Talk to Me

Don Cheadle gives an Oscar worthy performance in this biopic about famed radio personality Petey Greene. The movie follows Greene from his time as a disc jockey in prison, to his hiring at WOL-AM in Washington DC. From there he took his gift of "telling it like it is," and became the voice of the people. His thrust to stardom, however, cost him his health, and his relationships- especially with his close friend and manager- Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejifor who also delivers a performance the academy would do well to take note of).

The movie is divided essentially into three parts. The first act is Greene's struggle to win over Hughes, and the two of them trying to get Greene on the radio. This involves them having pacify the owner of the station, Martin Sheen. This section ends with him almost single handedly turning the station from an out-of-date relic into a relevant voice of the African American community. Unfortunately, Hughes won't let Greene's fame stop there, and helps him burst onto the national scene. This leads Greene down a road to self-destruction, and the destruction of their relationship.

Greene took over the role of WOL's morning DJ in the late sixties, a time when the city was a powder keg of racial tension. This came to a head on April 4th 1968, with the assassination of Martin Luther King. Washington literally exploded into riots, and in what I considered the climax of the movie, Greene spent the night on the radio listening and talking to people, trying to diffuse the situation. He played a major role in pacifying the city, and cemented his importance.

Taraji Henson also deserves being noted in her role as Vernell Watson, Greene's girlfriend. She plays the role so comically over the top, that you can't help but love the character. Even Cedric the Entertainer, who I normally don't care for, does a fine job in is turn as "Nighthawk" Bob Terry, another DJ at WOL.

There is an inherent problem with biopics, however. Usually, the story that the person is famous for runs out long before the end of the person's life. This was indeed the case for Petey Greene. He fell out of the spotlight after his infamous Johnny Carson appearance. This happened a good ten years before his death, but Kasi Lemmons (who also directed the wonderful Caveman's Valentine) spent over 15 minutes on this resolution. That's a tough call, because it's almost a requirement for a posthumous biopic to have content all the way to the end. This results in the movie dragging towards the end- a very common affliction for biographical movies.

This is a fine movie, telling the story of a highly over-looked, but very important cultural figure. It dragged on a little bit too long, but the acting more than compensates for this. Don't be surprised if you see this movie up for several nominations.

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4/5

Superbad

This could be for the late nineties what Dazed and Confused did for the mid seventies (except Superbad is a little bit more extreme). Every so long a movie comes along that is truly iconic, and I think this may be one of those movies that sums up a generation. I've seen two teenage comedies in the last week, Superbad and Bratz. I could not think of a single person who could possibly relate to Bratz, whereas I could not think of a single person who could not relate to some part of Superbad.

Judd Apatow has to be one of the hardest working people in show business. For the past year every Apatow movie I'm seen is preceded by trailers for the next one he's involved with. This can all be a little misleading, however, seeing as he neither directed nor wrote Superbad (It was directed by television veteran Greg Mottola, and penned by longtime Apatow collaborators Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg. This isn't a problem, though, since it is easily the funniest movie that has come from that crew.

Jonah Hill stars as Seth, and Michael Cera stars as Evan, two best best friend seniors who lacking a better term, are losers. The movie takes place over the course of a single day, as the two of them try to work of the courage to approach the girls they like, and somehow actually get invited to a party (under the impression that they are providing the alcohol). Said alcohol will be obtained by Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who is in possession of a fake ID with the hilarious moniker- McLovin. Just McLovin, no first name.

One thing about movies from this group, is that they are apologetically extreme. Most teen comedies try to aim for a PG-13 rating. I think every Apatow movie thus far has received nothing tamer than an R rating- clearly because of the language. Every other word uttered in this movie is either profane, or sexual. As realistic as the conflicts were in Mean Girls, the language is even more dead on in Superbad.

Seth and Evan spend a terrible night trying track down alcohol, and realizing their love-lives, all while coming to terms with the idea that they are going to different schools next year. Fogell/McLovin had a slightly more interesting evening. After the liquor store he was trying to buy booze at was robbed, he goes off on a joyride with the two police officers (Seth Rogen and and Bill Hader) who responded (evidently they felt a connection with McLovin). These scenes were the funniest in the movie.

