Valkyrie (2008)

Sometimes when you wait too long to see a movie, the hype builds up and the film can't live up to your expectations. VALKYRIE works the other way. Watching this perfectly acceptable suspense film blow by in what felt like much less than its two hour running time, I coulnd't understand why the film had been so trashed in the press leading up to and just after its release.
Perhaps it is because of all of this bad-mouthing that VALKYRIE exceeded my expectations. Not to say that I thought it was a "great" movie. But it was easily a solid piece of history-based entertainment.
"Valkyrie" is the name of a back-up plan that would use SS reservists to secure Berlin should anything happen to Adolf Hitler. Amidst a significant handful of high-ranking Nazi officers who actually dislike Hitler, Colonel Claus von Staffenberg (Tom Cruise) tweaks the Valkyrie plan and takes the lead in what would be the 15th and final assassination attempt on Hitler's life (before he killed himself).
The fact that we all know how this was going to turn out doesn't spoil the intensity of the suspense in the film, and that's one of the good things that VALKYRIE has going for it. The other good thing is the support cast. Kenneth Branaugh, Bill Bighy and Tom Wilkinson are almost incapable of giving bad performanes. Throw Terence Stamp and a barely-noticable Eddie Izzard into the mix, and the acting here is rock-solid. It needs to be. When the audience already knows the outcome of a story, it's up to the actors' performances to convey a suspense that would be otherwise lacking. Mission accomplished here.
And then there's Tom Cruise. They ripped him to shreds over this role, not in small part for his American accent. Is it justified? Not really. Every actor here spoke in their native cadences, thanks to a slightly hokey trick employed by director Bryan Singer in the film's opening during which Cruise's character is speaking and writing in German and it morphs between sentences into English, a device that was a little too obvious in telling the audience "we're going to make this easier on you...you hate subtitles." Having said that, I can't think of any special reason why the film had to have accents. In the end, it's not worth fighting about. Beyond the voice, Cruise is surprisingly muted here, though his character calls for a man with steely interior and cardboard-cutout exterior. It didn't take me long to put Cruise out of my head as any kind of star in this film. It felt more like an ensemble piece to me, and that's a good thing. Cruise was fine. In fact, I've seen pictures of the actual von Stauffenberg, and Cruise looks much like him.
Bryan Singer teams up here with his "Usual Suspects" screenwriter, Christopher McQuarrie, and the team does a halfway decent job of allowing the audience to follow who's who and what the heck is going on. But that's about it. As I said, unashamed solid entertainment, but that's about it. Certainly a decent rental: a good looking film with action, suspense, good acting, and exciting history thrown in the mix.

3.0 out of 4

Smile Pinki (2008)

"Slumdog Millionaire" was not the only India-set film to win an Oscar this past year. SMILE PINKI won the Oscar for Documentary Short Subject. During the course of this quick and simple film, the audience learns that in India, there are over one million children born with cleft palates. SMILE PINKI documents the efforts of an Indian hospital specializing in lip and facial reconstruction in finding these affected children in the far corners of India, and having them treated at their facility.

The title of this film comes from the name of one little girl, Pinka (or, Pinki), who is among those who's parents are approached by a doctor/spokesman who roams the Indian villages, asking people if they know any children with a cleft palate. When he finds Pinki's father, the family is understandably suspicious of the man's offer: free surgery. All the family has to do is get to the hospital. Pinki, however, is neither the central figure of the film (no case is, really), nor is she the most severe of the cases--and it is natural that the audience would feel even greater emotional connection to the worst of the affected.

In many ways, watching SMILE PINKI is like watching one of those late-night commercials where you see children in Africa who are malnourished and have flies swarming around them. I say that not to sound insensitive, but to admit that SMILE PINKI was, from a filmmaking standpoint, no more special than a good piece for a show like "Dateline NBC." It was a news report, and in no way artistically done.

And for my money, there was a missed opportunity in not further diving into the struggle each impoverished family encountered just in getting their child to the hospital to be operated on! To me, this was the most harrowing and effective part of the story. Each family is required to provide transportation to the hospital and pay for their food during a seven-day hospital stay. In Pinki's case, she and her father must travel on foot because there isn't enough money to get them there. When you consider that this three hour-plus walk is undertaken on the good faith presumption that the offer for free surgery is legitimate, the journey is that much more inspiring.

SMILE PINKI doesn't seem interested in the in-depth or providing any answers, such as: who is funding these operations...so numerous that when the children arrive, they must take numbers and be assigned a surgery date? It seems content in simply telling viewers that this condition is a serious one in India and that there is a hospital that is trying to do something about it. I prefer documentaries that take things a little deeper than that.

