THEM CROOKED VULTURES (music)

band: THEM CROOKED VULTURES

album: THEM CROOKED VULTURES

released: 2009

line-up: Dave Grohl (drums), John Paul Jones (bass), Josh Homme (guitars, vocals)

rating: *1/2

When I heard that Dave Grohl, one of my favorite "modern" drummers, who banged the skins on Nirvana's last two studio albums and then helmed his own outfit, FOO FIGHTERS, playing drums (along with guitars and singing) on the first two studio albums before allowing the Taylor Hawkins to take over completely... And John Paul Jones, bassist/keyboardist for the greatest band of all time, Led Zeppelin, had formed a band together... I was (to use the title of one of my favorite Foo Fighter's tunes) ECSTATIC! Grohl on drums, Jones on bass... and the lead singer from QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, a band I never liked, provides not only lead vocals but lead (and rhythm) guitars as well. As most people can figure, a singer gets the last word while the guitarist paints the real picture. So in the case of this particular supergroup, the guy who paints the last word, Josh Homme... sounding like a wannabe Scott "Stone Temple Pilots" Weiland and creating riffs that are both repetitive and boring... turns what could have been a powerhouse band into... to quote Captain James T. Kirk... "Standard Orbit". You heard one song, you heard them all. And none are very good.

MAN OF THE YEAR

title: MAN OF THE YEAR

year: 2006

cast: Robin Williams, Laura Linney, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum

writer/director: Barry Levinson

rating: *

Director Barry Levinson ran for president. Everything he believes in is here, and his mouthpiece is Robin Williams. Or is it the other way around? I know Barry wrote the script, but I'm still not sure how much was ad-libbed. Not enough to merit a good movie, or a decent premise, which builds shit-through-a-goose-quick during the opening credits: a Bill Maher/Jon Stewart type talk show host is told by an audience member he should run for President of the United States. He does, and wins. Kinda. Williams' hyperactive stand-up routines, one happening spontaneously during a planned Presidential debate, are nearly impossible to hear, and maybe that's good because what is audible isn't funny. A side-story involving a woman (and possible love-interest) who knows too much about a computer-voting glitch becomes the main focus, and Levinson juggles his dull documentarian-style comedy with a Redford-esque seventies-era political espionage drama, and fails miserably on both counts - at the same time.

THE HANGOVER

title: THE HANGOVER

year: 2009

cast: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha

rating: **1/2

Such a great initial investment with likable, often hilarious characters and a clever premise: four buddies journey to Vegas for a bachelor party and three wake up hungover, not remembering anything. The groom-to-be is missing and there's a tiger and baby in their suite. So they must find their friend by figuring what they did the night before. The first half, as the mystery unfolds, is fantastic. The last half, as the clues get solved and more and more seemingly impossible over-the-top situations involving a gay Asian drug lord, a police taser demonstration, and ex-champ Mike Tyson pan out, it loses any and all charm. The characters seemed too realistic and relatable to become comic book fodder. They deserved better.

VALENTINES DAY

title: VALENTINES DAY
year: 2010
cast: Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner

director: Garry Marshall
rating: *

The Robert Altman style of having a bunch of characters all seemingly unrelated and following their various stories within the same "location" eventually connecting ("Nashville", "A Wedding", "Short Cuts") has been ruined so many times, by so many directors, that yet another lame attempt may not seem a big deal, but this star-studded mess about troubled couples on VALENTINES DAY is not only a preposterous stab at the mazey genre, but one of the worst movies I've ever witnessed. The entire thing feels rushed and pieced together. Although Garry Marshall, the king of hit-or-miss, is at the helm, it feels like no one's in charge; like a crashing plane on auto-pilot or a car on cruise-control driving off a cliff. And just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. To center on each story and pick apart the mistakes would merit a review the size of a Tolstoy novel. But the sappy Ashton Kutcher flower shop tale involving Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner and George Lopez is the worst. The Julia Roberts/Bradley Cooper ditty of two strangers on a plane is the weakest. The Anne Hathaway story of a phone sex girl (stolen from SHORT CUTS) is the most annoying. And it all equals one giant mess.

