Cinderella Man

Grade: D+/DWR*

Critics must have been terrified that Russell Crowe was gonna' hunt them down and beat the living crap out of them, because that's the only explanation for the generous reviews this earnestly unoriginal biopic has been receiving.

Please don't tell him where I live.

Round One: A little Depression-era boy steals a salami to help feed his family. His father, Russell Crowe, makes him return the cold cuts to the local butcher, head hung low in shame. The family starves.

Kill me now.

Round Two: It's still the Depression, the electricity is turned off, Russell Crowe can see his own breath, and within hours the children start coughing. Can pneumonia be far away?

Round Three: Half starved and about to go into the boxing ring, a utensil-less Russell Crowe begins eating a bowl of hash like a dog, just as a reporter rounds the corner to spot him. "Long time no see, Jimmy," the pugilist-peeking sportswriter intones.

Round Four: We're in the boxing ring, and Russell Crowe begins to have flashes of his wife, children and "Past Due" notices. Suddenly, he comes to life and begins boxing like a champion.

Round Five: Russell Crowe's best friend gets trampled by a police horse in a Hooverville shantytown. He asks Crowe to inform the wife he'll be home a tad late as the stretcher comes to take him away. Quickly cut to pine box, big hole in the ground, number 62998 stamped on the pauper's grave. The music swells.

Round Six: A beaten man, Russell Crowe pleads with his wife Renee Zellweger - both replete with embarrassing Irish/New Yawk accents - "Babe, let me go back in the ring. At least there I know who's hitting me."

Round Seven: A coach is stunned that Russell Crowe is thrashing his champion fighter. "You beat the guy easy last time," he admonishes. "He ain't the same guy," the beaten prizefighter responds with mystical awe.

Round Eight: Renee actually says to Russell (I am so not making this up) "You are everybody's hope, you are your children's hero, and you are the champion of my heart, James J. Braddock."

Round Nine: Andrew Stern is in the restroom trying not to vomit.

Round Ten: Sylvestor Stallone sues for story infringement.

Round Eleven: Martin Scorsese sues for directorial infringement. His "Raging Bull" cameraman, Michael Chapman, sues for cinematography infringement. His "Raging Bull" editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, beats the crap out of Ron Howard with her Academy Award.

Round Twelve: Cinderella, Prince Charming, and the Evil Stepsisters sue for title infringement.

It's all dreadfully syrupy and sanctimonious. Crowe gives mock sincerity a bad name. Paul Giamatti is one-note irritating doing his best Burgess Meredith impression, sans cigar stub. Broadway's "The Music Man" himself, Craig Bierko causes major trouble in River City with one of the year's most scenery-chewing performances as the gorilla champion to beat, forced to deliver lines like, "Has your wife been dreaming about me?" as his psyche-out technique in the ring.

Director Ron Howard bores to tears with his formulaic, drawn out, cliché-ridden, derivative, but oh-so-well-meaning paean to the godlike protagonist no one's ever heard of before. Apparently, not only was fighter James Braddock an important boxer with a heart of gold and a patriotic song in his heart, but for some unknown reason we are also told he helped build the Verrazano Bridge as well. What this has to do with anything I'm not sure. Did he practice his punches on the suspension cables like Rocky Balboa beat up on the frozen carcasses in the meat locker?

Give this movie a one way ticket straight to Palookaville.

*For those unfamiliar with this particular designation, DWR (which stands for "Danger, Will Robinson") is used to indicate pretentious, self-congratulatory, holier-than-thou or otherwise self-important dreck that nevertheless manages to garner significant critical praise. I am considering changing this designation to IEFS for "Is Ebert Fu#king Serious?"

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0352248/

Batman Begins

Grade: A-

Note to Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher - wanna make a good "Batman" movie? Then make the caped crusader a human being first. It took five tries and Director Christopher Nolan, but someone finally got it right.

Christian Bale, who (be still my heart) will forever remain at the very top of my laminated list, brings charisma, humanity and more than a touch of nobility to a superhero who has heretofore been a brooding and one-dimensional cipher. He is a man whose course has been set through the decency of others - his parents, his childhood friend, his butler turned father figure - a man challenged to rise up to the examples and expectations of those around him. His sense of grief, vengefulness, shame, and paralyzing fear make him all the more heroic for confronting his human frailties and flying beyond and above them.