No, this isn't Shakespeare. It's the story of three desperately uncool high school seniors in their last ditch effort at enjoying their childhood. Their exploits may not be the most realistic, but the characters themselves are- and they're so damn funny, with a Bootsy Collins and Van Halen infused funky soundtrack. This is one of the best movies so far this year, and the funniest one in the past several years.

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5/5

Top 10 Zombie Movies

Occasionally I like to do fun little countdown lists. I'm currently working on my top 100 most thrilling movies, but in the meantime, here's my top 10 zombie movies.

10. Zombi 2 (1979)
This is not even all that great of a movie. It's Italian, and Italians love their Zombie movies, and Lucio Fulci did not disappoint. A yacht floats into New York Harbor abandoned. The ship owner's daughter and a journalist venture off to a South Pacific Island to discover a hot-bed of zombie activity. Even for a zombie movie this film is pretty bad. It's on this list for two scenes. One of the most squeamish scenes ever put on film- the infamous long drawn out impalement of a women on splintered wood through her eye ball (you think it's going to cut away, but it just doesn't). And a fantastic scene with a zombie fighting a shark.

9. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
This Wes Craven directed movie is barely a zombie movie, but it's a such a good movie in general that I had to put it on the list. It involves an anthropologist who visits Haiti to investigate rumors of zombies. Here he finds a cult using drugs to induce a death like state. It's so effective that it fools doctors into declaring people dead, who are later dug up and turned into slaves. This isn't so much a straight up zombie movie, but it is super creepy, with a terribly disturbing and foreboding ending.

8. Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetary Man) (1994)
Italian director Michele Soavi contributes the #8 movie on my list. This one stars Rupert Everett as a cemetery guard, who must kill the dead again- as they rise within a few days of being buried. He has gained a stoic acceptance of this role, until he falls in love with a widow who had come to visit her husband. Soon she dies as well, but of course, she won't be dead for long.

7. Army of Darkness (1993)
Saim Raimi's genius finish to the Evil Dead trilogy. This takes the comedy and the absurdity of the first two (which are actually kind of the same movie) and expands it to a new extreme. Bruce Campbell's Ash is transported back in time to fight an army of skeletons trying to get the Necronomicon. With chainsaw and shotgun in hand (I do mean "hand" because he's short on a second one) he goes to work on this army of the undead.

6. 28 Days Later (2003)
This movie changed the whole game of zombies. They were no longer the undead, but instead were infecting by some sort of virus. This results in fast moving pissed off zombies looking to kill anything they can. The opening scenes with Cillian Murphey wandering around an abandoned London are incredibly creepy and powerful. Danny Boyle took a genre I had thought to be dead, and made it undead again.

5. White Zombie (1932)
This is the movie that truly started it all. Most credit Night of the Living Dead, but as you can see, this one came 35 years earlier. It stars Bela Lugosi as Monsieur Beaumont, who tries to win the love of his life, but inadvertently turns her into a zombie. This has none of the brain eating and gore that became a standard in zombie movies. White Zombie deals strictly with a emotional ramifications of what happens when someone becomes lifeless.

4. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
This is the birth of the modern zombie. These zombies were violent and thirsted after human blood. Most of the movie takes place in a single farmhouse that a group of survivors has barricaded themselves in. Much of the tension comes not just from the zombie hordes awaiting outside, but from the turmoil and conflict that arises between the characters inside. In an ahead of its time idea, it features an African American as the hero, which is one of the causes of tension inside the house.

3. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
This is George Romero's sequel to Night of the Living Dead. It takes the claustrophobia of a single farmhouse, and brings greater scope. Now the whole world is affected, and the survivors hide in a shopping mall- again in a nearly hopeless situation. This couples with the terror, some brilliant social commentary on blind consumerism. The zombies, despite being dead, gravitate towards the shopping mall. It functions as a haven for the survivors, and a lure for the zombies. You don't get much more scathing commentary than that.

