Reviews

Just when you thought Arnold Schwartzenegger-style action adventure movies were dead, here comes The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) in "Walking Tall". Less comedic than "The Rundown" but more intense and action-packed, "Walking Tall" is pure, popcorn-chomping fun.

In "Walking Tall", Chris Vaughn (The Rock), a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, returns to his small hometown in rural Washington State to take a job at the local lumber mill. Once there, he finds that drugs, crime, and corruption have consumed his hometown. At the root of the town's problems lies Vaughn's former childhood friend, Jay Hamilton Jr. (Neal McDonough) who owns the new casino.

Of course, Vaughn gets pushed too far and wants his old hometown back. This sets him on a collision course (pun fully intended...) with Hamilton, which includes bone-crunching fistfights, massive fireballs, much gunfire, wanton destruction, and perilously thin plotting.

But hey, you don't go see movies starring The Rock for Shakespearean acting or Hitchcock-style plotting. I had a great time with this movie and highly recommend it.

I'm actually a big Farrelly Brothers fan (and not just because they're from Rhode Island). So, it's with great reluctance that I write a less than stellar review of "Stuck On You".

It's not a horrible film, but like many recent Farrelly releases it's muddled and illustrates a tug of war between the movies the Farrellys want to make the and movies the Farrelly's fans want them to make.

"Stuck On You" tells the tale of Bob and Walt Tenor, conjoined twins who live a good, peaceful life on Nantucket Island. That is until Walt (played by Greg Kinnear) catches the acting bug and wants to move to LA. The story and gags from there mostly revolve around a fish-out-of-water story (but two fish joined at the side) and the brothers' ongoing ignorance of their own condition.

At one point, Bob (played by Matt Damon) tells Walt that he'll never make it in acting. Why? Because he needs a better tan. Though these aren't the idiot gags that we all enjoyed in "Dumb & Dumber". In fact, both of the brothers are very bright. Their ignorance is more a function of their being so close (physically and emotionally) for such a long period of time and because back home everyone accepted them completely. They've become blind to their own handicap.

It's a nice message and it is delivered poignantly at times. More often, though, we're hammered with it over and over again while the Farrellys do their best to make the movie look more like one of their more celebrated, more tasteless, and funnier movies like "Dumb & Dumber", "Something About Mary", or "Me, Myself and Irene".

In all of the latter movies, there was no illusion that we were there primarily there for the gutter chuckles, but each movie also had characters we really liked. Let's face it. We were all rooting for Lloyd and Harry in "Dumb and Dumber" even if they were morons.

In "Stuck On You", the main characters are all a lot flatter than what we've seen before. Plus, one of the most disappointing aspects in "Stuck On You" is the poor use of the minor characters. In previous movies we got some of our biggest laughs from the sideline characters, while in "Stuck On You" they're used mostly as window dressing. Eva Mendes is primarily a cleavage delivery device in "Stuck On You", which is a shame because she's not a bad actress and she could have some comedic chops.

How are Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon in this film? They both do as good as can be expected. We're not used to seeing Damon in comedic films (his last was "Dogma"), and I think he does comedy very well. I'm reluctant to comment directly on their performances because it's not fair. The characters are flat and that's not their fault.

Sadly, this isn't a fluke for the Farrellys. It's part of an ongoing trend. Their animated movie, "Osmosis Joe", more closely resembled a feature-length public health announcement starring Chris Rock and Bill Murray. "Shallow Hal" dealt with superficiality in much heavier, dramatic tones than we were led to believe in the movie's trailers.*

In "Stuck On You", the Farrellys try to swerve back to their poop-and-fart-joke roots, but deep down you can tell they want to make more serious, thematic movies.

I would have no problem if the Farrellys decided to do a more serious, dramatic film. I would also have no problem if the Farrellys decided to do more locker-room humor comedies. But I do have a problem with them trying to do both at the same time. It's just not working.

* NOTE - While I'm not shopping for the DVD, I did enjoy "Shallow Hal" once I realized (and accepted) that the movie was a lot heavier than the trailers depicted. That said, there were a lot of people in the cinema who were expecting something like "Dumb & Dumber" and they were plenty unhappy about it. I don't blame them.

"The Missing", starring Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones, is one of those movies that will come and go without getting noticed by audiences let alone any of the award programs. That's a shame because it's a tightly plotted film with interesting, sympathetic characters in a Western setting, but minus most of the tired Western genre devices.