HALLOWEEN (2007)

title: HALLOWEEN

year: 2007

cast: Malcom McDowell

director: Rob Zombie

rating: **

Rob Zombie serves up human beings as fodder, most of them so overly vapid, annoying or evil they're just begging to die. The legendary Michael Myers gets a forty-five minute back-story as a little boy who's about as scary as Jodie Foster in those old Coppertone ads. He's picked on by bullies, has a stripper mom and a white trash cliche-spouting step-father, and eventually goes on a killing spree, gets locked up in an insane asylum, and fifteen years later resembles Cousin It on steroids. He breaks out after slaughtering more deserving-victims, returns to the dilapidated house of his youth, dons his trusty (and iconic) William Shatner mask, and like the John Carpenter film in which this is based: wanders the suburbs in search of his long-long sister. Malcom McDowell's Dr. Loomis is a greedy capitalist who, after having treated Myers for years, pens a best-seller and becomes like a double-agent in a CIA film: find Myers or lose everything. The character Laurie Strode, the focal-point of the original, is but a side-character. And her banal teenage friends, all written to be massacred with no interesting or memorable personality traits (each spouting forgettable filler dialog), become more pudding in the pie. How many times can one stab a human being, and how is this scary? Rob knows a thing or two about shock and gore, but doesn't build an eerie enough stage to merit genuine (implied) horror. Too much lightning without thunder.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

title: FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

year: 2008

cast: Jason Segal, Kirstin Bell

rating: *

That sarcastic yet vacant way of repeating-the-question in order to question-the-answer that "Hurley" does successfully in LOST is done horribly here - about a million times over - by glib dullard Jason Segal, who somehow, despite looking like Peter Berg and Garry Shandling's lovechild... after breaking up with (and being broken-hearted over) the most gorgeous blonde on earth (named Sarah Marshall) beds down with a handful of other hotties and then meets the most beautiful brunette in the universe and we're supposed to actually feel for this guy? I guess when you're in Hollywood, being a loser is much different than real life. This SWINGERS FOR DUMMIES might possibly be the worst film I've seen in a very long while. Judd Apatow, I'm begging you, buy your soul back!!!

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

title: NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

year: 2004

cast: Jon Hedder

rating: *

The Antichrist of modern comedies, this popular, beloved indie assumes we all adore the title character enough to allow anything and everything to be funny simply because... it's there. If you desire a legitimately moving and thoroughly entertaining slice-of-hellish-small-town-life experience centering on a really ugly kid out-of-step with classmates and family, watch the '90s flick WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, where the put-upon hero (or in that case, heroine) isn't let off the hook by dancing in front of the campus, one of the biggest cop-outs in underdog-teen-film history. Never before have I witnessed a more "loaded" movie - as if Napoleon himself is creating his own propaganda. And the side-characters are so extremely "odd and quirky", placed like contrived miniatures within an equally-forced bizarro-world setting, they soon become typical and ordinary, and downright tiresome.

COLLATERAL

title: COLLATERAL

year: 2002

cast: Tom Cruise, Jamie Fox

director: Michael Mann

rating: **1/2

Not really a fan of Jamie Fox, sometimes a Tom Cruise fan and haven't liked a Michael Mann flick in ages (and despised "Heat"), so I didn't think I'd enjoy this movie but I really dug the first hour. Tom Cruise, with a frosted buzz and robotically-adaptive intensity (he hasn't been this good in ages) is Vincent, a hit man who hires a dreamer cabbie Max (Fox) to drive him to each of his kills... with a gun to his head Max complies on this odyssey and it's a skillfully-paced cat-and-mouse game until half-way through when things morph into a typical big-budget high-octane "pumping action thriller" with an stunningly unrealistic shootout in a crowded rave-nightclub and a drawn-out climax involving Vincent (who, at this point, has become Freddy Kruger) going after Max's dreamgirl. It's a damn shame. Things were genuinely amazing for that first hour, providing a laidback, dialog-driven, psychologically-intense neo-noir mob flick by Michael Mann who, I guess, felt he had to channel Michael Bay to drive things home... And it takes a long time to get there.

