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Elmore Leonard’s Be Cool is a novel turned to film full of odd funny characters who have a small habit for getting caught up with gangsters, the Russian mafia, small-time wanna b’s and an eclectic mix of peculiars. Be Cool is part 2 that showcases Chili Palmer (John Travolta), a cool ex-loan shark who has adorned a big-time movie producer persona and finds yet another interest in being an even bigger music producer.

Cool
2 & 1/2 Stars

Elmore Leonard’s Be Cool is a novel turned to film full of odd funny characters who have a small habit for getting caught up with gangsters, the Russian mafia, small-time wanna b’s and an eclectic mix of peculiars. Be Cool is part 2 that showcases Chili Palmer (John Travolta), a cool ex-loan shark who has adorned a big-time movie producer persona and finds yet another interest in being an even bigger music producer.

Released on DVD June 28

In the sequel Chili Palmer wants to give up the movie business and finds an interest in the music industry. Chili gets his motivation from Tommy Athens (James Wood), a music producer who tries to pitch Chili on a new movie, he has always had an interest in Tommy’s wife Edie (Uma Therman) and Tommy has been shot down in cold blood so what better time than now to get into Tommy’s business and his spot next to Edie in bed. Thanks to Tommy’s lead with Linda Moon (Christina Milian), a stellar R&B artist, Chili moves forward with stealing her from Raji (Vince Vaughn), the wanna be music producer and his boss Nick Carr (Harvey Keitel). Of course, Chili does nothing by the books or by the rules, he walks in and says her contract is over and now she works for me. Needless to say Nick isn’t too happy with this situation and tries to have Chili knocked off and the Russians who killed Tommy is after him too. Chili, trying to avoid death and casualy running things with Edie, moves forward with a hit and a little help from Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. I almost left out Sin LaSalle (Cedric the Entertainer) and Dabu (Andre 3000) producer and rapper for the posse DubMD’s, Tommy owed them money too and Chili is trying to avoid their hit list also. After dodging all those bullets and hit men, Chili produces the perfect album with a little help from Sin Lasalle and Edie. Everybody gets what’s coming to them in the end and all ends well that didn’t start too well.

John Travolta as Chili Palmer, he’s just to cool for words. Be Cool is a far cry from it’s predecessor Get Shorty, but it stands on it’s own. Travolta and Thurman are heating up the dance floor once again, o-yeah! The Rock is awesome, he really has some acting chops and Vince Vaughn is a laugh-out-loud riot. Can’t forget Cedric the Entertainer, playing a high class well educated gangster producer, what a cast. Based on the novel, Be Cool, is a load more fun to watch than to read. Parts are pretty cheesy, but if you can get past that then it’s smooth sailing from there. Chili is awesome; sorry couldn’t come up with a better word. I could see where this character could go in many directions, but if they did that it would be lame. No one wants to see Be Cool or Get Shorty part 20. Stopping with where they are at should work out just fine. There are too many parts to explain how funny this movie truly is. How can anybody go wrong; there is an actor for everybody’s taste, there’s hot, sexy, talented, short, hairy, tall, strong, weak, funny, ugly, Russian, straight, gay, gangster, mafia, music, bad movies, and even a picture of Tom Hanks. The list literally goes on and on. Don’t take my word for it, be cool and rent it for yourself.

As with most sports films, you know how the final game ends up. What makes it such a treat is how director Robert Aldrich gets you there. The Longest Yard jumps from comedy to sports film to drama with equal ease, and the level of cynicism and bleakness inside each jumps out with alarming intensity. This is the film for football fans, and anyone interested in catching the upcoming Adam Sandler remake should skip the theater and just give the far superior original a go.

The Longest Yard: Lockdown Edition
4 & 1/2 Stars

Burt is dead sexy

When people think of the great sports movies, football-themed films are always conspicuously absent from the list. Baseball, of course, rules the genre, with basketball and golf taking up the next two slots. So why, when football is such a massive part of American sports, are there no great movies about it? Well, to tell the truth, there is a great football movie, and no it’s not Any Given Sunday or Rudy. It’s the 1974 Burt Reynolds classic, The Longest Yard.

