Nostalgia for the Light

There is no escaping the past in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where rain in some areas comes every 400 years. There is no humidity. No insects or plant life. Human remains are mummified, frozen in time. And the air is so thin astronomers can reach back millions of years.

Here, our strongest telescopes turn wheeling galaxies into spectacular light shows that trivialize the fantasies of Lucas and Spielberg. Distant planets seem close as apples on a backyard tree.

Not far from the desert’s gleaming white observatories, beautiful against blue sky, Chilean mothers till parched red soil with their arms and feet, looking for a reaching hand, a once useful leg – remains of a son or daughter who “disappeared” during Pinochet’s regime.

Patricio Guzmán’s documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same – a search for life.

The film is gorgeous, purposefully slow, almost a meditation. Guzmán tells us life in the Atacama Desert is an eternal book of memories. And he lingers on every page, capturing shots of constellations with the care of a master photographer. Imagine Ansel Adams, working in colour, let loose in the Milky Way.

At the same time, the filmmaker turns memories of desert victims into religious ceremony. An architect, one of 80,000 socialists imprisoned in the mid-1970s after General Augusto Pinochet led a coup d’état, tells how he paced the Chacabuco concentration camp, memorizing room sizes. Afterwards, alone in a cell, he translated the numbers into blueprints that might bear witness to the horror of Pinochet.

Another political prisoner remembers how he and friends would steal out at night, studying the sky with a makeshift telescope. How they felt drawn into heaven.

Just as astronomers’ telescopes go beyond our galaxy, filmmaker Guzmán’s gaze extends past the 20th century. Pinochet did not have to build Chacabuco. A hundred years earlier, workers were enslaved in desert camps and died mining salt that covered the soil like crusts of snow. The concentration camp where lawyers, doctors and writers were sent once housed Aymara and Mapuche Indians.

Although Nostalgia for the Light’s field of vision is deep, it’s also curiously narrow. Guzmán specializes in Chile’s recent history. His most famous efforts are The Battle of Chile and Salvador Allende. And he presumes the audience for his new film has seen those works. No effort is made to explain Pinochet’s overthrow of Allende’s democratically elected government.

Still, what he has done here is amazing to look at and important to consider. Guzmán’s message is simple: Vision is a gift that must be honoured with study and practice. He leaves us contemplating the words of a Chilean mother who continues to search for lost children. “I just wish the telescope didn’t just look at the sky, but could also see through the earth so that we could find them.”

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Rango Movie Review

Johnny Depp is wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

He seems to have mislaid his pants.

He has the head of a green lizard and is wandering, lost, in the sunbaked wasteland of the Nevada desert.

Just another day with Hunter S. Thompson.

Except this is not a scene from the life of Dr. Gonzo, or an outtake from Depp’s own tripping tribute, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It is, instead, from “Rango.” A new cartoon. For children.

Yes, when the going gets weird, Johnny Depp gets weirder.

Because, at a time when so many animated features take the safe, cuddly, Happy Meal approach, “Rango” proudly hitches its covered wagon to the mangy, bug-eyed look of Tex Avery, Big Daddy Roth, Basil Wolverton and long-gone underground “comix.”

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The slightly surreal animated story begins when a pet chameleon’s terrarium crashes in the desert — marooning him with a paper umbrella, a nude and headless Barbie and a wind-up fish.

So the little fellow starts walking, accompanied by an all-owl mariachi band — and finds himself in a town straight out of a Sergio Leone Western, complete with scrofulous villagers and low-life hired guns.

The Leone references soon start piling up (along with the Ennio Morricone musical cues). But there’s also a big nod to “Chinatown” (in its own way, a modern Western). And some odd, purely original touches — like a mystic armadillo — that come out of nowhere.

The originality may be deep in the DNA — Depp sometimes makes mistakes, but he never makes anything you’d expect him to, and director Gore Verbinski (who worked with him on the first few “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies) is making his first cartoon.

Even better, the movie uses animators from Industrial Light and Magic who are also new to extended feature-film work.

