Movie/TV Reviews

Race to Witch Mountain

Susan Granger’s review of “Race to Witch Mountain” (Disney)

Tweens and their families are flocking to this Disney remake for good reason: it’s light-hearted, diverting entertainment. Plus there’s surprisingly weak competition at the multi-plex right now.
The adventure begins in the Nevada desert where a UFO has landed. The U.S. military scrambles and Burke (Ciaran Hinds), a Homeland Security agent, is determined to secure the “illegal aliens.” Meanwhile, in nearby Las Vegas, ex-con taxi-driver Jack Bruno (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) picks up Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), an astrophysicist who’s in town lecturing at a UFO convention.
While Bruno dismisses those who believe in extraterrestrials as “nut jobs,” the next day, he happens upon siblings Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig), whose shape-shifting, telekinetic and telepathic abilities soon prove him wrong. After some ferocious high-speed chases and narrow escapes, with the robotic youngsters calmly murmuring, “It would appear we have not evaded them,” hot-shot driver Bruno is convinced that his passengers are not runaways but really aliens whose craft has been seized by Burke’s SWAT team and moved to a top-secret government installation hidden inside Witch Mountain. Plus there’s this nasty, intergalactic assassin, known as a Siphon, who’s pursuing them from their home planet.
Will Bruno and Dr. Friedman help the young space travelers reclaim their craft, go home and save their planet as well as Earth? You guess.
Inspired by Alexander Kay’s novel, which previously spawned “Escape to Witch Mountain” (1975) and “Return to Witch Mountain” (1978), Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback’s script is more action-oriented than its predecessors although devotees may spot the original child stars, Kim Richards and Iake Eissinmann, in cameos. Directed by Andy Fickman, it’s obviously contrived – but it’s also amusing, particularly with director/actor Garry Marshall as a rival extraterrestrial expert. Real-life cult writer Whitley Strieber (“Communion”) also attends the “You Will Believe” conference.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Race to Witch Mountain” is an appealing, escapist 7 – it’s cornball sci-fi fun.

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Echelon Conspiracy

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Echelon Conspiracy” (After Dark Pictures)

Good title…bad movie. What we have here is, basically, a high-tech whodunit that goes awry.
Max Peterson (Shane West of TV’s “ER”) is a top-notch computer security expert whose specialty is installing password protection. After completing a job in Bangkok, he returns to his hotel where he receives a mysterious package containing a sleek, state-of-the-art cell phone. Text messages start streaming in, suggesting that he extend his stay in Thailand and advising him to change his plane ticket home. He does – and the flight he was supposed to be on crashes. Then he gets a hot stock tip – and the price skyrockets. He’s dispatched to a casino in the Czech Republic, where text messages direct him to play a specific slot machine to win a jackpot and to a certain blackjack table for a big payoff.
Max’s sudden $3 million win alerts the casino’s vigilant security chief (Ed Burns), the casino’s perturbed owner (Jonathan Pryce), a Russian technology whiz (Yuri Kutsenko), a sexy operative (Tamara Feldman), a persistent FBI agent (Ving Rhames), even the blustering NSA chief (Martin Sheen). Everyone wants to know who is sending Max messages – and why, particularly since other seemingly random Americans have received similar cell phones and they all wound up dead. All clues point to the greatest surveillance tool ever created.
Written by Kevin Elders and Michel Nitsberg and directed by Greg Marcks, it bears a remarkable plot resemblance to “Eagle Eye,” at least in its cell phone contrivance. Yet the dialogue is absurd and experienced actors like Jonathan Pryce, Ving Rhames and Martin Sheen look embarrassed delivering their lines, causing one to think that times must be tough in the casting offices these days.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Echelon Conspiracy” is a tedious 3. How it ever got a theatrical release and didn’t go straight to dvd is the biggest mystery of all.

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March 6 DVD Update

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s dvd/video update for week of Friday, March 6th