Director Nolan has worked with screenwriter David S. Goyer to create a story that is more folklore than formula. From a childhood fall down a deep well infested with bats to brutal prison encampments to snow capped, zen encrusted mountain tops to a gotham of chillingly ingenious design, their Batman is the stuff forged of saga and legend. It is also a humdinger of an action adventure flick, replete with rooftop car chases, shadowy violence, and a villain I for one never saw coming. If there are moments that come perilously close to "Kung Fu" level mumbo jumbo and Capraesque goody goodness, there is also far more genuine emotion and pathos than one has a reasonable right to expect. A mesmerizing set design is enhanced by a creative sound design that allows eerie, cavelike echoes to reverberant throughout the theater. Nice stylistic touches introduce us to the famed bat spotlight, a relationship with "backup" bats forged through fear surmounted, and mayhap an early meeting of the lad who will one day become sidekick Robin.

Uniformly multi-dimensional performances from a fine cast of veterans the likes of Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson and Morgan Freeman keep the story well grounded and never veering too far into the realm of comic book fantasy. But it is Bale that soars above all others who haveworn the flamboyant cape and driven the flame-spewing car before him, and that makes this "Batman" dark yet never dull.

Since this one is a prequel, any chance we can call a do-over for all the clunker predecessors?

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0372784/

Happy Endings

Grade: C+

What begins as smart, witty, hip, urbane, and erotic quickly degenerates into something trying way too hard to be smart, witty, hip, urbane, and erotic.

Writer/director Don Roos intertwines the stories of some ten assorted people. They are at various times gay, straight, confused, neurotic, lonely, gullible, manipulative, vindictive, and despicable. Few if any are terribly likable. Pieces of information about all of the characters flash on the screen, at first charming snapshots and snippets into their histories and futures that soon reveal the storyteller has way too many characters and way too much information on hand to tell in a single sitting. Some stories are far more intriguing and surprising than others, yet the patchwork interweaving becomes tedious, dizzying and long-winded.

The acting is solid, especially from Lisa Kudrow as a despairing abortion counselor, pro-choice for others but questioning some of her own, Tom Arnold as a far too naïve mogul with a kind heart and the word sucker firmly imprinted on his forehead, and Jason Ritter as a gay boy in denial and with moptop, both circa 1980. There is a mean-spirited and hostile sophistication at play, a wink wink sense of humor at how flawed, unpleasant and pathetic everyone is. Straight men are vacuous morons, gay men are emotionally weak and impotent, women are cold and conniving, all variations on a theme Roos utilized to greater (and more concise) amusement in "The Opposite of Sex." Here any pretense of tenderness is replaced with acidity - everyone bribes, lies and cheats on everyone else, gay men have more sex with women than they do with each another, and nobody seems to have ever heard of birth control. The film is so self-consciously impressed with its own slickness and style that it becomes far too precious with far too few chuckles for its own good. At two hours, the filmmaker desperately needs six fewer protagonists and 30 fewer minutes.

Happy some of the endings may be - so say the written flashes of explanation and resolution on the screen - but there are definitely far too many of them.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0361693/

War of the Worlds

Grade: B

Steven Spielberg emphasizes good old fashioned American family dysfunction and the magic of CGI over a more universal story of unity and cooperation in the face of global extermination.
How simplistically isolationist of him.

The film is at its best watching Tom Cruise (whose character would be popping anti-anxiety medication if Cruise would only let him) attempting to protect the children he barely knows in the face of sudden, unanticipated, unrelenting and paralyzing fear. The terror the trio feels is matched only by the mutual antagonism they have toward one another, and their relationships expand and contract in remarkably believable fashion. Dakota Fanning is surprisingly un-irritating as she transforms from wise-beyond-her-years to a shrieking, screaming, crying, comatose little girl who just wants her mommy. Justin Chatwin is also fine as the bratty Ipod enraptured teenager who won't do his homework and would happily choose incineration over spending another moment with his dad given half an opportunity. Tim Robbins detracts as a shell shocked basket case encountered along the way, and Gene Barry (star of the classic original) makes a nice cameo that will be missed if you dare blink.