So what’s here doesn’t look like the perfect, spit-and-polish work we’re used to.

It’s its own thing — and sometimes, admitted, it gets lost in its own wanderings. The story easily could have been sped up by five or 10 minutes. And although the late appearance of one movie icon is fine, an invocation of “Apocalypse Now” is both old and off-track.

But Depp, happily disembodied, has a fine time with Rango, who — being a chameleon — is constantly assuming different identities, and he’s nicely partnered by the work of Isla Fisher, voicing his plucky pioneer love.

Adults and slightly older children should have a great time.

Will the movie appeal to the youngest toddlers? Probably not. Its rattlesnake villain is a little too scary and even its nicest characters are so ugly they’re likely to disgust small tots (and some of the indulgent adults who accompany them).

So as a safe, preschool matinee — yeah, it’s a little iffy.

But as a midnight movie, it’s going to have a long, long life.

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Sanctum Movie Review

"What could possibly go wrong diving in caves?" asks one of the newer members of an underwater expedition through one of the world's most breathtaking but least accessible cave systems.

She's about to find out the hard way, along with the rest of her ill-fated team, when a violent South Pacific storm cuts off their only known exit in the subterranean 3D adventure, Sanctum.

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Despite being presented by James Cameron and inspired by a real-life incident experienced by caver and co-scripter Andrew Wight, the thriller proves to be a considerably less harrowing experience than it might have been.

Banal dialogue, over-modulated performances and melodramatic scoring combine forces to sink the stirringly photographed proceedings quicker than that treacherous flash flood.

While Cameron's name and the mid-winter promise of an exotic 3D locale could give the $30 million production an initial boost, the only blue characters to be found here are the ones with hypothermia.

Set in the South Pacific's Esa'ala caves but actually filmed off Queenland's Gold Coast as well as in South Australian caves, the picture concerns the not necessarily unified efforts of the assembled crew, led by seasoned, headstrong master diver Frank (Richard Roxburgh), to find an alternate escape route.

Among those who aren't so great at taking orders are Frank's estranged 17-year-old son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield), an obnoxious American financier (Ioan Gruffudd) and his inexperienced girlfriend (Alice Parkinson).

With time quickly running out in their water-logged labyrinth, the dwindling crew members must either follow Frank's lead or come up with their own survival plan.

It's admittedly hard not to think of 127 Hours while watching Sanctum unfold.

But where the Danny Boyle film created unbearable tension through an economy of dialogue and skilled filmmaking, Alister Grierson's second feature effort (after 2006's fact-based war story, Kokoda) suffers from a talky script and thematics that play out more like The Poseidon Adventure minus the camp guilty pleasure aspect.

The film does best in its quieter sequences, where there's an undeniable ethereal beauty in Jules O'Loughlin's underwater photography, especially when the occasional shaft of light is pressed into stirring high relief by the same Cameron/Pace Fusion 3D Camera System utilized for Avatar.

Unfortunately that spell is constantly being broken by either the forced dialogue (credited to Wight and John Garvin) or composer David Hirschfelder's heavy symphonics, which are just too outsized for those tight, claustrophobic spaces.

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The Green Hornet Review

During the 1930s families would gather round their crackling wireless to hear the radio adventures of a playboy billionaire turned crime fighter, but this was no Dark Knight rising. Battling bad guys and ne’er-do-wells with a trusty sidekick and introducing a gadget laden car well before the Batmobile, The Green Hornet was the costumed crime fighter of choice. As alter ego Britt Reid, publisher of The Daily Sentinel, he was in the loop long before Clarke Kent on The Daily Planet or Peter Parker on The Daily Bugle. So where has he been since?

