Film

The Muppets have a long, deep history, and most people on this Earth today can say that these familiar felt creatures played a part in their upbringing. Even those, like myself, who were too young to have regularly indulged in The Muppet Show when it aired on television, are nevertheless familiar with The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island and, of course, Jim Henson's Muppet Babies. And just when it seemed like the Muppets had faded out of the pop culture in recent years, Kermit, Missy Piggy and the rest of the crew surge back into relevance in Jason Segel's resurrection of the franchise.
This big screen Muppet reunion features Gary (Segel), a simple man who spends his time with longtime girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) and his brother Walter. The brothers share an obsession with the Muppets, and Walter (weirdly) actually happens to be one. When the trio discovers an evil oil tycoon’s (Chris Cooper) plans to drill for oil under the old, rundown Muppet Theater, they find Kermit and round up the gang to resurrect The Muppet Show
for a telethon to raise money to save the theater.

I would personally like to apologize for the reviews I wrote for both The Twilight Saga: New Moon and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. I don't know what exactly came over me that I would rave on and on about how good both of these films were, but obviously I was under the influence of something. Let's call it Post-Adolescent Vampire Obsession Syndrome (or PAVOS, which coincidentally is Spanish for “turkeys,” and it's what all of us who latched onto this ridiculous series were for having so mindlessly obsessed over it for the past few years).
All I know is that during the height of my Twihard-ed obsession, my 15-year-old self would have seriously kicked my current self's ass. How does one go from making fun of Edward's sparkling skin to giving the last two movies each four out of five stars? I feel as though perhaps my mind melted and my time spent studying and adoring the art of cinema was tossed aside for a teenage vampire love story that throws both feminism and self respect out the window.

There's a lot to be said about Michael Shannon. He is a great actor carving out a niche for himself playing highly troubled individuals. Take Shelter starts with Shannon standing out in motor-oil-thick rain as he blankly stares into space. Right away we know there's trouble brewing. Moving beyond Christopher Walken's “hey I get it, I'm psychotic” manic territory, Shannon, epitome of a tortured soul, lets everything get under his skin.
There are a lot of normal-looking scenes in Take Shelter, but Michael Shannon does not play normal. As a guy named Curtis living with his wife (the excellent Jessica Chastain) in a small, unspecified Ohio town, Curtis is under pressure with a mortgage, a mother in an assisted-living home and a deaf six-year-old daughter. But none of that thwarts his obsession to build a backyard storm shelter to survive the devastating apocalypse he perceives is looming. Storms really are brewing out yonder, but the real storm is in Curtis' brain. He's plagued by nightmares as his mind begins to slide into madness and his devastating downward spiral takes his friends and family along with him. Shelter is an amazing, artistic, somewhat slow moving film that gives us a chance to see a rare hybrid of honesty and suspense.

Despite always earning A’s in my history classes, I usually avoid historically set programming when it comes to my entertainment consumption. I'm just not into it, which is probably why I fell asleep toward the end of The Kings Speech. I do make the exception for American history and well-made biopics.
Leonardo DiCaprio has played a large number of interesting characters and has, without a doubt, some of the best acting chops of any actor in Hollywood. While he has been known to play a pretty boy or two, he truly absorbed the role of John Edgar Hoover in a phenomenal way. Beneath the layers of latex, which he donned to play Hoover in his 70s, DiCaprio transcended time and physical appearance to become the hard-assed director of the FBI. The skill and talent were all DiCaprio, but beneath the makeup and behind the glasses he became nearly unrecognizable as anyone other than J. Edgar Hoover.

I'm probably breaking every rule in the critic handbook here, but I have to recommend Immortals, even though it misses the boat on some things “good” movies should contain. I could moan about subtext and character motivations until the cows come home, but if you've seen the trailer for Immortals, then you know exactly what you're getting into: It's Clash of the Titans (the original) for the 300 crowd. If you're looking for something deeper than that, then I'm sure J. Edgar will top off your “grown-up” movie tank, but if you shell out the dollars for this, then expect to feel like a little kid again.
I think the reason for the lack of subtext and motivation is due to the fact that the story itself is boilerplate hero's journey stuff. Boy leads simple life, Boy's simple life is destroyed by all powerful evil, Boy goes on journey to find mystical artifact to destroy said evil, Boy meets girl who will probably be held hostage by evil, Boy finds artifact and faces his destiny against evil and might possibly win if his heart is pure, his aim is true and his muscles are all greased up and flexed. When the remake of Clash of the Titans tried to pull off the hero's journey it failed because of three main flaws: 1) The hero was Sam Worthington, who is a black hole of charisma, 2) The script was written by people who should have their pencils taken away and 3) It was directed with such a lack of vision and style that it felt like a sad facsimile of something that could be awesome.

