REMAKE ON THE ROCKS

Perhaps it’s been thirty years and no one remembers Dudley Moore’s scotch guzzling, prostitute bedding, mischievous multi-millionaire alcoholic. Maybe today’s audiences won’t be familiar with the Oscar winning film, in all its perfectly written outrageous and self-deprecating grandeur. Every person involved with Arthur (2011) is betting the farm on it.

Television director Jason Winer (Modern Family) teams up with Borat screenwriter (Peter Baynham) to create a new version of Arthur, which loses nearly all its tenderness and sincerity in the revamping. The title character spends every waking second with a drink in his hand, figuring out the best way to spend his family’s millions, whose cushy life is threatened when he’s forced to marry a woman he doesn’t love – or be cut off financially.

It’s quite obvious that today’s billionaire heiresses gone wild and A-list celebrities’ very public rehab stints might make Steve Gordon’s 1981 story seem as common as supermarket tabloid fare.

Baynham’s answer to inflation and a culture acclimated with alcoholism? Ramp up Arthur’s car collection to include the batmobile and pawn off the drinking as a hobby until the last second.

Unlucky Englishman Russell Brand carries most of the burden of this year’s Arthur, reprising the role Moore made iconic. Brand isn’t altogether a failure; slapstic exploits including dangerous encounters with a table saw (and his tongue) are as poignant and moving as Mr. Winer could hope them to be.

But Brand’s incarnation of Arthur feels more like an oddly extroverted escaped mental patient than a man struggling with the disease of alcoholism. It’s difficult to differentiate Brand’s Arthur as wildly inebriated or just plain bizarre.

Gordon’s characters have been rewritten and genders replaced to anchor this Arthur by women. Not even Helen Mirren can salvage the role that won John Gielgud an Oscar, playing Arthur’s lifelong companion and assistant Hobson. And Jennifer Garner and Nick Nolte (Arthur’s fiancé and future father-in-law) are as uncomfortable delivering Baynham’s soggy dialogue as they’ve looked in recent memory.

It is worth noting that the romantic relationship for which Arthur is willing to give up his fortune (love interest played by Greta Gerwig) is so poorly defined here, that the would-be-moving scenes are the most awkwardly humorous in the film. Intoxicated billionaire-meets-soulmate courting goes as far as Arthur giving his love Pez dispensers with replicas of their respective heads.

This film is lonely and pathetic in all the wrong ways, leaving it looking less like the Arthur it could have been and more like a marriage of Dumb and Dumber meets Richie Rich covered by TMZ.

Someone tell Jason Winer and friends they just lost the farm.

-Hillary Smotherman

THE OSCAR EDGE. WHO SHOULD WIN. WHO WILL.

BEST ACTOR

It wasn't long ago that Javier Bardem picked up an Oscar for No Country for Old Men, and Jeff Bridges won in this category last year. Young Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) did fabulous work portraying egocentric Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, but he’ll need more than Juno and Fincher's film under his belt before a win in this category. James Franco is very lucky that his sky-screaming shenanigans brought him this far.

Colin Firth has this event locked. Earning extra points for being nominated in the same place last year with A Single Man, Firth is beyond due for recognition by the Academy and has won every major award this season.

Should win: Colin Firth

Will win: Colin Firth

BEST ACTRESS

Some people just can’t star in a movie anymore without Academy recognition – but Kidman won’t win for Rabbit Hole. Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine) get nods here for their work in indie films that strengthen their resumes for future voting seasons. Poor Annette Bening can’t seem to get nominated in a year where the award doesn’t belong to someone else, but at least she won’t be losing to Hillary Swank for a third time.

It’s Portman’s year. Aronofsky drama plus real-life pregnancy and engagement equals Oscar.

Should win: Natalie Portman

Will win: Natalie Portman

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Pity the fool that missed Christian Bale’s performance as crack-addicted boxing trainer Dicky Ward in The Fighter. His embodiment of the irresponsible brother incarnate is just the highlight of a young career already brimming with strong roles (The Machinist, American Psycho). Geoffrey Rush turns in an astounding performance as speech tutor Lionel Logue in The King’s Speech, but it’s not likely he’ll surpass Bale this year.

Should win: Christian Bale

Will win: Christian Bale

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

This is always the Academy’s “wild card” category. Past wins have delivered statuettes to true underdogs, some of whose careers all but halted after having won (Mira Sorvino, Marissa Tomei, Jennifer Hudson… the list goes on).

Jacki Weaver and Hallee Steinfeld phone in their nominations tonight. After years of tainting herself with oddities in Tim Burton films, Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech) will need to show more consistency to garner an award. The Academy loves Amy Adams (previously nominated for Junebug and Doubt). Too bad that the meatier supporting role in her film (The Fighter) belongs to Melissa Leo. Her portrayal of an overbearing mother/boxing manager makes Adams pale in comparison.

Should win: Melissa Leo

Will win: Melissa Leo

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Good job Joel and Ethan Cohen (as always) with True Grit. And Anne Rosellini did a masterful job getting into the minds of every sordid character in Winter’s Bone. Thank you, John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton for collectively bringing us smartly animated whoppers like Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, and WALL-E (this year they get nominated with Toy Story 3). Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy adapted the material for 127 Hours and left us with nothing but James Franco hallucinating for an hour and a half; perhaps it was slim pickings for that fifth slot.

The Social Network is one of the most astute adaptations of material (in any form) in recent memory. Thank you for leaving television, Aaron Sorkin.

Should win: Aaron Sorkin

Will win: Aaron Sorkin

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Inception was a selfish display of pushing screenwriting into the realm of what-can-digital-effects-do-with-this-script territory. The Fighter's family saga is a worthy candidate, and The Kids are All Right does a nice job of blurring social family lines.