AVATAR

title: AVATAR

year: 2009

cast: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver

writer/director: James Cameron

rating: *1/2

The first twenty minutes, although we're quickly force-fed the plot of a crippled marine going to a planet called Pandora where his counterpart "Avatar", clone to the indigenous natives, will seek trust in these tall blue Na'vi (all this happening while he, in human form, lays a tanning booth and guides the creature) in order to abduct a mineral to take back to earth (symbolizing oil, of course)... isn't bad, seeming as if a young James Cameron, who directed "Aliens", "The Terminator" and "The Terminator 2" with flowing precision, is at the helm. We're on a terrific adventure and it looks pretty neat: like a Roger Dean "Yes" album cover with motion. But then something happens: Once within the forest, separated from his fellow troops, the Avatar discovers he digs the peace-loving natives more than stupid humans, falls in love with the hottest of the tall blue elf-folk, and after taming a flying dragon and bedding down the babe, he's "one of the gang" way too quickly. Most of the action of the film's first half, pitting our hero against forest-dwelling predators, is (in a visual and directorial sense) straight out of JURASSIC PARK; the thrills eventually taking a backseat to drawn-out new-age ceremonies and cheesy dialog too horrible to repeat. And when the big battle ensues... The Honest Natives Vs The Greedy Americans... the vague, undeveloped characters get lost within the expensive flash. AVATAR, filmed in 3D but with 1D everything else, in trying to blend science-fiction, fantasy, romance, and a big bright moral message, ends up mirroring Cameron's view of the American Military: overwrought, overpriced and completely brain-dead.

HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES

title: HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES

year: 2002

cast: Sig Haig, Michael J. Pollard, Erin Daniels, Karen Black

writer/director: Rob Zombie

rating: *

I enjoyed the purposely-cheesy dialog in the beginning, with Sig Haig and Michael J. Pollard as two hicks in the middle of nowhere. Haig is "Captain Spaulding", a cocky trickster in clown garb who runs a gas station/oddity-museum/freak-show and... well... Pollard sort of disappears after a robbery occurs, blood is spilt in a Tarantino fashion and then two couples (who seem from the nineties yet it's set in the seventies) happen upon this odd little town and are very deserving to be butchered, you know, like in all horror movies. But these folks are simply BEGGING for it - and the hick family who takes them in seem more than willing to oblige. Rob Zombie really knows his stuff; though I'm still not sure what it is. Along with THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE I'm sure he was inspired by Troma's MOTHER'S DAY, which has murderous hillbillies pointlessly torturing and killing innocent city folk in a lot more coherent fashion, and without random images flashing like a music video. There's too much going on to be scary; too much gore to be fun. The oddball clan (of which veterans Karen Black and Dennis Fimple are members) are more cartoonish than creepy. The main baddie resembles a concert pianist possessed by Beetlejuice. And the prop-saturated town in which the targeted victims are hunted feels like Tim Burton's version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, with entrails. If only the entire film took place in Captain Spaulding's bizarro lair... It was a lot cooler, scarier and way more inspired than anything that followed...

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

title: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

year: 2005

cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Randy Quaid, Anne Hathaway

director: Ang Lee

rating: *1/2

Politically-correct types, in their usual knee-jerk manner, defending anything having to do with homosexuality, will shout these words if any related subject is brought up: "IT DOESN'T MATTER". So if someone is to say: "There's a film about two young men who fall in love", they'll shout: "IT DOESN'T MATTER". And in that, I totally agree. Yet if someone just happens to point out: "This movie is weak with no real plot and two shallow characters with no reason to be attracted to each other, other than both being attractive and alone on a lonely mountain"... I guess "IT DOESN'T MATTER". But it does to me, because any romance - whether centered on a man and woman - woman and woman - or man and man - has to be more than just "groundbreaking". There needs both chemistry and reason for that chemistry, so that the relationship, continuing to grow despite the odds, will truly and genuinely... MATTER!