While Superman and Spider-Man went on to become icons, The Hornet became somewhat anonymous, a second tier everyman with few remembering he was actually the grand-nephew of The Lone Ranger. The Green Hornet was even second fiddle in his own show, regularly upstaged by his right hand man, Kato. The role was immortalised by Bruce Lee in the 60s TV series which saw his legend begin, whereas Van Williams, who took the lead, never graduated past TV guest spots

Over the last decade a big screen version of The Green Hornet lacked one thing, a green light. Filtering through the hands of directors such as Kevin Smith and with A-list actors like George Clooney briefly attached, the script finally landed in the unlikely hands of Seth Rogen and his Superbad writing partner Evan Goldberg. In the director’s chair, meanwhile, was rogue eccentric Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind), a man not unfamiliar with The Hornet as the project had circled past him several years previously. This superhero film was never going to be by the book.

Proceedings seemingly begin with a classic origin story as the party boy slacker, Reid (a lean Rogen), must sober up upon the death of his media mogul father (Tom Wilkinson). Quickly introduced to his coffee making man-about-house Kato (Jay Chou), who has sideline expertise in martial arts and Q-like weapons augmentations, the pair bond over their disaffection for the departed and an accidental crime intervention sees the birth of a new dynamic duo. There is no grand sense of justice or even vengeance driving The Green Hornet; it is just that kicking ass might be fun, and it turns out it is.

This is a knowing look at the superhero genre, with a fine line between itself and reality. Reid is a man out of his depth, but Rogen is a man in his element, his bumbling frat house humour and off screen asides delivering a comedy turn of the highest calibre. The chemistry with his straight talking sidekick provides a stable core to the movie as the two cruise the streets looking for trouble with no real sense of direction, haphazardly arriving upon crime – mainly as the result of research by Reid’s newspaper.

The introduction of Cameron Diaz as secretary and shared object of affection is unfortunately a sad regression in her career, showing little evolution from her eye candy debut in The Mask. Christoph Waltz, however, as the unmemorably named neurotic villain Chudnofsky, cruises effortlessly as the insecure crime boss delivering his musings of self doubt with a reversal of the gravitas he carried in Inglorious Basterds. Although almost everyone is schooled by a sublime opening cameo by the blisteringly on form James Franco as upstart villain ‘Crystal’ Clear.

The Green Hornet delivers a comic revamp a million miles from the ‘darker’ edge of today’s heroes. Gondry has a clear affection for the crime fighter, bringing his flaws and offbeat charm to the forefront, and by the end of the film it’s hard not to be enamoured with our eponymous hero.

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Another ‘Exorcist’ remake? Yeah, ‘Rite’

Father Karras, meet Father Hannibal Lecter. He likes to cap his exorcisms with a dinner of liver, fava beans and nice Chianti. Whose bright idea was it to make an “Exorcist” knockoff with Anthony Hopkins as the Vatican’s exorcist-in-chief?

“The Rite” is purportedly based on “true events” and tells the tale of Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), a young man whose immigrant father, Istvan (Rutger Hauer), a bizarre mortician, talks to dead people and even forced his young son to say goodbye to the corpse of his dead mother.

As a young man, Michael decides to enter the seminary, even though he’s a stud, has no plans to become a priest and only wants to earn a degree at the church’s expense. It’s not nice to fool the Holy See.

Before you can say, “Your mother trucks rocks in hell,” Michael has been persuaded by his teacher, Father Matthew (Toby Jones, best known as the house elf Dobby in the “Harry Potter [website]” films) to go to the Vatican to study under exorcism authority Father Xavier (Ciaran Hinds). Father Xavier takes a liking to the tall, dark and handsome priest-in-training and sends him off to learn at the feet of Jesuit exorcist Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins, speaking a lot of Italian).

Like Hannibal Lecter, Trevant is also a medical doctor. He is currently treating a beautiful, young Italian girl named Rosaria (a very good Marta Gastini). Aside from being extremely pregnant and possibly raped by her father, 16-year-old Rosaria has a bare spot on her head where she scratches herself and a tendency to go into a trance-like state in which she begins to sound suspiciously like Mercedes McCambridge.

One of the most important things an exorcist can do, Father Lucas tells Michael, is to find out the name of the demon possessing the person possessed.