But the Oscar goes to David Seidler for undertaking what could have been a humdrum period piece and creating a mammoth drama about a simple stutter.

Should win: The King’s Speech

Will win: The King’s Speech

BEST DIRECTOR

There’s no stopping Fincher here. Known for pushing the cinematic envelope with films like Seven and Fight Club, 2008’s achievement with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button solidified him as an Oscar force with which to be reckoned. And The Social Network is his finest work by far, so far.

Should win: David Fincher

Will win: David Fincher

BEST PICTURE

It’s a close race between David Fincher’s The Social Network and Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech. When the Best Picture winner actually deserves to win - not when it wins because Martin Scorsese or the Cohen brothers can’t be slighted one more time (The Departed, No Country for Old Men), the Academy likes to award current, groundbreaking, boundary-pushing films (note Slumdog Millionaire; 2009, and Crash; 2006). The Social Network should be a shoe in, right?

Wrong. Voters haven’t awarded a British period drama since 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, and Hooper just upset Fincher at the DGA’s for his achievement in directing. Only six times has the DGA winner not gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Should win: The Social Network

Will win: The King’s Speech

FEAR THY NEIGHBOR

An Ozark town full of bad teeth and worse attitudes creates a menacing framework in Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone. The film that won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize blurs the lines of trust and devotion; every could-be-kind mountain town neighbor is a threat, every family member might deliver a punch before an embrace.

Granik’s gritty, piercing drama places her in the über-talented, female director category with Kathryn Bigelow (last year’s Oscar winner for The Hurt Locker). With Bone she delivers a simple, seek-and-find scavenger hunt.

It’s a one week quest for seventeen year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) to find her crack-dealing father, who is out of jail and has lovingly put up the family home (with the family in it) as bond. She sets out to accomplish what the police cannot, or her “nut-job” mother and two younger siblings-turned-kids-of-her-own are homeless.

Young Lawrence embodies Ree with the acumen of a woman twice her age. Her performance does for Bone what (Timothy) Hutton’s did for Ordinary People – except Lawrence carries this film through every scene. The twenty year-old actress lends Ree an unwavering determination and ballsy everything-to-lose attitude that opens some of the most closely guarded and dangerous neighborhood doors.

But the road to discovery is fraught with friction at every turn. Drug dealing uncle “Teardrop” nearly strangles her for asking about his brothers’ whereabouts. A family down the road (with all the charm of the deranged leatherface hoarders from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) nearly kills Ree before she stops asking about dad.

In a hillbilly town where women are forced to do dirty work way beyond hanging clothes on the line outside to dry, it seems there are few left on the side of the “good girl” spectrum. Dale Dickey is sensational as the female head of the Texas Chainsaw-like tribe. Her most loving gesture towards Ree involves a secluded lake and a power tool.

Bone’s cast is so hostile, parts of the movie straddle the horror genre. Creepy girls with pot-marked faces lead Ree through desolate fields to ominous destinations. An intimidating redneck violently herds her into his truck to take her somewhere “down the road,” with no further explanation. By the time Ree receives any gestures of kindness from her family, one wonders when the hand that helps her will come back to shoot her in the foot.

The axiom here could be plainly “when there’s no one you can trust, learn to trust one’s own courage.” And that is paramount. But the ultimate grandeur of Granik’s movie lies in the beauty of human fallibility. There’s tenderness to be appreciated in the backhanded assistance of monsters. When help arrives in the guise of the feared, there’s merit learned in letting go of one’s instincts.

Unsettling and poignant, Bone takes the audience somewhere unfathomable and brings them back safely. And they’ll root for Ree to come back too.


- Hillary Smotherman

M-M-M-MESMERIZING

Everyone has an Achilles heel. That one, inescapable handicap that prevents us from achieving “to be or not to be” status. In 1925, King George VI employed a man who promised to remedy the liability that threatened him most - his stutter.

Tom Hooper directs The King’s Speech like a finely orchestrated symphony. Characters lean on each other like bows on a fiddle; they complement like horn and trumpet. And no instruments in this film sound better together than Colin Firth’s Albert (the King), and speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush).

After countless doctors try every humiliating exercise imaginable to cure his stammer (including filling his mouth with marbles), Albert’s had enough with therapy. But Logue’s approach is psychological – he treats “Bertie” like a friend. What begins for Bertie as a cautious and guarded, “if we were equals, I wouldn’t be here” affiliation with Lionel, unfolds as a partnership masterful and symbiotic.

To see Albert achieve a syllable sans superfluous hesitation is like watching a one-legged climber reach the peak of Everest. It is thrilling to witness Firth’s emotional breakdowns and breakthroughs. Scenes with Albert’s wife, played with resolute brilliance by Helena Bonham Carter, are poignant and raw. What a treat to see her back in British film mode, and out of the odd grasp that is (husband) Tim Burton’s work.

Fantastic supporting turns by Guy Pierce (the King’s brother) and Michael Gambon (King George V) create strong illustrations as to why Bertie would be swimming in self-doubt. Lionel unveils the science of Albert’s stutter, which proves to be a fear-based peripheral reaction to an inward lack of conviction.

But behind Lionel’s closed doors, the King is safe. And as breathtaking as it is to watch Firth’s character triumph and fail with each word he utters, it is Rush’s performance as a wannabe actor-turned speech guru that emerges as the glue to Hooper’s so eloquent mold.

Left alone in a room to conquer a microphone and broadcast a profoundly important nine-minute speech, Firth and Rush deliver one of the most simply riveting scenes in recent film memory. With Logue (quite literally) conducting the King’s every breath, the world fixedly gathers around their radio, straining to hear every might-be-annunciated word. And so do we.


