Halloween [2007]

Rating: ***

American writer Dorothy Parker is famous for the line “Oh, what fresh hell is this?” Parker’s well-known rhetorical occurred to me when it was announced some time ago that the wags at Dimension Films, the genre subsidiary of the Weinstein Bothers, had decided to remake the prototype slasher film Halloween, the film that showed killers everywhere that babysitters made sexy prey. Although the sequels devolved from satisfactory to Busta Rhymes, the original remains a powerful and complete horror masterpiece.

Then they threw the reins for the remake to nouveaux horror auteur and old school hard rocker Rob Zombie and suddenly ‘fresh hell’ in a dismissive voice became ‘fresh hell’ in a more jubilant voice of anticipation. No one can overstate the B-movie delight of Zombie’s last movie The Devil’s Rejects, it was more Grindhouse than Grindhouse. The thought, I guess, was that if Zombie was involved then there might be something new and different enough to justify encroaching on sacred ground. After all, not all remakes are bad, original Halloween director John Carpenter proved that when he lensed The Thing, which many film-o-philes agree is a good remake that’s arguably better than the original.

Zombie’s flourish serves him well. In fact it quite nearly makes this a case of justifiable remake. In the nay column though is the fact the Zombie chose to centre such a large piece of his film on the early days of Michael Myers, the film’s indestructible boogeyman. We see a young Michael (Daeg Faerch) try to cope in his white trash home: his drunken step dad (William Forsythe), his stripper mom (Sherri Moon Zombie), his promiscuous older sister (Hanna Hall) and his baby sister he affectionately calls ‘Boo’.

So I guess there was still some stuff from Rejects that Rob was trying to work out, because if I came from Michael Myers’ background as presented in this film I’d probably get knife happy on anyone and everyone too. I guess Zombie forgot that the title of the original Halloween script was “The Babysitter Murders” meaning that the focus was the girls not the ghoul. I don’t need to know the zoological evolution of Gill Man in order to enjoy The Creature from the Black Lagoon, nor the precise astrological coordinates of the aliens’ home world so that I can watch War of the Worlds in peace.

After we leave young Michael on the psych ward, we flash-forward 15 years to when the real story gets underway as the big man (now played by Sabretooth Taylor Mane) heads home to find baby sis Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton), which is a real interesting twist because we didn’t find out until Halloween II in the old series that Laurie and Michael were sister and brother. Zombie settles in to a kind of mode for a while where he seems to be doing the Gus van Sant thing with his shot-by-shot remake of Psycho. Then Zombie manages to find his gumption and take the remake to some exciting new places.

That’s the frustrating thing with this movie: it is always in the cusp of true goodness only to falter again in a failed delivery or scene. We get treated to some great stuff, some cool jumps and some inventive camera work. Cool cameos from the Zombie repository players like Danny Trejo, Bill Moseley and Sid Haig help give the film a genuine Zombie feel, but like I said, the thing seems caught between being Carpenter’s Halloween and Zombie’s. And some of the Zombie spins are a tad bizarre and bizarrely questionable including Michael’s trademark mask being inherited from his dead sister’s boyfriend, who we see earlier in the film wanting to have sex with her while wearing it. Is there some next level Fraudian analysis going on and is it intentional of unintentional?

While the psychology of a killer can make for interesting watching (see Silence of the Lambs or TV’s Criminal Minds), there’s then a scene where young Michael sits by the side of the road with an empty trick or treat bag while his Mom strips and his sister has tawdry sex upstairs while the tune “Love Hurts” by Nazareth plays in the background. And to make matters worse, the inspired casting of Malcolm McDowell as Doctor Loomis falls somewhat short as McDowell is totally one dimensional and ineffectual in the part.

I think Michael Myers worked better when he was known simply as ‘The Shape’, which was the moniker he was referenced as in the original Halloween. He’s an inhuman monster that just randomly one night slaughtered his sister, not reacting to years of emotional, and probably physical, abuse, which makes his anger and blood lust a little easier to comprehend. I’ve heard 30 Days of Night creator Steve Niles say that we have a tendency to humanize or monsters and make them our friends and I think that’s what Zombie is trying to do. The question is, I guess: do you want a humanized Michael Myers?

All-in-all, Zombie’s Halloween is a mixed bag, but it’s got enough good parts to it to be worth recommending. I admire Zombie’s zeal and his rather fearless approach to the material in making a Halloween he wanted to see, but again, improving on perfection is an oxymoron. I hope Zombie returns to his original material next, and I hope that Hollywood money men learn to leave well enough alone. I should point out that only one of these wishes have any chance of coming true.