That will give you power over the entity. Michael also meets the meaningfully named Angeline (Alice Braga of “I Am Legend”), a beautiful journalist who wants to write about the church and its secrets regarding the ancient practice of exorcism.

Some may wonder what so many fine actors are doing in this lousy movie or try to guess who will pronounce the name Xavier correctly or if and when Michael and Angeline get it on.

Others may ask themselves how many versions can we take of the great 1973 William Friedkin movie with Max Von Sydow in a career-definitive role as Catholic exorcist Father Merrin, an old priest who, along with the doubting Father Karras, famously took on Linda Blair and a demon named Pazuzu, Sumerian god of plagues.

“What did you expect?” Father Lucas asks Michael, “Spinning heads and pea soup?” Well, yeah, Father, I kind of did — or at least something more than a heavy-breathing, red-eyed mule demon.

Director Mikael Håfström (“1408”) makes excellent use of the art and architecture of Rome and the Vatican, giving this otherwise inconsequential effort a weight it does not have. Was there nothing Håfström could do to get Hopkins to stop doing Lecter? Can we get the actor an exorcist?

“I am Baal,” someone screams near the end. Yeah, well, I am bored.

(“The Rite” contains a PG-13 demon, disturbing thematic material, violence, frightening images and language that includes sexual references.)

Punch-Drunk Love: 'The Fighter'

'The Fighter,' based on the life of fighter Micky Ward, is a true knockout.

Boxing fans that have spent time in Atlantic City know Micky Ward as one of the toughest fighters to ever mix it up in the ring, including three legendary battles with the late Arturo Gatti.

The Fighter, directed by David O. Russell (Three Kings) and starring Mark Wahlberg as Ward and Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund, Ward’s half-brother and trainer, takes a long, fascinating look at Ward’s life outside the ring as well as inside it.

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Movie critic shorthand would be to say that this story, about a fighter whose family is too involved in his life and career, is a real life Rocky.

When we first meet Ward, in his tight knit working class town of Lowell, Mass., his boxing career is taking a nosedive. With his mother (Melissa Leo) as his manager, and the older brother he idolized spending more time at the local crack house than the gym training him, Ward has been set up for failure in the ring. With his mom, brother and seven busybody sisters telling him what he should do, the man who has to take the punches doesn’t have much say in his career.

It would be too easy to call this a dysfunctional family. A better description would be a family that lives life at the top of their lungs, with Micky as the quiet one in the middle.

Ward doesn’t seem to have a chance, but the love of a good woman (played by Amy Adams) and the advice of his mentor outside the family ring — Mickey O’Keefe, a Lowell cop who plays himself in the movie — give him a clear view of a successful future.

The film follows the standard arc of a boxing picture; the ups and downs followed by the moment of triumph in the ring and in life. Director Russell and his superb cast manage to bob and weave around the clichés to make the story resonate beyond the standard confines of the genre.

Bale is fascinating as a drug addict who is more aware than most of what he has lost and what he might gain if he gets off the pipe for good. Melissa Leo, as the stage mother who directs Micky’s life without any input from him, takes this showy role and chews through the scenery like a beaver on crack — but in a good way.

Wahlberg is the generous man in the middle. His calm is the nice contrast to the insanity generated by his family. Too often the quiet acting doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, but without his contribution, Bale and Leo, both pegged as surefire Oscar nominees, would not shine nearly as brightly.

The Fighter wins the heart of the audience with a unanimous decision.

The Fighter

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True Grit Movie Review

Joel and Ethan, the mighty brothers Coen, take their masterful talents to the Old West for a bravura remake of True Grit. Jeff Bridges wears the eye patch in place of John Wayne as the iconic U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, and this is as beautiful a piece of casting as you are going to witness in modern cinema.

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As good as Bridges is in the role, delivering every line with a weary, somehow endearing mumble, he is matched every step of the way by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld, my pick for the year’s Best Supporting Actress. As Mattie Ross, the whip-smart young woman who hires Cogburn to find Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who killed her father, Steinfeld is nothing short of miraculous.

