Movie/TV Reviews

Live Free or Die Hard

Susan Granger’s review of “Live Free or Die Hard” (20th Century-Fox)

After a 12-year hiatus, the chaos and confusion that surrounds Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) are back again in what’s essentially “Die Hard 4.0.” Understanding that this is primarily a high-tech action adventure with little subtlety and only a smidgeon of substance, it succeeds – primarily because the stunts are spectacular.
Still working for the NYPD, wiser and wearier McClane’s assignment is to deliver a South Jersey computer hacker (Justin Long), to Washington for questioning by the FBI. But the feds aren’t the only ones after the geek; dastardly forces want him dead. So by the time McClane makes it to D.C., traffic signals, computers and cellphones have gone down. It’s a “fire sale,” a three-step plan leading to the total paralysis of the digital systems that control our nation’s energy and economy.
Using brawn and brains, McClane battles several villains, including a maniacal, sexy Hong Kong martial artist (Maggie Q), a Eurotrash thug (Cyril Raffaelli) and the mastermind cyber-terrorist, vengeful Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant of “Deadwood”).
Screenwriters Mark Bomback and David Marconi cleverly play off our current fears: terrorism and the increasing role that the technology plays in our culture. Director Len Wiseman (“Underworld: Evolution”) maintains a pulse-racing pace. Basically, it’s a continuous chase, involving not only the usual firepower but huge fireballs, catapulting cars, collapsing freeways, a Harrier fighter-jet leaving harrowing destruction in its wake and a climactic fight in an elevator shaft.
52 year-old Bruce Willis seems as fearsome and formidable as ever while 29 year-old Justin Long not only matches him in anti-authoritarianism but gets some of the best laughs in the picture. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Live Free or Die Hard” is an invigorating 8, a solid summer popcorn picture.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (Warner Bros.)

It’s kind of like “Star Wars: Episode I,” perhaps the weakest chain in the link but necessary in order to understand what’s going to happen in the next two installments.
After a lonely summer with the despicable Dursleys, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is denounced as a liar by the Ministry of Magic and returns in disgrace to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the authority of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) has been undermined by the unwelcome arrival of dreadful Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton).
Now 15 – with no family except godfather, Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), and friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) – Harry’s even more determined to fight the evil forces of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), training those few who still trust him in the magic they’ll need to defend themselves as “Dumbledore’s Army.”
Utilizing J.K. Rowling’s dark yet highly detailed novel, screenwriter Michael Goldenberg and director David Yates concentrate on Harry’s full-blown, angst-ridden coming-of-age confusion, reducing colorful characters like Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter), Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith), Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), even Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) to cameos. There’s not even a Quiddich match!
What’s still fascinating is watching the wide-eyed innocents of “Sorcerer’s Stone” grow up. Except for Michael Apted’s British series, “Seven Up,” documenting the lives of 14 British children every seven years, this has never been done before.
Yet with mumbled dialogue, fewer fantastical creatures, a perplexing prophecy and less impressive visual effects, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is a transitional, sinister 7. At two hours, 18 minutes, it’s one of the shortest Harry Potter movies – yet it feels like the longest.

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Hairspray

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Hairspray” (New Line Cinema)

It’s been almost two decades since John Waters’ original oddball comedy about dance-crazed teenagers inspired Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s Broadway musical which has now been adapted for the screen in a star-studded spectacle.
Set in Baltimore in the early 1960s, it’s the story of how pudgy, shimmying Tracy Turnblad (18 year-old newcomer Nikki Blonsky), stuns her overly protective, laundress mom Edna (John Travolta), and joke-store proprietor dad, Wilbur (Christopher Walken), wins a spot on an afternoon TV dance party, steals the heart of Link Larkin (Zac Efron) and becomes an unlikely force for racial integration, much to the chagrin of scheming, bitter Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), an ex-beauty queen who now runs “The Corny Collins Show,” a local version of “American Bandstand.”
Screenwriter Leslie Dixon (“Mrs. Doubtfire”) and choreographer-turned-director Adam Shankman (“Bringing Down the House”) gently bury much of John Waters’ subversive undertones to concentrate on being ‘different’ in this merrily trashy musical.
Stepping into the gender-blending role originated by Divine and then Harvey Fierstein on Broadway, John Travolta dons on his “Saturday Night Fever”/”Grease” dancing shoes – and dazzles. A nimble duet between Travolta and Walken, amid billowing clothes lines, evokes Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but the most memorable musical numbers are Queen Latifah’s “I Know Where I’ve Been” and Elijah Kelley’s “Run.”
Keep an eye out for cameos by alums of the original 1988 “Hairspray”: Ricki Lake, Jerry Stiller and auteur John Waters as the neighborhood flasher who lives next door to the Turnblads. Despite its PG rating, this is the first film to be cited for a teen smoking scene under the movie ratings board’s new anti-smoking policy.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Hairspray” is a bouncy, campy 9, a cotton-candy entertainment feast.