Balls of Fury

Rating: **1/2

If they made a movie about “professional” dodgeball, then I guess “professional” ping pong is the next logical step. Well, perhaps not logical per se, but whatever suitable substitution for the word logical you can think of should fit there. Of course, also in theatres now is the documentary King of Kong, about guys trying to prove they’re the best Donkey Kong player in the world. So into this celebration of all things that can barely be called sport, comes Balls of Fury, and one need not be a life long table tennis fanatic to enjoy the ride.

Tony award winner (huh?) Dan Fogler leads the cast as Randy Daytona, a washed-up former ping-pong prodigy that washed out of the Seoul Olympics in ’88 and saw his father murdered in a betting snafu. In the modern day, Randy’s approached by FBI agent Rodriguez (George Lopez) who wants to use Randy’s skills to smoke out underworld kingpin Feng (Christopher Walken), who gathers the best world players at his hidden compound for a sudden death tournament. (Meaning it ends with the losing player as a cadaver, or as Feng points out, “What part of ‘sudden death’ didn’t you understand?”)

The movie is silly for sure. It plays on widely accepted stereotypes as Randy’s Asian mentor is a blind Mr. Miyagi type with a wide pallet of insults and Randy’s German nemesis is an angry little deviant that does a little war scream before each competition. Oy, I can’t believe I was actually laughing at some of this stuff.

To be fair, while the material retraces familiar ground, the comedy chops of the actors is the thing that sells the show. And you would think that I’d think that Walken was slumming here, but actually, I loved his performance. It’s a great Walken as Walken role that makes you laugh from the first minute he appears on screen in costume.

But Walken isn’t an island unto himself, everybody contributes. Fogler is good, but he’s one of these background, sidekick player guys and seems a little out his element as the centre of attention, kind of like Andy Samberg in Hot Rod. Fortunately, everybody’s in the capable hands of Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant, who are two of the guys behind Reno 911. They smoothly make Balls of Fury a concise little package of laughs and an enjoyable hour-and-a-half of juvenile fun.

It’s not clever, it’s not subtle, but Balls of Fury is a relatively harmless bit of entertainment for the teenage boy in all of us. Gone from your mind not too soon after leaving the theatre, but you definitely remember that you enjoyed yourself.

War

Rating: **

If you name your movie War you better deliver, deliver like Edwin Starr or step aside. Teaming up Jet Li and Jason Statham is an inspired first move, it’s like what if someone pitted Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal against each other in the early 90s. Okay maybe not. It’s just too bad that this movie isn’t nearly as cool as it should have been or is far too complicated a story to be of worth to the target audience who paid for awesome martial arts and lots of them.

Statham plays Crawford, an FBI agent tasked with keeping warring factions of the Asian underworld out of the US and off the streets. Li plays “Rogue”, a for-profit assassin that works for whoever will pay for gas in his fancy-shmancy sports car and keep him in designer duds. Rogue kills Crawford’s partner and his partner’s family, and he wants revenge - big time. Rogue’s reappearance signals an escalation between the Chinese triads and the Japanese Yakuza on the streets of metropolitan America (really Vancouver BC mostly). But unbeknownst to everyone Rogue is pursuing his own agenda, but what is it? And who is Rogue really?

Okay that was concise; too bad the film couldn’t do us the same courtesy. I’m a pretty bright guy, if I do say so myself, but even I had trouble following the Rubix Cube of plots, counter-plots, shifting allegiances and betrayals. In this type of movie, if you’re busy trying to keep up with material feeling like there might be an exam on the subject afterwards, you’ve lost. Somebody get to the fight scenes! Or more specifically get to the main fight. Li versus Statham in a donnybrook to end all throw downs. I don’t care about Statham’s failed marriage or Mob boss John Lone’s hot Latina wife and their relationship. Come on!

Although the film is a master class in delayed gratification, it was interesting enough that I wasn’t completely bored and was more or less patient as I waited to see where it was going. There was a twist in the end that I found actually surprising, although looking back I probably should have seen it coming. Still though, any kind of surprise in a movie like this is a welcome one especially in light of the fairly disappointing final fight between Li and Statham. I don’t know what I was expecting, but they take so long getting there, I felt like we should have gotten more.

