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SXSW Review: "Micmacs"

5/24/2010

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Bazil has a rough life. As a child,  he was orphaned by a roadside mine that killed the only family he had. Sure that's a tough pill to swallow but presently Bazil seems alright. He works at a video stores and consumes copious amounts of what he loves most: film. That is until one fateful day, when a stray bullet randomly finds its way crashing through the video shop's front window and straight into Bazil's brain. He survives, but not completely unscathed, and when he tries to return to his normal life he soon finds he has been replaced at the video shop, and his place of residence has evicted him. So Bazil turns to the streets where he is soon taken in by a band of weirdos, each with a very specific skill set. They work together and provide for one another, and Bazil assumes his role well until his car breaks down and he finds himself between two monolithic buildings baring emblems of the two weapons of destruction that  ruined his life. Bazil's resolve? Take em down. But his way--with some zany Micmacs, or shenanigans.

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SXSW Review: "Kick Ass"

4/15/2010

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Everyone has dreamed it; just no one has done it. We all want to be super heroes but always seem to find ourselves limited by our general lack of superhero-y abilities and our general discomfort in form fitting clothing. I bet you even know what super power you would have if you had the choice (duh flying). But what Dave Lizewski has done is take his unnoticed high school persona, general lack of any fight training, and intense love for comic books and has made himself significantly more kick ass.

Dave becomes a viral sensation with his green scuba suit and dual wielding batons and serves as the inspiration for other people who want to make a difference. Only problem for Dave is that with great attention comes great foes and he has caught the attention of a local mob boss who sets out to make an example out of his alter ego Kick Ass. Also in the mix are Big Daddy and Hit Girl, who seems to have all the skills to be a masked vigilante, including the ability to remain under the radar until their masked colleague Dave requires aid.

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Hot Fun Fine Machine

3/26/2010

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What do you do when your friend tries to (allegedly) kill himself and your girlfriend has just left you? Why, you band together with your distanced but still best friends and you take a trip down memory lane--in this case, to a ski lodge where you were once champions of the lady world. And heck, while you're there, ain't no harm in all hopping naked into a hot tub with one another and getting totally wrecked. Or is there? Watch out, because if you're not careful, you might just wake up with a slammin' headache in the year 1986!

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Almost Great Zone

3/11/2010

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Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is done following orders after faulty secret intelligence keeps putting him and his men in dangerous situation after dangerous situation with nothing to show for it. Miller is hunting down WMDs in Saddam Hussein's Iraq  but has come up with zilch. Before being led on another wild goose chase, Miller partners up with a CIA official on a quest for the truth. The reason we were led to Iraq was because we were led to believe in these WMD's, but 7 years later we all know there weren't any there.  What director Paul Greengass and Academy Award-winner Brian Helgeland have done with the book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone", is taken an equal mix of fact and grand conspiracy/fantastic wishful thinking and created a taut suspenseful action packed thinking man's movie.

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The Wolfman BITES!

2/11/2010

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When directors go back and reboot a franchise, the most successful are always those who boil a movie down to its core, give it a firm base in reality, and then let the character take you from there. Christopher Nolan boiled a man who wears a suit that looks like a bat down to a man whose family was killed and seeks vigilante justice. Spider-Man was more than a kid who got bit by a radioactive spider; it was about a kid growing up in the world and learning for every one of his actions there is a reaction. What Joe Johnston has done with The Wolfman is boiled a film about a man dealing with his inner demons down to simply a film about a man who turns into a wolf.  And breaking a film down and missing the mark only serves to reveal the films inherent silliness.

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The Relatively Okay Bones

1/15/2010

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Based on the Alice Sebold novel of the same name, The Lovely Bones is the tale of 14-year-old Susie Salmon who is tragically raped and murdered by her neighbor in a suburban town in 1970s Pennsylvania. Upon her death Susie finds herself stuck in the "in-between," watching her family struggle to stay together as they try to find her killer and accept her death. The story is told from Susie's perspective as she floats back and forth between the fantastical "in-between" world and the real world while striving to make contact with the living to help them find her missing body. In doing so, Susie also observes her father's obsessive quest for vengeance and unwillingness to accept his daughter's demise.

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It's not that Complicated

12/23/2009

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Here's a hint for director/writer Nancy Myers: If you're going to make a movie about love, affairs, middle age, and family, go ahead and try and make at least one of your characters relatable, you know, so we have someone to root for and care about. Oh, and while you're at it, go ahead and develop some dimensions for your characters too!

The latest schlockfest from Myers is this Christmas's release of It's Complicated, which follows around wildly successful baker, Jane, (Meryl Streep) as she prances around her wildly successful bakery, upscale New York hotels, and her Pottery Barn porn house. Jane has been divorced for ten years, and one fateful night falls drunkenly into her ex-husband's, Jake (Alec Baldwin), arms for a one night shag-a-thon. Jake, who is now unhappily remarried, couldn't be more happy and in love with his ex-wife, and Jane couldn't be more guilt stricken. Couple this with the fact that Jane is potentially falling for the architect (Steve Martin) who is redesigning her (already huge) kitchen for more space, and you've got yourself a recipe for complication--and by complication, I mean stereotypical characters and predictable story.


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AFF Review: Warlords

11/18/2009

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During the Chinese Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s in the late Qing Dynasty, General Qing-Yun (Jet Li) is the only survivor of his slaughtered troops. In his aimless wanderings after, Qing-Yun encounters a woman who nurses him back to health. Qing-Yun is then welcomed into a group of bandits by Wu-Wang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) only to find the woman who had helped him is wife to other bandit leader Er-Hu (Andy Lau). The three men form a blood pact to always look out for one another, and Qing-Yun convinces the bandit leaders to join the Qing Army in an attempt to give them their financial independence. Qing-Yun assumes the leadership role and what follows is two hours of epic battles, confusing Chinese politics, love-triangles, and a test of fraternity, not to mention eight wins at the Hong Kong Film Awards including director, picture, and actor.

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The Men Who Stare at Goats

11/5/2009

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Based on the Jon Ronson book of the same name, The Men Who Stare at Goats follows the 'true' story of a reporter, Bob Wilton, (Ewan McGregor), trying to lose himself in the romance of war after his marriage fails. Bob gets more than he bargains for when he meets an alleged special forces agent, Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who reveals the existence of a secret psychic military unit whose goal is to end war as we know it. Having heard some truth to his tales Bob dives in and follows Lyn on his 'mission'. Is Lyn crazy or is he a super soldier member of The New Earth Army?

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AFF Review: The Road

11/3/2009

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It's easy to think up a post-apocalyptic world and how you would inhabit it; round up a couple of friends and family members, hoard your resources, and loot a local Wal-Mart of guns and supplies before holing up in a safe place with those you care about. But what would you realistically do?

There's no electricity, there's no communication, and you have no idea what's going on outside besides knowing civilization is coming to a end.  Nearly all of humanity has been wiped out by some unknown cataclysm, and those who remain are either well-armed xenophobes or canabilistic mauraders.  The sun has become obscured by a blanket of ashy grey sky, and plant and animal life is all but extinct. 

That's the life that is depicted in the bleak and haunting future in the John Hillcoat directed Cormac McCarthy adapation The Road. The story centers on an ailing father (Viggo Mortensen) traveling south with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) when he realizes they cannot survive another winter at their present location. The journey follows the father as he wields a pistol with two bullets to protect his son from cannibals, starvation, and everything else the cruel world has to offer him and his uninitiated young boy.

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