In "The Missing", Cate Blanchett plays Maggie Gilkeson, a tough, frontier doctor / rancher with two young daughters (played by Evan Rachel Wood and Jenna Boyd), and a farmhand / love interest (Aaron Eckhart) named Brake, who also acts as her family's dedicated protector.

Unexpectedly, her father (Tommy Lee Jones) comes back into her life after abandoning his family years before to live with the Indians. His attempts to make amends for his past mistakes are rebuffed until rogue Indians attack Gilkeson's family and kidnap one of her daughters. Reluctantly, she asks her father to use his hunting & tracking skills to follow the Indians and recover her daughter.

The story in "The Missing" works along two tracks. While following and clashing with the rogue Indians provides ample suspense, action, and peril, the emotional drama between Gilkeson and her father keeps the movie interesting, dynamic, and makes us care about these peoples. For a Western, the film lacks all of the cardboard cutout characters. There are no gunslingers (in the tradition of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns) in "The Missing". The characters are flawed and emotionally vulnerable in their own believable, endearing way.

As a film, "The Missing" also provides a rare, balanced view of Native Americans during the mid 19th century. They are portrayed as neither doe-eyed victims (as in "Dances With Wolves"), nor are they mindless savages (as in almost any John Wayne Western). I will note that Chidin (Eric Schweig), the primary "bad guy" Indian, seems to go a little over the top at times, but this is forgivable given the film's many other strengths.

Suffice it to say that all of the acting is solid. We probably won't see any 'best actor' or 'best actress' nominations, but you never do with Westerns. Blanchett continues to expand her repertoire ranging from eccentric British Queen ("Elizabeth") to destructive bar trash ("Shipping News") with this role. Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones continues to be typecast as "the guy who hunts people" which started years ago with "The Fugitive" and hasn't varied much since.

In the end, one of the things I liked best about "The Missing" is the genuine danger for all of the major characters. The film establishes early on that bad things can and will happen to the characters we like the most. As a result, it's impossible to guess who will make it to the end of the story and that means you have real suspense (an increasingly rare occurrence in suspense films).

So, go see "The Missing" while everyone else is piling into the better-marketed blockbusters. You know you'll get both a good seat and a good movie without a lot of fuss.

About every 3-4 movies, Tom Cruise likes to remind us that he really can act. He did it with "Rain Man" and "Born On The Fourth of July", and now he's done it with "The Last Samurai".

"The Last Samurai" tells an epic story set in Japan during the late 19th's century when the island nation first opened its doors to Western ways and trade, sparking a cultural battle between the old ways epitomized by the samurai and the new ways of the outside world. This is the Japan as seen by Cruise's character, Captain Nathan Algren, a Civil War hero haunted by battlefield horrors to the point where he has become a self-hating, alcoholic plugging Winchester rifles for $25/week.

Algren is recruited by his former commanding officer to travel to Japan and help train the nation's fledgling army. Specifically, his new employers want their modern army to defeat rebel samurai who aggressively oppose the invasion of Western thought and technology into their culture. With nothing to lose and a significant pay raise to gain, Algren accepts and soon finds himself drilling conscripted Japanese farmers.

Against his recommendations, Algren is forced to lead his barely-trained troops against the samurai. Algren's troops are slaughtered even though the samurai fight with traditional weapons (sword, spear, bows & arrows). Algren is captured by the samurai leader, Katsumoto (skillfully played by veteran Japanese actor Ken Watanabe), so that he may learn about his American enemy.

It is here that we get to the meat of the story. Algren is held captive in the samurai's mountain village where he gradually becomes more involved and amazed by the samurai lifestyle and philosophy. While he slowly becomes integrated into their culture, he never quite convinces himself that he's one of them. Nonetheless, as his relationship with the samurai switches from being adversarial to deep friendship, and even love, we are treated to a series of rich and emotional transformations for both Algren and the samurai. In most movies, this would be the "slow" part between battle scenes. In "The Last Samurai" conversation gets balanced with action to keep you involved in both the story and the action.

On many levels, it is as much a deftly-told love story as it is an epic adventure. And not just a stock love story. "The Last Samurai" wraps the love of ones culture, love between a man and a woman, and the deep, familial bond between soldiers into one story.

Considering the barrage of summer/autumn action thrillers, we're not accustomed to films like "The Last Samurai". Here we see director Edward Zwick (who also directed 1989's "Glory" and 1994's "Legends of the Fall") use a more thoughtful pace to let us settle into the story, watch characters interact, and then ramp up the tension with carefully placed (and beautifully filmed) battle scenes. "The Last Samurai" leads the audience through a broad range of emotions and shouldn't be compared to the high-octane action films we've watched for the past few months.