- Hillary Smotherman

SELF-MADE ENEMY

Before he created Facebook, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg was just a condescending, self-righteous, my way or your sub-par-online-highway jerk. Or at least that’s what (The Social Network) director David Fincher wants us to think.

Mark (played with steely cold sophistication by Jesse Eisenberg) is so hubristic, it’s like watching a Greek tragedy. While his professional career escalates at a meteoric rate, he bulldozes through every personal relationship with complete nonchalance.

He offends perfect marriage material by insulting her inferior Boston University education. He steals ideas from fellow students. He hacks into campus websites, pirating photos and information in order to create something unique on his own, and once he does – he cheats his best friend out of billions of dollars.

No one will feel too sorry when Mark’s life (however undeniably successful) is whittled down to sitting in front of his own Facebook page, constantly refreshing to get “friend request” validation. But that’s how Fincher’s Zuckerberg ends up.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (who admits to threading some of his own yarn with his script) has created a relentlessly intelligent, near perfect bon bon of colorfully sarcastic scenes. The film triumphs with every carefully written “I’m CEO Bitch” line of dialogue (Mark’s well earned title and business card headline).

This is 2010’s Citizen Kane, where it’s just so lonely at the top of one’s self-made, friendless empire. Perhaps it’s karma that the person who created a website famous for connecting people is hopelessly socially inept and incapable of sustaining any real connection of his own.

Whether or not audiences relate to Zuckerberg on a professional level is futile. At a molecular level, as one lawyer says, Mark’s “not an a—hole.” He’s “just trying so hard to be.” And it’s impossible not to be mesmerized by watching him try.


- Hillary Smotherman

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A BORING PLACE

94 minutes is all Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle could squeeze out of James Franco talking to a boulder and a camcorder. Thank God.

The oscar-winning director takes a stab at chronicling mountain climber Aron Ralston’s true story of survival with 127 hours. Just as film audiences knew Titanic would sink and Emile Hirsch’s character in Into the Wild would perish eating toxic berries, only if you had been in a coma for the year 2003 would you not be somewhat familiar with Ralston’s tale.

After a boulder falls and pins Aron (James Franco) deep in a cavern tens of miles away from civilization, he spends over five days hallucinating and rationing a burrito, water (and yes, finally his own urine) to prolong what would usually be certain death. When he decides to do the unthinkable with a cheap, dull made-in-China-multi-tool stocking stuffer from his mom, it’s way too late in the film to be invested in his survival.

The first 45 expository minutes of Cast Away are missing here. The character depth we received in the flashbacks of Into the Wild is gone. The audience’s only escape from Ralston’s rock in over eighty minutes include several fantasies of soda and beer, momentary childhood remembrances and a vision of an unborn son.

It’s worth mentioning that Franco’s performance is gripping – even if he does little more than bodyslam a fallen rock and scream begrudgingly at the sky. He’s just great at it. And Slumdog cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle breathtakingly paints the desert skies like a vividly colored 80’s Kodak commercial. This is an artful film that’s sometimes fun to look at and listen to (thanks A.R. Rahman).

Too bad the boulder couldn’t have had more lines. Then there might have been a story.


- Hillary Smotherman

AMERICAN ASSASSIN

Cold-blooded killer Jack (George Clooney) is hanging up his sniper rifle after one last job in Anton Corbijn’s The American. Stripped of profuse action sequences or superfluous subplots, this quiet drama is what would happen to Bond films if anyone cared enough to explore character and story.

Jack is an enigmatic conundrum of an assassin. He’s a lonely loner – a reluctant killer. As any seasoned hit man would know, it’s best to not befriend the local priest or neighborhood whore while working. But that’s exactly what Jack does on his last mission. Lessons go unlearned after he is forced to shoot an innocent Russian bedmate in the back of her head, but that doesn’t stop Jack from falling in love with a beautiful brothel employee in Italy.

Disheartened bad boys aren’t a novelty the action genre, but director Corbijn takes careful time to establish his cast in an intimate way; every character here has a secret worth keeping hidden.

Clara (Violante Placido) is Jack’s sexy Italian hooker du jour. What begins as a love affair of convenience takes a different shape as the two get to know each other over picnicking and dinner dates. Sound like true love? It doesn’t really matter. Jack and Clara’s loneliness as individuals is palpable and heartbreaking; their connection is based on an attempt to fill an empty void within themselves – and that’s okay.

Most of Jack’s time alone is spent in his hotel room, where he does push up’s and peruses books that satisfy his obsession with butterflies (imperative shots of butterfly neck tattoos included). The coolest part of Jack’s home away from home? He uses it as a workplace to assemble rifles for terrorist clients – homemade weapons partly made from (because if Clooney can’t, no one can…) used car parts.

Some of the best scenes are between Jack and neighborhood priest Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli). Like a teenager can spot a Twilight actor in a crowd, the priest pinpoints Jack as a man in need of confession. Interestingly enough, Jack isn’t drawn to anyone who doesn’t have some secrets of their own, and Benedetto’s no saint.

As broken and twisted as these characters are, they are all worth rooting for. The American is a departure from today’s run of the mill suave-killer’s-gonna-shoot-‘em action film. Make no mistake, Corbijn’s movie will keep audiences guessing and wanting more – more intimate scenes between Jack and gorgeous terrorist client Mathilde, more homemade rifle assembly, more dinner drinks with Jack and Benedetto.

You’ll be curious where these characters end up. The American chronicles the sentiments that live in moments, and these moments are well worth the wait.


