Movie/TV Reviews

300

Susan Granger’s review of “300” (Warner Bros.)

If you’re into uber-violent video games, this overblown sword ‘n’ sandals action adventure, inspired by Frank Miller’s graphic novel, is for you. If you seek characterization and dialogue, look elsewhere.
The setting is the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 stalwart Spartans square off for three days against thousands of Persians, knowing they’re fighting a losing battle.
Famous for its ferocious warriors, Sparta was an enigmatic Greek city-state which defined itself by freedom and sacrifice. Spartans were taught never to retreat, never to surrender. In 480 B.C., Sparta’s heroic King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), supported by his wife Gorgo (Lena Headley), defies the will of the Spartan Council and its Oracle to march into battle against evil Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), the self-proclaimed God-King of the Persians, whose has flagrantly raped and pillaged his way across the countryside.
Perhaps inspired by the slashing, grisly battle slaughter favored by Mel Gibson in “Apocalypto” and “Braveheart,” director Zack Snyder (best known for his “Dawn of the Dead” remake) concentrates on the testosterone-propelled visuals, nearly all of which are CGI and many in such slow-motion that they become campy. The actors’ performances are obviously secondary to their mandatory gym workouts, as is Snyder’s patchworked, homoerotic, awkwardly paced script, co-written with Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon.
Film buffs may recall this same historical story was filmed back in 1962 as “The 300 Spartans,” starring Richard Egan; while it was certainly less graphic, it wasn’t any better. Also, there’s been much conjecture about the allegorical references, justifying America’s involvement in Iraq; in my opinion, that’s a ridiculously far-fetched interpretation. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “300” is a vividly stylized, spectacular 6. “Prepare for Glory!” is the studio tagline. Un-uh! It should be “Prepare for Gory!”

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The Ultimate Gift

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Ultimate Gift” (Fox Faith)

According to a recent USA Today article, Americans get an ‘F’ in religion, revealing an appalling lack of knowledge about Bible basics, core beliefs, stories and symbols. So it’s no wonder that Fox Faith, a subsidiary of 20th Century-Fox, fills the gap, creating spiritually-based “message” entertainment that could substitute as a Sunday School class.
Based on Jim Stovall’s self-help book that has apparently sold more than three million copies, “The Ultimate Gift” won the Crystal Heart at the 2006 Heartland Festival.
Jason Stevens (Drew Fuller of “Charmed”) is a lazy trust-fund loafer who is stunned when the video-taped Will of his recently-deceased, but estranged billionaire grandfather offers him a series of 12 tasks (i.e.: gifts), forming a crash course on self-discovery. He must accept these challenges in order to learn the monetary amount of his inheritance. En route, Jason gets kidnapped and imprisoned in a Central American jungle and befriends a spunky, precocious child, Emily (Abigail Breslin of “Little Miss Sunshine”), who is dying of leukemia, while falling in love with her single mother (Ali Hillis).
Watching it, I was reminded of “Brewster’s Millions,” minus the comedy. Screenwriter Cheryl McKay and director Michael O. Sajbel (“One Night with the King”) predictably fall into several cloying, melodramatic pitfalls while teaching Jason to become a useful member of society and, thereby, become worthy of his windfall.
Jason Stevens delivers a bland, one-note performance but some veteran thespians make memorable appearances: James Garner as the grandfather, Brian Dennehy as a Texas cattle rancher, and Bill Cobbs as the Estate lawyer. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Ultimate Gift” is a wholesome, inspirational 5, preaching a simplistic “prosperity gospel” which is then reiterated in a final compilation during the end credits.

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Premonition

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Premonition” (Sony Pictures)

