Movie Reviews

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

  • Title: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
  • IMDB: link

a-very-harold-and-kumar-3d-christmasAfter growing apart in recent years Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are brought back together for one more magical night of crazed debauchery. Harold now has a wife (Paula Garcés), a job on Wall Street, and a host of in-laws led by his intimidating father-in-law (Danny Trejo). Kumar, on the other hand, is still spending his days getting high without a job, a girlfriend, or a care in the world.

A trip to Harold’s to drop off a Christmas package begins a night of miracles (okay, more like impossibly contrived sequences and funny bits). These involve the horny daughter (Jordan Hinson) of a gangster (Elias Koteas), a baby on drugs, a nifty robot that makes waffles, the search for the perfect Christmas tree, Santa Claus (Richard Riehle), and a reunion with their woman-obsessed pal Neil Patrick Harris.

The third entry to the franchise is more of the same with some elaborate raunch and quite a bit of pot smoking. Some of the jokes work, some don’t, and one especially (and homage to A Christmas Story) is sure to make you wince.

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Take Shelter

  • Title: Take Shelter
  • IMDB: link

take-shelter-posterWhen a construction worker starts to have apocalyptic nightmares and hallucinations he becomes obsessed with spending his time and his family’s limited resources to build onto a fallout shelter in their backyard.

Curtis (Michael Shannon) is convinced that a storm, unlike anyone has ever seen, is approaching and the shelter is his only hope of keeping his wife (Jessica Chastain) and daughter (Tova Stewart) safe. He’s also well-aware that his problems might be linked to his family’s history of mental illness. His mother (Kathy Baker) was diagnosed as a schizophrenic at the age he is now. Are his visions real or is he too loosing his mind?

Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, Take Shelter works well because the lead character is able to admit the possibility that everything he’s experiencing may be nothing more than his delusions. But that admission doesn’t mean he’s not still at their mercy. Over the course of the film the gathering storm in his mind grows louder and louder until it finally erupts.

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Tower Heist

  • Title: Tower Heist
  • IMDB: link

tower-heist-posterThere’s a long and storied tradition of heist films in cinema, and no small number of those films are draped in a dyed-in-the-wool “fuck the man” ethos. Of late, we’ve had far less anti-establishment peanut butter in our heist-film chocolate, but if there’s any time for populist payback on our silver screens, I think we can all agree that now’s as ripe a time as any.

But whereas the sadly overreaching In Time sci-fi inequality underpinnings felt like a happy accident in the midst of an otherwise unfortunate trainwreck, Brett Ratner‘s latest assault on cinema, Tower Heist, wears its blue-collar leanings on its sleeve like the world’s least subtle Livestrong bracelet. If only as much thought had gone into the pacing (and plot) of this little-guys-strike-back farce as it did for how to stuff as much working-stiff sympathy into 104 minutes, we might have had ourselves an entertaining little bout of payback by proxy.

Unfortunately, Ratner (who I hold could not have destroyed the X-Men franchise more completely than if he made Jar-Jar Dark Phoenix) seemed to take an obvious love of 70’s heist films with one serious Xanax chaser.

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Maybe Roland Emmerich should stick to disaster movies

  • Title: Anonymous
  • IMDB: link

anonymous-posterDid William Shakespeare write the plays and collected works attributed to him, or is someone else responsible? In an age where conspiracy theories are more popular than reality-TV shows director Roland Emmerich and writer John Orloff not only ask but offer an answer that question.

Anonymous follows the train of thought that Elizabethan aristocrat, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), is the real author to Shakespeare’s works. Shakespeare (Rafe Spall) himself? Well, if you buy into this version, he was an uneducated dullard and bumbling actor with barely enough brains to take credit for another’s work.

Emmerich and Orloff aren’t the first to raise the question of Shakespeare’s authorship, but the case they make here involving vast conspiracies, secrets of the royal family, and a super-secret plan of succession to the throne of England come off more like bad soap opera than tragic drama. Their attempt to devalue Shakespeare further by portraying him as a angry buffoon doesn’t help their argument.

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The Rum Diary

  • Title: The Rum Diary
  • IMDB: link

the-rum-diary-posterIn the 1950’s Hunter S. Thompson would pen a novel that wouldn’t see the light of day for more than 40 years. Its path to the theaters wasn’t much smoother as it languished in development hell for the better part of a decade before writer/director Bruce Robinson and Johnny Depp (Thompson’s original choice for the role) were attached in 2009. The story follows the exploits of Paul Kemp (Depp), a struggling novelist, who leaves New York to accept a job no one else wants at The Daily News in Puerto Rico. The film also stars Amber Heard who the camera doesn’t so much love as continuously lust after in every scene she appears.

The film follows the misadventures of Kemp including his friendship with the paper’s lead photographer (Michael Rispoli) and his reluctant involvement in a land grab scheme by a buisness man named Samuelson (Aaron Eckhart). Kemp’s part in the scheme is made more difficult by his inability to stop drinking and his instant fascination to Samuelson’s girl, Chenault (Heard). Did I mention how pretty she was?

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