Timed to coordinate with the new movie, “Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic” contains all 12 chapters from the graphic novel, adding motion, voice and sound to the book’s striking panels, spanning everything from the Comedian’s mysterious demise to the crisscrossed destinies of the various superheroes to their fateful impact on the world. These 30-minute chapters were previously available only as iTunes downloads.
“Beverly Hills Chihuahua” is a good-natured comedy with Drew Barrymore as the voice of Chloe, a diamond-clad pooch who enjoys her luxurious lifestyle so much that she barely notices Papi (voiced by George Lopez) who’s head-over-paws in love with her. But when Chloe gets lost in Mexico with only a street-wise German Shepherd (voiced by Andy Garcia) to help her, Papi heads south of the border to rescue her.
“Lake City” is a dramatic thriller about a young man who gets into trouble with a local drug dealer and heads to the last place on earth he wants to go: his childhood home. Sissy Spacek plays a Southern mother who reunites with her son (Troy Garity, Jane Fonda’s real-life son) under desperate circumstances after a family tragedy drove them apart.
Set on Christmas Eve, “Exit Speed” is a ferocious, low-budget direct-to-dvd action-thriller about 10 passengers on a bus traveling across Texas that collides with a meth-addicted biker. Forced off the road by his gang, they’re forced to defend themselves.
For kids: “The Smurfs: Vol. 1” contains five uncut episodes of the animated series, along with a bonus feature, “Meet the Smurfs.” “Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet Detective” features a 12 year-old chasing down leads and laughs. And “Where Will My Feet Take Me Today?” delivers six segments from the delightful PBS pre-school series “Franny’s Feet.”
PICK OF THE WEEK: As viewed through the eyes of a half-Aboriginal child, Baz Luhrmann’s epic-length “Australia” is a frontier romance starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. Awesomely photographed and creatively challenging, it’s an enormous, exotic adventure.

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Sherman’s Way

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Sherman’s Way” (Starry Night Entertainment)

In this coming-of-age story, uptight, pampered Ivy-Leaguer Sherman Black (Michael Shulman) has always been dominated by his rich, politically ambitious, controlling mother (Donna Murphy), who steered him to Yale and fast-tracked him into a potentially lucrative career in law.
One day, while riding on a New York commuter train with his girlfriend (Lacey Chabert), she dares Sherman to perform one simple, spontaneous act – and he’s unable to. Then she asks him to come visit her in California over the summer. He declines, explaining that his mother has arranged a superb internship at a prestigious law firm. But then he begins to think…..
So Sherman heads West, hoping to surprise his girlfriend and discovers, instead, that she already has a new beau. Furious, he storms out of her house and hitches a ride with Palmer “Bomber” Van Dyke (James LeGros), a former alpine skier in the 1984 Winter Olympics who is still gliding on the coattails of that fleeting glory. But when Sherman hops into the car, he loses his wallet, depriving him of his accustomed wealth.
Palmer assures him he can crash with his buddy D.J. (Enrico Colantoni), a master chef-turned-auto mechanic who lives in a trailer in the middle-of-nowhere. And from these two scruffy-yet-endearing men, Sherman learns how to swim, how to fish, how to drive and, gradually, how to chill, unencumbered by pressures of time, money and success.
“Time’s just a loose reference,” Palmer tells him as the three of them work to restore Palmer’s stolen 1975 MGB roadster which he plans to give to his estranged son for graduation. And Sherman discovers a fulfilling relationship with Marcy (Brooke Nevin), a free-spirited clerk in a local store.
Written by Thomas R. Nance and directed by Craig M. Saavedra, it’s familiar and formulaic, so on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Sherman’s Way” is a schmaltzy 5, whimsically entertaining if entirely predictable.

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Watchmen

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

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

Intense, ultra-violent and – at 2 hours, 41 minutes – far too long, this is not your ordinary superhero movie. It’s Zack Snyder’s challenging yet slavishly faithful adaptation of Alan Moore’s landmark graphic novel about psychopathic crime fighters investigating the death of one of their own.
Set in 1985 in an alternate America, the Doomsday Clock with the Soviet Union is ticking ominously and Richard Nixon still occupies the White House, having won the Vietnam War by unleashing a powerful colossus, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), to subjugate the Vietcong. But when a renegade known as The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered, his troubled cohort Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley) rounds up other now-banished costumed vigilantes – like Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), whose mother (Carla Gugino) once had a relationship with The Comedian – to investigate an insidious and devastating conspiracy that’s hurtling us toward Armageddon.
While “The Dark Knight” set the stage for the politics of fear, this audacious, allegorical saga ruminates on pop culture’s addiction to archetypical savior figures. There are character-origin explanations, along with complicated sexual liaisons, demonstrating that that gratuitous violence has its consequences.
Behind-the-scenes, this notorious project bounced around Hollywood for years with directors Terry Gilliam (“Brazil”) and Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler”) attempting to get it made. But it fell to Zack Snyder and cinematographer Larry Fong, who previously collaborated on “300,” to turn the bleak brutality into a rain-soaked, R-rated rampage.
What works are the striking visuals and stunning digital effects – from Dr. Manhattan’s blue-hued nakedness (no fig leaf here) and Martian refuge to Ozymandias’ Antarctica fortress, along with performances by Morgan, Wilson and Haley. But there’s weakness in the dense exposition/multiple flashbacks and in the work of Akerman and Goode.
While hardcore fans of the source material may quibble with David Hayter and Alex Tse’s script changes, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Watchmen” is an eerie, awesome 8, aimed primarily at a young male audience familiar with the blood-stained smiley face.

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Reunion

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Reunion” (Talking Pictures Company, Inc.)