Seriously. Why? Well for one, it’s just a great movie. Man vs. The Man. Underdogs bucking authority for one last shot at dignity and pride. Great stuff, that. But most importantly it’s the football. The last 1/3 rd of The Longest Yard is the game between the Burt Reynolds led convicts and the prison guards and, if you took out the talky bits, it’s as if you’re watching a semi-pro game. It moves like a football game, and boy does it hit like one. They didn’t pull any punches filming this, and that shows up on the screen. Having the bulk of the teams comprised of ex football pros certainly makes it feel all the more real.

The gist of the story is this: former All Pro quarterback Paul Crewe hasn’t played a game since he was kicked out of the NFL for points shaving. Fed up with his kept life, he steals his gal’s car, tears through the city in a high speed chase, dumps the car in the bay, and then beats up two cops. Needless to say, he goes to jail. He ends up in Citrus State Prison, where the warden (a phenomenal Eddie Albert) has pulled some strings to bring the ex NFL great to his little facility in the hopes that Crewe will coach his guards’ semi-pro team to a national championship. Crewe refuses to help, but eventually agrees to lead a team of convicts against the guards in an exhibition match which Albert thinks will be an easy win for his law-lovin’ boys.

Boy, is he wrong. Crewe collects an assortment of violent offenders and near-sociopaths that manage to come together for their own pride, dignity, and a shot at crippling the guards who torment them every day.

As with most sports films, you know how the final game ends up. What makes it such a treat is how director Robert Aldrich gets you there. The Longest Yard jumps from comedy to sports film to drama with equal ease, and the level of cynicism and bleakness inside each jumps out with alarming intensity. This is the film for football fans, and anyone interested in catching the upcoming Adam Sandler remake should skip the theater and just give the far superior original a go.

What ever happened to Michael Keaton’s career?  Seriously folks, I’m asking you, the guy was Batman for cris’sake!  I can only assume that his latest film, White Noise, is a very loud and extremely painful cry for help from a guy who looks to be about one year away from doing gay porn.  I personally do not believe in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), contacting dead people through the static in your television, and I have to say the movie only made me sorry for those that do, which I sincerely doubt if that was the director’s objective.

White Noise
1/2 Star

What ever happened to Michael Keaton’s career?  Seriously folks, I’m asking you, the guy was Batman for cris’sake!  I can only assume that his latest film, White Noise, is a very loud and extremely painful cry for help from a guy who looks to be about one year away from doing gay porn.  I personally do not believe in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), contacting dead people through the static in your television, and I have to say the movie only made me sorry for those that do, which I sincerely doubt if that was the director’s objective.

Jonathon Rivers (Keaton) is a successful architect with a young son and a hot new second wife (Chandra West) who mysteriously disappears one night on her way home.  Paranormal expert Raymond Price (Ian McNeice) approaches Rivers and explains his wife is dead and trying to contact him through his television set.  At first Rivers is skeptical, but after his wife turns up dead, rather than going to the police, he buys into the guy’s rather flimsy story with ridiculous speed, never looking back.  He joins with Price and Sarah Tate (Deborah Kara Unger), a young woman who is trying to reach her dead fiance, into discovering what messages his wife is trying to send him from beyond the grave. 

Rivers becomes increasingly obsessed after hearing his wife on a tape Price plays for him; he buys thousands of dollars of computer equipment, recording equipment, television monitors, and VCRs to spend 20 hours a day recording looking for messages from his wife.  He totally ignores his job and his son, sending him off to live with his ex-wife.  After several attempts he discovers his wife always comes to contact him through the white noise at exactly 2:30 (am or pm seems to not matter to ghosts).  In her message she seems to warn him against some danger. 

Along with seeing his wife he also finds images of people in danger which he later discovers are people still alive that he has a chance to save if he follows the clues his wife has given him (I can’t believe I watched this whole movie!).  Also in the static are three mysterious strangers that have some stake or control in all of this very odd tale.  I won’t tell you anymore about them, not because there’s any kind of plot twist, but simply because that’s as far as these guys were developed.  Even from watching the director’s commentary I was unable to learn anything of interest about them, except that the director thought they were “really cool.”

