3.5 Razors

Frozen River

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Frozen River
  • IMDB: link

“I didn’t know any other way to keep us together.”

Melissa Leo stars as Ray, a struggling mother of two (Charlie McDermott, James Reilly) just trying to get by in a small town in upstate New York, just across the border from Quebec.

When her husband takes off for Atlantic City with the final payment for her family’s DoubleWide new home she’s left without options.

A chance encounter with a Native American woman named Lily (Misty Upham) provides Ray a dangerous business opportunity to smuggle illegal immigrants across the Mohawk reservation into the United States.

The film, written and directed by first-timer Courtney Hunt, is a bleak story about love, family, and how far someone will go to persue their dreams.  Leo and Upham carry the film with a pair of strong performances, and when the story movies away from their characters the story suffers.

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It’s Always Sunny in Season 3

/ / Home Video
  • Title: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – The Complete Third Season
  • tv.com: link

“Here’s to you pussyhands!”

A Philly bar, endless amount of dysfunction, jokes about rape, death, sex offenders, kittens trapped in a well, that Marky-Mark movie, ejaculating bums, and North Korea. Although this third season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn’t quite as good as the previous volume, there’s plenty of bad behavior and craziness to go around.

Paddy’s Pub regulars Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), Mac (Kaitlin Olson), Charlie (Charlie Day), and Frank (Danny DeVito) all return along with some recurring characters like Charlie’s waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), the McPoyles (Jimmi Simpson, Nate Mooney), Charlie’s Mom (Lynne Marie Stewart), Mac’s tranny girlfriend (Brittany Daniel) and father (Gregory Scott Cummins) and Rickety Cricket (David Hornsby).  New characters include an entire clan of McPoyles, Dee’s old high school friend Fatty McGoo (Judy Greer), and Charlie’s 12 year-old Asian fiance (Tania Gunadi).

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Mamma Mia! Sing-Along

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Mamma Mia!
  • IMDB: link

“Audiences at these specially selected theaters are invited to bring friends and family to experience the smash hit movie musical in a whole new way by singing along to the songs they love.  Mamma Mia!: The Sing-Along Edition will feature the lyrics to every musical number on the screen, and you are invited to sing and dance along.”

I enjoyed Mamma Mia!, but it has a few flaws (read that review) and seemed to be missing something.  It turns out what it was missing was an active audience.  This new Sing-Along Edition, released today in select theaters, provides karaoke style lyrics and the bottom of the screen for all of the musical numbers.  The audience is encouraged to sing along with the actors.

If you can get into a theater at least 2/3 full of Mamma Mia! fans this is the best way to see the film.  First, the audience singing along with the stars helps some of the actors (mostly the men) who struggle with their numbers.  And second, it’s just fun!

Now, if you aren’t an ABBA fan this isn’t going to change anything, but this active experience (much like the Buffy-Sing-Along or The Rocky Horror Picture Show) adds energy, magic, and fun, to the film making it an enjoyable time at the movies.  If, over time, the experience is tweaked even further with the addition of props and audience activities this film could earn a long life in late night screenings.

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American Teen

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: American Teen
  • IMDB: link

“You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.  But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princesss, and a criminal.”
–The Breakfast Club

A familiar pose
The documentary by Nanette Burstein follows a small group of diverse high school students from Warsaw, Indiana, over their final year through graduation.  Burstein’s chosen subjects run the gamut from the high school basketball stud trying to land a scholarship and the most popular (and nastiest) girl in school, to your typical band geek and the lonely art student who wants nothing more than to get as far from Indiana as possible.

Events over this year include each of the subjects dealing with relationships, both romantic and platonic, fears about the future, the awkwardness of adolescence, bad choices, and a cruelty that can only be found in American high schools and Turkish prisons.

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Swing Vote

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Swing Vote
  • IMDB: link

“You’re ruining America!”

When the outcome of the Presidential election comes down to one uncounted ballot in New Mexico the entire country’s attention becomes focused on Earnest “Bud” Johnson (Kevin Costner) an unemployed single father from a small town called Texaco.

Both campaigns, along with news media from around the country land in Texaco to court this doofus who, in ten days time, will decide the fate of the election.

The film is many things, part parody and part cautionary tale.  At the heart of the film is the relationship between Bud and his much smarter daughter Molly Johnson (young Madeline Carroll, who steals the film in her first performance on screen).  There’s also a subplot about the secret of Bud’s ballot which, although sets up the story, is a bit burdensome to the plot.

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