dad (Michael Douglas), who also happens to be Carl’s boss.

Dupree loses his job, girlfriend and apartment on returning from Hawaii and the newlyweds reluctantly put him up, until he nearly burns their place to the ground in a buttery sexual encounter. Dad also is not happy about the marriage as Mom died several years earlier and Kate is (in a non-sexual way) the primary object of his affections, so he tries to break up the marriage albeit in ways that his darling daughter won’t see and some that may be subtle enough that even Cal won’t recognize them for what they are.

You, Me and Dupree is a romantic comedy at its core, though, and so the chicanery is played for laughs and ultimately fails, with Dad realizing Kate will always be his daughter (of course). But writer Michael LeSieur (this is his only IMDB credit) and directors Joe and Anthony Russo give us enough laughs and slippery story twists to make the hour and 45 minutes entertaining despite the predictable end. Most of them come from Wilson’s character, who despite being in his mid 30s is still utterly naive and child-like. Seth Rogen, who was pretty good in 40 Year Old Virgin and apparently even more so in Knocked Up, is mostly wasted here as the third buddy in Carl and Dupree’s clique.

recommended

Danny, Rusty and their ever-growing squad of adorable con men are back for a third stroll down Frank’s Way and for my money, its the charm, the best of the bunch. Perhaps it was just a question of growing into the material, or perhaps Clooney and Soderbergh finally got the right writers in Brian Koppelman and David Levien. You might think the key was finally getting the right antagonist in Al Pacino’s Willie Bank since Andy Garcia (sorry dude) was never really more than a second-choice Pacino in the first two flicks, which is made clear here by comparison, but I don’t think so.

No, Pacino never seemed to be fully occupying this role; maybe he was preoccupied with his upcoming title role in Salvador Dali & I? Side note: that film is directed by Andrew Niccol, a very different thing from his previous movie, Nick Cage’s Lord of War. Anyway, Al has two key scenes that bookend the film, the first with Elliot Gould that sets the events here in motion and the latter when he confronts George Clooney after the scheme has done its damage.

For me the real credit goes to the writers, Soderbergh and Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as the key players in getting Gould’s money back, really good bits by Casey Affleck and Scott Caan once again playing the runts of the pack who put in some of the key elements (especially the scenes with Affleck at the Mexican dice factory channeling Norma Rae), and Julian Sands as lifelong battling security geeks. Don Cheadle and Bernie Mac never really rev their engines and the same is true for Vincent Cassel reprising the Fox.

Damon finally gets to trot out the Nose, working over Ellen Barkin (Pacino’s top assistant) who, it turns out, is a cougar, and Bob Einstein (better known as Super Dave Osborne) is the Damon character parent who shows up as a (fake) cop to bail out the boy. Carl Reiner does an upper crust Brit act to make Pacino think he’s the hotel award judge but really David Paymer is the judge and the 13 give him an unbelievably hard time to ensure the new hotel does not join Bank’s other properties in winning the Five Diamonds (but make it up to Paymer at the last).

recommended

Yet another, er, graphic novel adaptation but much darker and more serious than others I’ve seen or noticed. Written and produced by the Wachowski brothers and directed by their longtime assistant James McTeigue, V for Vendetta is the story of a near future Britain that falls under the control of a fascist politician riding a wave of terrorist episodes and global unrest. One man, known only as V, has found the means to fight back and he uses the failed revolutionary Guy Fawkes as a stalking horse to rally support.

V (Hugo Weaving, in yet another high profile science fiction role) is never seen out of costume, centuries old clothing and a hard ceramic mask. Even when making breakfast for his unwilling house guest, Evey (Natalie Portman, in her early 20s, her appearance a very appropriate blend of child and woman). V saved her from some nasty extracurricular police activity one night but soon after realized the only way he could truly protect the girl was to keep her in his lair. Despite what you’re probably thinking there’s no intimate contact, how could there be when he never removes that mask?

Meanwhile V’s high profile guerilla actions are driving High Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt) a bit batty, and the politician has already got a good start on that. One by one his minions are falling to V or Sutler’s discontent with the exception of top policeman Finch (Stephen Rea), a cop bent on doing his job and keeping the politics as far out of it as possible.

McTeigue keeps the visuals dark, lots of deep reds, greys and scenes shot at night, underground or with rain falling if day time, and a big building on fire some years beforehand which we see in pieces throughout. There’s a minimum of exposition and flashbacks used instead of talking for most of the explanatory material. The philosophical backdrop is clearly of a piece with the Wachowski brothers’ most famous work, the Matrix trilogy, decidedly individualistic and wary of corporate machinery.

(As an aside, I’m quite amused that their next project is the film version of ’60s cartoon series Speed Racer. Another project in which an underdog takes on The Man and another cartoon adaptation.)

recommended