AN AMERICAN CAROL

title: AN AMERICAN CAROL

year: 2008

cast: Kevin Farley, Kelsey Grammer, Robert Davi, Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, Leslie Neilson, Gary Coleman

director: David Zucker

rating: **

Since Hollywood's primary-default is on a permenent left wing setting (more implied than preached, but usually quite obvious), it takes right wingers to kick and scream in a childlike "Listen to me" manner - that is, they have to make the most of their two seconds in the spotlight. Well they got their chance to shine, bagging on Michael Moore and his I-dress-poorly-but-am-worth-a-billion-bucks hypocrisy, but, other than a few good jabs about the supposedly pristine Cuban healthcare system and Hollywood fat-cats gorging themselves during a charity dinner for starving children... This comedy, about a left wing documentarian being shown how great America is by three ghosts, ala Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, falls completely flat. Kevin Farely, brother of Chris, although a dead ringer for the obese Oscar winning target-at-hand, overacts in the main role, seeming more like a sloppily wayward party animal than a shifty documentarian with an agenda. CAROL makes the mistake that occured in NAKED GUN 3 - dealing too much with the characters and situations as each individual joke gets more and more stale. Until, at the end, we just don't care about the parody or the characters (in these kind of AIRPLANE! type movies, the jokes have to carry the characters; without which, there's a house built of sand). Nice try, guys. But you'll have to do a lot better when you're given another chance - in twenty or thirty years.

DISH DOGS

Shawna Anderson Dish Dogs

title: DISH DOGS

rating: 2000

cast: Sean Astin, Matthew Lillard, Brian Dennehy, Shannon Elizabeth, Shawna Anderson

rating: **

Two guys wash dishes and philosophize about life. Sean Astin, the one who really wants to be a philosopher by quoting... philosophers all the time; the other, Matthew Lillard, likes hanging out with Astin but is more into chicks and good times, and eventually gets back with his girlfriend and then, to the chagrin of Astin - who's quest is to always search but never find - wants to get married. The first half is entertainingly dumb fun as the two buddies drive around, wash dishes in various restaurants, talk about life (sometimes with their fat hippie guru, Brian Dennehy), surf, and go to a strip club... where Astin meets the girl of his dreams, Shannon Elizabeth. And we're supposed to believe that she falls in love with him, but that's alright. By the time this happens, you'll wanna press eject anyway, because the last half of the movie - after Astin and Lillard "split up" after a really stupid argument - falls under the weight of its own pretensions by trying too hard to be deep. (And the reason I rented this straight-to-video turkey was to see a girl I was in a Christian elementary school with as a stripper... For that, it was worth the money.)

EVICTED

year: 2000

cast: Michael Tierney, Lawrence Tierney

rating: *

Two... no, three guys drive around L.A., drink beer, and throw their cans out the window. Wait, it's a convertible - there's no window. Did I mention, two of them live in an apartment and are about to get... what's the name of the movie again? So to go out in a blaze, they throw a party. Here's where we hit a very long snag. The party itself doesn't flow like a party should. And then, during the bash, scenes involving the main character, after dropping acid, dreaming in a bathtub about running for President while rapping in front of an American flag... Wow. Actually, this part drew me back into the so-bad-it's-fun aspect that's lost during the party. This indie-indie was written-directed-produced-scored by Michael Tierney, son of little-known actor Ed Tierney, the brother of iconic film noir legends Lawrence Tierney and Scott Brady (Terence, Scott's son, co-stars). Uncle Larry (DILLINGER, BORN TO KILL, RESERVOIR DOGS) appears as "Bob", an old man who gives Michael advice on life. "Get A Job... Buy New Shoes... Don't Do Drugs". If the film stuck with the three young slackers hanging and drinking cheap (generic) beer, without the party (or a very confusing side-story involving a gangster with a briefcase) to encapsulate a reason or... dare I say, plot... the losers-with-nothing-to-lose theme would've served a better purpose of having no purpose at all (and deeper, more involved dialog with Lawrence Tierney would have been helpful). Scenes involving a Vietnam vet landlord playing with toy soldiers doesn't help things any (although he is a real actor). And the performances of the three young leads, well... let's say they don't try very hard... and they're not good enough for that to be intentional.