I’d like to say that action fans at least will get enjoyment from this, but I get the feeling sometimes that director Philip G. Atwell is under the impression that he was making the Asian criminal gang version of The Departed, which incidentally was an Asian film to begin with called Infernal Affairs. War teeters on satisfactory but can’t quite tip the scale enough to make it recommendable. It should make a better DVD choice as a double-headed with Statham’s The Transporter or Crank.

The Nanny Diaries

Rating: **

Did you like The Devil Wears Prada? Well if you did, then you should absolutely adore The Nanny Diaries right? Maybe not so much because it is so obvious from the first reel that the success of Prada was foremost on the minds of the people behind Diaries. Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t find the right equation of bitter versus funny and that’s a difficult equation to balance at even the best of times.

Not helping matters is that fact that everyone in the film is referenced by one kind of amusing alias, descriptive or otherwise, even the film’s narrator and heroine Annie (Scarlett Johansson). Annie’s just graduated college without a clue as to what’s next and she stumbles into a nanny gig for the even more clueless Mrs X (Laura Linney). The X’s are a typical Upper East Side Manhattan couple were Dad works too much and Mom plays too much while pretending that she has a hard-knock life as she ignores her son, Grayer (Nicholas Art).

Part of the problem is that these kind of Mo Money, No Problem socialites are too easy a target to get any real kind of laugh traction off of. Linney is shrill and uninspired as the so-named Mrs. X, I realize that the point of referring to her as such is to protect the innocent, but it’s meant to be the bland name for a blander character. If you want to see a real evil socialite, then stick with Streep in Prada, or Lindsay Lohan on a coke fuelled joy ride.

As for Johansson, she’s not really given the answer to that question of acting questions: what’s my motivation? Seriously, you could understand in Prada that Anne Hathaway’s Andy was taking crap from Streep’s Miranda because she knew it’d help her career in the long run. What’s Annie’s excuse? She doesn’t want to tell her Mom that she doesn’t want to be a Wall Street broker. That’s like a Saved By the Bell plot, straight out of the Zack Morris playbook.

The funny part is I like Annie’s mom played by Donna Murphy, I wish there was more stuff with her and I wish that she wasn’t played quite so obliviously. I also wish that there had been more stuff about young Grayer (or Grover as he’s nicknamed by Annie) and how all the nanny shifting and parental neglect has an affect on the boy. But no, we get Annie’s can she or can’t she relationship with the “Harvard Hottie” (Chris Evans) and how he’s the one guy in all of the Upper East Side that isn’t blinded by the bling.

It’s hard to believe that this is from the same filmmaking team that brought us American Splendor except for the fact that Paul Giamatti was easily obtainable for the thankless role of Mr. X. This thing is about five years out of date, a pure post 90s artefact that feels really out of touch and more than that, like it’s been done already only better. Frankly, I was bored most of the time and I never felt there was an adequate dramatic resolution between Annie and Mrs. X, unless you count yelling at the nanny cam satisfactory.

Mr. Bean’s Holiday

Rating: ***

I had almost forgotten Mr. Bean. Rowan Atkinson’s beloved British bafoon was a great counter discussion topic for me and other high school hipsters when others were talking about Friends. How can Chandler stack against Bean, I ask you? Hell, even Friends ended up riffing on Bean when Joey got his head stuck in a turkey. Sorry Friends, but Bean got there first and best. Bean’s new adventure seems to have gotten a critical trounce in the States, which I don’t get. Could it be that Bean is too sophisticated for Americans? Yikes.

To be fair, Mr Bean’s Holiday is not breaking any new ground, we get the same old Bean in the same old series of misunderstandings and mistaken identities as he falls ass backwards from one comically unintentional set-up to the other. After winning a church raffle, Bean departs for a holiday in Cannes, France. On the train trip though his desire to get the perfect shot of him boarding the train results in a Russian film director missing the same train with his son already aboard. Bean takes it upon himself to return the boy to his father despite his, as Mr Burns would say, incompetent bafoonery, including making a powerful enemy in Willem Dafoe, I mean Carson Clay.

Of course, like any movie based on a series of shorts or sketches, Mr Bean’s Holiday feels like a series of vignettes sewn together by a common narrative. The episode structure is nice as we follow Bean from adventure to adventure, but it’s just not overly ambitious is it? Atkinson still hits it out of the park though. And while I know that others will say that Bean is not Atkinson’s best creation (Black Adder is the correct answer by the way), he’s still a stunning example of silent comedy. Put him in soundless, black & white film with a piano soundtrack and the point still gets across.

