CONFIDENCE (**)
A con is short for a confidence game, where trust is an essential piece of a ruse. CONFIDENCE knows all about setup and deception, but at the end of it all, it understands little about risk. After I witnessed its tricks and admired its creativity, I was only half-satisfied, for at no point did I feel anything was at stake.
DEATH TO SMOOCHY (**)
Some movies have raging motivation. Perhaps, they are driven by a subject that is just begging to be told. DEATH TO SMOOCHY is one of these films. Like Hardball, it mishandles a treasure that is just waiting to be discovered. There are moments where it builds its value impressively, then tears it down like a child playing with a city of blocks. There where many times when I laughed out loud, but there were just as many stretches where I was annoyed, and in some cases, disgusted.
HARDBALL (**)
The experience of watching HARDBALL is like trying to locate an archeological find. It's tedious and requires patience, and its treasures are buried deep. But most of the time, we barely scratch the surface. I found it discouraging to find a promising story handled so badly.
HIDALGO (**)
On the heels of the warmly crafted SEABISCUIT comes HIDALGO, another film revolving around its title-championed horse. Like its predecessor, it espouses and takes advantage of our inherit love of the underdog to propel our interest in its storyline. A fair share of controversy had been brewing upon its release, with its claims of being based on a “true story” and of its purported racism towards Arabs. But despite these accusations (valid or not), what really does the movie in is its poor execution and its lack of focus. Instead of getting a rousing swashbuckler, we receive schlock unworthy of our attention span or its lead actor....
HIGH CRIMES (**)
I dislike predictable movies, and Hollywood has become so commercialized that it produces safe, conventional fare that we've all seen before. HIGH CRIMES fits this mold, and has mediocrity painted all over it. You can find dozens of similar movies on cable with the same legalistic-thriller plots. This one just happens to occur in a military base. What surprised me was that this movie came from a very gifted director, and has very capable stars. The leads make this picture watchable, but hardly interesting.
HITCH (**)
What on Earth happened to this movie? For two-thirds of its running time, it develops two sweet romances, but then plummets into an ungainly third act. All of its charms and chemistry are sacrificed for a horrible denouement. I hate it when a movie holds my attention, only to jerk me around in the end.
IMPOSTOR (**)
NOT many people outside of the science fiction circles know who Philip K. Dick is. But they have definitely seen (or heard of) the great films that have been based on his work. SF writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan and Michael Crichton create stories where characters become victims/witnesses of events beyond their control/understanding. PKD works from the individual instead of to it, revealing the ideas he wishes to deal with, through a focal character. If SF ideas could be seen as ripples in a pool of water, other writers’ characters would be buoys. PKD’s would be causing the splash.
JUST VISITING (**)
There's nothing wrong with this picture. It's silly fun. Nobody should try and dissect it and look for flaws in its plot (like how can they go to future but end up on the other side of the Atlantic). Time-travel movies have been around for a long time, and it's amusing how people of the present (BACK TO THE FUTURE) or people from the past (KATE AND LEOPOLD) would adjust in "fish-out-of-water" scenarios. The problem with JUST VISITING is that after a really wonderful and side-splitting first-half, it never recovers. It runs out of steam after its best scene. It doesn't get bad or corny, but it never takes off again.
OCEAN’S TWELVE (**)
Danny Ocean’s last appearance brought me a sense of devilish satisfaction and subtle dread. At the end of OCEAN’S ELEVEN, he and his crew had achieved their goals and seemed confidently prepared for its consequences. Sadly, in OCEAN’S TWELVE, this group’s ambitions deliver hardly any of the same slick entertainment and suave charm that was so delicious in its predecessor. Steven Soderbergh bites off more than he can chew in taking on an idea that has nowhere left to go, and giving it less focus than it deserves.
STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES (**)
There is one point in STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES, where Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) comments, "I've got a bad feeling about this." He couldn't have put it any better. It is this kind of exhausted dialogue that permeates the movie, worsened by the fact that almost all the human characters display almost no vigor, no drive, no purpose. For all its dazzling imagery, AOTC is surprisingly boring, until the last 40 minutes that is.
THE DA VINCI CODE (**)
As you can see, I’m against the film’s censorship. But I hope you understand why I must now tell you to avoid it if you can. Not because it is false, but because it is faulty. It contains historical information that must have been laboriously researched, but its two mistakes, which are its 1st and 3rd acts, are as equally arduous. How ironic that a movie that relies heavily on a Passover image, must itself be passed over.
THE PACIFIER (**)
Why am I citing the Austrian Oak? Because I couldn’t stop thinking about him while viewing THE PACIFIER. Vin Diesel, has the physique of puma, is a fine actor (see him in MULTI-FACIAL, which he wrote and directed), and is Schwarzenegger’s heir apparent when it comes to muscular he-men (The Rock is a close second). Like his predecessor, he too wishes to capitalize on his imposing rep by exploiting it in a comedy. Sadly, his efforts never fully bloom, due to director Adam Shankman’s squandering of his story’s full potential.
THE SCORPION KING (**)
The return of barbarian movies. Is this a good thing? They weren't when they were hip in the late 70s and early 80s. To date there is only one barbarian film that is truly epic, and that is Schwarzenneger's CONAN THE BARBARIAN. It's one of the best sword and scorcery movies around, but when put up against THE SCORPION KING, it looks like THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
THE THIRD WHEEL (**)
THE THIRD WHEEL belongs to a category of movies which I least look forward to writing about... the bland films. It has a first rate cast, familiar plot elements, and a standard execution. After watching it, you'll be left befuddled, most likely asking yourself, "Was I entertained? Was it bad?" The probable answer on both counts will be no. It's a sailboat that managed to get out to sea, but is now stuck in the doldrums. It makes you wonder how it got made in the first place.
TRANSFORMERS (**)
For followers of the series, how much you love Michael Bay’s TRANSFORMERS will depend on how much you have grown up (and probably how many decibels your eardrums can take). It seems natural that many of us who collected toy autobots and decepticons might have had great interest in the fields of science, as the mechanics of how these robots transform required inquiry during our younger years. So if you’re like me, watching this movie may not only reveal an onscreen battle between good and evil, but also one's own personal battle between nostalgia and common sense.
