Film

What's right with this picture?About two weeks ago, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez spoke on
Capitol Hill about issues related to homelessness in American cities.
Specifically, he discussed his personal and professional relationship
with mentally ill musician Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, played by Jamie
Foxx in The Soloist. It wasn't exactly the standard late-night talk
show type of appearance you expect in advance of a studio movie, but
then again The Soloist isn't your usual Hollywood rags-to-riches
redemption story.

With The Soloist, director Joe Wright scorches
the screen with the same mixture of fantasy and grungy reality that he
used in Atonement.This is probably the first film of 2009 that has
serious Oscar aspirations.
Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lopez, the
intrepid columnist who spies Ayers in a not-so-chance meeting by a
statue of Beethoven in downtown Los Angeles. From there, Lopez learns
that Ayers is a former Julliard student with tremendous promise whose
life was turned upside-down by voices in his head. An interesting
newspaper column idea evolves into something more personal and profound
that grows into friendship.

Shock me baby…all night long.Crank: High Voltage is an adrenalized rollercoaster ride presented in
overtly stylized hyper-surrealism. It's what the remakes of Death Race
and Fast and Furious strived to be.

The original Crank lifted its
concept from the classic D.O.A. starring Edmund O'Brien (re-made later
with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan). The hitman, Chev Chelios (Jason
Statham), mysteriously poisoned by a "Beijing Cocktail," races against
time to find his perpetrators. If Chev's heart rate slowed down he'd
croak. To keep his adrenaline up, he was off and running, punching
anyone in his path.
This sequel takes up the storyline when
Chev falls from a helicopter. After splattering onto pavement, he is
literally scooped up by some evil Chinese gangsters who want to harvest
his super organs. To keep him alive they transplant a battery powered
heart that needs a charge every hour or so. When they start to harvest
Chelios' well-endowed man part, he spurs back to life and the pummeling
begins. He spends the rest of the film repeatdly jump-starting his
heart any way possible.

Journalists? They still have those?Think of all the things that people have seen with great repetition in
their lives but for which we continue to crane our necks to glimpse
again and again: Sunrises, sunsets, windstorms, the aftermath of car
crashes, Seth Rogen movies, etc. In a way, State of Play is the film
version of a sunrise - or at least a good morning coffee. We know
precisely what we're being fed, and that's why we keep coming back for
more.

That being said, State of Play throws enough twists around to
give this daily cup of Joe a pleasant aroma. Adapted from a BBC
television series of the same name, the film stars Ben Affleck as
Stephen Collins, a congressman with a bright future whose office
assistant dies under bizarre circumstances. Russell Crowe plays Cal
McAffrey, a streetwise journalist and old friend of the congressman,
who begins investigating the aide's death and its connection to the
murders of two other people. Things get murky when it turns out the
married Collins and the assistant were having an affair. Still murkier
is that Collins is skewering a private defense contractor at a
congressional hearing, and the defense contractor doesn't like it one
bit. Billions in no-bid contracts could be lost. And when billions are
at stake, lives aren't worth much, so people get killed. Rinse and
repeat, right?

Where's Guttenberg and Bobcat?In the Jody Hill-directed comedy Observe and Report, Seth Rogen plays a
bi-polar, egomaniacal security guard who beats up children. So yeah,
Rogen fans can be forgiven if they think their hero is being cast
against type.

But then again, Observe and Report doesn't adhere to
many rules at all. In some ways, it's a drama about a grown-up kid
finding his way through manhood without a father. Then it's a farcical,
slapstick comedy about inept stooges who somehow convinced even more
inept powers-that-be to entrust them with authority. There's a sweet,
romantic subplot involving a pair of underdogs who seem born for each
other. Finally (and most weirdly) it's a vicarious, Chuck Norris-like
action vehicle. Any other day and I'd say that there are too many
movies cooked up in this mess. But each one has such an entertaining
lift, I refuse to be unimpressed.

Auschwitz? No, just Oregon. At first glance Wendy and Lucy seems to revel in simplicity. Wendy
(Michelle Williams) is a girl. Lucy is a dog. Together they seem
inseparable. But what unfolds is an intimate look at a road-weary
girl's predicament and her marooned isolation. Wendy and Lucy is a tale
of things going wrong and the resulting whirlpool of consequences.
Wendy is on her way to Alaska to work at a fish hatchery and en route
gets stranded in Wilsonville, Oregon, losing her dog in the process.
One bad thing leads to another. The irrepressible dent it leaves on
Wendy is mesmerizing to witness.

This movie's realism is almost
painful. Time seems to slow down. This is not nail biting stuff. It's
more like watching laboratory animals squirm. In a weird voyeuristic
effect, the audience is forced to root for her while fighting the urge
to jump in and help. The surrounding characters do their best to steer
Wendy in the right direction, but are too immersed in their own hard
times to get involved. Watching Wendy's big dream getting smaller every
second adds to the calamity. When Wendy's car breaks down it's truly
the car hell we all can relate to.

Explosions? Check. Hot rod? Check. Beefed up professional wrestler? Check.I am operating under the assumption that fans of Milk or Like Water for
Chocolate are probably not interested in reading a review of a movie
starring a WWE icon. So forgive me if, for the remainder of this
review, I actually take this film seriously. Because lord knows it
takes itself seriously.

12 Rounds stars John Cena, the WWE wrestler
and rapper (yes, rapper) as Danny Fisher, a New Orleans cop who foils
an international terrorist's plan to steal diamonds or something.
Anyway, during the pursuit, the terrorist's girlfriend is killed, and
the terrorist captured. Then the terrorist goes to jail. Then,
naturally, he breaks out a year later, kidnaps Danny's fiancé, and
torments Danny for an entire day with a number of impossible tasks that
have Danny running, jumping and flexing to save his girl. But mostly
flexing.

Something tells me you're not in a good place right now. If nothing else this film confirms my theory that a movie with the word
"haunting" in the title is doomed before the opening credits. If it's,
"based on a true story," doubly so. Based on the documented 1986
paranormal happenings to the Campbell family, The Haunting in
Connecticut stretches truth like county fair taffy. There's nothing new
here. The haunting flick is one heckuva tired old genre, even with
beefed up hyper-kinetic special effects to mask the absolute emptiness
of the action on the screen.

The plot goes something like this: a
family in turmoil…Mom (Virginia Madsen) is a big Christian, Dad (Martin
Donovan) is a big drunk and son Matt (Kyle Gallner) is dying of cancer.
They buy a house on a whim to avoid long drives for rigorous cancer
treatments. The house is a bargain but has a "history"-turns out that
it was a funeral parlor in which séances were conducted to raise the
dead. Now the dead want revenge or possession of a soul or something.
In other words the house is, um…haunted.