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Joshua

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Joshua” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Wall Street yuppies Brad and Abby Cairn (Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga) are privileged, perfect parents, living in a magnificent Upper West Side, Manhattan apartment with their nine year-old piano prodigy son, Joshua (Jacob Kogan), and their newborn daughter, Lily.
In addition to his musical genius, Joshua is an exceptional student – but definitely weird. He dismisses sports, displaying, instead, a morbid fascination with Egyptian embalming techniques. His cold, creepy passive-aggressiveness manifests itself in many sneaky ways, particularly with the arrival of a little sister and the disturbing recurrence of his mother’s deep, sleep-deprived, postpartum depression.
“You don’t have to love me,” precocious Joshua ambivalently tells his father, bonding, instead with his arty, gay, composer uncle, Ned Davidoff (Dallas Roberts), who blandly appreciates his taste for dissonant Bartok and somber Beethoven sonatas and isn’t besotted by the incessantly crying baby. But then there’s his evangelical grandmother, Hazel Cairn (Celia Weston), who, ill-advisedly, interferes.
Writer/director George Ratcliff and co-writer David Gilbert combine the spooky sociopath child – explored with more visual panache in “The Bad Seed” and “The Omen” – with the darkly disturbing psychological dynamics of family drama, amplified by the chilly elegance achieved by production designer Roshelle Berliner, Belgian cinematographer Benoit Debie and musician Nico Muhly, whose moody “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” is indelible.
Yet despite the best efforts of Sam Rockwell (“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”) and Vera Farmiga (“The Departed”), their characters are underdeveloped even before they begin their inevitable, slowly-paced decline. But young Joshua Kogan is a real find – and his real-life baby sister doubled as the newborn. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Joshua” is a subtle, sinister 6. Evil, yes, but not very scary.

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Rescue Dawn

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Rescue Dawn” (MGM)

Back in 1965, a cocky U.S. Air Force pilot, German-born Dieter Dengler (Chrisian Bale), took off on a top-secret bombing raid over Laos. Before flying out, he and his cohorts cynically watch an authentic military information film about surviving in the jungle – but the advice is invaluable once he’s shot down, captured and tortured.
An ant’s nest is tied to his face. Bound hand-and-foot, he’s dragged by a cow through a village and almost drowned in a shallow well. But no coercion will make him denounce American imperialism. “I love America because America gave me wings,” he declares.
Eventually, he’s dumped in a POW camp, where he meets two fellow Americans (Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies) and plans a daring escape to Thailand during the rainy season. But if he can manage to get out of the compound, he’ still imprisoned by the impenetrable jungle.
Screenwriter/director Werner Herzog knew the real Dieter Dengler, who died in 1991 of Lou Gehrig’s disease, and made the acclaimed documentary, “Little Dieter Needs to Fly,” about him but wanted to bring this story to the screen as an action-adventure. As with “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo” and “Grizzly Man,” Herzog is intrigued with the man-versus-nature survival concept, aided in great part by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger. That’s understandable, but the stereotypical script – Herzog’s first in English – could benefit from simple devices like back story and character development, accompanying the heat, hunger and exhaustion.
What’s most memorable is Christian Bale’s physically transformative performance. Once the buff “Batman” hero, he – literally – starved himself to look emaciated in “The Machinist” and visibly drops weight, once again, here. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Rescue Dawn” is an intensely visceral and violent 7. It’s not for the faint-hearted.