I had a sixth sense that Sandra Bullock’s sci-fi script judgment might not be the best but this puzzling psychological thriller makes “The Lake House” look logical by comparison.
Bullock plays Linda Hanson, a seemingly happily married mother of two daughters who, one day, hears a knock on the front door and is informed by the police that her husband (Julian McMahon from “Nip/Tuck”) died in a gruesome car crash. She’s devastated, reeling from shock. Yet the next morning, she wakes up to discover her husband isn’t dead. Or is he? Is that really his body in the coffin? Or is she experiencing a psychic phenomenon?
And what about her creepy mother (Kate Nelligan), distracted best friend (Nia Long) and her husband’s flirtatious new assistant (Amber Valletta).
Problem is: once you suspend disbelief, and buy into the intriguing premise of Bill Kelly’s screenplay (which occasionally seems to be channeling “Groundhog Day”), he double-crosses you, and that’s not fair. You develop sympathy, even empathy for Linda – and there’s essentially no pay-off – unless you want to turn the entire concept into a moralizing lesson on faith. But that’s another movie entirely.
Plus, German director Mennan Yapo doesn’t permit a shred of humor to permeate the predictably suspenseful atmosphere – which is a mistake. On the other hand, despite the confounding material, Sandra Bullock scores as believable, just as she did in “Crash.”
But one does wonder why this charming actress chooses such inappropriate material; it’s all quite similar to Jim Carrey’s serious turn in “The Number 23.” Don’t these stars realize the public wants to see them do what made them stars in the first place?
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Premonition” is a convoluted 4. It’s a pointless race against time.

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I Think I Love My Wife

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “I Think I Love My Wife” (Fox Searchlight)

Inspired by French director Eric Rohmer’s 1972 study of temptation and marital fidelity in “Chloe in the Afternoon,” Chris Rock devises a crass mid-life crisis comedy.
Manhattan investment banker Richard Cooper (Chris Rock) seems to have it all: a successful career, a smart, foxy, if prim, schoolteacher wife (Gina Torres) and two terrific kids. But he’s so sex-starved and bored with suburban life that all he can think about is women. Not that he plans to cheat; he just likes to fantasize about lewd ways he could seduce a strange woman. That is – until the needy ‘ex’ of an old pal, mercurial Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington) asks him for help not only in landing a job but also in finding an apartment and packing up her belongings that are back in Washington, D.C. In short, the scantily clad femme fatale Nikki turns Richard’s life into constant turmoil, kind of like Kevin Spacey’s lust in “American Beauty.”
Chris Rock, who directed and co-scripted with fellow comedian Louise C.K., has a lot to say about disillusionment with the institution of marriage, relationships and dilemmas faced by the black upper-middle class in suburbia, subjects he often covers in his rapier-wit stand-up routines. But he doesn’t articulate it here with much finesse, relying too often on the voiceover technique utilized in his TV series “Everybody Hates Chris.”
Back on his 2004 HBO special “Never Scared,” Rock said: “Those are the choices in life: You can be married and bored or single and lonely. Ain’t no happiness nowhere.” And not much has changed. So on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “I Think I Love My Wife” is a raunchy, garbled 5, an improbable, uneven rumination about love on the rocks.

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The Lookout

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Lookout” (Miramax Films)

An unusual character study combined with a bank-heist premise adds up to a taut psychological thriller.
Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a former Kansas high school hockey star whose life got sidelined when a careless car crash left him with a severe brain injury. He has trouble with his memory, particularly sequencing events (shades of “Memento”), and making sense of things. Sharing an apartment with a wisecracking blind companion, Lewis (Jeff Daniels), Chris is clearly guilt-ridden and frustrated but somewhat self-sufficient, although he needs to write down in a pocket notebook even the most mundane tasks, like “lock door when leaving,” as well as daily life lessons.
Since he works as the night janitor in a small-town bank, Chris becomes an obvious and vulnerable target for a ruthless crook, Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode), who helps him find a girl-friend, a compliant ex-stripper named Luvee Lemons (Isla Fisher). Cleverly manipulating Chris’s shaky self-esteem, Gary convinces him to go along with an ill-fated robbery plan, telling him, “Those who have the money have the power.” It’s obvious that Chris’s mental disability is the pivotal factor – and that augments the sinister suspense.
Screenwriter Scott Frank, who adapted Elmore Leonard’s “Get Shorty” and “Out of Sight,” makes this an auspicious directing debut. His casting choices are meticulous. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a former child actor, familiar from the sitcom “3rd Rock from the Sun,” who, more recently, starred in “Brick.” And Jeff Daniels (“The Squid and the Whale”) provides sardonic comic relief. It’s too bad that, as the story methodically unfolds, the pace is so slow that, in the middle, one is tempted to become disengaged. So on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Lookout” is an edgy 7, a darkly engaging crime caper.