- Hillary Smotherman

ROUTINE SEX: DRESSED UP IN MANOLOS

Mouths worldwide were left agape in 1998 when HBO debuted its groundbreaking series, Sex and the City. “Do women really talk like that?” The show introduced 30 and 40 something’s Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda as workaholic, fashionista New Yorkers with a propensity to discuss sex like horny college frat boys. SATC marked the end of days when men thought they were the only ones who used the “c-word” – don’t make me say it – to describe women.

Series creator Michael Patrick King delivered a nice little bonbon with 2008’s film version of the show. Crude and colorful, fun and uncomfortably honest in almost all the right ways, the film was widely accepted by critics. 2010’s follow up is equally decadent and gay; “gay,” as it is traditionally defined as “merry,” and also gay as it refers to groom-groom weddings in Connecticut, complete with choir boys donning silver top hats who sing renditions of “Sunrise, Sunset” for the invitees.

The film is episodic like the series, cut into geographic and storied vignettes. From “broom” wedding (that’s bride plus groom for the SATC lingo-challenged) to Manhattan, to opulent vacation in the Middle East and back. It would be more effective if the vignettes had plots, but they really don’t. The characters are already established and mostly remain static, experiencing as much new growth as Samantha experiences new sexual positions.

The true SATC cult following won’t care about the lack of substance here. SATC 2 is like having a candy lollipop (no phallic pun intended) for dinner – while it leaves you wanting nourishment and adults might be embarrassed to sustain themselves with something so frivolous, it’s indulgent and satisfying for a few hours.

The nourishing plot points in the layers of the sticky-sweet, saccharin SATC 2 pop? Miranda is under-appreciated at work. Charlotte struggles to maintain her sanity while her buxom nanny juggles her kids without a bra. Carrie defends her unconventional marriage with Big, after they decide to live in separate apartments for two days a week. And Samantha? A little slap from the Middle Eastern hand of the law when she learns she can’t be “affectionate” in public while on vacation.

The film never takes itself too seriously, which is to its credit. There are brutally honest and heartfelt scenes (watch Charlotte lose it when her child finger paints her vintage Valentino skirt) thrown into the mix with force-fed moments of infidelity with past love interests that don’t actually serve as a method for dynamic change, but who cares? This lollipop looks so good when dressed in Gucci on vacation in Abu Dhabi!

Bigger is better with this sequel, which packs in appearances from former series flames and inflates ostentatious to a whole new level when the girls get an all-expense paid vacation equipped with everything from private butlers and limousines to hand-picked glittery garbs for camel rides.

Cameos by Liza Minelli (covering a Beyonce song in tight black sequins) and Miley Cirus (who upstages Samantha on the red carpet in an US Weekly who-wore-it-better moment) will leave SATC cult members squealing with excitement.

Whenever SATC 2 aims for honesty or a faint touch of reality, it falls short. Carrie’s poor book reviews and careless relationship decisions are barely covered in the story, and the audience’s nonchalance will follow probable suit. The harsh reality of oppressed Middle Eastern women is continually made light of, ultimately dismissed as an issue easily solved by donning the new Louis Vuitton line under a burka.

Whatever. Sex and the City 2 provides a nice little reality distraction for its cult members. And if all they find at the center of the lollypop is an abundance of sexual profanity and Liza Minelli dancing at a gay wedding, they’ll get their money’s worth.


- Hillary Smotherman

MASQUERADING AS ROBIN HOOD

Russell Crowe teams up with director Ridley Scott for the fifth time with Robin Hood. It’s difficult to forget the massive entertainment these two forces brought audiences with 2000’s Gladiator, and with similar promises of Crowe sporting armor and archery, bloody civil war battle scenes and a love story complete with Cate Blanchett, Robin Hood vows to be a timeless epic adventure.

Right…? Wrong.

The classic tale of Robin Hood brings to mind certain unalienable concepts. 13th century battles won with fiery bows and arrows. Robbing the rich to feed the poor. The dynamic between Marion and Hood. Ridley Scott’s version of the story dangles the Crowe-in-armor carrot in front of unassuming audiences this weekend, only for moviegoers to discover Crowe isn’t even playing Robin Hood.

Here Crowe is actually Robin Longstride, an archer in King Richard’s army who takes fate into his own hands after finding the king and some of his best men dead on the battlefield. Assuming the identity of fallen knight Robert Loxely, Robin and his friends deliver the king’s crown to Queen Eleanor (Eileen Atkins).

The film is more of a poorly guided history lesson than the justice-seeking, triumphant Hood tale audiences are used to. Newly appointed King John (Oscar Isaac) can barely contain his excitement over his brother’s death; now he can publicly blame mom for paying France a hefty ransom to get Richard out of jail that left England in debt. He can also pinky swear to his trusting subjects, led now by Robin “of the hood,” that he’ll sign a charter guaranteeing them certain rights if they all fight for England.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think audiences thought they were paying $10 to learn about the horrors of King John and the Magna Carta when they signed up for the director of Gladiator’s version of Robin Hood.

The film feels similar to Gladiator. Crowe’s scenes with Sir Walter Loxely (Max Von Sydow) are reminiscent of the father-son-like moments between Crowe and Richard Harris in the 2000 film. The following of armor-clad citizens being led by Crowe to possible death is oddly familiar, but ever so much more dull and forcibly didactic with Hood.

Between sub-plots involving English traitors close to the king, Robin uncovering the meaning of his father’s death when he was a child, and a pretend-turned-(surprise!)-real relationship with Marion, it’s possible to actually miss the few Robin Hood-esque moments in Robin Hood.