We've seen Occupy movements pop up all over the country in response to capitalist America's actions, but they seem to be getting little to no results. At least so far. But Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy and Matthew Broderick may have unveiled a plan to finally show those greedy, bloodsuckers that the little guy means business. The 99 percent represented in Tower Heist by employees at a fictionalized Trump Tower don't get mad, they get even.
Tower Heist follows a group of apartment employees shafted by their richest resident, Arthur Shaw. Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the manager of New York's most pricey apartment complex “The Tower.” After Shaw gets busted for a Madoff-esq scheme, Kovacs learns that because of him, the pension plans of his employees no longer exist. Assuming some sort of responsibility, Kovacs suits up and becomes a modern day Robin Hood in an effort to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

On Prancer… on Donner… on Harold… on Kumar? With Halloween just over and Thanksgiving looming in the wind – bam – we get our first Christmas flick. Here's my advice: prepare for A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas. I think it's genius for the guys who bring stoner humor, lame sex jokes, bodily functions and bad taste to the screen to beat everyone to the holiday punch, and it's in 3-D no less. That said, this movie is amazingly stupid.
I actually liked H&K Go to White Castle, much to my surprise, but I walked out of H&K Escape from Guantanamo because it was that moronic. H&K X-mas isn't as insulting, but ripe with stereotypes; the latest addition to this unlikely franchise boasts an extensive list of bad and unfinished ideas. Many setups fall as flat as a squished pot brownie while others just glide along in wimpiness. Only a few jokes explode with originality. The film seems to be on a visible collision course with mediocrity and predictable Airplane-style humor. I have a hard time relating to comedies where I can see the punch lines coming from a mile away.

With Johnny Depp's history of chameleon acting and his dear late friend Hunter S. Thompson's machine-gun writing style, we should have had a hit on our hands with The Rum Diary. Sadly, this is not the case. Rather, we get something that borders on cute and mediocre. The whole thing is meek and needs more punch, falling flat in telling a hugely interesting and compelling story.
The uninspired plot tells of journalist Paul Kemp (Depp), who in 1960 goes to work a freelance job for a local newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that has fallen into cahoots with a sleazy planning and development scam. Mostly, though, this is a very loose collection of drug-and-alcohol-fueled mishaps as we watch Kemp struggle with corrupt business dealings, romance and heavy drinking.
In reality, Thompson had unsuccessfully applied to work at the larger English-language daily while in Puerto Rico, befriending many of the writers there and providing the context for The Rum Diary's fictional storyline. It wasn't until he and Depp came upon the novel in an old box that it was published in 1998. I read the book a few years back and found it pretty engaging, with rebellious insight and tons of humor.

Finally, we have an IMAX screen here in Bend! No more heading over to Portland for IMAX midnight screenings now that we can get our faces melted from the comfort of our little mountain town. For my first IMAX-ing (in 3-D), I watched the Shrek spin-off Puss In Boots, starring the sounds of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Zach Galifianakis. I wasn't expecting too much since I thought the last two Shrek movies were so pop culture laden that they were dated about eight minutes after release, but Puss In Boots keeps the references to a minimum and comes out feeling timeless and, at times, almost classic.
The sound system in the Old Mill 16's IMAX auditorium is 12,000 watts of pure auditory adrenalin and, combined with the giant screen and tastefully done 3-D, Puss In Boots was an incredibly immersive experience for me. The story is a mash-up of a few different fairy tales with Puss (the flawless Banderas) on the hunt for magic beans that will allow him to get to the castle in the sky so he can steal the goose that lays golden eggs. He partners with Kitty Softpaws (a seductively smoky Hayek) and his old friend Humpty Dumpty (the indispensable Galifianakis) to do one last heist and then he's done stealing. All the story beats are predictable from a mile off, but the kids will be eating up every word and the world of Puss in Boots is so bizarre and surreal that cooler parents will also be swept along with them.

We live in a time of constant remakes and reboots, prequels, sequels and re-imaginings, sometimes even rebootquels and prequakes. Sure, thanks, I'd love another version of The Thing that takes place 15 minutes before the last one and why not do another Footloose, since I'm pretty sure people still like to cut loose and pick up their Sunday shoes.
But The Three Musketeers? Really? There have been 22 live-action versions of the film since 1903 (including a martial arts take from 2001 and a 1993 Disney production starring Kiefer “DAMMIT” Sutherland and Charlie “winning” Sheen) and seven animated versions since 1953 (including Barbie and the Three Musketeers from 2009, which is either a kids’ movie or porn). If you're going to do another Musketeer movie then it needs to add something new to the formula, but all the new Musketeer film adds is laughable acting, incompetent direction and a script so filled with clichés that it starts swallowing itself like an Ouroboros.