Review: Lakeview Terrace

Samuel L. Jackson has made quite a career playing self-righteous, vengeful, morally ambiguous seekers of "justice. It started with Pulp Fiction when he played the cool bible quoting hit man, Jules Winnfield. It continued with his role in Changing Lanes, playing a game of one-upmanship with Ben Affleck. And it reaches what I think is Jackson's creative peak in Lakeview Terrace, where he plays the ultimate neighbor from Hell, or in this case Oakland.

Jackson plays Abel Turner, a single father raising his two kids in an upper class community in Los Angeles. Abel is a police officer. The type we've come to expect from movies portraying LA cops in recent years: He's overly aggressive, borderline racist, and basically has little faith in the inherent goodness of mankind. Who'da thought having guns pointed at you everyday would make you bitter? Go figure.

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Podcast Time!

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This week's inaugural episode features:

1. A review of the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading"
2. A scathing review of Deniro and Pacino's "Righteous Kill"
3. Travis reveals his true love of art house cinema
4. The guys' mutual love of Christina Ricci
5. DVD releases that matter, such as they were
6. The Coens inspire this week's Love This/Eff That segment

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Review: Bangkok Dangerous

I've always had a sortof love/hate relationship with Nicolas Cage. I loved him in Raising Arizona. Hated him for years in pretty much everything after that. He gets points for Leaving Las Vegas, but I maintain that it's Elisabeth Shue who deserves the credit more than he. Then in 2005 he fell back into my good graces by having two of my favorite films of that year, The Weatherman and Lord of War. Since then he's slipped quite naturally into his role as the turd in the punchbowl with films like Next, Ghost Rider, and the uncomfortably bad The Wicker Man. Nic Cage's latest film, Bangkok Dangerous, is an attempt to make what I assume is his version of Luc Besson's classic Leon the Professional. Only not good.

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Zack and Miri Make a Statement

Not a review just something I found particularly hillarious. So a week or so ago Kevin Smith released a poster for his new movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno which was immediatley banned in the US by the MPAA, here's the poster in question.




Nothing too racy, sure there are heads at the bottom of the poster doing something that may or may not be indecent but hey... at least they have their clothes on unlike the not banned poster for Good Luck Chuck which featured an apparently nude Dane Cook with the top of a girls head in the danger zone. I guess they figured that flick was going to suffer enough and gave it a pass. Anyway, Smith released a new poster the other day which is decidedly less racy and knowing the story behind it is much more funny. Here's the new 'Americanized' teaser poster.




And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love Kevin Smith. A big F U to the MPAA for banning his poster and in a hillarious way. The best part is that all the stiffs at the MPAA did by banning the poster is make it a news story and vastly more popular. Thanks to the internet more people saw this poster than they would have before. Score one for the Clerks guy!

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Review: Burn After Reading

Plot: CIA analyst Osborne Cox quits his job after being reassigned due to a drinking problem. He takes this opportunity to write his memoirs. His cheating wife decides to file for divorce and accidently copies the memoirs while trying to make copies of the family financial records. This CD falls into the hands of gym employees Chad and Linda who want to use what they think is “secret CIA shit” to blackmail Osborne.

The Ups: I’ll start by saying that the cast is amazing! I couldn’t give you one bad performance if I tried; even the characters with only a few lines nailed it. Brad Pitt and George Clooney cement themselves in my mind as two of the last true movie stars. Pitt is hilarious and really shows his range when you compare this to some of his other work. Look at Se7en, Troy and then this and you see three completely different yet all believable sides to his work. Clooney is great and although he’s doing the same schtick he’s done in other movies it just works, he’s that likeable of a guy. Frances McDormand is quirky, cute, and at the same time a bit scary in her dedication to what she wants. John Malkovich is always amazing but he really goes above and beyond in this one a bit and really left me wishing he had more screen time. The story is very complex yet easy to follow and the writing is amazing. Joel and Ethan Coen really amazed me with their mastery of black comedy even more so than they did with Fargo.

The Downs: I can honestly say that I have nothing to put here. That’s not to say it was a perfect movie. I’m sure I could say something about the score maybe, or the cinematography or some other technical aspect…but I really don’t think any of us care about that. I don’t know about you but I just like to be entertained and in that department there is no downside to this movie.

The Final Word: Although there is a completely different feel here than in their last outing, No Country for Old Men, I would not be surprised to see more Oscar talk in the Coen brother’s future for this one. Even if you weren’t planning on going to the movies this weekend carve out some time to see this. In today’s world we all need a good laugh and Burn After Reading provides great laughs with and a good story.

9.5/10

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Review: Righteous Kill

Plot: Turk and Rooster are two NYC detectives, played respectively by De Niro and Pacino. They go on the hunt for a serial killer who is targeting criminals and leaving poems on their bodies. The deeper they delve into the case, the more it looks like the killer is one of their own, a cop.

The Ups: Following in the footsteps of Heat and The Godfather Pt. II Robert De Niro and Al Pacino show amazing chemistry. The fact that Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller can get together for 87 movies in one year, and these two have only done three in the span of more than thirty years is disheartening, but maybe that’s what makes it so good. It’s not overdone, it’s an event. The story provides a solid background with some good twists and turns for these two to do their thing. Donnie Wahlberg delivers another good performance, I really think he is underrated and perhaps a better actor than his kid brother… or at least makes better choices on what films to do. Lastly, there were quite a few funny moments in the film which I wasn’t expecting but worked well.

The Downs: The story like, I said earlier, is a good background for De Niro and Pacino to showcase their chemistry, but that’s it. As a stand-alone story with any other two actors in the lead, it’s unmemorable and somewhat predictable. I also didn’t like how they tried to play up on the chemistry between De Niro and Pacino. These two are great together anyway you put it, but the filmmakers tried to put emphasis on that fact and it ends up looking really cheesy in some parts. 50 Cent shows some decent acting but that’s overshadowed by the fact that his role was completely unnecessary and it feels like they only added him to draw a larger audience. The pacing also wasn’t all that great. The flick never really slows down but it felt a lot longer than its 1 hr 40 min run time.

The Final Word: I really….really….REALLY didn’t want to have to tell anyone to wait for this one on DVD, but unless you have some serious love for the De Niro/Pacino connection I wouldn’t bother spending the ten bucks. Don’t get me wrong this wasn’t a bad movie by any means, it just wasn’t particularly good. Go rent Heat if you want to see these two together this weekend and rent Righteous Kill in a couple months when it’s out on DVD.

6.75/10

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Review: The House Bunny

Does it throw my credibility into question if I state that the first few minutes of this film are some of my favorite of the year? It doesn't, does it? I'm a pretty sophisticated dude when it comes to movies, but even I can be easily won over by a plethora of scantily clad Playboy playmates frolicking at a party. I'm not hard to please.

There's something about Anna Faris that makes me like her in pretty much anything she does. Even if the material is weak, she somehow rises above it with her doe-eyed expressions and keen comedic timing. Here she plays Shelley, one of a myriad of playmates staying at the Playboy mansion. Well, she wishes she was a playmate. She's more like a roommate, as she's never actually been in a pictorial. But she's looked up to by the girls and especially Hefner, who absolutely adores her. On Shelley's 27th birthday, she wakes up to an ominous letter from Hef telling her to please leave the premises. Turns out 27 is a smidge too old to be shacking up with the ancient playboy. Distraught, Shelley finds herself checking out the local sororitys as a place to live because they "look like little playboy mansions". As good a reason as any.

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