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Memory

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Memory” (Eastgate Pictures)

If your memories aren’t your own, then whose are they? That’s the dilemma faced by a neuroscientist in this mind-bending psychological thriller.
While lecturing on memory disorders in Brazil, Dr. Taylor Briggs (Billy Zane) is summoned to a local hospital to examine a dying patient who exhibits weird and baffling symptoms. But when Briggs’ protective rubber glove rips, he’s accidentally exposed to a mysterious substance, a reddish powder from the Amazon rain forest. Soon after, Briggs begins experiencing strange, horrific flashbacks; it’s as though he’s suddenly accessed the mind of a demented serial killer who preys on young girls and makes plaster casts of their faces.
As the threads of the pulpy plot unravel, it becomes clear that the powder, a reportedly benign extract from the pineal gland, seems to unleash ancestral memories. But whose memories has Briggs tapped into? All the he can discern is a shadowy figure. Could it be his dead father? Or even his comatose mother, who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s?
To help clarify this dilemma, he turns to a sexy artist girlfriend (Tricia Helfer from “Battlestar Galactica”), his surrogate father Max Lichtenstein (Dennis Hopper) and his mother’s best friend, art gallery owner Carol Hargrave (Ann-Margret).
The taut, supernatural screenplay was written by Bennett Davlin and Anthony Badalucco, based on Davlin’s novel which asserts that 93% of our DNA has yet to be explained. Making his directing debut, Davlin explains that “all the science you see in this motion picture is cutting edge.” Perhaps. But his story is filled with red herrings, his helming is clumsy, and Billy Zane’s intense demeanor is distractingly artificial, despite the efforts of Dennis Hopper and Ann-Margret. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Memory” is a bizarre 5, a haunting hallucination.

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Color Me Kubrick

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Color Me Kubrick” (Magnolia Pictures)

If you’re a fan of Stanley Kubrick, director of memorable movies like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Dr. Strangelove,” or just a die-hard film buff, you may find this weird, semi-documentary an absolute hoot. I did. For several years, a garish British swindler named Alan Conway (John Malkovich) passed himself off to unsuspecting fans as the mythical, reclusive filmmaker. It wasn’t difficult since Kubrick didn’t do interviews or submit to photographs. If anyone questioned the deceptive Conway, he brushed it off, explaining he’d recently shaved off his beard. One after another, gullible, starstruck strangers allowed themselves to be fleeced, just for the opportunity of associating with the promiscuous homosexual whom they thought was Kubrick. Afterward, most of the victims were too embarrassed to press charges, so the scammer was able to keep operating, even when the real Stanley Kubrick found out. Eventually, when Conway brazenly struck up a restaurant conversation with New York Times writers Frank Rich and his wife, Alex Witchel, introducing himself as Kubrick, they became curious, confirming the suspicious of a London journalist (Robert Powell) who’d heard of Conway’s exploits. Written by Anthony Frewin, Kubrick’s former real-life assistant, and directed by Brian Cook, who assisted on “Barry Lyndon,” “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut,” it’s a series of vignettes that add up to an amusing portrait of a con-artist. Although it lacks the scope of impostor tales like “Catch Me If You Can” and “Shattered Glass,” it’s chameleon-like John Malkovich’s creepiest romp. He’s supported by talented Leslie Phillips, Honor Blackman, Ken Russell, Terence Rigby, Richard E. Grant, Luke Mably, Jim Davidson – and hilariously miscued Kubrick film music. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Color Me Kubrick” is a sly, bizarre 7 – a “true.ish” story.

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Meet the Robinsons

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Meet the Robinsons” (Disney)

When the New York Times ran a story about how Pixar’s John Lasseter (“Toy Story,” “Cars”), now the chief of animation for the Walt Disney Company, had restructured Stephen Anderson’s “Meet the Robinsons,” I realized the film must have had serious inherent problems – although, years ago, astute movie moguls, like Darryl F. Zanuck, routinely re-cut studio features that they felt didn’t quite make the grade. Indeed, in an era when we’ve come to expect animated features to entertain adults as well as children, this story of an orphan who builds a time machine in order to find his mother falls short. I suspect much of the confusion can be traced to seven – count ’em – screenwriters who tinkered around with a complex “moving forward” plot that encompasses abandonment, adoption, embarrassment and vengeance – in the past and present. The hero, 12 year-old Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen), was left at an orphanage when he was an infant. Since he’s a science geek (but not as cool as Jimmy Neutron), he tries to trace the mother he never knew. (Who his biological father was is hard to ascertain, kinda like with Anna Nicole Smith’s baby daughter.) Instead, Lewis is abruptly catapulted into a retro’ish, candy-colored Future World by friendly Wilbur Robinson (voiced by Wesley Singerman), whose eccentric, gregarious extended family takes him in. There’s a fiendish villain, of course, a sinister, mustache-twirling man wearing a malevolent bowler hat – known as the Bowler Hat Guy. The supporting vocal cast includes Angela Bassett, Tom Selleck, Ethan Sandler and Adam West. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Meet the Robinsons” is a frenetic, fanciful 5. When taking tots to see this G-rated ‘toon, go for Disney’s Digital 3-D and get those cool, dark glasses.