When Rooster and Mattie set out on the trail of Chaney, they are joined by Texas lawman LeBoeuf (Matt Damon). While the film certainly is no comedy, Damon gets a lot of laughs as the tag-along who talks too much, leaving the party more than once due to Cogburn’s stubbornness and Mattie’s mental superiority. LeBoeuf’s verbal rivalry with Cogburn is made all the more hilarious by Mattie’s tendency to be the only one in the camping crew acting like an adult.

As good as the Coens are at presenting a distinctively wild West, this story wouldn’t work if the central performances from Bridges and Steinfeld didn’t gel. Luckily, they exchange lines like an actor and actress who have shared the screen a hundred times before.

Some of the film’s greater passages occur early on when the duo are getting to know each other. Watching Bridges’ Cogburn react with quizzical stares as Mattie continuously outsmarts him is a testament to how giving and wonderful an actor Bridges truly is. You sense that the man knows he is witnessing lightning in a bottle when it comes to what’s happening here with Steinfeld, and he must love it.

Chaney shows up late in the film, and Brolin plays him as a comically sad simpleton always complaining about his current predicament. He’s the sort of character that has you laughing hard one moment and terrified the next. Brolin makes Chaney’s apparent sadness almost charming, making it all the more shocking when he shifts into bad guy mode. Barry Pepper is also menacing as Lucky Ned Pepper, the frothing-at-the-mouth leader of a band of outlaws.

As with all of the genres they have approached, the Coens clearly relish the opportunity to play in a new sandbox. Their take on the Charles Portis novel is a dark one, laced with gnarly tree branches, bad teeth, heavy whiskey-drinking and lots of killing. Yet, the whole deal is oddly beautiful thanks to the work of their performers, tremendous camerawork by old standby Roger Deakins, and a stirring soundtrack from the criminally underrated Carter Burwell.

The film is full of trademark Coen brother eccentric touches, the sort of stuff fans might expect of them. There’s a wonderful interlude when Rooster and Mattie cross paths with the Bear Man (Ed Corbin), a wandering dental technician who’s more than a little dramatic when he speaks of the trade he just made for a dead body. The public hanging of three men plays out in a way that could’ve only been directed by the Coens.

So, yeah, the Coen brothers have done it again, taking over another genre and making it their own. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: I have never met a Coen brothers film I didn’t like. True Grit is another milestone in their amazing careers, as well as a showcase for an up-and-coming star and some of the industry’s finest actors.

It’s almost insulting to call it a remake. While John Wayne’s portrayal of Cogburn may have netted him an Oscar, Bridges is the real Rooster. As for Steinfeld, she’s the real deal.

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Tron' takes itself too seriously

Like "Avatar," "Tron: Legacy" takes us into a world of digital imagination. It's a gorgeous sequel to 1982's "Tron," a video game movie and a cult hit that was decades ahead of its time.

But also like "Avatar," "Legacy" is a film too in love with its own good looks. And like the first "Tron," the sequel is a bit of a slog, a generally humorless quest inside the computer grid in which a son searches for his digitally disembodied father while the father seeks salvation for humanity through the digi-verse he created but which has taken on a life of its own.

Garrett Hedlund ("Friday Night Lights") is Sam Flynn, son of Kevin (Jeff Bridges), the games-and-grid guru who stumbled into the Digital New World back in 1982. Dad disappeared in 1989, the film tells us, so Sam has grown up a rich, motorcycle-riding rebel.

Then Dad's old partner (Bruce Boxleitner, back from the original film) says he's been paged by the phone from Kevin's long-closed arcade. That sends Sam to the office where Kevin was digitized and drops him onto the computer grid his dad created. He's soon forced to race light cycles and do disc battles to survive the machinations of the evil Clu, Dad's alter ego, played by a digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges, who looks as if he could also play the train conductor in a "Polar Express" sequel.