So Bean’s not original, so what? I had a good time and I laughed a lot. Bean still works and if you’re a Bean fan from ages past then I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.

Death at a Funeral

Rating: ***1/2

So funerals aren’t typically know for being well-springs from which tremendous comedic moments flow. Leave to the British then to say, “When are we going to see a really dry-witted comedy set at somebody’s final reward?” Well wonder no more. Directed by veteran funny man and puppet master Frank Oz, Death at a Funeral is a typical slice of Britannica with dry humour punctuated by odd bits of slap-stick and dangerously quirky characters. While not a black comedy per se, this film hilariously makes light of one of the dourest events in life and turns it a farce worthy of Three’s Company.

The titular funeral belongs to the father of Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen), a would-be novelist who lives in the shadow of his talented brother Robert (Rupert Graves). The course of the day begins with the delivery of the wrong body to the service and segues into the tardy arrival of Robert who says that he can’t pay for his half of the funeral thus costing Daniel and his wife Jane (Keeley Hawes) the flat they’ve had their eye on. Further complications arise when a man named Peter (Peter Dinklage), tells Daniel that he and his Dad were lovers and that he, Peter, wants ₤15,000 worth of the estate. And if that isn’t bad enough an ecstasy filled bottle of Valium is making the rounds.

So basically, this is one of those British comedies with a bunch of quirky characters get caught in some hilarious misunderstandings. Nothing is held sacred from parody, not desecrating a corpse, not the casual ingestion of a hallucinogenic drug and certain not senior citizen incontinence and nudity. The stands out have to be Alan Tudyk, as straight laced bookkeeper Simon, who becomes the first to fall prey to a mistaken acid trip and Peter Vaughan as crusty old Uncle Alfie. Tudyk especially shows no shame as he flies through his acid trip past imaginary dogs and textile sensations to bring the funeral to a screeching halt when he climbs on the roof naked.

While I laughed a lot at the antics and buffoonery of Death at a Funeral, I have to concede the point that it treads a lot of the same territory of other British comedies. True that childish behaviour is somehow funnier when being done by someone with a haughty British accent, but again, I knew that already. The plot can get pretty sitcom-y at times with all its mad contrivances and victim of circumstance comedy routines, and under normal conditions I probably would have found that problematic. But again, I laughed a lot at this film and the actors are clearly master enough of their game to hit the ball at almost every at bat.

The Invasion

Rating: **

The trouble with remaking a movie rich in the political and social allegory of the time it was made in is that you have to find a way to repurpose that subtext in your new version. Perhaps this is where The Invasion, remake of the thrice lensed sci-fi flick The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, went so horribly wrong enough that a new director and production team was brought in to “salvage” it. To be fair, the 2007 incarnation does have a lot of ideas, and that’s a good thing, but they fail to coalesce into a working, or workable, film.

This invasion begins with a shuttle crash that spreads contaminated debris from Dallas to Washington D.C. A psychiatrist named Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) begins to notice that the behaviour of people is getting a little out of whack, either getting really, really unemotional or going full-blown, cock-eyed crazy. Not the least among the strangeness is Carol’s ex-husband (Jeremy Northam), a high-ranking CDC official, who’s really the architect for the spread of the alien, mind-controlling virus. Soon Carol and a small group of malcontent scientists are the only ones left uninfected, but Carol’s son may hold the key to finding a cure to the virus.

This was supposed to be the English-language debut for director Oliver Hirschbiegel, the filmmaker behind the recent Academy Award nominee Downfall. But when test screenings apparently made studio chiefs believe that The Invasion was more like The Blandvasion, producer Joel Silver called in the Wachowski Brothers to punch up the action. Frankly, its kind of obvious where the Wachowskis come in and when the editing scissors come out. Meanwhile, all along the periphery of the film though are shades of a big idea movie. The action is unquestionably cool, but Body Snatchers is a franchise known for its big brains (figurative), and when the action roles, the social commentary, such as it is, stops.

And that’s too bad because like I said, all along the outside of the film’s main story is the makings of what could have been a really complicated and engaging movie. Different remarks at different times demonstrate the versatility of the movie’s themes, from the over prescription of psychiatric medication to fundamental violence inherent in human nature. In the background are great, little flourishes of possibility, scenes of world peace breaking out all over, a US withdrawal in Iraq, and a less pig-headed George W. Bush meeting with Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, things tend to play out more like a zombie movie then anything else and even then, things don’t even get as gory as they should.