Doze off for a second (and you might) in the first hour and you’ll miss one of the film’s two master archer follow-Robin’s-arrow-to-the-target moments. And there’s something to be said of the fist-pumping speeches given by this Robin. There are none, really. Only a short lecture the length of a Rhianna ring tone (and probably just as inspiring) describing a country’s need for equality of income to preserve honor. Honor schm-onor.

Whether it’s King John lying to England or Robin impersonating someone he is not, there are few honorable moments or storylines to follow here. Perhaps it’s fitting for modern audiences to watch someone masquerade publicly as a hero, promising citizens things they won’t get. Some might agree that Americans are fairly used to disappointment by now – they just didn’t expect it from Crowe and Scott.

- Hillary Smotherman

WHEN SUPERHEROES BECOME ROCK STARS

A rock star hero with narcissistic tendencies. A revenge-thirsty physicist villain with a special suit equipped with electric lightening whips as weapons. An impossibly sexy assistant for rock star who isn’t who she says she is. A seedy senator and greedy US government eager to get their hands on rock star’s “weapon” suit. A palladium core imbedded in our hero’s chest necessary to keep him alive that is poisoning his blood, slowly killing him. Welcome to the first 45 minutes of Iron Man 2.

More plot will be added in the second half – but don’t expect this second installment of the franchise to be weighed down or tired. Fret not about director Jon Favreau dizzying the film with superfluous shots or shoving story down your throat, because he won’t. Don’t be intimidated by an almost entirely Oscar-recognized cast, most of their best recent work in this film. Iron Man 2 is so entertaining, you’ll forget how well done is.

The release of any sequel following a wildly successful predecessor is nearly impossible to live up to. But Iron Man 2 is a spine-tingling adventure, artful and well-designed enough to take it’s seat with comic book sequels like The Dark Knight and Spider Man 2.

Everything has grown since the first film. Public approval of Iron Man/Tony Stark (played by the always endearing Robert Downey Jr.) has reached new heights - as has Stark’s ego. Claiming the world’s longest peaceful run due to Iron Man, Stark charms a courtroom and walks out of a senate hearing before dismissal, blowing kisses at the cameras.

All of this film’s characters have motives of their own, even some closest to Iron Man. At Stark’s birthday party, buddy Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) steals a superhero suit for the government, after a drunken Stark uses his suit to shoot watermelons into pieces in front of an excited crowd (all this after Stark calling attention to urinating – yes, urinating – in the suit).

Stories oscillate from Ivan building warrior drones for Hammer and the US government to shame Stark at his own expo, to Stark searching for a solution to his palladium health problem. And audiences will embrace Stark’s self-described “sold-ish” relationship with Pepper, watching her squirm with envy as he hires Natalie (a seductive Scarlett Johansson) as secretary after Tony hands Pepper the keys to Stark Enterprises.

The strongest scenes shine with comeback kid Mickey Rourke, who plays villain Ivan Ranko to perfection. Seeking revenge for a dead father who was shamed by Stark Sr., Ivan harnesses electrical energy in a contraption to rival Iron Man’s suit. After Stark’s technology rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) bails Ivan out of jail in an attempt to join forces against Iron Man, one wonders how long Ivan will play nice with Hammer – especially when he greets Ivan for the first time with a mouthful of food and wearing a napkin as a bib.

Not a beat is missed in this movie. All hail to comedic actors turned-directors (Ben Stiller very much included) who know how to conceptualize a film and work with actors. Favreau’s second Iron Man installment will leave very few people wanting more. More action. More comedy. More pitch-perfect dialogue or back and forth banter. Crucial fight sequences between Iron Man and Ranko will leave audiences cheering.

If moviegoers stick around for the credits, as all gracious and grateful audience members should, they just might get a taste of Iron Man 3 sequel set-up. Fitting for Favreau to tease Iron Man fans with a scene as they’re exiting the theatre. Every rock star leaves the stage at least once before rushing back for a crowd-pleasing encore.

- Hillary Smotherman

A NIGHTMARE, INDEED

Moviegoers should be petrified. They should purchase their tickets with trepidation. Their bodies should shake uncontrollably with anxiety, as their fingernails leave rips in the faux velvet that lines their movie seat. Nothing says “scary” like poorly written villains killing people no one will care about losing, in a movie viewers will only care about finishing. Producer Michael Bay has brought Freddy back, and the result is horrifying.

After breathing new financial life into fright franchises like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, and Friday the 13th, Bay continues his launch of critical horror failures with the reincarnation of Nightmare on Elm Street. One can expect almost any film with a Bay endorsement to come lacking in character definition and believable storyline. If audiences bought the romance in Pearl Harbor, rooted for the escape from The Island, or cried when Bruce Willis gave his life for planet Earth in Armageddon, perhaps the absurdity in Elm Street’s fear factor won’t make a difference.

Bay’s recipe for success with 2010’s version of Elm Street? Open the movie killing an actor from Twilight (Kellan Lutz), keep the movie current with references to using ADD medicine as speed, and embellish a seedy, pornographic plotline to further define a child murderer as “bad.”

2010’s moviegoers are savvy, and today’s successful slasher film formula requires more than busty bimbos running down empty streets and pounding on a neighbor’s door for help they won’t get. The supposed fear-inducing moments in Elm Street are so contrived and expected, so crudely acted and manipulative – intelligent audiences will feel cheated.

Freddy Kruger (played by Oscar nominated Jackie Earle Haley) is Elm Street’s notorious villain. The original 1984 film explains that Kruger was a child murderer acquitted of his crimes and later killed by a group of parents whose children were victimized. Kruger seeks revenge on these kids and their families, stalking them in their dreams. Nightmares become reality; characters force themselves to stay awake and fail, waking up to bed sheets slashed by Kruger’s knife-clad fingernails. Campy, gory and suspenseful, the original movie kept audiences on the edge of their seats.