If you ask me, the Academy's excitement over all things India caused them to overlook the far superior short: "The Witness-From the Balcony of Room 306," a gut-wrenching, intellectual and spiritual first-hand account of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. This is not to say that SMILE PINKI won't affect you, won't move you, won't make you sad for these families (who, by the way, all feel cursed and punished by God when their children are born this way). It's just that this well-intentioned film could have said a bit more.

2.0 out of 4

Up (2009)

One of the most striking things about UP, Disney Pixar's latest triumph, is its pervasive sense of melancholy. While I never felt quite as emotionally overwhelmed as I did when watching "Wall-E," I was much more consistently filled with sadness and longing.

And therein lies the continued genius of the Pixar films, because my children laughed and were frightened and were alert and attentive to the film as though it was made just for them, while my wife and I got something completely different out of it: missing our grandpas and taking a new look at profound depth of companionship in a marriage. I daresay that every married couple needs to see this movie. While I haven't seen "Fireproof" yet, (the Christian film lauded for its impact on refocusing one's marriage), I could easily make a case for UP as its secular equivalent.

All of the adventure and excitement in UP is derived from sadness. Carl Fredrickson, the central character, is as unwilling to budge from the home he made with his now-dead wife as Walt Kowalski/Clint Eastwood was in "Gran Torino." You almost expect Carl to say "get off of my lawn" when construction crews pillage everything around his lot and wait for him to leave, but Ed Asner's take on the character is a much more sweet sort of grumpy.

When Carl does finally give in and move, it's because he can no longer secure the safety of the home and grounds he created with his wife. They are what's left of her, so he attempts to relocate them to an entirely different continent by uplifting the house with balloons. (Isn't animation great?) It is at this point that Carl gets a boy sidekick and some animal friends to keep the kids interested. They are needed foils for comic relief, because the film has two nemeses that are among Disney's most frightening: Carl's former childhood hero (played deliciously by Christopher Plummer) and mortality itself.

The visuals of UP are as stunning as we've come to expect from Pixar. And while I did not see the film in 3-D because I hate 3-D, please believe me when I tell you that you do not need it. You don't need pop-out gimmickry to interfere with what's important, and that's the storytelling.

What I liked best about UP, though, is the final message it left in my mind. Ultimately, I found this to be a film about how we place such value in objects and how, ultimately, our experiences and memories hold more value than any object ever could. It is the destruction of an object at the beginning of the film that pushes Carl over the edge. And over the course of the film, Carl's rough adventure causes him to damage or lose many other artifacts that either belonged to his wife or reminded him of her. In the end, he realizes that she was always with him, material possessions or not. And this is what finally frees Carl to move on to the next adventure. UP might just offer viewers the most useful lesson ever written into Pixar's magic.

3.5 out of 4

Hotel For Dogs (2009)

Very few live-action kids' movies are what I'd call "amazing." ("Babe" would be an example of one that is.) So since I spend a lot of time as a dad watching a lot of mediocre kids films, I have learned to prepare myself to be mostly underwhelmed or, at least, to accept these movies for what they are. I know, in other words, that I am not the target audience for these movies. They weren't made for me.

That said, HOTEL FOR DOGS falls into the category of being quite tolerable for a children's film. If you love dogs, I'm not sure how you couldn't appreciate the film. The dogs are better actors than the majority of the humans in the movie (except for maybe Don Cheadle...how in the hell did they get HIM in here?).

The story is insanely removed from plausability, but my daughter, for one, bought it so much that she's seen the film three times now. In it, two orphans find no satisfaction in their foster care situations and create their own family -- mostly out of dogs. I'm over-simplifying a bit here, but not by much. The simpatico of a well-placed, abandoned hotel allows the kids to play house, or in this case, doggy hotel.

You've got your requisite bad guys, your requisite clueless adults, your adorable animals and fantastic action sequences. What more could you ask for in a kids' movie? You've even got a great speech by Cheadle at the end that is barely a veiled plea for all of us to head straight from watching the movie to an animal shelter. If I could be guaranteed that the dog I'd pick up would be as awesome as some of the dogs in this movie, I just might consider it. For what it aims to be, "Hotel For Dogs" does the trick. It's perfectly pleasant, and you gotta love those dogs!

2.5 out of 4

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

I finally caught up with one of the big comedy hits of 2008, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. I had nothing to lose since it aired on HBO and I had a few hours to kill. I was pleasantly surprised. As a matter of fact, I would have to say that only "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" is a better Apatow film than this one. For me, this worked better than "Knocked Up" or even "Superbad."