Writer/director Alan Hruska’s midlife rumination on revelations from college days reveals how, perhaps more often than not, our past determines our present.
Before she died, Janie Burns tantalized fellow members of an exclusive Yale society by sending each of them a letter promising to reveal some buried ‘secrets’ that would touch them all. Ten years later, her attorney husband Jake (Brett Cullen) invites them all to come to Manhattan to attend a meeting. Since Jake wrote a novel which enraged many of his fellow ‘best and brightest’ cohorts, only a few accept but those who do are eager to participate in the kind of confession-and-confrontation sessions they used to relish back in New Haven.
There’s big-time film producer, Lloyd (David Thornton), accompanied by his actress girlfriend, Minerva (Alice Evans); alcoholic, less-than-successful businessman, Barnaby (Jamey Sheridan), and his frustrated novelist/wife, Emily (Cynthia Stevenson); actress-turned-talent agent, Sadie (Amy Pietz); outspoken, resentful journalist, Eamon (Christopher McDonald); prominent, if ethnocentric Jewish doctor/philanthropist, Saul (Josh Pais) with his adoring wife, Beth (Jessica Hecht); and Jake’s loyal assistant, Averil (Zoe McLellan), who obviously wishes she had a closer relationship with her widower boss.
While the provocative set-up is reminiscent of “The Big Chill,” the problem is that Janie’s oft-referred-to letter is never read and the highly anticipated ‘secrets’ are less than earth-shattering, making one wish for a more effective payoff after 90 minutes. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to10, “Reunion” is a psychobabbling 6. I just wish it didn’t come across as a muddled melodrama about entitled elitists.

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Must Read After My Death

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Must Read After My Death” (Gigantic Releasing)

Filmmaker Morgan Dews unearths the emotional kaleidoscope that permeated his grandparents’ lives in this revealing documentary.
In 2001, after the death of his maternal grandmother Allis, Dews discovered a multi-media stash of Dictaphone and tape recordings, along with reels of home-movies, labeled MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH and soon realized how very little he knew about his fractured family’s traumatic history. As Tolstoy wrote, “while happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
When Allis and Charley met, they were married to other people. Since both were non-conformists and into ‘open marriage,’ that didn’t post much of a problem – at least, not at first. Charley, more than Allis, relished his freedom and she, being the dutiful ‘50s housewife, indulged his incessant philandering while raising their daughter and three sons. But she was anxious and resentful – and the angst took its toll.
A hyper-critical, heavy-drinking insurance exec based in Hartford, Connecticut, Charley spent several months each year on the road, often in Australia, and his audio “letters” reveal his liaisons with a multitude of women, many of whom added their own messages to Allis. Meanwhile, on the home front, unconventional, pre-feminist Allis coped in various ways, many of which screwed up the lives of their children. Chuck, the eldest, suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia and was eventually dispatched to a mental hospital – an upheaval which understandably affected the lives of his siblings: Bruce, Douglas and Anne. Patronizing psychiatric therapy – in and out of the Institute for Living – didn’t help much.
Having had experience making short films, Morgan Dews decided to superimpose Allis’s home movies on her audio recordings to create a virtual scrapbook filled with memorabilia in a genre that is reminiscent of “Capturing the Friedmans.” There are the idyllic summer frolics and winter snowman-building but, just beneath the veneer of suburban camaraderie, lurk fleeting glimpses of loneliness and betrayal.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Must Read After My Death” is a haunting, troubling 7, therapeutically transforming home movies into visual art.

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February 27 DVD Update

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s dvd/video update for week of Friday, Feb. 27th

Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo stumble through “Blindness,” Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago’s apocalyptic allegory in which residents of a deliberately unspecified but primarily English-speaking city are afflicted by an inexplicable ailment that affects their vision.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe team up in “Body of Lies,” a far-fetched action-adventure with DiCaprio as the Pentagon’s top spy in the Middle East and Crowe as the Langley-based ‘operative’ who tracks his every movement via computer.
Spike Lee’s episodic W.W.II drama, “Miracle at St. Anna,” is the revisionist story of African-American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in Tuscany, combining a murder-mystery with a war epic in a muddle of “miracles.” And “Frozen River” Oscar-nominee Melissa Leo stars in the thriller “Lullaby” as an American mother who receives word that her drug-addled son has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom by a South African drug lord.
Utilizing interviews and archival footage, Christina Clausen’s loving but ultimately shallow documentary, “The Universe of Keith Haring,” traces the too-short life of the New York graffiti-style artist from his childhood to his death from AIDS at age 21. Margaret Brown’s “The Order of Myths” is a documentary about Mobile, Alabama’s Mardi Gras, which has been celebrated since 1703 and is still racially segregated. And “Adam Clayton Powell,” narrated by legendary activist Julian Bond, lauds one of the most influential civil rights leaders.
To amuse pre-schoolers, there’s “How’d They Build That?” focusing on the school bus and the concrete truck, and all their favorites (Barney, Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam, etc.) blossom together in “HIT Favorites: Here Comes Spring.”
PICK OF THE WEEK: You can get an insider’s glimpse into Hollywood in Barry Levinson’s wryly amusing “What Just Happened,” as a producer (Robert De Niro) battles a contentious, pill-popping British director (Michael Wincott) during post-production of an arty Sean Penn thriller schedule to debut at Cannes within a week and prepares to start a new film with temperamental Bruce Willis.