The new spin with 2010’s Elm Street? There isn’t one. Teenagers of sub-par intelligence stalked by Kruger in their dreams: check. Emotionally battered heroines backed by their emotionally retarded male suitors: check. Beyond inept characters and inane story, what is so disturbing about Elm Street is its obsession with Kruger’s pedophilia. Elm Streets’ characters spend precious screen time doubting the validity of their parents’ (and their own) accusations against Freddy. But every time the movie gets a heartbeat, director Samuel Bayer (this week’s music video director du jour) interjects moronic flashbacks and bizarre dialogue that ruins the tempo of the film.

It’s never attractive to watch a film attempt to be something it’s not. This is a slasher flick devoid of gore, lacking in body count and tension. It’s a scary movie that bores other dull scary movies. This is a disappointing teen horror flick trying to take its place among more mature, intellectual films in its genre like 2002’s The Ring. This is a film with characters so confusing and melodramatic (some stay awake by drinking coffee – some, by burning themselves with car cigarette lighters and injecting themselves with stolen adrenaline), it is more than difficult to care whether they survive their plight.

Welcome to Michael Bay’s first cinematic lie of 2010 - masquerading as a real film, it is poorly concocted, bloody teen camp at its worst.

- Hillary Smotherman

DIRECTOR GONE WILD

Music video director Sylvain White must have been thrilled to helm a mainstream comic film, after delivering critical disasters like the straight-to-video horror flick I’ll Always Know What you did Last Summer and the dance-themed, battle-driven movie Stomp the Yard. I didn’t anticipate much from this April action release, and I was still disappointed in almost every way. I expected more from Friday Night Lights screenwriter Peter Berg than amateur banalities like “showtime fellas!” The filmic result of DC Comic’s war series is an utter mess – a one-and-a-half hour wild and exhibitionistic music video with a cast lackluster enough to make one reminisce the good old action movie days of the 90’s – when superstar heroes (Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan) weren’t given enough successive lines to ruin the film.

I usually love revenge movies because of the sheer simplicity of the story. Someone wronged you. Now you’re willing to put everything on the line for justice. Here we have a CIA special ops team sent in to the Bolivian backwoods to locate and destroy a drug operation. After the team is attacked and presumed dead, they decide to follow the voice on the (inter)”com” which led to their seeming demise. They escape South America through the help of Aisha (played by Avatar’s Zoe Saldana), a mysterious operative with her own plan. Masquerading as a native prostitute (I’m sure there is an ample supply of good-looking-enough-to-be-a-supermodel hookers roaming the backstreet bars in Bolivia), Aisha happens to know where they can find Max, the group’s enigmatic target on the other end of the “com."

The plot was thick enough with revenge, but it congeals like tar as we discover Max (played to uncanny, comic perfection by Jason Patric) intends to purchase “green” weapons of mass destruction. These smart bombs are described as “pure destruction. No pollution.” Terrorists with a conscience and a reverence for the environment? Absurdity.

This film is unbalanced and out of control in so many ways that it becomes comedy to continue watching. We expect Aisha to hook up with Clay (loser leader Jeffrey Dean Morgan), but when she saunters into his room at night, ready for action and holding a bottle of liquor, it’s more confusing than sexy. There’s been no establishment of a connection between them at all.

What’s even more daunting is the devotion the losers have to Clay. Established in the beginning of the film to be in charge of “operational control,” Clay is the officer in command. I get it. But there’s a nonchalant arrogance Morgan gives his character that seems completely unwarranted by any real talents or leadership. He wears a tuxedo shirt and slacks throughout the film for no reason I could decipher other than a futile attempt to channel George Clooney à la Ocean’s Eleven. Clooney was in a casino in that movie. And he’s Clooney.

The only engaging scenes in The Losers are owed to Patric’s cunning Max. Watch for the chemistry between him and his beefy sidekick Wade (Holt McCallany) as an exasperated Max places three orders for a firing squad. With the exception of this duo’s onscreen chemistry, the end of this film could not come quickly enough for me. With ostentatious shots that simultaneously speed up and slow down while zooming in and pulling out, then turn to comic Lichtenstein within five seconds, the speed of White’s movie alone will make the audience want to throw up his/her popcorn. The urge to regurgitate should only continue with lines like “payback’s a bitch,” and a steady bombardment of ridiculousness that does not stop (before a young Bolivian boy catches a helicopter ride to safety, note Morgan’s affected grin as he hands him a stuffed teddy bear and speaks to him in broken Spanish).

If you’d like to watch a good result of a music video director given reign with a feature film, rent David LaChapelle’s Rize. I understand entrusting an acclaimed video director with a documentary chronicling a dance movement. The only result you’ll get from watching The Losers is nausea. If you must see it, go to a matinee - and save the extra four dollars for Dramamine.


- Hillary Smotherman

A DISASTROUS DATE

There are people who will love Date Night. They won’t bat an eye at any of the film’s unexplored characters. They won’t mind that it doesn’t come close to providing the entertainment which similar husband-and-wife caper-oriented films like True Lies (or even the shoddy Pitt-Jolie remake of Mr. and Mrs. Smith) brought to audiences. They will sit back and revel in Steve Carell’s all-too-familiar understated campiness. They will marvel at just how far Tina Fey’s novice acting chops have come since Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update. What a wonderfully fulfilling 88 minutes this film must be for them. I am not one of those people.

