Film

Busting out another Blockbuster.I can't recall any other big-budget movie based on action figures, but Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen again showcases the nuts and bolts of machines (mainly cars and airplanes) morphing themselves into humongous metallic beasts. What were once just toys for kids and flimsy animated cartoons, have, yes, transformed, into big-boy-toys in the hands of multi-millionaires Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg. And with the funds to deliver high tech goods, they go all gear-head-turbo with this newest Transformers installment.

Beginning with a pseudo tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey, our Transformers history lesson tells us that they have been on the planet since 17,000 BC. It quickly zooms ahead to a convoluted fight scene between the Autobots, lead by Optimus Prime, against the evil Decepticons, in which either side can change into behemoth gear-grinding monstrosities.

Tenacious Archery time with JB.Little boys, whatever their ages, have always loved permission to laugh at potty humor. Like baseball, number two pencils, and visiting your parents, jokes about feces and farting draw out that inner child like nothing else can. Harold Ramis recognizes this. So he wrote and directed Jack Black's new movie, Year One.

Ramis has a great resume dating back to Caddyshack and Ghostbusters. But let's face it, houses built largely of dung and gas generally don't hold up. And Year One is no exception.
But there are redeeming moments. In fact, cameos by Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria are brilliant. Azaria plays Abraham to Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Isaac. And there are bits, moments and high points where you're surprised in ways that are original and funny. And Azaria and Platt are in many of them.

Mister rabbit says, "A moment of realization is worth a thousand prayers." Management is set in Kingman, Arizona but anyone who has been around here a while knows it was really filmed in Madras. As a resident of Central Oregon and a short-term resident of Arizona, I couldn't see the resemblance at all - Madras is just too instantly recognizable as Madras. It's not the first Oregon city to play surrogate, Portland has masqueraded as Baltimore, Maryland and Aberdeen, Washington in the same way. But Madras is little more than a prop - the story could have taken place in any small town in any motel.

Management opens on the character of Mike (Steve Zahn) a motel heir in the most basic sense who is running his parents' small roadside hotel. Into his life walks Sue (Jennifer Aniston), a businesswoman with whom Mike becomes smitten. The movie then morphs into a cross-country/stalker-obsessed love story and all that usually entails: a jealous ex, kooky sidekick, ailing parents. Management attempts to put a capitol "Q" on quirky and succeeds more times than it fails. For a while, the film gropes and falters in the suspended disbelief mode, but is peculiar enough to be enjoyable. Then about midway through, it sinks into way-too-cute mode, combining heartfelt scenes with oddball comic relief. If you dig chick flicks, this is the one for you.

…without a paddle.Sin Nombre (which translates to "Without a Name") is one of those films that will stay with you for days. This brilliantly directed, acted and photographed visual masterpiece is a chase-thriller/road-movie/coming of age/love story. The film examines the power and influence of Mexican gangs in small towns that offer little beyond the lure of crossing the border. It's a simple tale bound together with complex emotional themes, and produced by two actors who have established themselves in American movies, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mamá También).
The film features two main storylines that intersect during a train ride moving immigrants north. El Casper (Edgar Flores) is disillusioned with gang life and seeks an escape; Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is going to cross the Mexican border from Honduras with her estranged father. Casper is running from his past with gang members in chase. Sayra is smitten with him, a combination of infatuation, necessity and the white knight syndrome-even if the knight wields a machete. The saga of twelve-year old Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) is the movie's pivotal and most powerful secondary storyline, chronicling his gang indoctrination and efforts to legitimize himself. Immigration, while a powerful undercurrent, plays a back seat to the depiction of desperate acts to escape intolerable circumstances.

Bike Chariot wars: Coming soon to Drake Park…please.Bicycling. It seems simple enough - two wheels, gears, cables, and of course someone to ride it. But anyone even remotely connected to cycling, especially in this part of the country, knows that it's not that straightforward. In fact, past Webcyclery movie nights at McMenamins have always looked into a specific aspect of the bicycle world. But this time around, the chosen film is one called Veer, and it attempts to tackle cycling culture in one fell swoop by taking a wide-angle look at Portland's culture more or less as a whole.
The film, directed by Greg Fredette, introduces us to a range of characters including the Zoobombers, an increasingly well-known group of cyclists that bombs down Portland hillsides on children's bikes as well as a cycling advocate battling to pass bills on the floor of the state legislature. There's also a group of bike dancers, cycling non-profits and stories of cyclists who've been killed in traffic. All in all, it's a look at Portland's urban cycling culture from a variety of angles. But there's very little by way of facts or statistics to discuss or explain the cycling boom, it's not that kind of documentary. Rather, the film is strictly observational in its approach.

C.H.U.D. III hits theaters this week. Look, I'm not making any inappropriate allegations. All I'm saying is
that if Tony Scott does have any scandalous photos of Denzel
Washington, that might explain a lot.