The actors are fairly good, but are not necessarily breaking themselves into a terror sweat. Kidman looks good running around in high heels, but I can’t imagine that there was anything to this job more taxing then that. Of course, Kidman also has her tremendous star presence working for her, but she finds a match in Daniel Craig who’s every bit as magnetic and engaging to watch playing the heroic doctor friend as he is playing England’s favourite super spy.

Ultimately, I think that The Invasion is entertaining enough to be diverting, but it’s woefully deficient in the area of subtext and subtlety. If you can live with that then this invasion is an effective way to kill and hour and a half. But for fans of hardcore sci-fi this will have too fast, be too flashy and is no where near a satisfying meal enough to justify getting out of the house and up to the movie theatre.

Superbad

Rating: ****

It’s always nice when the studios save us a penny for tribute at the end of the busy summer movie season. The Apatow Dynasty delivers again with Superbad, a small film (relatively) that delivers big laughs (literally) with solid writing and a talented cast of mostly unknowns. Whether your senior year in high school is a mere memory or is that thing in the windshield you’re quickly speeding up on, the down to Earth hilarity of three down on their luck guys preoccupied with girls and booze will surely appeal to the 18-year-old in all of us.

Written by Knocked Up star Seth Rogen with life-long friend Evan Goldberg, Superbad follows the coincidentally named Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) as they embark to loose their virginity in the waning days of high school before they head off for different colleges. A party at the house of a girl named Jules (Emma Stone) sounds promising, and like a gentleman, Seth offers to provide the alcohol. But how do two teenagers get liquor in the ‘burbs? Answer: fake id. Like the fake id of the boys’ good friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who has a faux Hawaiian driver’s license sporting the unlikely alias “McLovin”. Fogell (or McLovin) ends up on a wild ride with two out-of-control cops (Rogen and SNL’s Bill Hader), while Seth and Evan seek alcohol through other means.

That’s more or less the plot breakdown; short, simple and to the point. The sweet secret to Superbad’s success is its genuine characterization and unabashed look at male adolescence in all its raunchy, off-colour glory. To call the language in this movie spicy would be something of an understatement. I remember watching Vietnam War movies as a kid and being caught off guard by all the bad language in them, but at least that was a brutal, soul-crushing war. In all seriousness though, it sounds real. Ride any bus, go to any mall and listen to teenage boys when they talk and you’ll hear shades of McLovin and the gang.

The cast is great and it’s hard to imagine that the main players won’t someday take their mark at the forefront of Hollywood comedy alongside new legends like Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller and the Wilson Brothers. Hill has been doing some great supporting work in films like Accepted and Knocked Up and he hits his first at bat as the lead out of the park. Cera backs him up well, but anyone aware of the Brampton, Ontario native’s work on Arrested Development knows of his masterful use of the uncomfortable pause. The real discovery though is Mintz-Plasse, who owns as the incident-prone Fogell from trying to pass himself off as McLovin to drinking it up with the cops to nearly scoring with his crush Nicola (Aviva).

The comedy of Superbad is raw, honest and real. The actors, although not literally high school age, are not obviously twentysomethings trying to fake it, which typifies the usual fakeness that Hollywood, high school movies are known for, and that makes Superbad an even more special film.

This will surely go down in history as one of the better teen comedies, blissfully, not even a little self-absorbed for how it seems to go out of its way to show the warts of teen life as opposed to hiding them. Sure, some of the situations are a little out there, believability-wise, but with a good heart and great one-liners, it doesn’t matter. Superbad is the most winning comedy of the summer, if not the year so far. Assuming you like your comedy salty then you’re in for a heck of treat.

Stardust

Rating: ****

It’s a shame that the reception for Stardust failed to be as bright as the name implied, because it is possibly the most whimsically enjoyable fantasy film released since The Princess Bride. There’s no “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father prepare to die,” line or the repeated, incorrect use of the word, “Inconceivable,” but let’s be honest: no film will ever match that level of genius. Still though, lovers of The Bride should easily be able to get down with Stardust.

The story goes that the wall that borders the town named after it is the border that separates the real world from the magical kingdom of Stormhold. Only one soul from Wall has dared to brave across the divide and that is Dunstan Thorn (Nathaniel Parker), who’s tryst in Stormhold with a slave girl results in a son left on his door steps nine months later.