Taught, harrowing and relentless, the film makes only passing reference to terrorism and exploits the occasional 9/11 imagery to manipulative effect, yet never bothers to explore the more subtle aspects of a society under constant fear of attack. Mob scene mentality, "have you seen this person" photo collages, and Cruise covered with dust of the vaporized is about as high-minded and philosophical as the film gets. Computer generated effects rule the day, and they are often frightening and pulse increasing if also stubbornly two-dimensional. As Spielberg has demonstrated in such masterworks as "Jaws" and "Close Encounters," less is indeed more. Yet here we are shown far too much, and as threatening and gargantuan as it all looks, it nonetheless diminishes rather than enhances a genuine sense of dread and fear. It is the stuff of nightmares, yet we are too often impressed with the art design instead of being haunted by the realism. One can't help but lookfor dinosaurs to make a special guest appearance, especially during an overly long basement hideout sequence derivative of Spielberg's velociraptor sequence in "Jurassic Park."

Through focusing completely on one nuclear family's journey, we lose any sense of the worldwide battle so forcefully indicated in the original 1950's screen version, a struggle of all humankind to save the planet from certain annihilation. Beyond the three main characters, everyone else lies somewhere between cartoon and stereotype (from a dopey auto mechanic named Manny to a neighborhood kid with street smarts and a goofy afro to the wealthy and kindhearted stepfather who all too easily makes Cruise look shabby and self-centered in contrast). Plot points are too often contrived or convenient (why is there always a running car filled to the brim with gasoline and a bunch of hand grenades just when you need 'em?) A sappy, Hollywood ending betrays the dark and uncompromising gloom and reality the piece initially aspires to, and the epilogue feels tacked on, a story ender rather than the spiritual and metaphysical revelation one expects H.G. Wells had originally intended.

This "War of the Worlds" does not live up to its title. "Aliens vs. Bayonne, N.J.?" Maybe.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0407304/

Heights

Grade: B+

We know there's a rooftop accessible to us in our apartment building. We've lived there for almost four years. We've never ventured up there. We're New Yorkers, not explorers. Our apartment is our oasis against the insanity. We don't know the names of a single neighbor. We walk among the millions, talking on cell phones in order to live in our own insular world among the anonymous and annoying throngs. Yet the City of New York is a very, very small world. We bump into friends, point out acquaintances, gawk at theater actors and dodge the damn tourists. Every New Yorker is two degrees of separation from every other New Yorker.

In 24 hours, the lives of five New Yorkers are forever altered. They know one another well, but maybe not as well as they think. They've never met one another before, yet are unwittingly and unknowingly connected nonetheless. Confessions will be made, lies will be told, emotions will be uncovered and avoided. Affairs of the heart, betrayals in the bedroom, longings unfulfilled.
People will venture onto the rooftops they never knew existed before.

Glenn Close is a grand dame of the theater, both larger and smaller than life depending on which side of the performance she stands. Ostentatious and vibrant, suddenly old and vulnerable. Elizabeth Banks is trapped within the life that exists inside her apartment walls, without even recognizing how much she longs for escape into the wider world. James Marsden hides behind his engagement, living the revisionist life of denial an anonymous city affords him. Jesse Bradford lives in the same apartment building, knows one, meets another, changes the life of the one he's never met. The taxi cab rides, the subway stations, the Broadway Theaters (major points for any film that uses a house that actually looks like it exists within the theater district), the claustrophobic apartments, the rooftop vistas - the story, tone, and setting are all quintessential New York. Sharply written and nicely acted, some self-conscious editing and section titling, the lack of a mood capturing film score, and the occasionally clichéd plot misstep makes for an intellectually rather than emotionally involving experience. There is an inherent coldness in filmmaking style at work, appropriate to the environs yet nevertheless distancing from our characters. There is also perhaps a glimmer or two of hope that appears rather disingenuous, even if desired.

Yet one also cannot escape the many truths and observations about the lives we lead, the perspectives we share, and the games we play, only in New York. Truth be told, only in Manhattan.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0382073/