Had they paid better attention, they would see that M. Night penned the story, not even the script, while directing credits go to Quarantine brothers John Erick and Drew Dowdle. It is clear that people are fed up with Shyamalan, especially after the unforgivable The Last Airbender, however I think we can learn a lot about this reaction.

First off, the whole celebrity attachment thing is getting to be a bit much, especially when even the press isn’t always taking the time to look at who directed a film. I saw a great deal of misreportage — no, not on blogs — about Robert Rodriguez directing Predators, which is entirely untrue. Nimród Antal worked closely with Rodriguez to be sure, but the buck ultimately stops with the director.

Of course, Rodriguez is a name you want attached to a film like that. Viewers are clearly over M. Night’s trickery, but people should remember his beginnings. Shyamalan is a man of many talents who, most would argue, has been corrupted by his fame. He started as a writer and is an extremely gifted storyteller, so I think the move to bringing his story to another director is perfect. Perhaps we will even see him move away from the camera on more projects so he can slowly win back the hearts and minds of the horror and thriller fans he has (not really) betrayed.

That being said, an entire film that takes place in an elevator is very easy to screw up. So we’ll just have to wait and see. The trailer itself looks pretty wonderful.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYy7igKD21A

I haven’t seen SATC2 yet, so one really ought to take my thoughts with a grain of salt. I’ve enjoyed the smattering of episodes of the series that I’ve seen and I found the first film funny, if grating. New York on film holds a place dear to my heart. It seems even its most gifted celluloid sculptors have had trouble reproducing it in the last decade (I’m talking to you, Woody Allen). The dialogue around this latest fantasia, as Ms. Dargis points out, is largely related to questions of ethnocentricity and racial sensitivities:

To borrow a tactic from the TV show, which invariably featured Carrie posing the week’s Big Question to her readers: Was “Sex” actually 50 percent worse the second time around? Not from where I was seated, though I happily concede that the sequel is about as bad as the original. They’re just lousy in different ways. The new sex puns (“Lawrence of my labia”) are as wince inducing as the old, and Mr. King’s direction remains strictly small screen. What has changed are the locations: in the first film, the friends visit Mexico (funny!), but this time, they yuk it up in the Middle East (not funny!). But what has really changed? The characters, the critics, the context: how quickly yesterday’s pleasure can pop, just like an economic bubble.

I have to agree with her. Like Michael Bay’s Transformers 2 before it, this film makes the perfect target for any number of derisions. Mexico is funny because we don’t mind getting a little racist when it comes to our neighbors to the south. When it comes to the Middle East, we tread softly because of national tensions and, honestly, personal fears. So I’ll give Manohla, and this film, that much.

Where I get annoyed, however, is in her closing:

This and other scenes of the women with Muslims are often awkward, though that’s partly a function of Mr. King’s direction. Yet there’s also something touching about a few of these encounters, as when the women wonder how you eat fries when you’re wearing a veil, a question that strikes me as an uncharacteristically honest admission of difference in a mainstream American movie. Too bad the women weren’t guys and went to Las Vegas, where they could have indulged in the kind of critically sanctioned masculine political incorrectness that made “The Hangover” such a darling.

I did not like The Hangover all that much, and I completely agree with her sentiment that masculine stupidity often goes unquestioned onscreen. However, that doesn’t exactly make for much of an excuse. The first Sex and the City film was lauded for its ability to rake in millions while boasting a cast of female leads, a rarity in this business. The same goes for the show, though it should be noted that today (not in 1998 when the show first aired) women are in control of television programming in a big way. Phenomena like Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives are a testament to this shift.

Regardless, does the status of Carrie and pals offer leeway on their level of political correctness? For my part, no. Nor should it let The Hangover guys off the hook, but the difference there seems to be that that film knew exactly what it wanted to be. If SATC2 actually is a bad film, then hopefully it is a bad film on merit alone. We should not forget that we now live in a world where a woman has won an Oscar for Best Director, and for a film with no female leads. I think it is short sighted to chalk negative reactions up to critical sexism.

But I haven’t seen the film and I’m a dude, so what do I know?

Unlike some other 2009 blockbuster, screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have crafted a legitimate origin story for the franchise. The film opens with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock as children on their respective planets showing a distinct promise of greatness. Over the years, the Star Trek galaxy has become so vast that the characters within it seem to have shrunk in stature, considered more to be model citizens of the Federation than anything more. By focusing on the early years of these two shipmates, Mr. Abrams is emphasizing that Kirk, Spock and their cohorts are not the norm; they are extraordinary; they are superheroes. Continue reading at the candler blog.

Drugs, guns, vulgarity and rims are just the tip of the pigeonholed iceberg that is Benny Boom’s feature debut, Next Day Air; but what this little caper has that so many other films of a similar ilk lack is heart, and lots of it.

The improbable story follows ten bricks of cocaine from a formidable drug dealer in Calexico, California to his dispatcher in Philadelphia by way of an overnight delivery service, Next Day Air. Donald Faison, of Scrubs fame, plays Leo Jackson, a chronically stoned delivery man for the fictitious company, whose mind is so clouded on the job that he delivers the coke to apartment 302 instead of 303, setting events in motion. The drugs end up in the hands of fledgling criminals Guch, Brody and Hassie instead of the diminutive yet feisty Jesus, who prefers to be called “Gee-sus” rather than “Hay-zoos”. While Hassie is sleeping on the couch, as he is for the most of the film, Guch and Brody, played with an incredible balance of humor and charisma by Wood Harris and Mike Epps, respectively, hatch a plan to sell the dope to Brody’s cousin, Shavoo, before the rightful owners get wise to the mistake. Think of it like True Romance but without white people and set in Philly. Continue reading at the candler blog.