Sam's efforts to escape lead him to other digital worlds, and the corporate villains from the real world who helped create this mess are forgotten as he journeys on and off the grid in an effort to reconnect with his father and his father's creations.

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Then, 80 minutes in, Brit character actor Michael Sheen shows up as Castor, a bon vivant grid program who looks like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust incarnation and who's played by Sheen as if he's ready to star in a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" remake. The actor's hamming brings the movie to life.

"Behold," he bellows to the other programs drinking at his swank digital bar, "the son of our creator!"

When Bridges himself, an aged guru stuck in time, blurts "You're messin' with my zen thing, man," we're left to wonder how "Legacy" might have gone down had the movie's creators not taken the damned thing so seriously. They've unfortunately saddled the movie with a lack of humor and personality that robs it of any real emotion.

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The Tourist Review

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Tourist follows math teacher Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) as his European vacation becomes fraught with danger and peril after he meets and befriends a mysterious woman named Elise Clifton-Ward (Angelina Jolie) - with the film subsequently (and primarily) detailing the pair's ongoing efforts at avoiding a variety of pursuing figures (including Paul Bettany's tenacious police officer and Steven Berkoff's nasty gangster).

Filmmaker von Donnersmarck does a superb job of capturing the viewer's interest right from the get-go, as The Tourist opens with a thoroughly captivating sequence in which Jolie's character is pursued and watched by cops as she goes about her morning routine. The movie's easygoing vibe is perpetuated by Frank and Elise's first encounter aboard a Venice-bound train, with the chemistry between the two disparate figures initially compensating for a midsection that's decidedly less-than-eventful in its execution.

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And while it ultimately does become clear that von Donnersmarck is looking to ape the atmosphere and tone of a circa 1960s caper movie, The Tourist suffers from an almost pervasively lighthearted feel that ultimately cements its place as a watchable yet forgettable piece of work - with the inclusion of several engrossing performances and a certain last-minute revelation just barely pushing the proceedings to the positive, rather than negative, side of things.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 2010

My, how they've grown. The adorable tots of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" are grim adolescents now, survivors in a world where death is omnipresent and swift to strike. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, having apprenticed alongside Britain's finest actors for a decade, ably carry the seventh film, a project clearly designed to let them take charge and shine. Their high-strung performances are the most impressive aspect of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I."



J.K. Rowling's event-packed narrative, as scripted by Steve Kloves, is rather a mess, a rambling series of incidents rather than a tightly plotted story. It's as if they threw ideas into the Hogwarts Sorting Hat and crossed their fingers. Even Potter devotees must admit this chapter has no dramatic shape; for the non-fan it's just this side of incomprehensible.

Marauders' Maps should be handed out at the door. Exposito Confundis. Stripped to its essence, the plot is classic Brothers Grimm: Young people get lost in the woods and struggle with a witch. In the Rowling version, the witch doesn't get pushed into the oven; the film concludes with the forces of evil magic more powerful than ever. Their families threatened by vile Lord Voldemort's occult forces and besieged Hogwarts School a fading memory, the three friends are isolated and homeless, camping out in freezing forests. The deeper they get into the woods the more Harry, Hermione and Ron confront the darkness in themselves.

Trapped in a situation that seems hopeless, they turn against each other, just as factions of the wizards' world are battling one another in conflicts that spill over into present-day London. Lots of gore The film begins on a note of Gothic horror as Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) convenes a meeting of his coven. They mostly ignore a struggling, agonized woman floating above the dining table like a chandelier. It's a fitting prologue for the gory maimings and murder to come.

This Potter is dominated by an atmosphere of permanent menace. It is all about the danger of being upright and truthful in a land ruled by corrupt government agencies and dishonest media cartels. There is a wonderful image of the misinformation industry manufacturing broadsheets of lies that go winging through the air like paper airplanes with minds of their own.