Years afterward young Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox) has a thing for a local girl named Victoria (Sienna Miller). In order to impress her, he promises to bring her a fallen star then see come to Earth somewhere beyond the wall. But when Tristan finds the star in Stormhold, he discovers that it’s in the form of a young woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes) and he ends up being her protector as she’s pursued through Stormhold by people that want to take out her heart in order to achieve immortality.

The sensibilities of writer Neil Gaiman’s original novella are kept largely intact, although I could definitely feel a Lord of the Rings sense of scale added to the affair. Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) takes in the windswept countryside with an epic eye, making that land as much a character in the film as any of the characters. But Vaughn’s focus throughout the story is not epic battles or cool sequences, but character moments and archetypes properly employed to generate a good humoured reaction in the audience. There isn’t really any gut busting comedy, but that’s not really the point. What there is however is the fun and joy of seeing the recognizable turned on its head and turned into something both familiar and new.

Surely you’ll recognize the idea of flying pirates, even if you only know of Don Carnage from Tale Spin. But in Stardust we meet Captain Shakespeare (Robert De Niro) an air pirate with a fearsome reputation, but in confidence is really a “woopsie”. Other stories have had kings looking to find an heir for their throne, but only the Lord of Stormhold (Peter O’Toole) pits his sons against each other in mortal combat to see who’s worthy. And how many times have you seen wicked witches committing acts of villainy, but rarely have their motives been so basically vain than Lamia’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) quest for permanent youth through what amounts to cannibalism.

Make no mistake because while this may be a fantasy, this also an actor’s showcase. To see De Niro loose all macho pretext and become Captain Shakespeare is inspired, and De Niro himself attacks the part with such relish it’s a joy. O’Toole is beautifully nasty as the Lord of Stormhold and Pfeiffer continues her comeback tour by racking up another great villain part that allows her to mix Wicked Witch of the West with a little Julie Cooper. Danes, meanwhile, I don’t think has ever been more luminescent in a role and newcomer Cox makes for an unconventional, though effective leading man.

Anyone who followed the drama around X-Men: The Last Stand know that Vaughn was the original replacement for Bryan Singer on the third film of the Marvel mutant movie franchise. When he dropped out weeks before the start of production, there was some concern about his ability to handle a big budget production, especially in the light of the well-received Cake. Well, proving once again that the faults of X-Men were those of Fox, Vaughn shows a skilled hand on screen, keeping the sprawling narrative and multi-dimensional characters tightly knit together. This no mere Rings riff a la Eragon, but a full-bodied fantasy story in its own right, beautifully conceived and brilliantly executed.

So if you didn’t already get the gist, forget about all those serious looking films that are coming up in the full frontal view of the fall box office schedule. Do yourself a favour and take one last lick at summer Hollywood fantasy, but one that is unmistakably worthwhile in the seeing. Stardust, if you’ll pardon the turn of phrase, is pure magic.

Rush Hour 3

Rating: **

One of the outtakes during the end credits of Rush Hour 2 was Chris Tucker remarking how the death of the villain meant that “he won’t be in Rush Hour 3.” At the time, the production of a third Rush Hour was incomprehensible, though not entirely unexpected. The thing was a cash cow, considering the relative indifference by the producers’ to show desire in commissioning a script that didn’t merely regurgitate the first film.

But perhaps a Rush Hour 3 needed to be made so that Chris Tucker would have something to do, because Rush Hour movies seem to be the only thing he gets out of bed to do now in days. In 1997, Tucker co-starred in three movies, which is the same number of movies he’s done in the last ten years: Rush Hours 1, 2 and 3.

Unimpressed is a word I frequently thought about while watching this latest outing for everybody’s favourite, pan-Pacific, mismatched, buddy cops. Jackie Chan’s Lee is forced to team-up again with Tucker’s Carter when an assassination attempt is made on Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma, from part one) while he’s giving evidence on the identity of the lethal Chinese triads to the World Court. So at about five minutes in, the movie is already hung on an exceptionally flimsy premise. Things go from staggeringly coincidental to completely inane when Lee and Carter’s search for the triads’ leader takes them to Paris, France of all places.

As to what Chinese mobsters are doing based in Paris, France is never explained, nor should the rational mind have expected one to begin with. The whole point, like the first two Rushes, is to take advantage of a fish out of water situation where ignorant stereotypes and lame cross-culture humour can be taken full advantage of. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I happened to enjoy both the first and second Rush Hours quite a bit. So why am I being so hard on this one?