The extras include 3 documentaries about EVP presented by the experts in the field.  As laughable as the movie is it looks sullen compared to these people walking around hotel rooms with microphones asking ghosts to talk to them.  One of the extras even shows you how you to can record voices from white noise, giving you lists of the equipment you will need and a nice step by step how to guide on how to record.  After watching moments of these extras I seriously wondered whether the makers of this DVD think EVP is complete crap and used this opportunity to let these people show how laughable their “science” is.

Also included are a commentary track with director Geoffrey Sax and Keaton which gives some nice shooting and production stories, but does nothing to explain this stupid, stupid script.  Of course a DVD wouldn’t be complete with out some useless deleted scenes with optional commentary by the director on why they weren’t worthy to be included in this gem of a movie.  Also included are some previews to movies you could be watching rather than this one.
As for the sound and picture quality they are what you would expect from a major studio DVD, with the optional different languages and subtitles. 

The problems in the movie are too numerous to go into much detail, but here are a few.  The movie never explains how people still alive are contacting Keaton’s character through the white noise that only the dead can use (let alone how the dead are doing it).  The three odd gentlemen/creatures are never developed nor explained, nor is the reason why all contact happens at exactly 2:30.  Rivers never once stops to consider he is being hustled, part of an elaborate hoax, or is going insane, all much better explanations for what happens than any given in the movie.  The police never think it’s suspicious when Keaton keeps ending up finding dead bodies, or when the people helping him turn up dead or injured.
The documentaries are unintentionally laugh out loud funny if you can manage to sit through them.  The seriousness that these people take to finding sounds in radio waves or television signals is just so bizarre you can only chuckle.

I can’t really recommend this to anyone; if you believe in EVP you won’t after watching this, and if you don’t you will just see this experience as a terrible waste of time.

One final note, the movie begins with a quote from Thomas Edison, who I honestly believe would have electrocuted himself on his first light bulb if he knew his name would ever be associated to such…….noise.

This is a rare case where I’ll say the re-make is better than the original, and Columbia TriStar really opened up the floodgates for this release.  Why they couldn’t put this version out originally, I’ve no clue outside of purely monetary reasons, but The Grudge: Unrated Director’s Cut should keep fans happy, and might be enough to convert those of us who didn’t give it a go the first time around.

The Grudge: Unrated Director’s Cut
3 Stars

Hollywood has opened Pandora’s Box with its recent slate of Asian Horror remakes.  Time will tell if fan’s appetites can stomach the upcoming Dark Water, but with the recent release of Ring 2, and the upcoming sequel to the Grudge remake, there seems to be no end in site of slick horror films showcasing creepy kids and women with long, black hair and bad posture.

I didn’t catch the Grudge re-make in the theaters, as I’d had an iffy reaction to the original (Ju-Oh).  So news that the Sarah Michelle Geller fueled remake would be utilizing the same sets, ghostly actors, and director didn’t really get me excited.  After sitting down with the upcoming Unrated Director’s Cut, I’m comfortable in my decision to stay away from the theater version, but I wasn’t wholly unhappy with the atmospheric thriller.

The Grudge tells the story of one very bad house.  Seriously, this place makes Amityville House look like Disney World in comparison.  Anyone who encounters the cursed house soon finds themselves contending with the murderous spirits of its previous occupants, and there ain’t nobody who’s a match for a cat-screeching little boy with pitch black eyes.  The film tells the stories of each of those poor souls who’ve walked in the wrong doorway.  Geller plays an exchange student who’s internship as a social aid worker brings her into contact with the home, and it’s through her that we learn the stories of each of the house’s victims who have all fallen before the unstoppable rage of it’s ghosts.

Plotwise The Grudge is paper-thin, but this is a movie more concerned with atmosphere and sheer creepiness than telling a cohesive story.  So while it certainly does the job in dispensing out the heebie-jeebies, you’re left feeling like you missed an integral part of the plot, when it wasn’t there to begin with.