So, overall it is a very good and powerful story. But as you're watching "The Last Samurai" you may get the sense that you've seen this very good and powerful story before. And perhaps you have. It was called "Dances With Wolves", another fine epic film that addressed the same themes, conflicts, and even used many of the same character types that are carbon-copied into "The Last Samurai".

This isn't necessarily a criticism. The story worked for audiences before and "The Last Samurai" adds enough new angles to avoid being a blatant rip-off. After all, "Dances With Wolves" was ultimately a loose rework of "Lawrence of Arabia", and no one seemed to mind.

"Jersey Girl" has been controversial for Kevin Smith not because of bad language, politically-incorrect / immature humor, or alleged blasphemy ("Dogma" anyone...?), but because he's made an interesting drama liberally flavored with good comedy and the occasional pop-culture reference.

In "Jersey Girl", Ben Affleck plays Ollie Trinke, a self-absorbed music PR flack at the top of his game, that is until his wife (played by Jennifer Lopez) dies during childbirth. Not wanting to deal with either his loss or his baby girl, Trinke throws himself into his work and hands the childrearing responsibilities off to his father (George Carlin in a fun psuedo-dramatic role).

Eventually, the pressures build up and Trinke flips out in front of a room full of journalists. This tanks his career in PR and eventually forces him to move in with his Dad, take a job as a street cleaner, and finally take responsibility for his daughter, Gertie (an often scene-stealing performance by Raquel Castro).

While yearning to get his old life back, Trinke settles into a happy but hard working class lifestyle. He even meets a potential love interest in a local girl, Maya (Liv Tyler), who works the video store.

The question (and the conflict) is what will happen if Ollie gets the opportunity to live the high life in NYC rather than clean streets in New Jersey?

If someone had said that this could be a Kevin Smith film around the time of "Jay and Bob Strike Back" was released, then most of his fans would have scoffed...and they did. Smith has taken a good deal of flack from fans of his "Jay & Silent Bob" movies for selling out and making a "serious" film.

That said, "Jersey Girl" retains at least trace amounts of Smith's less-than-mature humor mixed in with more thoughtful dramatic scenes. On the minus side, some of the transitions between scenes and story elements are a bit clunky and heavy handed, but overall "Jersey Girl" is an often-touching and frequently funny film.

Cheers, John Harvey

"LOTR: Return of the King" marks the final and perhaps the best film in Peter Jackson's stunningly successful adaptation of Tolkien's much-revered trilogy.

Keep in mind that this was a story that many scholars, fans, and film industry hawks assumed would never be done to the satisfaction of multiple generations of Tolkien aficionados and fanatics (especially since these films never received the official endorsement of Tolkien's estate as managed by his son, Christopher Tolkien).

And sure, there are gaffes (the worst being the unsatisfactory way this film deals with the evil wizard Saruman), but none are so egregious that the legions of fans felt they had to boycott Jackson's trilogy.

In fact, all three films have managed to remain close enough to the books to keep the hardcore fans' respect while using the strengths of the cast, special effects, and a well-written screenplay to keep the story accessible to the millions who have never read the books but loved the movies nonetheless.

"Return of the King" not only maintains the high standard set in the previous films, but easily surpasses it. While no one has gone out of their way to praise the acting in the previous two films, the performances of Elijah Wood as Frodo and Sean Astin as Sam in "Return of the King" certainly deserve a mention.

For those of you who love the battle scenes (and I happen to be a bit of a battle scene junkie) you will not be disappointed here. The assault on Gondor is breathtaking and creative. Unlike the tediously long fight scenes in the final two "Matrix" movies, "Return of the King" smartly threads drama in and amongst the clashing swords, flying debris, and charging steeds.

All that said, viewers should be aware that the impressive feat of wrapping up the trilogy requires three and a half hours of viewing time. Sure, the vast majority of the film flies by, but it's something to keep in mind as you're planning the rest of your Saturday afternoon.

I say 'vast majority' because the final scenes drag out a bit and the movie seems to end several times before the credits actually roll. When I went to see the movie, many people in the audience stood up not once, but twice, because what felt like the end of the film faked them out.

Last but not least, kudos to New Line for having the financial and creative courage to film all three big-budget films back to back in New Zealand. It was gutsy risk that could have hurt the company a great deal had the first movie flopped.