 Chances are you’ve already made up your mind about whether or not you’ll see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Like so many films framing fictional tales around real-life tragedies past, it could be argued a movie centered around the events of Sept. 11 is going to be at best a tacky melodrama and at worst an exploitative venture that cashes in on very real sorrow and the deaths of 3,000 innocent people.
In this case, the movie is based off the book of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated), who, coincidentally, like director Stephen Daldry (The Reader, The Hours), has a previous work rooted in another sorrowful bit of history — the Holocaust. ELIC is a tale (heavily) narrated by 10-year-old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), whose father (Tom Hanks) died on “the worst day.” (Though narration is the go-to easy-way out for working the best parts of a book into a film adaptation, it's hard to fault Daldry for the tactic when faced with a collection of words as potent as Foer's) Desperately attempting to make sense of his father’s death and coping with the expanding gulf of time separating him from the memory of his father, Oskar embarks on a nearly impossible quest to unlock the meaning of a key left behind by his father and a lost and mostly forgotten sixth borough of New York. Continued after the jump. Add Comment  Let’s imagine a movie. This film will be produced by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy). It will star Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek as lovers on a quest for redemption and justice. We’ll throw in comic relief from Zach Galifianakis in skin-tight golden spandex and Billy Bob Thorton and Amy Sedaris as a couple of hillbilly psychopaths. That sounds like a movie I’d watch. No, Robert Rodriguez isn’t adding a fourth film to his Mariachi Trilogy — this is Puss in Boots. About 15 minutes into Puss in Boots, I became deeply concerned. I was being... entertained. How could this be? There are few animated movies I despise more than the Shrek series, and despite a few recent gems, DreamWorks Animation is still responsible for 20-something downright awful films over the past decade. My terror turned into skepticism before dissolving into joyous acceptance after a roller-coaster ride of stunningly animated 3D chase scenes, slapstick humor, wink-wink adult jokes, an expertly choreographed dance off and a flurry of cat puns. My praise is difficult to utter. It lingers in my throat like a massive hairball I hesitate to vomit free, but I must: This is an entertaining movie. I would recommend people see this. Though Puss in Boots was born from the painfully unfunny Shrek films, which suffered from a case of Family Guy humor (i.e., mistaking pop-culture references for jokes) and Mike Myers, it has little in common with its forebearers and is much more like DreamWorks Animation’s best work, Kung Fu Panda and How To Train Your Dragon. It’s a family-friendly action-adventure, a PG take on Zorro with universally relatable characters and top-notch visuals and exceptional performances. Though the lack of competition may take some of the punch out of this statement, Puss in Boots is the best animated film I’ve seen this year. --Eric Pulsifer "The Thing" is a beastly bore of a prequel 10/14/2011
 What to say about The Thing that hasn’t been said about the million other remakes, reboots and uncalled for prequels? Well, for starters, it’s another one of those. A film that no one asked for. A movie no one ever knew they didn’t need. The Thing (1982) — the real one, the John Carpenter-directed one with a bearded Kurt Russell — is a grim, tense and terrifying thriller with groundbreaking special effects and a palpable air of paranoia. The Thing (2011) — the brainless yawn-fest of a prequel released this week that stars a beardless Mary Elizabeth Winstead (the object of Michael Cera’s affection in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the cheerleader from Death Proof) — leads into the opening of the original film by telling us the story of the poor bastards who first come into contact with The Thing. The Thing — the titular shape-shifting alien life form that can morph to mimic its victims — is introduced in The Thing (2011) as a 13-foot tall black bipedal creature with claw-like hands that has been frozen in the ice outside of its spacecraft, which apparently crashed in the middle of Antarctica centuries ago. This Thing — the appearance-absorbing alien — creates some interesting dilemmas if you’re isolated with a small group of scientists in a remote research facility in Antarctica. Who can you trust when you know the enemy is among you? Luxurious beards and flamethrower porn after the jump!  The concept behind The Change-Up is as dumb as it is uninspired. A pair of unlikely bros, a family-man lawyer and father of three, Dave (Jason Bateman), and a stoner Lothario, Mitch (Ryan Reynolds), get the ol’ Freaky Friday swap after peeing in a magical fountain and realize the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Dick and poo jokes, hijinks, lessons learned, the credits roll — no surprises. But The Change-Up has one trick up its sleeve: It's pretty damn funny. I realize you've probably seen the previews, and thus, I may have just tossed out what little credibility I have, but hear me out. Read more after the jump!  I love going into a theater with low expectations. In my mind, there was no way Captain America could be anything other than crap. For more than a decade now, our summers have been saturated with superheroes in tight-fitting outfits battling evil and their inner demons. How could a one-dimensional do-gooder like Captain America — an all-American, nauseatingly flawless square-jawed Superman type with generic powers — offer anything I’d want to see? By bucking the trend of comic book films of the last 12 years. Things have gotten gray. Our bad guys are complex and forged by understandable circumstances. We see there is a motivation behind their madness. Our good guys are flawed and driven to wonder if they are any better than the foes they seek to defeat — renegades with no regard for the law on a quest to find what they consider to be justice. Things are not so in the 1940’s world of Captain America. Hit the break to read more! “Bad Teacher” barely makes the grade 06/24/2011