Carell and Fey play Phil and Claire Foster, whose uneventful marriage takes an unexpected turn when their weekly date night turns criminal, after Phil steals another couples’ reservation at the hottest new restaurant in Manhattan. A case of mistaken identity leads two dirty cops (loyal to the mafia) to assume the Fosters are the Tripplehorns, who have some incriminating photos on a very important flash drive. Yes, the Fosters alert the mob goons as to their dishonest table-snatching scheme. No, these sub-intellectual detectives do not believe the boring Jersey husband and wife, who evade the duo and the New York City police impossibly and consistently throughout the movie.

You can expect several smile-inducing, albeit not knee-slapping moments from Fey and Carell. Fey’s SNL slapstick experience and lack of vanity onscreen is always refreshing (watch the thick trails of saliva fall out of her mouth as she removes her retainer before some possible intimacy with Carell). But the lack of chemistry and tension between Fey and Carell weighs Date Night down. The couple’s argument over who takes more responsibility in the marriage feels out of place and manipulative; the scenes meant to be pivotal and heartfelt feel canned and sappy.

The film’s best laughs come from stand-out cameo’s played by everyone from Ray Liotta to Mila Kunis. A bare-chested Mark Wahlberg steals scenes as a playboy security professional, while Kunis and James Franco (who have the flash drive the Fosters want) are fantastic as a gushy couple hiding from Liotta’s mob boss.

Date Night isn’t rocket science, and director Shawn Levy (of Cheaper by the Dozen and Night at the Museum franchise fame) knows this. Expect to be spoon-fed tender plot points that will be shoved back in your mouth at the end of the film. Count on the Fosters living through the inexplicable car chases and perilous shootouts. The real question at the end of any onscreen duo action movie is whether the pair is still willing to go on together. Has this experience put them through the wringer enough to tear them apart, or bring them closer together? I said it before. Audiences just might care about the fate of the Fosters. I, however, do not.


-Hillary Smotherman

THE OSCAR EDGE - WHO SHOULD WIN. WHO WILL.

BEST ACTOR

With his 5^th nomination, Jeff Bridges’ work has been recognized by the Academy for nearly 40 years. Solid turns in The Contender and Seabiscuit went unrewarded, but Bridges’ portrayal as a has-been country singer makes him a sure bet in this category. Freeman and Clooney were both recently honored with Oscars, in 2004 and 2005, respectively. International box office totals for (the Cohen brothers’) A Single Man came in at an abysmal $13 million – less people saw Firth’s performance in that film than adults waited in line to see New Moon. Unless The Hurt Locker upsets in several categories tomorrow night, Renner’s breakthrough role will sit second to Bridges.

Should win: Bridges

Will win: Bridges

BEST ACTRESS

I love it when actresses win Razzie’s (Worst Picture/Actor Awards) in the same year they’re nominated for Oscars. If I shut my eyes tight enough, I can still remember Halle Berry accepting her Razzie with her Best Actress Oscar in tow. We’ve watched Sandra Bullock portray the lovable girl-next-door repeatedly since 1994’s Speed, and this is as good as she gets, kids. Although Streep has been nominated a whopping 16 times (more than any other actor), she hasn’t gotten up to the podium to accept an Oscar since 1983’s Sophie’s Choice. Mirren won in this category four years ago with The Queen and won’t be honored for her work in this little-seen film. Mulligan’s British hailing won’t help her here, as it carried her to a Best Actress BAFTA Award, and Sidibe’s heartbreaking turn as a pregnant, illiterate teen has already won her all the awards she’ll see this season.

Should win: Streep

Will win: Bullock

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Every once in a while someone seemingly plucked from obscurity and placed into the open arms of Hollywood wins an Academy Award because they’re just that good (Marion Cotillard, Roberto Benigni). Give Christoph Waltz an Oscar. I haven’t loved to hate a villain as much as his Col. Hans Landa since Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. No one will touch Waltz – not Damon’s inspiring rugby captain, Plummer’s Tolstoy, Harrelson’s alcoholic nor even Tucci’s homicidal turn in The Lovely Bones.

Should win: Waltz

Will win: Waltz

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

History has proven favorites in this category shockingly remain in their seats as unlikely winners take the stage. Kate Hudson had swept all other ceremonies until Marcia Gay Harden claimed the statuette for Pollock in 2000. This is also the “not-guaranteed-to-solidify-your-career-Oscar” – remember Jennifer Hudson? What about Mira Sorvino? Didn’t think so. So when Mo’Nique is celebrating the culmination of a near perfect awards season with her Oscar tomorrow night, we will hope that her luck continues after Precious. Penelope just won here last year with Vicki Christina Barcelona, and is lucky to be nominated in what I would label an almost total disaster for director Rob Marshall. Critic’s darling Gyllenhaal wasn’t nominated for a single other award this season for Crazy Heart, and won’t win here. Kendrick’s scene-stealing wasn’t enough for her to gain awards momentum in 2009. Farmiga’s ballsy traveler in Up in the Air was the stand-out performance in a film filled with poignant turns by major Hollywood heavy hitters, but it’ll be impossible for her to overcome the Mo’Nique train, especially since this is the only award that Oscar will bestow on Precious.

Should win: Farmiga

Will win: Mo’Nique

BEST DIRECTOR

Like Best Picture, this field belongs to Cameron and Bigelow. Cameron’s achievement isn’t easily ignored; Avatar is a spectacle to behold in terms of technical advancements in filmmaking. It has become more than just a film, but a phenomenon reaching far beyond blockbuster epic expectations. And that could come back to bite Avatar on its nicely shaped, blue-skinned behind. Mr. Tarentino hasn’t won an Oscar for directing, but this is unfortunately not his year to rise above Cameron’s massive undertaking or Bigelow’s supreme storytelling. Reitman’s turn will come soon, I’m sure. With 2007’s Juno and this year’s Up in the Air, we can count on this 33 year-old to deliver again. Lee Daniels is lucky to be included here, edging out the Oscar-winning Cohen brothers for a nomination. Bigelow’s slice of life war portrait of American soldiers in Iraq was the most poignant 2 hours of film I saw last year. Be watchful for Avatar-weary Academy members who may feel inclined to vote against the grain.

