Discount Shelf Ratings: One-Minute Reviews

I am a victim of being seduced by the potentials of the discount sell shelfs at Hollywood Video and Blockbuster. A few recent buys, and a couple of reviews I never got around to that came out too far back to be mentioned as anything new make it here in my quick-reviews.

In no particular order...

1.) The Descent - Alien meets cave divers in this british horror film. After Sarah loses her family in a car crash, her friends try to get her back into the adventurous side of life by going cave exploring. Not far into the cave, both Sarah and the audience starts to see things in the distance. Then the cave collapses, causing them to look for a way out when they are suddenly attacked by cave-dwellers, a small clan of deformed, de-evolved crawlers out for blood. The great use of setting has the audience thinking they're seeing things in the shadows, develop castrophobia, and slowly watch the climbers degrade mentally and physically to the attacks and peril. What seperates this movie from the previous deep-cave movies is the psychological, where as we go deeper into the cave, we go deeper into Sarah's mind, where the simplest dialogue says alot when it is hinted Juno, the most adventurious of the women, had an affair with Sarah's husband before his death. I approve this movie, without a doubt the best horror film of 2006. The alternate endings are worth the DVD, as the theatrical release confused most audiences, the British ending is just as good.

2.) Black Christmas - While we're on horror, I went into this movie with low expectations, was pleasantly surprised, but the final half hour of the movie sent it too far into the traditional dead teenager movie. Black Christmas is a remake of the movie that followed Halloween and other holiday based movies of the 1970s. It stars a cast of many horror beauties, such as Mean Girls' Lacey Chabert, Final Destination 3's Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Final Destination's Kristen Cloke. The movie's strong points are its beauties, any of which could be the star of their own horror flick, and leaves us guessing some about who will live. The flashbacks of the killer's childhood in what is now the beauties sorority house is the real horror, as we see family disfunction taken to an extreme, including incest and cannibalism to the point it is grossly funny in a good way. However, when the flashbacks end, we're left with a horror flick that falls to the cliche, having to kill people one by one rather quickly to meet its kill quota within allowed time. The movie even pulls the "dead... oh, wait!... not dead" trick with it's killer. In fact, it does this twice at the same time, after doing a milder version of the trick a few minutes earlier. The cast defies logic more than most stupid teenagers in a horror movie, then the writer's defy logic with not allowing their killer to die, time and again. Then, alas, he is killed too easily by a Christmas decoration. I hate it when that happens to the tree. Not approved.

3.) Smokin' Aces - Good news: This film lived up what its trailer advertised. Bad News: That's all it lived up to. When various teams of hitmen, FBI agents, assassins, mercaneries, and bailbondsmen go at an Mafia copa turned informant for the Witness Protection Program for the $1 million on his "heart," everyone makes their way up to the Penthouse Suite of a single hotel locked, loaded, and on fire. Add three speed-freaked skinheads and you get the idea of how out of control it is. Every fighter has a distinct style, which works for making them a diverse group to go at each other, and the set-up worth the time it takes to introduce each of them, so how some sneak, others sleether, and a few just shoot their way in. But when the bullets fly, not very many people die. Too often one person or the other is saved by a near miss, or left at just the right time. A few just happen to bump into each other, but it seems like it always takes the second bumping into someone to get them killed. When a dozen of these killers and agents go into a gunfight and half of them walk out, limping at worse, the movie loses its edge. Instead of killing off some of its characters, the movie goes on to a small twist on who the informant and mafia truly are in an attempt to provide closure. Maybe the director felt he was making a movie about how bad violence is, only he felt this way AFTER it was set up for an action and revenge movie. Credit for the style, but it loses it's edge after the last shot when we're still wanting more shooting. Not approved.

4.) Breach - If the words "worse security breach in the history of the United States," doesn't get your attention, this isn't the movie for you. If you're looking for a thiller, you might want to watch something else first. The movie succeeds in its quick documentary style, where the close attention to detail keeping the story true makes it entertaining. Ryan Philipe plays Eric, a quiet, yet ambitious clerk at the FBI looking to make agent. He is assigned to look for signs of sexual diviation while working under veteran agent Robert Hannsen, wonderfully played by Chris Cooper. Eric grows to be annoyed by, yet admire and learn from Hannsen and his strict Catholic lifestyle. 40 minutes into the film, Eric learns what active footage told us in the first minute: Hannsen is a spy for the Russians, whose damage is in the billions and cost the US various lives over the course of many years. Laura Linney plays the investigating agent who assigned Eric, and describes Hannsen best, "He spent years outsmarting the Russians. He's smarter than all of us." The movie has flaws as a thriller. If it was made to thrill us, as it is advertised, the first 40 minutes are terribly uneventful. Then it shows its cards too early. We're led to believe Hannsen is onto Eric's assignment early on, which defies logic later on when Eric does what would have caused suspicion. It's as though Hannsen convinced himself between scenes to forget Eric might be watching him. The acting is what makes this movie. Philipe shows he can act, despite what Cruel Intentions might say otherwise. Cooper's performance as Hannsen is Oscar-worthy, what makes me approve this movie. Whatever it lacks as a thriller, it makes up for as a character study into Hannsen as a guilt-ridden, overlooked traitor who was screwed by the politics of the Bureau. Philipe presents a man torn between his job, his wife, and the dangers surrounding him as he must time and again try to fool the fool-proof. Watching this a second time, I payed closer attention to the characters and the presentation of the true events, which is how the film is set up. Ignore the misleading trailers and watch this for great performances on the anatomy of the greatest betrayal in US history, right next to Benedict Arnold. I approve this movie.