2. Dead Alive (A.K.A Braindead) (1992)
Peter Jackson's early movies were all violent, and completely outlandish. This is perhaps the most wild of them all (except possibly Meet the Feebles which featured an all puppet slaughter fest). This movie is about Lionel, a dedicated son to an oppressive mother. When she gets infected by a disease and dies, she comes back to life. Lionel does everything to protect her, even when it means turning half the town into zombies. Everyone in the movie suffers incredibly violent deaths, and it is rumored that it used more fake blood than any other movie in history. The final scene alone used 300 liters. At its heart, it's just about a simple son learning his independence (ha).

1. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
This movie is perfect in every way. The heroes in this movie actually act like real people would. If I saw a zombie for the first time, I'd think it was just drunk too. Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost make this a genius comedic movie. It skewers Zombie movies, while paying homage to them. It's done by a group of people who genuinely love the genre. Everything about this movie is just perfect.

Factory Girl

After watching a whole slew of really bad Summer bombs, I decided to take a step back and watch a movie I thought may actually be good. Factory Girl is about the relationship between Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller), and Andy Warhol (Guy Pierce). The movie follows them as Edie joins Andy in his "The Factory" the studio the where he created his art house hit films staring Edie. Essentially the movie tells her story as she is thrust into stardom, the only true star in a sea of superficiality.

This is, of course, a revisionist story, but since I don't really know the true history, I can't attest to how accurate it is. One thing I do know is that her relationship with the Bob Dylan character (played with mediocrity by Hayden Christiansen) was entirely fictional. This isn't really important, though. At its core, it's about Edie wrestling with her fame, rebelling against her parents, and being used by Warhol.

Miller and Pierce both play their roles magnificently. Pierce captures the performance the Warhol himself created. Everything is chic, and oh so pretentious. Every word mapped out to support his outsider art personality. Miller portrays the glowing on the outside, empty on the inside Sedgwick. There are certain scenes where she genuinely captures the horror that she must have been feeling, having all her innermost feelings and secrets stripped from her and shown on screen. Jimmy Fallon plays Chucky, one of Edie's oldest and closest friends. He falls into the art scene, and in the end manipulates Edie more than anyone else. The only genuine person around her is the unnamed Dylan character that Edie falls for. In one wonderfully uncomfortable scene, he visits Edie in the factory, and makes Warhol feel out of place in his own studio.

It's tough, because despite how intriguing the story is, the script is not all that strong. Warhol seems to talk almost exclusively in one liners, and it seems that every line Sedgwick has to outline her inner turmoil. The entire script is carefully composed, and would normally fall flat. However, in the context of this pretentious time, with these pretentious characters, a pretentious script seems to work. It does sound like the deliberate dialog that the characters might actually have spoken.

This is an emotionally driven tale of Edie as she leaves her affluent family and enters the art world head first. She gets used up, and thrown out. The more she loses grip on reality, the more it comes crashing down on her. It paints Warhol, and that whole scene in an absolutely negative light- in a world of anarchy with Warhol as the twisted self-serving ring master. Factory Girl is a heart-wrenching story with Edie Sedgwick stuck in the middle.

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4/5

Daddy Day Camp

Cuba Gooding Jr used to be good. As Good as it Gets, What Dreams May Come, he even won the Oscar for Jerry McGuire. What happened to him? Snow Dogs, Norbit, Boat Trip, and Daddy Day Camp are what happened to him. This poor man needs to fire his agent, or whoever convinced him to take a role in this sequel that even Eddie Murphey passed on.

This is Fred Savage's feature directorial debut. This comes after spending his whole life on TV, and nearly a decade directing for the small screen. He should have stayed there. After the success of his "Daddy Day Care" business, Charlie Hinton (Gooding), and Phil Ryerson, (Paul Rae) buy an ailing camp ground and try to revitalize it. In an entirely unoriginal plot, the camp filled with misfits is pitted against the rich "Camp Cannola." Lance Warner (Lochlyn Monroe), who runs Camp Cannola makes Biff Tannen look like a Rhoads Scholar. Or how about Charlie's wife (Tamala Jones), who's willing to risk bankruptcy to support her husband's pipe dream? Do these sound like realistic characters, even for a children's movie?