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Sunshine

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Sunshine” (Fox Searchlight)

Evoking “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Solaris” and “2010,” Danny Boyle’s stunning sci-fi thriller is an intense metaphysical odyssey into the unknown.
In 2057, our sun is dying and mankind faces extinction. Earth’s last hope is Icarus II, a spacecraft with a crew of eight astronauts led by pensive Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada). Their mission is to detonate a massive nuclear device on the sun to re-ignite it by creating a star within a star.
Deep into their voyage, amid emotional tension generated by their claustrophobic condition, the communications officer (Troy Garity) picks up a faint distress signal from the Icarus I, which disappeared on the same mission seven years earlier. Since that’s followed by a miscalculation by the navigator (Benedict Wong) which destroys the biologist’s (Michelle Yeoh) vital oxygen-producing garden, the physicist (Cillian Murphy) recommends that the pilot (Rose Byrne) rendezvous with the orbiting older vessel to heist replacements. He’s opposed by the ship’s engineer (Chris Evans) as the on-board psychiatrist (Cliff Curtis) becomes increasingly obsessed with the gloriously bright, fiery Sun. Compelling moral dilemmas abound. Then a pivotal moment occurs when the soft-spoken computer (reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s HAL) detects a new, mysterious, otherworldly on-board presence that questions the essence of the Icarus mission.
With his “28 Days Later” and “The Beach” collaborators – writer Alex Garland and producer Andrew Macdonald – Danny Boyle sets forth a provocative premise that eventually dissolves into an insane killer-on-the-loose religious fanaticism but not before the cinematic stylist – utilizing the talents of cinematographer Alwin Kuchler and production designer Mark Tildesley – dazzles with extraordinary visuals depicting the physical and psychological hazards of space travel. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Sunshine” glows with a gripping, adventurous 8, giving new meaning to The Big Bang. Awesome!

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I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” (Universal Pictures)

If you can overlook the slapstick and silly shtick, this mainstream, contemporary satire makes the case for civil unions, domestic partnerships and gay marriages.
Perennial bachelor Chuck Levine (Adam Sandler) and widower father Larry Valentine (Kevin James) are best-friend Brooklyn firefighters who resort to pretending to be gay ‘life partners’ when Larry has bureaucratic problems with his pension and Chuck offers to repay a life-saving favor. When a suspicious N.Y.C. fraud inspector (Steve Buscemi) questions their legitimacy, they hire a sexy, crusading lawyer (Jessica Biel) to defend their rights – “We’re big-time fruits”- not to mention the bodacious authenticity of her breasts.
Screenwriters Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, along with Sandler’s favorite director, Dennis Dugan (“Happy Gilmore,” “Big Daddy,” “The Benchwarmers”), lack subtlety and credulity, falling prey to gay-clichŽ moments, like the prison rape joke, the dropping-the-soap in the locker-room shower joke, and a City Council president cameo by out-of-the-closet Richard Chamberlain – and the third-act simply succumbs.
But that’s not the fault of FDNY’s Engine 506/Ladder 223 firefighters played by Dan Aykroyd, Gary Valentine, Jonathan Loughran, Michael Buscemi, Renaldo Pinera, Peter Dante and Ving Rhames or “Saturday Night Live” alums Rachel Dratch and Robert Smigel, along with Dave Matthews and Lace Bass, plus Sandler sidekicks David Spade and Rob Schneider, who steals scenes as Canada’s Two Hearts Wedding Chapel minister.
As a side note, the usually publicity-shy, Sandler recently revealed he has a gay family member who’s in a long-term relationship and is well aware of discrimination faced by same-sex couples. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” is a raunchy, testosterone-driven 5 – with a relevant message about tolerance and acceptance.

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The Reaping

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Reaping” (Warner Bros.)

