Jun 17, 2011
(rated PG-13, 125 mins) It’s Texas 1949 and John Grady (Matt Damon) has just learned that momma has “bet the ranch” (sold it) after daddy dies, so she and her lover make some quick cash. Leaving the only life he’s ever known, Grady sets out with sidekick cowboy Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas), who are a far cry from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. After crossing the Mexican border, they land at a hacienda where they have four days to train sixteen mustangs into saddle-riding mode. But these wild horses could drag Grady away when he meets the lovely boss’s daughter (Penelope Cruz) who usually dates guys that “drive airplanes, let alone cars”, (not the horse sitter). Suddenly Grady finds himself misguided, wanting to be his own stallion to the lovely mare. He lands into a Mexican prison for a combo of love and suspected horse theft. The story moves along rather charmingly then the “pretty” movie turns “ugly” and the horse-breeding premise disappears. Cruz and Damon have about as much chemistry as General Santa Anna at gunpoint. The dialog is lame yet the Spanish manages to save a few lines with subtitles. One can’t help wonder what writer Ted “Silence Of The Lambs” Tally been doing all these years, that finally delivered “All The Pretty Horses” with all these pretty cliches?
Jun 17, 2011
(rated R, 90 mins.) Bounty hunter (Ice Cube) has dreams of owning his own investigation firm in Miami, but for now he’s stuck working for a company that tracks lowlife. Like all Hollywood bounty hunter characters (yeah, sure), he’s set up as a real rapper underdog that’s underpaid, unorthodox and uses the prefix “mother” to the “f” word a lot. When he sets his sites on pursuing a bail jumper (Mike Epps), the two led to an abandoned warehouse, that little did they know is a drop-off point for a major diamond heist operation. Trying a hip-hop version of “48 Hours” the two join forces and work out their own personal issues as well. Issues we don’t even care about. Money can make people do funny things (reads the tagline), but in this case they aren’t very funny. And, the movie is so laden in violence we are never sure if it’s meant to be a comedy or an action flick. Yet money seems to be the only thing holding the otherwise distasteful film together. Ice Cube and Epps try to be charismatic with little chemistry and end up being more annoying than Martin Lawrence meets Chris Tucker.
Jun 17, 2011
There’s something about Mary (Sandra Bullock) and it’s not that she’s a Cameron Diaz type with multiple men swooning around her… In this, Bullock’s real life production company has long been trying to launch this female driven bromance. Mary is a nerdy, factual, know-it-all, crossword puzzle writer for the local newspaper, but she hasn’t a love life (or anylife for that matter.) But when she agrees to go on a blind date, she falls ga-ga over Steve (Bradley Cooper.) Can you blame her? And she begins stalking him at his various assignments. Turns out he’s a cameraman to a would-be news anchor (Thomas Haden Church) and they chase headline stories while Mary chases them. But like her overly-highlighted hair and ridiculous little red riding hood boots, the movie doesn’t quite work. Her earlier summer success “The Proposal” is the kind of character we love Bullock to be. She’s too likable an actress to try to play un-likable. Men like Owen Wilson, Seth Rogen and Vince Vaughn can play losers, but there’s a reason women haven’t tried this type of role before. It just doesn’t work. That said, Bullock really gives her all to this level-five-psycho-ditz and somehow (good script writing?) we finally come to accept her. In the end the metaphor is that her crossword puzzle job much like life, has words that can mean good things, hurtful things, kind things and empty things where no words can be said or fill in the empty spaces. Two tiaras
Jun 17, 2011
The idea of Walt Disney Studios and Director Tim Burton teaming for a family movie seems almost too perfect a marriage. As a matter of fact, Disney will now have to rethink its theme park’s Mad Hatter ride, undoubtedly expanding it to something as thrilling as their Haunted House ticket. But despite all of its eye-popping splendor, in the end it adds up to disappointing. While the story sticks to much of the original tale – Alice wanders off, falls down a rabbit hole and lands at a tea party, drinks potions that make her small and then large, etc., Burton manages his own twisted version. And that’s fine. Leave it to Burton to make Alice (Mia Wasikowska) unconventionally pretty – an anemic-dark-circle-eyed girl with skin so pale and a challenging troubled-teen attitude she’s more “Go Ask Alice.” Apparently she has some sort of sleeping disorder that delivers bad dreams. Burton’s real life wife, Helena Bonham Carter steals the show as the Red Queen – an amusing albeit horrid thing who demands “Off with their heads!” to anybody who pisses her off. Johnny Depp is as good as Depp can be as the Mad Hatter who resembles Albert Einstein as the Mad Hatter. His accent lapses from British to Scottish to occasional pirate-matey. Anne Hathaway has the quintessential Disney fairytale role as the White Queen who seems underused and delicate in a movie that often feels very David Lynch. But when the plot moves from Alice in Wonderland to Clash of the Titans it loses its magic and lacks emotion. Even the movies palette is far from primary colors but instead more dreary Sweeney Todd Burton’s better extravangza. The 3D tricks do delight, but in the end, this teen with sleep disorder should just get a prescription of Ambien and save us all from her Nightmares Before er, Easter. Two Tiaras
Jun 17, 2011
(rated PG-13, 150 mins.) This biography of the sports legend heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali (Will Smith) opens and continues with a roaring Motown soundtrack through the decade that spanned Ali’s career beginning in 1964 to his infamous Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman in ’74. Sounding like an often babbling “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” comedian with enough energy to take on the world, Cassius Clay style, Ali bonds with friends Malcolm X (Mario Van Pebbles) and Martin Luther King (LeVar Burton) both igniting and mirroring the conflicts of his time. His political views had him challenging the law, the status quo and the war-as well by draft dodging, with fists ready to rumble. Will Smith worked hard at this and it shows. Oscar nod is without say, but it’s Jon Voight as dry monotone delivered Howard Cosell and Jamie Foxx as “Bundini” his trainer that are champs right up there with him. By the movie’s end you’ll have tension in your shoulders and your own set of tight abs from all the movie’s surprise knock-out jabs both in the ring and out.