5.) Stranger Than Fiction - Best Comedy of 2006. Will Farrell departs himself from the clown roles in Talledga Night and Blades of Glory for a serious role (we get to laugh at him) as an uptight IRS auditor who has a difficult time with his affection towards his auditee, a rebelious baker played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. To make matters worse, he's being narrated by a chain-smoking writer, who unknownly tells him his life, only with a better vocabulary. Emma Thompson is the narrator, a chain-mosking desperate for a way to kill character Crick. Her comedy is formed in contrast to the more conventional assistant, played by Queen Latifah. Crick is haunted by the voice, frustrated to the point of seeking out a literary expert, played with wonderful coy by Dustin Hoffman. Little does Crick know, as he finds she intends to kill him off in the story (therefore naturally in real life), he must find out whether he is in a comedy (gets hitched) or a tragedy (gets killed), try to win over his beloved baker, and figure out the meaning of his so-far mundane existance of counting brush-strokes and calculating time. The movie is a successful blend of romantic-comedy, supernatural-comedy, literary jokes, and reflecting on the meaning of life. Also, it has various Beatles references, which I don't know what the significance is. The movie's reflection is insightful and simple, not distracting from the story. In the end, you will leave laughing and wanting to make more of your life having seen a film entertaining, memorable, and worth sharing. I fully approve this movie.


6.) Crank - Out of The Transporter (one and two), I find Crank to be the better suited of Jason Statham roles. Statham plays Chev Chelios, a top-level hitman who gets major recoil from a hit on a triad when he wakes up to feeling of being injected with a deadly drug. The drug shuts off the perceptors that tell the heart when it needs to speed up, so Chelios' only hope is to find every way to get his adrenaline going. That means energy drinks, stunts, sex, and drugs to keep him going, literally keeping in mind the doctor's warning: "You stop, you die." He sorts out his enemies in between entertaining ways to stay alive and kicking, also stopping to confess his profession and dire situation to his girlfriend, and working his way up for revenge for his upcoming death by heart failure. Usually this movie would be cliche and no different than the previous Transporter films, but here Statham can let go and be the bad guy at times. The language and violence goes for humorous, with everything to severed hand-jokes to having a character with a deathwish willing to defy logic. Desperate attempts to keep the heart beating are humorous and adventurous, keeping the simple plot entertaining. Statham is well casted, as any other actor would probably be less believable in quick-and-over-with-action scenes. The camera-work really seperates the film, as the editing, special-effects and sound are all used, either exagerrated or slowed to reflect Chelios' heartrate and state of mind, so they're passible if not humorous or adding to the film. A family-friendly language setting is available on the DVD in case you don't like so many F words, but the violence, language, and words referring to gays and ethnic groups may not be for everyone, so keep in mind the reasons why I say it's a good movie before you think it would be good for a date. More appealing for the action, guy film to watch with the buds. I approve this movie.

7.) Lucky # Slevin - Slevin is what happens when a movie gets too caught up in its own plot. Josh Hartnett is Slevin, who has the unfortunate luck of being mistaken for Eddie by the two rival mob bosses (Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley) that Eddie owes a very large sum of money to. Helping Slevin figure all this out is Lucy Liu, the attractive girl down the hall. Behind it all is something to do with Bruce Willis as Mr. Goodcat, who is talking to both mob bosses. The problem with this movie? It introduces itself for a twist, with Bruce Willis talking about a Kansas City Shuffle, when everyone dances one way and you dance the other. You look one way while the whole movie goes the other. The thin line between twist (acceptable)
and spin (gone too far) is whether or not the movie pulls out what you liked about it. We like Slevin in his not-stressed, orphan self, getting the girl and everything, and we like the mob bosses when they're playing the stereotypes, espically Kingsley as "the Rabbi," to which Slevin asks, "how can you be a Rabbi and a gangster?" The answer: "Whenever you're on both sides of the fence, the grass is always green." Not in this movie. It tries to have it both ways, but when the mob bosses go too vengeful and Slevin isn't such a nice guy, we stop caring who wins, who loses, and in this case, who dies. There's an alternate ending, who's a killer and who's being killed is changed. However, after watching the alternate ending, I realized I didn't care if they lived or died, or who killed them, because I no longer enjoyed watching any of them after the basis of their characters were completely removed. I don't approve this movie.

Thanks,
--Jack