When a thriller starring two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank sits on the shelf for a year, it’s usually because it’s cinematic rubbish.
Hilary plays Katherine Winter, a former Christian missionary who lost her faith after her husband and daughter were murdered in an act of religious fanaticism in the Sudan. Now she’s a cynical, world-renowned debunker of paranormal religious phenomena who is summoned by a science teacher (David Morrissey) to a small Louisiana bayou town called Haven that’s suffering from what appears to be an onslaught of the ten Old Testament plagues that God used to convince Pharoah to allow Moses lead his people out of Egypt.
Accompanied by her assistant (Idris Elba), Katherine sees how the river is running red with blood and frogs are falling from the sky. Despite her skepticism, she realizes that mere science cannot explain what’s happening here and regains her faith in order to combat the dark forces that threaten the community. There’s also a confusing subplot involving a sulky young girl, Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb), who may have incurred God’s wrath because she killed her brother.
Screenwriting brothers Chad and Casey W. Hayes, utilizing Brian Russo’s story, borrow from “The Exorcist,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Omen.” Instead of exploring the power of evil and the existence of Satan, director Stephen Hopkins relies on spooky, formulaic shock sequences. Thanks to cinematographer Peter Levy and CGI, there’s lots of ludicrous, graphic violence: a gruesome plague of locusts, decaying and dying cattle, putrefying corpses, murders and suicides. Insofar as acting goes, Hilary Swank strikes out completely in developing any emotional depth to her non-believing character. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Reaping” is a sloppy, shamelessly exploitive 3. Perhaps the devil made them do it.

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Firehouse Dog

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Firehouse Dog” (20th Century-Fox)

What would happen if a pampered, top-grossing movie mutt called Rexxx wound up as a fire station mascot? That’s the premise for this family-friendly comedy.
While Rexxx (star of “The Fast and the Furriest” and “Jurassic Bark”) is shooting a commercial, an aerial stunt goes awry and he’s presumed dead. Instead, he’s is lost in a strange city and befriended by a lonely 12 year-old Shane Fahey (Josh Hutcherson from “Bridge to Terabithia”), whose widower, workaholic fireman dad (Bruce Greenwood) rescues the actor-dog after the animal’s death-defying leap from a burning building. Soon the entire company is in awe of Rexxx’s spectacular skills which they put to use during rescue calls.
But somewhere in the second half of this cute canine caper, one of several subplots barks up the wrong tree as Shane tries to solve the mystery of how his beloved uncle died in a fire that might have been caused by arson. This involves an intense scene with a boy trapped in a burning room – a nightmarish concept for kids in the audience.
There have been many celebrity dogs – from Rin Tin Tin to Lassie to Benji. This hero is actually played by an interchangeable quartet of red-coated Irish terriers trained by Ursula Brauner from Boone’s Hollywood Animals. Screenwriter Claire-Dee Lim and director Todd Holland (TV’s “Matthew in the Middle”) give Rexxx a definite personality and he’s as demanding as any screen diva with a list of ‘perks’ that includes Kobe beef, poodle groupies and diamond bling. Problem is: they also throw in too many flatulence jokes and pooch-related puns. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Firehouse Dog” is a scruffy, spirited 6, running a bit too long to keep tykes from squirming in their seats.

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Are We Done Yet?

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Are We Done Yet?” (Sony/Revolution release)

Not many people realize that the original “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” was about a city couple (Cary Grant, Myrna Loy) building a country home in New Milford, Connecticut, particularly since this wretched current reinvention of the concept is so far removed.
Elaborating on the “Are We There Yet?” (2005) characters who were trapped in an SUV traveling from Portland to Vancouver, there’s recently married Nick Persons (Ice Cube) with his good-natured bride Suzanne (Nia Long), her two growingly obnoxious children, Lindsey and Kevin (Aleisha Allen, Philip Daniel Bolden) and dog, Coco. Having settled into his former bachelor condo, the newly formed family descends into crisis when Suzanne announces she’s pregnant.with twins. There seems no choice but to move.
The sprawling, suburban Victorian house they choose is palatial – with vast grounds and lakeside views. It’s impressive but the pipes are rotted, the wiring is disastrous and dry rot is everywhere. It’s a “fixer-upper” money pit. Ah ha! No coincidence that their real-estate agent, Chuck Mitchell Jr. (John C. McGinley) is also the local contractor, building inspector, yoga instructor and – believe it or not – a Polynesian fire-dancer. (No, that was not in the original Eric Hodgins’ novel.) Nor was his Airstream trailer moving into the Persons’ yard.
The truism, “It’s gonna get ugly before it gets pretty” is repeated far too often.
Having paired with Ice Cube on “Next Friday,” director Steve Carr knows how to make the comedian a hapless Everyman, utilizing Hank Nelken’s script adaptation and a good owl gag. Cinematographer Jack Green captures the scenic scope, while production designer Nina Ruscio creates chaos. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Are We Done Yet?” is a dull, forgettable 4, relentlessly extending this family comedy franchise.

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