Frankly, because it’s lazy. Lazy like Chris Tucker lazy. All the jokes have been done and done better: from the borderline good taste racism to Carter’s hot shot machismo fronting to the “Do you understand the words that are coming out of mouth,” misunderstandings. And considering that Chan isn’t as young as he used to be (although he’s really, really fit for a man of the age of 52), the action set pieces don’t seen to have their usual pop and zip. Opening this a week after Bourne makes Rush look like Grumpy Old Men.

Director Brett Ratner keeps the show moving, which is great, because the last thing you want is an exaggeratedly long Rush Hour movie. I’m sure most fans will walk away entertained, but gone is any pretext that this movie is about anything more than seeing Chan do awesome stunts while Tucker gets to shoot his mouth off with one questionably improved line after the other.

Anyway, it’s a sure fire sign that the summer’s winding down when the movies fail to impress on any level. Rush Hour 3 is pure popcorn entertainment with little to no nutritional value. Get it while it’s hot.

Becoming Jane

Rating: **1/2

There’ve been a lot of movies lately about the lives of authors and how they were influenced to write their most famous works. If things keep going he way they are now, pretty soon we’ll have Carrie Me Away, about what made Stephen King decide to write Carrie and then maybe Magical Me about the life of J.K. Rowling. In a way, it was inevitable that Anne Hathaway would play a famous English writer considering the name she has. All-in-all, she’s probably the one good thing about this otherwise tepid look at one of the most famous English writers of all time.

Becoming Jane is about the time in Jane Austen’s life when she put pad to paper and churned out the work that would be later named Pride and Prejudice. Hathaway plays Jane, an unconventional woman (for the time) that stays up nights working on her writing, tying long sequences of adjectives together in beautiful prose. She’s being courted by a local lord and forced into a match by her mother (Julie Walters) in order to guarantee financial security. But when a loveable rogue named Lefroy (James McAvoy) comes to the countryside from London, Anne begins to rethink her place in life and is inspired to write the novel that would make her famous.

First of all, and I can’t stress this enough, Hathaway is great, she really shines in the role and her English accent is pretty good save for one or two instances. She brings a lot of energy and really throws herself into the part, making you think completely that is Jane Austen. I wish the rest of the film was a match.

The story itself is pretty conventional though; brilliant writer defies parents/society in order to pursue true love and find their destiny away from the confines of their class/social status. And let’s face it: remove the “writer” tag and this is the second oldest story in the book. Not helping is that fact I found McAvoy fairly unengaging as a romantic lead. Then again so was Mr Darcy, the Pride character that Lefroy was supposedly the model for, but you’re rooting for Darcy and Elizabeth, I wanted Lefroy gone so we could get more stuff between Jane and the charmingly befuddled Mr. Wisley.

The whole story unfolds rather predictably and all the appropriate highlights are hit on their expected cues, including the bittersweet post-script. Of course, this makes the proceedings woefully drawn out as your waiting for things to get to their inevitable conclusion. This might be interesting for Austen fans, but they’ll know the story already. In other words, it’s all been done before.

Hot Rod

Rating: ***

Nothing beats an underdog story. Take the thrilling tale of would-be stuntman Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg), a young man desperate to live up the legacy of his father, an accomplished stuntman in his own right, that he perceivers despite continued failures. Rod also desperately seeks the approval of his stepfather Frank (Ian McShane), a ruffian that fights Rod weekly to strengthen the boy. But Frank and the other members of Rod’s family have been keeping a secret from Rod, Frank is sick and unless he gets a transplant, he’s going to die and Rod will never get the chance to defeat him in hand-to-hand combat.

This the first movie for Samberg and co-horts Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, who gained fame as “The Lonely Island” a group of digital filmmakers that created shorts, sketches and videos for the web. They eventually came to the attention of Saturday Night Live mastermind Lorne Michaels, who brought all three aboard in 2005 with Samberg performing and Taccone and Schaffer writing. Samberg’s digital videos have been highlights of the show in the last few years including the hits “Lazy Sunday” and “Dick in a Box” with Justin Timberlake.

Hot Rod brings a lot of those same sensibilities to the big screen. Michaels may have produced the film and it may co-star Samberg’s fellow SNL players Bill Hader and Chris Parnell, but this is not an SNL movie per se. It fits more firmly in the sensibilities of those old Lonely Island gags and this is helped along by the fact that Schaffer is sitting in the director’s chair.