The film opens with a hint of promise in northwestern Canada in 1845. A sickly young James Logan, who is to become our Wolverine, accidentally kills his biological father (who had just killed his adopted father!) with his newly discovered retractable bone claws and runs off to the woods. There, another boy, Victor, who we just learned is in fact James’s brother, is waiting. They run off together, promising never to separate and to never go back.

As it turns out, Victor is a mutant just like James. He will grow up to become who X-heads will recognize as Sabretooth, though filmgoers will never know that as he is never bestowed a fabulous nom de guerre as our hunky Logan is (Wolverine, rawr). Since their main power is the ability to cheat death, they live on through history, though oddly, United States history. For whatever reason, these two mutant Canucks fight in every major U.S. war of the last two centuries. This confusion is compounded by the question: if they are immortal, why did they choose to stay thirty-five forever? Normally I might gloss over these niggles, but this is an origin story after all; these are the questions we need answers to. Continue reading at the candler blog.

There is only one thing not to love about Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman: the very serious hunk of jarlsberg that must be downed while watching it. Certainly, the film reeks of early 1990s overwritten performance-vehicle sentimental pieces of cheese whiz. But that goes down much better if you take it with a grain of salt.

Al Pacino, obviously, offers up an amazing performance as the blind and aging Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade. There are obvious reasons why the performance is memorable (hell, the guy hardly blinks on camera) but the real meat of it comes out during the smaller moments, like his near collapse on Park Avenue or his first interview of the young Charlie Simms, sitting, lecturing from an obfuscated armchair. We are as blind to his existence as ours is to him.

Speaking of Charlie Simms, Chris O’Donnell is charming as the impressionable young bumpkin. Neither a starry eyed fish out of water nor an farmboy who is too dumb to function, Mr. O’Donnell slips into the role of a confused 17 year old perfectly. He provides the perfect looking glass through which to see Lt. Slade’s wild trip through his psyche.

Cinematography is simple and classic: heavy on the warm tones, a generally flat palette with a nice use of haze on wider shots. There is a rather odd wide angle used at the end just fit all those reformatory boys onto the screen. Editing is better than we think. There is a great deal of talking in this film, and at over 150 minutes the pace between the cuts must keep our attention during everyone’s diatribes.

Also of note: Philip Seymour Hoffman as the smarmy George Willis. With only limited screen time, the young Mr. Hoffman manages to spin out a great little character. Watching him try to manipulate the school’s disciplinary committee while his father breathes down on him is really something to behold. Bradley Whitford also offers up his weasley best midway through.

Great? Nah. Watch it? When it comes on TV, check it out.

The film follows Rose Lorkowski, played by Amy Adams, a down on her luck single mother in Albuquerque who makes ends meat by cleaning houses. Rose’s sister, Norah, is a former punk-kid who never grew up, can’t hold down a job, and lives with their idiosyncratic father, played with respectable charm by Alan Arkin. When Rose’s police officer boyfriend, who is married, tells her how much money there is to be made in cleaning up messy crime scenes, a lightbulb goes off and the tiny glint of a plot begins to form. Of course, the two sisters start a business cleaning up crime scenes while dealing with their own emotional hangups.

Duplicity

Mr. Owen and Ms. Roberts play Ray Koval and Claire Stenwick, two former state spies who take corporate intel positions at competing household products firms, Equikrom and Burkett & Randle (B & R). When B & R leaks the existence of a top secret project, the game is on to see who can get to the spoils first. That is really all I can put down here to keep the film interesting for you, so let’s dive into the meat of it. Keep Reading at the candler blog.

The story follows two men, Daniel Archer and Solomon Vandy. The first is a white diamond smuggler and self-proclaimed soldier of fortune played by Leonardo DiCaprio. The second, played by Djimon Hounsou, is a black fisherman who becomes entangled in both Sierra Leone’s civil war and the international diamond trade when his village is attacked by rebels. They are both African, and that is the point.

It seems as though Mr. Zwick sets out to make Gone With The Wind on every outing. He finds singular bits of schmaltz amid nations brought to the brink of armageddon and uses them as his macguffin to, well, blow a bunch of shit up and teach us all a lesson by the end of the pummeling. If ever this tactic works, it works best in Blood Diamond. Most of where this film stands apart is in the actind. Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Hounsou bring a great deal of heart to the table. Archer as the cold hearted cynic who, surprise, lightens up a bit by the end, and Vandy as the loving man-child who dreams for a simpler world, where he could live in peace with his family.

My favorite moments in this film is a scene where Archer must pretend to be a journalist and Vandy must pose as his cameraman so that they may get a free ride towards the giant diamond around which the film centers. Bear in mind, at the point, Vandy has lost his family, his home, and he has very litttle to gain by finding the diamond anyhow. Still, he pulls Archer aside and yells at him “I cannot do this!” He is referring to lying. The scene is both heart-warming and heart breaking, but in the end I found myself chuckling. The film would be better with more of this, but that is all we get.

I absolutely recommend giving this one a viewing if you haven’t yet.