MONSTER-IN-LAW

title: MONSTER-IN-LAW

year: 2005

cast: Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Vartan

rating: *1/2

Most blame Jennifer Lopez and her big butt (which she makes fun of here) for this movie not being good, but it's Jane Fonda, who simply doesn't have the chops to play a love-to-hate character. Jane has always amazed me how, in every film, she delivers each line perfectly, has the moves down just right, seems to really know how to perform but without being ENTIRELY lost in character (like a fish half out of water). And being completely in-character's what was really needed here, and just doesn't happen. Fonda is the mother of a dapper, really skinny, permanent-five-o-clock-shadowed guy (Michael Vartan) who Lopez is about to marry, and tries to keep that from happening by faking insanity and thus driving Lopez away. But there's nothing to make us thirst for Lopez and hubby to be punished, much like, for example, in watching FATAL ATTRACTION, the audience gets thoroughly addicted to Glenn Close making Michael Douglas and Anne Archer's life hell. I realize this is a comedy and that isn't... but it's the same template - and there's simply not enough reasons for Fonda's "monster" to gulp up her victim - or, more importantly, for the audience to enjoy it. Both Fonda and Lopez, as loggerheads, have zero chemistry. And as for husband Michael Vartan... dude, EAT SOMETHING!

SIN CITY

year: 2005

cast: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Nicky Katt

rating: *

The look of this movie and THE SPIRIT, both written by "Graphic Novel" guru Frank Miller, is the same: scantly hand-drawn, purposely cheap looking discolored backdrops. Whatever this "new look"...feeling as if a punchdrunk Roger Rabbit molested cheap Japanese anime while giving birth to a braindead Matrix wannabe... is called, it should be forever done away with. This vapid, tacky mess, directed by Robert Rodriguez and with a "special director credit" to Quentin Tarantino, both who've gotten mossy in their middle age... is simply horrible. Porno-esque slowly timed acting and gloriously lame violence all seems like a lonely comic book reader euphorically visualizing his melodramatic dream-film.

STAR TREK

title: STAR TREK

year: 2009

cast: Chris Pine

rating: **

While this was better than the NEW Star Wars prequels (episode 1, 2, and 3), I had the same problem in the continuity factor. In other words, when watching the original Star Wars: A New Hope, seeing Obi Wan Kenobi (Alec Guiness) and imagining him doing all the things Ewan McGregor did in the first three films... was impossible. And when I go back and watch the original Star Trek TV show, or the movies starring the original cast, I will now have to wrap my brain around the fact that Captain Kirk, as a preteen, listened to The Beastie Boys. And that Spock dealt with bullies on his home planet - which weren't very different from the ones cookie-cutter teen flicks (I realize, this is mentioned on the original show, but the way they carried it out was so... after-school-special). Or that Uhura had a green martian roomate who Captain Kirk, before he was Captain, was trying to bang in an apartment that looked straight outta Melrose Place. I realize the William Shatner "Kirk" is known to be quite a ladies man - but seeing Jim in a trendy nightclub with rave music thumping in the backdrop just doesn't fit in the Star Trek canon... at least not mine. The first ten minutes, involving Kirk's father saving the lives of 800 people, including his wife who was pregnant with you-know-who... right before intrepidly dying on a monitor viewed by his weeping wife... was pure melodrama straight out bad made-for-cable sci-fi. The villain looked and acted like a WWF wrestler. And I'm not sure what the plot is other than "blow the big bad thing up that destroys planets" (kinda like The Death Star, huh?). Chris Pine looked perfect for the role of a young Kirk but seemed too much like a jocky lughead than anything else. And the special effects... going back to my problem with the new Star Wars... was just too much. I always dug the cerebral-led aspect of the original series (and movies)... mind over action... kind of like a chess match... And, so, having these youthful, energetic characters being part of a high-octane thriller... And the Enterprise darting through space like a Tie Fighter... just didn't fit with me. I'll take corny acting, dated special effects and a slow moving plot to exploding eye-candy any day.