Director Nicholas Stoller adheres closely to the Apatow playbook, which I will admit is starting to get a little stale. Once again, it's the loser boy-man as the star of the show, here played by the loveable and doughy Jason Segel. The team takes the common, relatable theme of getting over being dumped and takes an approach that combines modern, sexually-explicit comedy with old-fashioned screwball movies. The result, to me, was a delight.

As all of you who have seen the film already know, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL developed its reputation largely around the use of full-frontal male nudity, something that is not as common in films. The shock of seeing Jason Segal naked (and may I add that he is a BRAVE actor...kudos!) overpowers what I think is actually a moment of comic genius -- using the male body to play for laugh both visually and situationally. To have Segal naked in the opening scene of the film and to repeatedly show everything takes "sight gag" to a whole new level. It was hilarious, and it worked.

The supporting cast also worked for me, particularly Russell Brand, which is a good thing because up until now, I have found him to be nothing short of obnoxious and unfunny. The "Apatow Players" (Paul Rudd, et. al.) make requisite appearances as well, and they all work.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is the kind of movie that I would stop to watch if it was on HBO (and it will be again, many times). It's a film that is easy and fun to watch, and you could tune in to it at any moment and not have to wait but a second or two for a moment of outrageous comedy. A pleasant surprise!

3.5 out of 4

Why Did I Get Married? (2007)

While I have been vocal about the limits I feel Tyler Perry places on himself as a filmmaker and cinematic thinker, I can't say that I didn't enjoy WHY DID I GET MARRIED? for what it was. And "what it was" amounted to what turns out to be Perry's most subtle blend of humor and melodrama in another of his TV-movie-of-the-week-style films.

You get the sense when you watch any of Perry's films that his clout alone gets these Lifetime movies onto the big screen, when it makes more sense that Perry should just function as the CEO of his own television network that would air his sitcoms and his films. (Maybe that's already happened or it's in the works?)

Perry does little to break from his formula with WHY DID I GET MARRIED?, though the outrageousness is definitely toned down in the absence of Madea, the typical Perry film foil.

Sadly, however, it's Perry's moments of broad comedy that I personally like the best. I could do without the ridiculous, over-the-top melodrama of every Perry film, where no couple is without horrible secrets, no marriage is monogamous, and no blatant sinner is without a hypocritical sermon to preach to his/her friends. So naturally, I gravitated toward Tasha Smith, who plays a loud-mouthed drunk wife named Angela and walked away with this film's best comedic moments. Angela is your stereotypical "oh no, you dih-int!" characacture of an unmanagable, speaks-her-mind-despite-the-consequences black woman, and Perry uses her alcoholism to explain or excuse the behavior. Regardless, she was a riot.

The rest of the cast, I have to say, was solid. Janet Jackson gets the stoic role and is conspicuously tame except for her one big scene of confession (Perry gives every actor a scene like this, and that's part of the problem with his movies.) Jill Scott is fantastic as an overweight wife who is in denial about her marriage and is eventually brought into the light. Most of the male actors were interchangeable -- most behaved in a similar, often neanderthal-ish manner and came alive when in scenes without the women, who dominated the stories and the film as a whole.

In ranking WHY DID I GET MARRIED? among Perry's works, this definitely belongs in the top half, though I have not scene all of his films. I suppose it is a more solid attempt at something that could succeed outside of the black community. Certainly, its subject matter is universal, though Perry always flavors it with his worldview, which is certainly his prerogative.

In short, WHY DID I GET MARRIED? is a perfectly entertaining two hours as it airs on cable film channels. TV is where his stuff seems to belong and where it probably works best, anyway.

2.5 out of 4

He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

The title of HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU is also my review of the film. I would be "He" and the film is "You." Not since "27 Dresses" has my wife made such a big deal about apologizing to me for making me sit through a movie she wanted to see.

For me, the worst part about HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU is Ginnifer Goodwin, a WHINY stereotype of a woman who always sits by the phone, waiting for a man to call. As my wife accurately pointed out, all of the men in the film appear to be major assholes and manipulators, and the women all appear to be some sort of emotional Voltron...like they share one brain among them and have to merge together over lunch to assemble the brain pieces into one and then collectively decide how to handle this guy or that guy.

Everything you expect to happen in this film does. You'll figure out who is going to end up with who, and you'll be right. You'll see a married couple faced with infidelity and think, "now wouldn't it be refreshing if he DOESN'T cheat on his wife?," but of course he does. There's got to be conflict coming from somewhere!

This film was two hours of irrational behavior swirling around a series of mini-conflicts that pop up and are settled like half-hour television episodes. The message that it sends about dating and relationships is mostly deplorable, simplistic and laughable. And that's probably the only part of this romantic comedy that's actually funny.

1.0 out of 4