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Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience” (Disney)

Like Hanna Montana before them, The Jonas Brothers are ‘tween idols, releasing multimillion selling records and selling out stadiums nationwide. So it’s a blessing to parents’ wallets that youngsters can enjoy this peppy, 75-minute performance in a movie theater rather than scrambling for hard-to-get tickets and trekking to a ‘live’ concert.
What’s on the screen is footage from their 2008 arena spectaculars, supplemented with behind-the-scenes glimpses of them romping and riding Segways. But that does not include their recent appearance at the White House, fulfilling the fantasies of Sasha and Malia Obama.
For those unfamiliar with the Jonases, they are really brothers whose deeply religious parents accompany them on the road; their father is an evangelical pastor. At 21, Kevin is the eldest. He plays lead guitar and does backup vocals. The middle brother, Joe, is 18 and seems to propel the show as the lead singer. 17 year-old Nick, a.k.a. “Mr. President” plays guitar, keyboard and drums. He has Type 1 diabetes, which he dramatically reveals in a heartfelt solo number, “A Little Bit Longer.”
Nick allegedly dated and dumped Miley Cyrus, prompting her to write and record “7 Things I Hate About You.” He’s now dating Disney-bred Selena Gomez. And Joe expressed love for country singer Taylor Swift before moving on to his music video partner Camilla Belle. I’m told you need to know these timely gossip tidbits to appreciate the swooning fan fervor for this trinity that’s captured by director Bruce Hendricks.
The Jonas Brothers’ style seems to combine the Backstreet Boys and NKOTB, emphasizing repetitive three-part harmony. They warble about teenage angst, emphasizing chaste love and heartbreak, touching on the temptations of drugs and sex. All three wear purity rings and have vowed celibacy until marriage. That’s what’s behind the lyrics to “Burning Up”: “I’m slipping into the lava/I’m trying to keep from going under/Baby, you turn the temperature hotter/’Cuz I’m burnin’ up for you, baby.”
As for the 3-D, it’s a gimmick involving tossed sunglasses and guitar picks. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience” is a high-decibel, shriek-inducing 6 for its intended audience – which, I suspect, includes few of us over the age of 30.

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Crossing Over

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Crossing Over” (Weinstein Co.)

Think of this as the “Crash” and “Babel” of illegal-immigration ensemble dramas. Set in Southern California, its stereotypical characters and structured story lines keep crossing and bumping into each other.
There’s Max Brogan (Harrison Ford), a gruff but wearily sympathetic Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who is trying to reunite an illegal Mexican, Mireya Sanchez (Alice Braga), caught in a sweatshop raid, with her young son. His partner Hamid Baraheri (Cliff Curtis) comes from a wealthy Iranian family who fled the 1979 revolution and is dishonored by the behavior of his sister, Zahra (Melody Khazae), a sexy young woman who has become way too assimilated. And Hamid just happens to be there when a Korean teen, Yong Kim (Justin Chon), and his pals rob a convenience store. Then there’s a Bangladeshi Muslim teen, Taslima Jahangir (Summer Bishil), who faces F.B.I. deportation after she naively writes a school essay in which she says she understands the motives of the 9/11 hijackers. Her crusading defense attorney, Denise Frankel (Ashley Judd), wants to adopt an African orphan stuck in a detention center, despite the objections of her sleazy husband, Cole (Ray Liotta), an immigrations application adjudicator who is sexually exploiting an ambitious Australian starlet, Claire Sheperd (Alice Eve), whose visitor status doesn’t permit her to work and whose British musician boyfriend, Gavin Kossef (Jim Sturgess), is posing as an expert in Judaism to get his green card.
Problem is: none of these diverse micro-dilemmas are explored in any depth, although they culminate with a mass citizenship ceremony at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Writer/director Wayne Kramer (“The Cooler”), who emigrated from South Africa in 1986, skims over the surface of the interconnected issues, stressing the challenge of enforcing fair immigration legislation within an overburdened governmental system.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Crossing Over” is a lurid, contrived 4. So it’s understandable why Oscar-winner Sean Penn reportedly requested that his small role be eliminated from the final cut.

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