Rowling is not a writer of memorable dialogue, but director David Yates compensates with some eloquent visuals. Harry's silent leave-taking from the empty Dursley residence is quite affecting. If Harry's life with his obnoxious uncle was oppressive and limited, it was also secure and predictable. In a neat shot, Harry gazes at a pair of his old tin soldiers. One is upright, his saber raised, the other lying flat. The moment delivers a pang of nostalgia while foreshadowing Harry's imminent showdown with Voldemort.


The key to defeating the evil wizard is locating and learning how to destroy the seven Horcruxes in which he has preserved portions of his soul. When Harry and the others seize one of the medallions, they become spiritually possessed by it. Harry, still dealing with his childhood demons -- literally -- is beset by awful visions. Yates' daring shots are the visual equivalent of nightmarish psychological collapse. There are many stunning effects in the film, swirling creatures that coil like ink in water, and a haunting witches' folk tale presented in shadowy sepia animation.

The flood of visuals never overwhelms the characters, which I think is the key to "Potter's" worldwide success. Would-be series such as "Lemony Snicket," "The Golden Compass" and "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" boast remarkable graphics, but lack the Potter saga's engaging protagonists and ideally cast young actors. They don't do the showiest acting in the piece. Those honors go to Imelda Staunton as haughty, waspish Dolores Umbrage and Helena Bonham Carter, cackling like a hyena as the delightfully mad Bellatrix Lestrange. But Radcliffe, Watson and Grint, having literally grown up in their characters, are ready for their close-up. They earned it, they deserve it and they nailed it.

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Morgen -- Film Review

While out fishing, Nelu, a middle-aged, mild-mannered supermarket security guard (Andras Hathazi) lands more than he bargained for when he encounters Behran, an illegal Turkish immigrant (Yilmaz Yalcin) ducking Romanian-Hungarian border police.

Despite the tricky language barrier (the impish, bearded Turk’s lines aren’t even accompanied by subtitles), Nelu offers the cold, hungry man refuge back at his rural farmhouse, much to the irritation of his bossy wife (Elvira Rimbu). In the process of trying to figure out how to smuggle his unintended guest across the border into Hungary, Nelu and Behran end up forming a curiously engaging bond.

Allowing his story to unfold in extended wide-angle shots that underscore the unhurried daily regimen of Nelu’s small-town existence, writer-director Crisan puts an accessible human face on the subjects of politics and xenophobia. While it recalls Danis Tanovic’s Oscar-winning No Man’s Land (depicting the 1993 war between Bosnia and Herzegovina) in its examination of the folly of international conflict, Morgen takes a less biting approach to its brand of satire, allowing its universal truths to unfold organically, with the patience of a seasoned fisherman intent on landing the big catch.

Due Date Movie Review

The Plod Couple: An inspired pairing in Due Date quickly resorts to cheap laughs.

You’re either going to love or loathe Zach Galifianakis when he puts himself into Todd Phillips’ hands. In The Hangover, Galifianakis’ borderline-pedophiliac, mentally challenged man-child was annoying enough to sink the movie. (Yes, the most successful R-rated comedy of all time does have some detractors.) And in Due Date, Galifianakis plays a gentler version of more of the same. His Ethan Tremblay is a 23-year-old (!) aspiring actor with a pocket pooch and the demeanor of a six-year-old kid.

This time, at least, he’s occasionally funny instead of just irritating. In Phillips’ follow-up to his box-office smash, Ethan’s the thorn in an expectant father’s side from the time they meet disastrous at an airport. Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) is trying to get back to Los Angeles in time for the birth of his first child. Ethan, meanwhile, is trekking to “Hollywood” to pursue his ain’t-gonna-happen dream.


Due Date Trailer

A car accident, bag mix-up, and light tussle on the plane gets both of them on the no-fly list, and with Peter’s wallet buried in his confiscated luggage, he has little choice but to accept Ethan’s offer to drive cross-country in his rented car. Near homicide, naturally, ensues.

