Hollywood's Great Chickenshit

Another great review by Robert Wilonsky of the Village Voice:

Patrick Dempsey plays a conveniently rich and willfully single serial "fornicator" slowly but surely domesticated by his unspoken love for longtime BFF Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), who's on her way to Scotland to marry Mr. Right Now since Mr. Right's too chickenshit to say boo before her "I do." Which, come to think of it, not only sums up this movie, but more or less half the films in which Dempsey starred between 1987 and 2003, when he was scheduled to headline a Fox TV series based on the film About a Boy, with Dempsey in the Hugh Grant role of the conveniently rich and willfully single serial "fornicator" slowly but surely domesticated by his blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, there's the My Best Friend's Wedding connection. Only the filmmakers and McDreamy have been so up-front about the resemblance between their offering and 1997's threesome that to acknowledge any further similarities would be playing right into their grubby paws. Director Paul Weiland and the three (!) screenwriters it took to boil down thousands of bad movies into 101 minutes haven't provided this one with a single original thought; it should only entertain those still getting adjusted to the idea of talkies.

From The Village Voice.

What A Bunch of Nonsense

Robert Wilonsky of the Village Voice takes aim at The Happening:



What a bunch of nonsense—effective nonsense, chilling nonsense, occasionally wrenching nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. This is what happens when M. Night Shyamalan tries to play both John Carpenter (bloody) and Stanley Kubrick (cold-blooded) while writing and directing what the literalist will either dismiss or embrace as the horror-film extension of An Inconvenient Truth, depending upon who the literalist thinks is responsible for, ya know, killing the planet. No spoilers here, because there’s nothing to give away—not even the alleged cause of the toxin that causes folks in the Northeast to go loopy before killing themselves with whatever’s handy (a cop’s gun, a shard of glass, a sidewalk 40 stories down … a rotor tiller, ick). One minute folks are enjoying themselves in Central Park, the next they’re stabbing and shooting themselves for the following, oh, 90 minutes give or take.

Full article here.

Stale Popcorn: Wicker Man

It's an old one, but worth revisiting. Jim Slotek of the Toronto Sun wrote the following (one star):

It really is a shame that Nicolas Cage is becoming synonymous with bad movies. He asserts his talent on occasion. But too often his "performance" is just a bunch of phoned-in self-parodying mannerisms.

In the case of The Wicker Man, a moronic and muddled Hollywood remake of one of the best British thrillers ever, Cage seems to be acting in a whole other movie -- with, as they say in the TV capsules, hilarious results.

Hilarious? Wait until you see him taking part in a pagan ritual, dressed as a bear. . .

Hey, but don't worry. Our hero Nic gets to punch some of these bad women in the face before we're done. As they say on South Park "dude, this is pretty f---ed up right here." . . .

And where the original gave up details a bit at a time, LaBute's script is so expository it insults the stupid. Characters pick up books and read aloud extensively about Druid traditions and sacrifice rituals. Burstyn and her right-hand pagan Sister Rose (Molly Parker) practically admit in the first act that they perform human sacrifices. It's LaBute's first thriller, and it's so hamhanded you want to douse it in mustard. . .

BOTTOM LINE: A great thriller has been remade into one of the most laughable. Nicolas Cage seems to be acting in another movie, waving his arms around, shouting, pulling guns and even punching smiling pagan women. And Neil LaBute -- who never met a story he couldn't turn into a paranoid castration fantasy -- dumbs things down enough to insult the stupid.

Read the full review here.

Hulk also go rarrr!

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gives The Incredible Hulk only one star in his hilarious Hulk-dialogue-inspired review.

"Hulk. Smash!" Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk's USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. Hulk crush all hopes of entertainment. Hulk in boring film. Film co-written by star. Edward Norton. Norton in it. Norton write it. Norton not need gamma-radiation poisoning to get big head. Thing is: Hulk head weirdly small. Compared with rest of big green body.

There are 6 more paragraphs of this for your reading pleasure here.