Culture

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.