Since their first collaboration
on Crimson Tide in 1995, Washington and Scott have teamed up in recent
years for Man on Fire, Dèjá Vu and now this remake of 1974's The Taking
of Pelham 1 2 3, with yet another film together scheduled for 2011.
Stewart/Hitchcock! DeNiro/Scorsese! Depp/Burton! Washington/Scott! One
of these things is not like the others…
It's not that Washington
suddenly turns into a hack-by-association in his Scott-directed films.
Here he plays Walter Garber, a New York Transit Authority employee who
has the bad luck to be on the other end of a radio dispatch when a
subway train is hijacked. A guy calling himself Ryder (John Travolta),
leading a quartet of gunmen, has given the city one hour to deliver $10
million. While fears of a terrorist attack spread, Garber and Ryder
play the kind of cat-and-mouse game that you get in movies of this kind.

I wanna hold your hand. Todd Phillips, director of the GG Allin documentary Hated, and the
testimony to immature behavior, Old School, now brings us The Hangover,
a journey down a path of tasteless jokes and weird slapstick that will
keep you strangely riveted as you try to find out what's next. This is
Bachelor Party meets Memento.

The gist of the plot is a bachelor
party in Vegas gone askew. Four dudes go to Vegas: There's a dentist,
Stu (Ed Helms), who lies to his wife; Phil (Bradley Cooper), a school
teacher/cool guy happy to get away from the wife and kids; the nice guy
groom, Doug (Justin Bartha), and Doug's brother-in-law, Alan (Zach
Galifianakis), an oddball/weirdo/idiot savant/moronic pest. After a
night offscreen partying they wake up in shambles-the hotel suite is
trashed, a chicken, a tiger and a baby have all appeared out of nowhere
and one of them (Doug) is missing. Neither they nor the audience has a
clue as to what led to the wreckage. Then the race is on to nurse their
hangovers, put some pieces back together, find their friend and get
back to the wedding in time.

Director Sam Raimi revisits his old haunted stomping grounds and proves
he can still deliver the goods in Drag Me to Hell. A master of schlock
humor and drive-in horror who made the Evil Dead trilogy, Raimi went on
to some cleverly made flops (A Simple Plan, Quick and the Dead), then
ostracized himself from his main audience (including me) by taking the
helm of the mega-hit Spiderman franchise. Now he humbly returns to his
evil deadly roots with a bag of familiar tricks. Drag Me to Hell is an
old school curse movie complete with jolts, scares and gross-out laughs
galore. Beginning with the old style universal logo, Raimi shows
immediately that his heart is in the right place. And all the
over-budget sets, high tech lighting and CGI antics that defined his
recent work take a back seat.

The plot is painstakingly simple.
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer vying for the
assistant manger position. She's up against smarmy kiss-ass Stu (Reggie
Lee) and her pansy indecisive boss (David Paymer). Enter one haggard
old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver) with a shattered blue eye and crumbling
dentures. Christine refuses to extend her a third and final loan, thus
evicting her from her home. The gypsy places an evil curse on her and
all hell breaks loose. Desperate, Christine and boyfriend Clay (Justin
Long) turn to a fortune teller (Dileep Rao) to try to save her soul,
while evil forces work against her.

It’s actually a baseball movie…Sugar, the new film by the directors of Half Nelson, begins and ends
with our hero atop a pitcher's mound. Tucked in between is a minor
league season, one that elapses with all the boredom and fury you'd
expect from a modern baseball drama. But baseball is a side attraction
in Sugar, as mature and empathetic as any sports flick in recent
memory. In the era of Eastbound and Down – HBO's terrific spoof of a
clueless ex-pro baseballer – we can expect a glut of baseball satire,
given what the game has done to itself. Meanwhile, Sugar has other
scores to settle. It's about how easily undone are the dreams of being
among the best at something, and how in order to be the best, it can be
necessary to leave those we love behind. Sugar works as an immigrant
saga, a coming-of-age story and a coming-down-to-earth cautionary tale.
In short, Sugar is pure and honest, which is more than we can say for
baseball itself.

You’re lucky you’re not a stage hand, my friend…Terminator Salvation could very well be the best action blockbuster of
the summer and by far the best of 2009. This flick excels in delivering
non-stop and well-timed action scenes without skimping on plot. As a
great, high energy battle-for-survival adventure, Terminator
Salvation's level of intensity never stops.

The prequel to the first
Terminator takes place in 2018 wherein John Connor (Christian Bale) has
to find and save young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin of Charlie Bartlett
fame) from the artificial intelligence military organization Skynet
(based in a dilapidated San Francisco) and their robot machines. Connor
has to make sure Reese stays alive so he can eventually be sent to the
past to have sex with his mother so he (Connor) can be born. Got it?
Connor must then battle the terminator army and move mountains
(sometimes literally) to convince the underground resistance to help
save mankind from an evil transport machine while they attempt to
overthrow the machine-protected government. Introduced to move the plot
along, a new character, Marcus (Sam Worthington) helps to reveal the
underlying motives and prejudices of both sides. To the plot's credit,
it stands alone as an action flick, but also works well as the
beginning to the Terminator series, incorporating all the things any
loyal fan would pick up on (the photo of Sarah Connor from the
original, her recorded instructions to Connor). What works so well with
this flick is that it follows a bunch of distinct sub plots, from
Marcus' origin to Reese's underground resistance and capture to
Connor's quest and blatant disregard for authority against all odds.
Connor's motivational radio messages come across like a good version of
Mata Hari.