 As the name implies, Bad Teacher — sadly, of no relation to Bad Santa — is about a bad teacher. See, it’s funny cause she’s a bad person and she works with kids. Get it? Yeah, it’s not that funny of a concept. But, it’s also funnier than you’d think, mostly thanks to a solid supporting cast of people far funnier than leading lady, (and the titular bad teacher) Cameron Diaz. Diaz plays Elizabeth Hasley, a teacher who shows up to work hung-over and passes out at her desk while her students watch movies about teachers who aren’t quite so bad at their jobs (e.g., Stand And Deliver, Dangerous Minds, Lean on Me). Ms. Hasley has her sights met on marrying rich, and her weapons of choice for bagging this financial benefactor are a pair of soon-to-be purchased breast implants. To accomplish this pricey goal, Ms. Hasley has to get creative: taking bribes from parents, strip teasing for tips at a school car wash fundraiser, helping students cheat on standardized tests — teacher stuff. None of this is too funny, and some of it opens up a plot hole, an unanswered question that seems to have been edited into the film about how bad a person Ms. Hasley may or may not actually be. But then there’s Justin Timberlake. JT plays substitute teacher Scott Delacorte, a handsome and wealthy heir to a watch-making dynasty, who, despite being a bit off, is the moral opposite of Ms. Hasley. Gullible and seemingly oblivious to the idea that anyone might be interested in him solely for his wealth, he’s also the perfect mark for Hasley. And it’s Timberlake, who without hesitation is willing to make himself look like a fool for a good laugh, who carries most of the film’s memorable moments. Assisting JT are some other truly funny supporting actors: Jason Segel, the good guy gym coach we all know Ms. Hasley should end up with; Ms. Hasley’s crazy roommate, Kirk (Eric Stonestreet of Modern Family); a white wine–drinking state test administrator (Thomas Lennon); and an unenthusiastic Abe Lincoln historical reenactor (Matt Besser of Upright Citizens Brigade). Bad Teacher has some good laughs, especially when Diaz isn’t in the spotlight, but it still has a lot to learn. If you’re dying for a comedy this summer and have already seen Bridesmaids, you could definitely do worse than Bad Teacher (I’m looking at you, Hangover 2). Like director Jake Kasdan’s other films Orange County and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, it’s the kind of mindless movie one wouldn’t mind watching if there’s nothing else to do. Bad Teacher is a C-student of a comedy; it has the potential to be something great but never really does enough over the bare minimum to stand out from the crowd. --Eric Pulsifer  Are women as funny as men? Sexist as it sounds, the idea lives on that women aren’t as funny as their penis-equipped counterparts in the comedy department. [1] Bridesmaids has been touted as a breakthrough — a raunchy female response to a decade of dude-driven comedies and bromances. (Does that make Bridesmaids a “womance?” And, if it does and the term “womance” enters into regular rotation, I expect credit for it.) But does Bridesmaids live up to the hype? More after the jump!  “Your ancestors called it magic, and you call it science; I come from a place where they’re one in the same.” So the God of Thunder himself explains how he can exist in the Marvel Comics film universe, a world populated by a billionaire playboy with a flying robotic suit, a real-life Jekyll and Hyde, and a frozen human guinea pig from World War II. You see, Thor’s eponymous hero and his Norse mythology brethren aren’t gods per se, but super-powered aliens mistaken for gods by ignorant Vikings. No, it certainly doesn’t make for the most plausible of Marvel’s origin stories, but, of the company’s stable of stinkers, Thor is the most entertaining bit of comic book cinema since 2008’s Iron Man. Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, a one-eyed Anthony Hopkins and more after the jump.  Echotone is an Austin-made documentary about the Austin music scene, described by the filmmakers as a “cultural portrait of the modern American city examined through the lyrics and lens of its creative class.” The film opens with its strongest material, blues rock bad boy Joe Lewis of Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears delivering fish and sharing his two cents about being a musician in the Live Music Capital of the World. We get equally entertaining (and occasionally heartbreaking) tales and performances from others among Austin’s indie elite, including The Black Angels, Ghostland Observatory, Belaire, Sunset, Dana Falconberry and The Octopus Project. Director Nathan Christ and his gang clearly know where to point the business end of a camera/microphone — the visuals and audio are absolutely gorgeous, but the film seems to lack a clear direction. Read more after the jump!  POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a documentary (and an attempt at creating the first “docbuster”) about marketing and product placement funded entirely by marketing and product placement. The film follows director Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) as he attempts to make the film by pitching corporations on sponsoring the film all the way through promoting and releasing the movie — the movie the audience is watching. Forget the Scream movies: This is meta. The Spurlock “brand” will probably forever be tied to Super Size Me. For most people, the horseshoe-mustachioed filmmaker may never be anything more than the slightly goofy guy who ate at McDonald’s for a month. But those who kept up with Spurlock over the past six years know he’s gone on to do interesting work that shows an intelligence and heart that promises many more exciting experiments to come. Most notable of these projects was 30 Days, the wonderful, woefully defunct FX series born from the Super Size Me concept of trying something for a month. (If you’re unfamiliar or never got around to watching it, get on it.) Read more after the jump! | Archives
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