REAL LIFE

title: REAL LIFE

year: 1979

cast: Albert Brooks, Charles Grodin, Francis Lee McCann, J.A. Preston, David Speilberg, James L. Brooks, Johnny Haymer, Matthew Tobin

writer/director: Albert Brooks

rating: **

The worst thing about this Albert Brooks film where Albert Brooks (supposedly) plays Albert Brooks is Albert Brooks, going completely overboard developing and directing a reality TV show. Brooks sets up camera and crew inside a middle class suburban house in Arizona, and things fall apart quickly, to the point where there's not much of a story arc. Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCann are fun to watch as the uptight patriarchs, and both seem blandly realistic, as is intended. The concept here is smarter than the outcome: to show not only the reality show participants (years before the genre became commonplace) but also the REAL people who film that show and how both collide. Unfortunately they collide a bit too much, too soon, and when other elements are introduced - like a news station following up on a story by a disgruntled psychologist (J.A. Preston) who quit the film in progress - or Brooks having several nervous breakdowns and eventually committing arson... what could have been light and funny ends up completely irritating and ironically unREAListic, although there are a few funny moments. Brooks would really find his niche a few years later with LOST IN AMERICA.

LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

title: LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

year: 2005

cast: Albert Brooks, Fred Thompson

writer/director: Albert Brooks

rating: ***

Post 911, Albert Brooks, playing himself - a borderline-has-been comedic-actor who really needs that "great role" - is hired by Washington to find out what makes Muslims laugh... to help bridge the gap between "us and them". He's sent to India (where there are hindus but also many muslims) to interview people, asking them what they think is funny. Well the movie isn't very funny but it is involving, as Brooks interviews people on the streets and sets up a comedy concert where he performs his improvisational routines that no one in the audience gets. That is, they understand English, but don't find him funny. He then goes to Pakistan, illegally through the border, and entertains hash-smoking soldiers who, unlike the Indians - and stoned out of their minds - love his routine. The Iranians catch wind of this and a war almost breaks out: a pasted-on b-story that never comes to fruition, and frankly is a distraction that doesn't need to be there. By the end, when Brooks is back home with a fictional wife and daughter, what have we learned? Nothing much, but for a bland mockumentary, it's decent enough; Brooks' signature non-polarizing yet completely obvious indifference to the natives providing the sole "punchline" throughout. Albert is older but not much wiser. His character - who is himself in this case, which makes no difference - hasn't changed. He still doesn't know what he has to offer, and is trying to discover himself and his purpose: the "mission" i.e. plot here is but a platform for him to do so, as usual. Not up to par with "Lost In America" or "Defending Your Life" but leagues above "Mother", "The Muse", and "The Scout".

BRUNO

title: BRUNO

year: 2009

cast: Sacha Baron Cohen

rating: ***

Putting aside the fact that every situation is contrived, and all the "participants" are obviously in on the joke, this is actually a funny movie about a gay Austrian wannabe fashionista's odyssey to become not just famous, but VERY famous. He does just about anything it takes, including becoming straight, for this seemingly impossible goal, and while the situations aren't always hilarious they are entertaining, and throughout the "skits", some of which are jabs at celebrities, like adopting a black child for publicity, and religion, like meeting with pastors who "make men straight", there is an actual love story that, bizarre as it seems in the buildup, becomes the very thing that bookmarks the film into something that feels legit despite the platform of setup, strikingly bogus interviews and confrontations. Just forget it's trying to seem real and you'll find yourself addicted to the main character's "stranger in a straight land" dilemma. The real humor lies in our hero Bruno's stubborn drive to keep his hectically flamboyant focus intact despite it working against him.