The Final Take with Parker Mott

3 Stars out of 4
(108 minutes)

Larry (Allen) and Marcia Fox (Huston) play an impassive game of cards in Manhattan Murder Mystery.

When Hitchcock’s Rear Window first released, it arrived at New York City on August 1, 1954. Woody Allen would have been 21 years-old and, I’m sure, very into movies. I can see him lining up at the first show of the night, with his ticket and excited for a light adventure. Rear Window was a light adventure, and strangely one of the best movies ever made. I can picture the nervous fella thinking “hey, I should make a movie like that but with way more New York.” Sure enough that product emerged 39 years later. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(128 minutes)

Drummond (Tracy) makes the prosecutor, Brady (March), the witness in Inherit the Wind.

Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind is probably a masterpiece for atheists and cheap, portentous evolutionist’s propaganda towards Christians. It’s a film that talks a lot, using very little visual detail and commenting on the state of society through its characters. Like Billy Wilder, Kramer is fascinated more with characters than style, and that is just as well if Inherit the Wind is to be taken seriously as a humanized foray on creationism, not just an empty tirade. (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(152 minutes)

An epic love affair springs at The Majestic.

There is something rather uplifting in watching movies about movie going. It creates the nostalgia of when films started to be appreciated as art and immersed people to the point they forgot they were sitting in a theatre. The Majestic isn’t quite a film about such, though it treats the movie going experience as a symbol in the background to a very pensive yet meandering old fashioned post-war romance.

Remember Frank Capra? Well, Frank Darabont – the director of The Shawshank Redemption – brings back the gliding optimism and unstoppable high spirits of Capra’s romantic works. Think It’s A Wonderful Life but embedded in a town that is not so wonderful. What Darabont has gone for is a retreat to Capra romanticism, escaping the age of Rambo iconography. This is a film without bullets, grim death, or pointless explosions. It’s a settled, passionate story that – at its heart – is a real slog. It’s too long so most of its yearning and romanticism is replaced with impatience as the film counts its minutes. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(103 minutes)

The rebellious Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier) loses his moral innocence in Winter In Wartime.

A plane crashes to open Winter In Wartime, which acts as an apposite metaphor for the film itself. No it’s not terrible but completely unneeded in the impressive array of World War 2 films. The base of the story is a loss-of-innocence tale and that’s all you need to know, and will get. It’s beautiful to look at, painted with saturated whites manifesting the falling snow and the roaring winds. It’s glum while rather majestic, cold but fiercely elegant. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(90 minutes)

Morgan Spurlock wants us to buy, buy, buy in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

My pressing question about The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is whether director Morgan Spurlock is selling out or buying in. The slogan to the film submits he’s doing the latter. I remain unconvinced but that is just as well. In fact I really like this film because it takes Spurlock, our documentary antihero, and makes him a chump (not a revolutionary) who sells out with a smirk. This is a documentary that does not just embrace its flaws but turns inward and criticizes itself, with a pinch of admiration. It’s flawed and damn proud of it. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(102 minutes)

In The Hangover Part II, the Wolf Pack wakes up in Bangkok – without a script.

Marriage, I assume, is tough. A hangover, I know, is too. And the beloved Wolf Pack go through a doozy of a post-drunk trip in Bridesmaids – sorry, um – Hangover Part II.

Yes, the aptly named “Hangover Part II” plays out more like déjà vu than a sequel. It’s all the same, so similar in fact the end credits refuse to be a little original. Just a little. But I have this grumbling feeling – and it’s not last night’s schnapps – that that may be the point. If the formula of the first Hangover worked (and it did, grossing 467 million worldwide) then it ought to work again. Right? Wrong. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(105 minutes)

A soldier is shellshocked after being shot in Armadillo.

If the timing of Armadillo’s release somewhat thwarts its impact, one can still expect to be shaken. Armadillo is a documentary about madness, in its purest and – granted – thoroughly explored form. Some have called it the Apocalypse Now of cinema verité and I could agree by adding a touch of The Hurt Locker and Jarhead. So Armadillo is a true-to-form and also very familiar war documentary about soldiers on their precarious duties abroad. It works but it’s nothing revolutionary. But what can it say? You can’t blame the film that everyone who has watched a war movie understands “war is hell.” (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(104 minutes)

Amber Heard and Nicolas Cage drive angry in – well – Drive Angry 3D.

Under its own raw and ridiculous formula Drive Angry works. It’s a retreading step into the Grindhouse genre, disposing of combustive and scratchy film reels for the new archetype 3D. It was shot in 3D and director Patrick Lussier (a fellow Canadian) makes a 100-minute pyrotechnic gimmick that drives its way to the finish line, with a few chugs along the way. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(90 minutes)

Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey) is back. Oh dear.

We get the over personality treatment in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, a film that’s title inspires me to use the bathroom more than it does make me laugh. It is the sequel to the very abysmal and somehow (and sadly) “classic” Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. It stars Jim Carrey as the egomaniacal Ace who – if you found him funny before – he will continue to amuse you here. I noticed I was not as irked by Ace’s personality here, but that could just be me getting used to the stink. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(137 minutes)

Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is in a "fountain" of trouble in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. So is the script.

All aboard the (3D) ship in the less-than- stellar Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Producer Jerry Bruckenheimer, this time around, makes a few noticeable concessions: lowers the budget, trims the run time, and minimizes the fun. By the fourth time around we do not expect much, but what we get is mostly below the barrel. (continue reading…)