Should win: Bigelow

Will win: Cameron

- Hillary Smotherman

*For Best Picture Prediction, go to http://rosebudisa.blogspot.com/2010/03/dont-take-it-personally.html

DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY

Whoever decides where Kathryn Bigelow will sit for tomorrow’s Oscar ceremony is in on “it.” The red carpet reporters who decide to skip interviewing Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey (producers of An Education) for a quick twenty seconds with James Cameron know “it,” as well.

There are obvious front-runners during awards season no matter what organization is holding the ceremony. You can expect surprises at the SAG Awards, where any actor who made enough last year to buy a used Dodge Neon can vote for his/her favorite candidate. You can expect the unexpected at the BAFTA’s (the British version of the Oscars), where a European dialect is sure to make any actor a voting favorite (congratulations, Colin Firth). Even the Golden Globe Awards, decided by a handful of critics and journalists, have proven to turn heads and bestow statuettes to people who go on to be left out of the Oscar race, entirely (you’re a lucky guy, Robert Downey, Jr.).

What gives you “it” at other ceremonies doesn’t mean much at the Oscars. There’s a formula to success here, and the Academy hardly ever deviates from it. The “it” is all political. It doesn’t matter if you deserve to win – do you deserve to win THIS TIME?

As they mark their ballots each year, stuffy Academy members take political inventory. Have you won before – how recently, and how many times (Meryl, Jack)? Are you overdue for an Oscar (Winslet, Freeman and Scorsese get my drift), having been nominated consistently without a win? Will you be skipped by Oscar this year because we know you’ll be back soon (Leo)? Does the Academy have to recognize you because this is probably the best work you’ll ever do (Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock…?). And why does the pity category never transfer over to Best Actor (poor Tom Cruise)?

This year Best Picture is a close race, because politics are slim in the category. It’s between James Cameron’s Avatar and Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. If you bet a dollar on any of the other eight films in this category and got lucky, you could buy a fancy new refrigerator with your winnings. Cameron’s won in this category before, but it’s been 13 years and he doesn’t make films very often. To be quite honest, the hype that follows Avatar and the assurance it will win here is dangerous. Have we not learned our lesson in handicapping since Shakespeare in Love’s triumph over Saving Private Ryan, or the shock of Crash’s win in 2005?

Bigelow is new to this Oscar thing, and her film has been quietly gaining recognition since its release last summer. She recently won top honors at the Director’s Guild of America Awards. In 60 years, only six times has the DGA winner not gone on to collect Best Picture at the Oscars.

I’m just sayin’.

Should win: The Hurt Locker

Will win: Avatar

- Hillary Smotherman

* For predictions of Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Director, go to http://rosebudisa.blogspot.com/2010/03/oscar-edge-who-should-win-who-will.html

CONGRATULATIONS - YOU SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED

Every year when the Oscar nominations roll around, there is almost always a “wild card” nominee in the Best Picture category. We’re all familiar with the wild card – that pitiful film just marginally special enough to have made the rank with the other, more deserving four. That one hundred-to-one shot people in Vegas will put a few bucks on “just for fun.” The director of this film will walk down the red carpet the night of the awards ceremony cloaked in shame. He is the one who continues to tell reporters along the carpet, “it’s such an honor to be recognized in this category.” He knows it. The reporters know it. The viewers at home are laughing about it. His film is good – really good. But there’s not a snowball’s chance in you-know-where that he’ll return home with Oscar gold.

Thanks to the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010’s Oscar ceremony will not bring us just one of these unfortunate Best Picture nominees, but six. Last summer, the academy’s president (Sidney Ganis) announced they would be “casting (the) net wide,” in an attempt to include films more widely seen.”

So rarely do movie-going audiences get the chance to see all films up for Oscars. Unless you live in New York, Los Angeles, or a major city with theatre houses owned by people who don’t mind risking showing An Education over James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar, you probably won’t get the opportunity to see some films in the theatre. Because the academy wants the Oscar telecast to remain in the top 2 Neilson spots (television rankings, folks) with the Super Bowl, they’re going to widen the Best Picture category. No one can dispute that some films are just better than others. Because you can’t simply eliminate the best, broaden the category to include the mediocre.

There were four films this year we could count on to be voted into the Best Picture category: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Bastards, and Up in the Air. Each year, the members of the academy vote for two categories: their own (if you’re registered as a “director,” you vote for Best Director, and so on) and for Best Picture. Members cast their ballots for Best Picture listing up to five names, ranked in order of preference.

This year, it’s as if we get to see the five or six films ranked last on those ballots. How embarrassing for The Blind Side. How exhilarating for Jonas Rivera (Up’s producer) to remain in his seat for this category after winning Best Animated Feature. I’m sure Peter Jackson and the Cohen Brothers won’t be writing acceptance speeches, their movies having won in recent years.

Ganis wanted to make sure that people watching the Oscar telecast felt included – that they had seen some of the films nominated in the Best Picture category. Ironic that the category is being widened in a year where there are probably only a handful of folks on this planet who haven’t seen (Avatar) the movie that will win in this category. Thank you, academy. Problem solved.

-Hillary Smotherman