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Grindhouse

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Grindhouse” (Dimension Films)

In an affectionate homage to the deliberately tawdry exploitation movies of the 1960s and ’70s, directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have collaborated on this flashy double-feature which captures all the sensationalism and over-the-top violence which characterized that low-budget genre. “Grindhouse” contains two distinctly different blood-and-guts stories, separated by fake “Coming Attractions” for low-budget thrillers that promise more nudity, lewdness and weirdness.
In Rodriguez’ “Planet Terror,” Wray, a traveler, played by Freddy Rodriguez, finds himself in a town that’s suddenly overrun by alien zombies. Rose McGowan is Cherry, a go-go dancer who has lost a leg and is called upon to save the universe with a machine gun mounted in her prosthetic limb. (Match that Heather Mills!). In Tarantino’s “Death Proof,” Kurt Russell plays macho Stuntman Mike, a psychotic serial killer who goes after women in his skull-emblazoned vintage Chevy Nova. Rosario Dawson is Lindsay Lohan’s makeup/hair artist, working on a cheerleader movie that Mike is stalking. She and her cohorts (Zoe Bell, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wreak vengeance in their stolen Dodge Challenger. (Lohan herself does not appear in the movie at all.) Completing this grotesque, three-plus hour anthology are a multitude of allusions and references to the screen characters and pop culture motifs of that bygone era when downtown movie theaters, called Grindhouses, ran double and triple B features, non-stop, rotating perhaps seven different films each week. And stalwart supporting actors like Bruce Willis, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Michel Biehn, Jeff Fahey and Naveen Andrews frolic in the deservedly R-rated bloodshed and gore. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Grindhouse” is a deliberately cliché-filled, hyper-sleazy 7. What’s most terrifying is that this cinematic concept could become a franchise. What’s next? Kung fu, blaxpoitation, sexploitation, you name it.

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Blades of Glory

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Blades of Glory” (Paramount Pictures)

After “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights,” Will Ferrell now adds ice-skating star to his list of caricatures.
Ferrell and Jon Heder (“Napoleon Dynamite”) play rival figure skaters who are stripped of their gold medals and banned from skating solo after brawling on the victory stand after tying for first place at the World Championships but find a loophole that allows them to come back into competition as the first-ever pair of male skaters. Coached by Craig T. Nelson (“Coach”), their unorthodox routine includes a risky maneuver called the Iron Lotus, which has only been attempted in competition once before – and one partner was decapitated. Their European rivals are played by Will Arnett (“Arrested Development”) and Amy Poehler (“Saturday Night Live”), a bickering, vaguely incestuous brother/sister team who are determined to sabotage them. Screenwriters Jeff Cox, Craig Cox, John Altschuler and David Krinsky guilelessly lift the plot from “The Cutting Edge” (1992), while rookie directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon, who created Geico’s memorable TV commercials, pile on the goofy, stumbling slapstick. “Talladega Nights” had Sacha Baron Cohen (before “Borat”), so this has skating champion Sasha Cohen. There are plenty of spoofs of the glitzy, glittering, genteel figure-skating world and cameos by real-life Olympians Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton and Nancy Kerrigan. While Tonya Harding, whose 1994 attack on Kerrigan garnered extensive tabloid coverage, is conspicuously missing, Poehler threatens to break Ferrell’s leg “beneath the knee and above the ankle” and Arnett pursues Ferrell with a steel pipe. Off-screen, Ferrell has vociferously complained about wearing “the dance belt,” which “hides everything but is not a fun trip.” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Blades of Glory” glides in with a silly, satirical 6, skating on thin ice.

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