Four scripters’ efforts (including one responsible for the horrendous Made of Honor) result in a tone that’s all over the place: There are light Odd Couple-esque squabbles, dark humor, and, when all original ideas seem to have been exhausted about halfway through the film, strenuous wackiness à la car crashes and ridiculous schemes. Galifianakis is more likable here than he was in his breakout

Hangover role—Ethan’s insistence on rules, such as not letting anyone touch his luggage in an airport, is mildly amusing—but it’s Downey’s wry, tightly wound, foul-mouthed bitterness that earns the best and most surprising laughs. (Bet you never thought you’d giggle at a grown man punching a kid in the gut.) Running jokes such as a coffee-can urn and that damn dog lose their bite quickly, however, as does the film in the aggregate. What starts out as an inspired coupling turns into another hate-you-love-you buddy flick, a moratorium on which is long overdue.

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Megamind: Brainy idea

The bad guy gets to win for once

MOVIE---Megamind (Will Ferrell, right) tells Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey, left) that Metro Man (Brad Pitt) won’t be there to rescue her this time in DreamWorks Animation’s MEGAMIND to be released by Paramount on November 5th. Photo credit: Courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

“Megamind”

No matter how colorful they’re drawn, superheroes tend to inhabit a black and white world where good triumphs over evil. But what happens when the villain wins? DreamWorks Animation puts that question to the test with “Megamind,” an original superhero adventure that gives the eponymous blue bad guy, voiced by Will Ferrell, the keys to Metro City. In this refreshing twist on a familiar format, director Tom McGrath combines flawless 3-D animation with a bevy of comedic talent to craft an entertaining adventure with plenty of smart, grown-up laughs.

Although “Megamind” uses the tried-and-true superhero model, with its strapping, jutting-jawed hero (Metro Man, voiced by Brad Pitt) and lair-dwelling villain (Megamind) repeatedly facing off before the helpless citizens of Metro City, the film is an entirely original concept — an unusual occurrence in Hollywood these days, where brand recognition is king (think sequels, comic book adaptations, remakes). But writers Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons use that model only as a familiar jumping-off point before diving in and turning it on its head.

The PG-rated adventure gets off to a rip-roaring, “Superman”-esque start as baby versions of Megamind and Metro Man are stuffed into space capsules by their parents and launched to safety before their planets are destroyed. As the capsules hurl through space, a fluke of nature causes them to briefly cross paths, bumping Metro Man into a life of privilege and heroic expectations, and Megamind into a life of crime and self-hatred.
Megamind’s and Metro Man’s roles as hero and villain seem inescapable; they’re locked in an endless cycle, with the same predetermined ending. Even Megamind’s frequent kidnapping victim, the Lois Lane-ish TV reporter Roxanne (Tina Fey), is bored by the routine. Then, one day, the criminally insecure Megamind does the unthinkable — he wins.

With Metro Man put to rest, Megamind and his fishy sidekick Minion (David Cross) joyously wreak havoc on the unprotected city (in one of the film’s best sequences). But then what? Bored and missing his lifelong rival, Megamind decides to create a new nemesis from scratch, picking Roxanne’s slacker cameraman (Jonah Hill) for the role. But just because you cast someone as a hero doesn’t mean they’ll live up to the standard, as Megamind and the rest of Metro City discover once his creation is let loose. The question is, does our villain have what it takes to play the hero?

It’s not difficult to predict the path that Megamind will take in this superhero take on “nature versus nurture,” but the fun is in the journey itself — a fast-paced romp full of clever dialogue (Fey and Ferrell make for terrific banter), sight gags delivered in top-notch, purposeful 3-D animation, and silly goofs that only a personality like Ferrell can deliver (his mispronunciations are repeatedly rewarding). Sure, a percentage of Ferrell’s jokes fall flat, but the film’s rapid-fire, rock ’n’ roll pace whisks us off to the next gag before the misfire sinks in.

“Megamind’s” frenetic pace hits a few speed bumps toward the end with a few too many emotional resolutions, as well as a love story. But at this late point in an otherwise entertaining film, the lull gives us time to savor the thought that an original idea can still find the light of day in modern Hollywood.

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