This is a rare case where I’ll say the re-make is better than the original, and Columbia TriStar really opened up the floodgates for this release.  Why they couldn’t put this version out originally, I’ve no clue outside of purely monetary reasons, but The Grudge: Unrated Director’s Cut should keep fans happy, and might be enough to convert those of us who didn’t give it a go the first time around.

Released on DVD May 10He failed with bringing Sega videogame House of the Dead to the big screen, but hopefully director Uwe Boll finished his career with Alone in the Dark, yet another video game adaptation. This film is scary only on the bases that the studio thinks you should pay to see this horribly stupid catastrophy. What’s scarier yet is that I did pay to see it in the theater and now I am suffering through the DVD version; what I will sacrifice for our public. If this gives you any idea what you are in for, the film’s perspective is shared by the special effects coordinator John Sleep, who was responsible for the special effects on House of the Dead, Scary Movie 3 and Catwoman. I must say that those were pretty stellar films, NOT.

Alone in the Dark
Negative Stars

I must warn you that besides Uwe Boll and John Sleep with their proven bad taste, the film shares a crew with House of the Dead including producers, cinematographer, production designer, and art director; oh yes, you are in for a true treat here.

Any film that adds a pair of dark rimmed glasses to Tara Reid and assumes instant intelligent anthropologist, has serious issues. Tara Reid has one talent and one talent only, she looks hot to guys and drives women absolutely crazy. However, there is a couple of small perks to experiencing this close to crap film phenomenon and that is both Stephen Dorff and Christian Slater, not the best actors in the world, but certainly not bad to look at. Hey, they even figured out how to fit a sex scene in, Stephen and Christian were really hot in it, gotcha, the scene was between Tara and Christian. Yes, it was a little weird fitting in a love scene amongst monsters splattering humans in half and bullets blazing in the dark, but it was a necessary weakness.

That’s right I said it: bullets blazing. It was quite funny to see these weird demons of hell show up and not even 15 minutes later the Special Ops team, 7-13, would come crashing through the windows, heavy metal cued and fiery blazes of bullets sneaking past everybody only to hit the creatures. I am surprised that everybody didn’t get flattened by the stream of random ammo fire. Everything about this film failed, the premise, the acting, the style, all of it failed so bad that I must refer to the studios brief synopsis to explain the horror of yet another failed video game film.

You wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling someone is in the room with you. You get a flash of panic as you fumble for your bedside lamp. But when you turn on the light, no one is there.

“You wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling someone is in the room with you. You get a flash of panic as you fumble for your bedside lamp. But when you turn on the light, no one is there.”

“You might feel safe…but just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Watching. Waiting. Existing at the fragile boundaries of our perception. There is a world around us, a world most of us never see – or never want to see.”

“As a child, Edward Carnby was given irrefutable proof of that world. He hasn’t slept well since. Now, twenty years later, Edward is a paranormal investigator. When the irrational and the inexplicable become undeniable, he is there. He is not out to change your mind. But he may be the only one who can save your life.”

“Now, the greatest mystery of Edward’s past is about to become the most dangerous case he has ever faced. Nineteen people have disappeared, and they have only one thing in common – each one grew up in the same orphanage as Edward. Looking for answers, Edward learns that an ancient artifact of considerable power has been discovered in a long-lost shipwreck. Amidst mounting danger, he turns to Aline Cedrac, a brilliant anthropologist who’s also his ex-flame – and the only person he really trusts.”

“In a world of ancient evils, lost civilizations, shadowy government conspiracies, and deadly paranormal threats, Edward and Aline come together to confront a supernatural enemy unlike anything they’ve ever seen before…one whose very existence could threaten all of humankind.—© Lions Gate Films”

Wow, the studio was able to make it sound like a whole different film, I would love to see the one they just described above. I will give the film a fitting bonus to a different style of ending, it surely wasn’t expected. Oh, wait a moment, that same exact ending was on Resident Evil, sorry I tried to add something forgiving to this, but I couldn’t.

To sum this up, unless you are completely infatuated with really bad horror movies, a few low B-listed hot movie stars or enjoy DVDs just for the extras, DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME!