Ian T. McFarland

Just because National Treasure: Book of Secrets isn’t that great of a film doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see it.  It’s not a classic and I don’t know if I would even classify it as art; but it’s all sorts of fun in a season full of pretentious movies without any thrills.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
3 Stars

Man, there are all sorts of conspiracy theories in this country.  I knew that.  What I didn’t know, until I saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets that is, is that apparently, they’re all a part of one giganto collective super conspiracy woven throughout all time, and conveniently packaged for edutainment (of course it’s a word!).  Okay, maybe not every claim in the movie, such as the real-life whereabouts   of the El Dorado, is based in fact; but the solid planting of fact throughout the film is what makes this movie so much fun – the idea that history can be just as exciting as Transformers, and anyone can be thrilled by the experience.

After discovering the founding father’s treasure in part one of the series, part two picks up with Nicolas Cage‘s character Ben Gates’, and that character’s father’s (Jon Voight), name being tarnished by that asshole Ed Harris.  By bogusly interpreting some historical evidence, his character hopes to trick Gates into finding – wait for it – a NATIONAL TREASURE.  And thus sets off the wild goose hunt that is another National Treasure flick.

Though it’s far off from the Best Of the Year lists that have started flooding the internets, it’s also a good distance off from being a bad movie.  The historical aspect of the film is a more than amusing- the mixture of fact and fiction is sweet to the taste, and the characters’ love of history is somehow charming.  The actors are having a good time, like Voight, Cage or the stereotypical sidekick character played by Justin Bartha.  The character could just as easily been played as that annoying tech geek that no one actually likes that shows up in most action movies; but Bartha nails every one of his wisecracks, and is perfectly charming.  The movie is just thrilling enough until the final act, when you’ll look down and realize the tension on the screen has you wringing your fingers, in giddy apprehension of the fate of the good guys.  Director Jon Turteltaub, a veteran of the first film, clearly knows what he’s doing here, and he’s not trying to do anything more than he has to.  From start to finish, he makes this a simple, family thriller whose only aim is to be fun, and maybe a little cool.  There’s no subtext (aside from a couple of off-handed remarks on the state of affairs in our State today,) and it’s not trying to change your mind either.  It’s just a fun time.

But don’t get too excited – there are some definite flaws.  The pacing is fast, to ensure that not even the youngest of audience members’ minds begin to wander onto any other pertinent topics like Santa, video games or how gross girls are.  Maybe that pace is a good thing for the second-graders out there, but it means the movie feels rushed to anyone with a mature attention span; and, for a movie that relies on facts that few know off the top of their head, it can be difficult to follow the story and the logic of the characters.

Men like Turteltaub deserve some credit.  Their movies aren’t going to win any awards; but their not in it for the recognition.  They’re not trying to revolutionize the medium of movies, they just want to give people a great way to waste two hours.  Well, Mr. Turteltaub, for what it’s worth, I was glad to let you waste my time.

• Title: Margot at the Wedding
• Rating: 4.5 Stars
• IMDB: link

The best dramas are the ones that make you fall for the characters, and because of this Margot at the Wedding is one of the best dramas of the year.  Sweet and funny in even some of its darkest moments, it’s a movie that fully exploits character developments and relationships without ever hinting at becoming sappy.

The plot is simple enough – Margot (Nicole Kidman) ventures back home from the big city for the wedding of her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the sporadically depressed but endearing Malcolm (Jack Black).  It might sound like a joyous occasion, but it’s anything but, thanks to the inability of Margot to just shut up and love her family.  Never content with herself or her surroundings, she constantly criticizing everyone within eyeshot, descending from her high throne of a New York socialite, a writer who spends more time analyzing the world than she ought to.  Blithely and sneeringly, she can put down her sister’s confidence, fiancé and pregnancy inside of a single breath.  She’s really a disgusting person, but it’s clear that she’s aware and haunted by her repulsive behavior.

…

A ‘Wedding’ Worth AttendingRead More »

Dude, guns are awesome.  Seriously, they’re flickin’ sweet.  So can you make an entire movie comprised of almost nothing but people shooting guns at each other?  You can, and it’s called Shoot ‘Em Up.  But can you make a really good movie comprised of almost nothing but people shooting guns at each other?  I guess you’ll just have to read the review to find out. . .

Shoot ‘Em Up
3 Stars

It’s a good time to be a guy at the movies.  With the unexpected success of movies like 300 and Transformers, movies with excessive amounts of violence, style and entirely unneeded female nudity are going to start to flood the marketplace.  Shoot ‘Em Up is easily lumped in with these ultra-macho flicks, but is it too busy being a man’s movie to work on the whole?

Clive Owen plays Smith, an other-wise average guy that happens to be able to be so good with guns, that they’re practically an extension of his arms.  He’s minding his own beeswax one night at a bus stop, enjoying a carrot; when out of nowhere a pregnant damsel runs by, distressed by the dozens of hit men out for the life of her and her womb’s.  Realizing he should probably do the right thing, Smith is dragged into trying to save the woman, failing and being stuck with the task of keeping her freshly delivered bundle of joy out harm’s way.  Eventually Monica Bellalucci joins in on the fun, and we have a happy family of a gun-slinger, a prostitute and an orphan.  To be sure, it’s a picture for the whole family.

While Owen is perfectly reserved and angry as the easily annoyed hard-ass who doesn’t give a fuck; this show belongs to Paul Giamatti as the smug family man whose business trips consist of offing people that the highest bidder wants offed.  Giamatti is disgusting here, snobbily muttering off his dialogue under his breath out of his round and stubbled face.  We all knew that the guy can play a serious role like few others can, but now we see that the Sideways star can do exploitation as well as fine drama.  The guy can shout “Fuck you, you fucking fucker!” like it’s no one’s business.

But as great as the performances are, the film’s entire purpose for being is the violence.  The stuff is so histrionic and unbelievable, it’s probably closer in line with Looney Toons than most action vehicles Hollywood throws our way, with gun-fights erupting on playgrounds and a few thousand feet in the air.  Realism isn’t this movie’s thing, but entertainment is – the set-ups for these segments are riotously far-fetched, so unbelievable that only a five-year-old who still believes in the monster under his bed could think of the story as plausible.

But as insane as all of these scenes are, none of them reach their potential.  You laugh when you’re in the theater, but the stakes are non-existent and the action is too difficult to follow for this film to be memorable.  I saw this movie less than 24 hours before writing this review, and I’m already having a hard time recalling what exactly happened.  What with a murky political conspiracy that is hard to grasp and not a second’s rest to take everything in and realize how ridiculous it is, the movie spirals downward at the end to a point where the fact that Owen just used his own hand as a gun isn’t as interesting as it ought to be.

It might not be the movie that I had hoped it would be; but at a short and sweet 93 minutes, Shoot ‘Em Up a good enough time to spend a few bucks on.

If I remember correctly, I decided that I was going to love Superbad the second I heard the title.  Probably not a great thing for a critic to do, but at least I improperly fell in love with a movie that I can now justify falling in love with – Superbad is a romp through high school that, only one year removed from the institution, made me nostalgic for secondary education.

Superbad
4 Stars

You may have read my review of Knocked Up, in which I praised the film for being a hilarious but realistic look at the complications of real-life people and their relationships.  Well, with apologies for being one of the zillion film-goers that will easily compare these two Judd Apatow-produced films, but Superbad is Knocked Up for teenage guys who don’t care about anything else more than loosing their virginity and sobriety – a comedy that, though spiced up to be a wide-release summer movie – is still mostly a real-life look at two best friends.

Hey, do you remember that night in high school that you and your friends tried to impress some girls by buying them alcohol?  Maybe.  But do you remember that night in high school that you and your friends got hit by two cars, escaped the fuzz and danced with a girl who really felt the flow?  Probably not, so it’s a good thing we get an entertaining, outlandish but still grounded comedy like Superbad so that we can experience such a night.

We’ve got Michael Cera and Jonah Hill playing two guys trying to seal the end of their high school careers by nailing the dream girls, only to find many a hilarious obstacle thrown in their path.  Then, on the other side, we have first-time actor Christopher Mintz-Plasse playing the absolute geek who, amazingly enough, spends a Friday night with two cops drinking and tackling hobos.  Let me repeat that for you: “spends a Friday night with two cops drinking and tackling hobos.”  Okay, if the end of that sentence wasn’t enough for you to decide that you need to see Superbad, I don’t think any other clause I could write will be, so don’t be afraid to stop reading this review entirely.

Screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have been writing a the script since they were in high school ten years ago, and it shows.  The final product is packed with so many flawlessly executed jokes, there’s no way even the funniest screenwriters today could have written this script in any less time.  Though the first act primarily serves to set up the characters and their mind sets, it continually adds more and more laughs per minute until you the end, at which point you can’t believe how much your roaring, doubled up in your seat.  The humor mostly comes out of the dialogue of the actors, but for Mintz-Plasse’s character’s story, just the set-up is enough to make you howl your lungs out.  Every laugh is outrageous, but still possible enough; and thanks to the strong characters and their actors, it it all works in the end.

There’s no ass that’s easier to kiss in Comedy than that of Judd Apatow, so I can’t help but feel like a tool for heaping on another load of big wet ones on his newest film.  But you know what, when that ass belongs to a guy who is behind the majority of all the notable comedies from the past few years, consider these lips taken.