I give props to the cast for whatever comedic gold it’s able to mine from the material. This is not a film in the vain Napoleon Dynamite as others have reported; such comparisons are pretty spurious actually. Hot Rod is much more zany and much more slapstick than typical off-colour teen comedies. It’s like Freaks and Geeks meets Super Dave Osborne really. Samberg, while still raw, sells the comedy with gonzo flare using his best asset, his literal big mouth. Will Arnett (Gob from Arrested Development) does his smary best as Rod’s rivals for the affections of Denise, played by the always lovely and talented Isla Fisher.

The script is pretty typical. A group of loveable losers doing their best to overcome impossible odds for altruistic reasons: raising the capital to give Frank a life-saving operation. There are the usual ups and downs as Rod battles with his feelings for Denise and coming to terms with the fact that his dad wasn’t the great stuntman advertised to him, but was killed in a pie-eating contest. This of course leads to doubts and self-incrimination and a third act revelation as Rod finds the stuntman with in.

The film doesn’t break any new ground, but it is fun and enjoyable. Its humour is an acquired taste assuming you like prolonged falls down the side of a hill, a whole sequence involving the phrase “cool beans” and an excellent post-“U Can’t Touch This” M.C. Hammer reference. If this sounds like the comedy for you, then enjoy Hot Rod with my compliments.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Rating: ****

If you liked the reboot on Bond in Casino Royale, then you’ve got to give big props to the gang behind the Bourne movies. The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy were both down to Earth spy movies that had basis in reality with all the stunts done manually and came complete with an emotional resonant storyline that carried over from one movie to the next. The hardcore, free running, Sony store supplied Bond played by Daniel Craig is as much Robert Ludlum as it is Ian Fleming.

Going in to The Bourne Ultimatum there was cause for concern. It was the third in the series be shown in a summer when number threes are hit-and-miss so far as meeting viewer expectations. And the Bourne movies, like Bond’s, have a formula to them too: erstwhile former government assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) tries to put together the pieces of his past while running from the very people that made him and now want to destroy him. Doug Liman got the ball rolling in Identity, but it was the kinetic energy and shaky cam of Paul Greengrass with Supremacy that confirmed Bourne as the super spy of the 21st century.

Ultimatum picks up right where Supremacy left off, in the six weeks between Bourne’s escape from the CIA in Moscow to his phone call to Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) in New York. Bourne discovers that a British journalist has been digging around into matters involving Treadstone, with specific reference in his articles to Bourne himself. It turns out that Treadstone is not as defunct as the Agency’s upper-echelon would like people to believe and at the centre of it all is Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). Bourne’s meeting with the reporter at a London train station goes poorly, but it sets Bourne on the path to finding out who he was and what he’s done. His travels take him from London to Madrid to Morocco and eventually home to New York City.

Ultimatum is solid from beginning to end. The story is tight, the action comes naturally and the actors are great in their roles, which are actual parts as opposed to place holders there to fill time between car chases and martial arts.

Bourne has definitely become a signature part for Damon, and I have a feeling he’ll long be remembered for playing the amnesiac assassin in the same way Connery’s connected to Bond. At the same time though, the contributions of ancillary characters like Allen’s driven, turned sympathetic Landy, or Strathairn’s Cheneyesque Vosen can’t be understated. They make the CIA office scenes work with their differing goals in the pursuit of Bourne and add a touch of dramatic tension as actors behind computers yell out coordinates while chasing everyone’s favourite Memory Charmed super spy.

Greengrass takes things up a notch action-wise, reining in his tremor-like camera work while at the same time maintaining the frenetic feel of the fight scenes, which are much more brutal in Ultimatum then they were in Supremacy. Greengrass pushes the limits with a rooftop chase across Tangiers, to a rush hour surveillance dodge in London’s Waterloo station to a brutal car chase through the streets of Manhattan. In the midst of it all is the idea that Bourne is fighting towards something, perhaps a final resolution to the questions that plague him. If there was a fault with the storyline of Supremacy, it was that Bourne often felt divorced from the action in his own film.

Is this the last film of the series? I hope not, I feel that Bourne is just getting started and certainly the story leaves things open to go either way depending on interest from the artists and the audience. If it’s the end it feels appropriate and the resolution is adequate. But there is that small opening in the door to give us more Bourne. So cue the Moby and crank it up.