Culture

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.