It seems that there are two variations on comedy in this movie. Toilet humor, and people screaming very loudly. Within two minutes of each other, there is a skunk spraying gag, a vomiting gag, and an exploding toilet gag. It's filled with scene after scene of balloons filled with liquids of varying colors and consistencies exploding on people. Funny, huh? As the movie progresses, the characters just get louder, whether it's Hinton on the archery range, or during a raid by the other camp. These comedies need to learn that loud does not equal funny.

The acting on all fronts is terrible. It sounded like they were reading the script for the first time. I feel bad about saying this, but the kids were awful as well. It seemed as if they were asking every single line, completely unsure of themselves. They didn't sound like kids, they sounded like poor actors trying to act like kids. It's a shame.

I know this is a children's movie, and I shouldn't judge it on the same level as other movies. I did in fact hear scattered laughter from the young-uns, and of course it preaches the idea of tolerance and being yourself, but honestly- it's just a rancid piece of cinema. There are many movies that promote the same ideas to the same demographic, that are so much more enjoyable. With this role Cuba Gooding may have complete descended from the Oscars to the Razzies.

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0/5

Captivity

Fresh on the heels of Hostel II, Captivity is the latest in the new Torture genre- possibly started several years ago by the first Saw movie. Before this movie was released, there was a batch of billboards in Los Angeles that depicted some fairly graphic images. This advertising campaign was met with public outcry, which only helped After Dark Pictures promote this as "the most controversial movie ever made." Genius. But it takes a lot for a movie to live up to billing like that- and Captivity does not.

Almost immediately after the opening sequence, Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert), a world famous model, is abducted and confined in a stereotypical non-descript chamber. After a underwhelming escape attempts, it's revealed that she is not alone. One room over is Gary Dexter (Daniel Gillies), a cross-country car courier. They form an realistic relationship under the circumstances, and work together to try to escape.

Captivity blends aspects of both Hostel and Saw, even throwing in a few throwbacks to the grandaddy of all creepy movies- Seven. Captivity, however, doesn't allow for the twisted irony in Saw and Seven, of using a sinner's sins against that person. There was at least a higher motivation behind those murders, instead of simply for entertainment. This is more of the straight ahead torture of the Hostel movies.

The movie started to lose my interest, but around the hour mark, it dissolved into a series of twists and manipulations. Some of them were interesting, but many were just unbelievable. It's a shame the acting did nothing to help the believability of this movie. Cuthbert is...okay, and so is Gillies, but most of the supporting cast is just awful. I know I'd have trouble acting with lines like

"It's Greek, it says..."
"How do you know it's Greek?"
"Because I speak Greek."
"What does it say?"

Are exchanges like that really necessary? And that's just one small example of the terrible dialogue filling this movie.

There is very little shocking material in this movie. There are no outstanding twists. The investigative portions are worthless. There are nearly no redeeming qualities to this movie. Saw was a decent movie, but I would gladly have given it up, if it meant there was nothing to inspire movies like Captivity to ever be made.

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0.5/5

Bratz: The Movie

OMG!!! JKLOL!!!! Oh no they didn't- I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie before, and that was Mean Girls. The only difference is that Mean Girls was good- really good. This movie is bad- really bad. It takes one ten second gag from Mean Girls (the seating arrangements in the cafeteria), and makes an entire movie out of it. It loses all of the feelings of conflict and isolation that made Mean Girls so good.

Logan Browning, Janel Parrish, Nathalia Ramos, and Skyler Shaye play Sasha, Jade, Yasmin, Cloe- four best friends just starting high-school. Their hopeful starry eyed dreams are shattered when Meredith (Chelsea Staub), the student council president, drives them to join separate cliques and breaks of their friendships. Potential for genuine conflict? Hardly. They're back together before the half hour mark. The rest of the movie is spent split between revenge against Meredith, and their attempts at spreading their inter-clique diversity around the school.

It's been a while since I was in high-school, but I don't remember it being like this- at all. I think High School Musical even had more truths in it. Bratz just rips off everything. It continues harvesting Mean Girls all the way down to the talent show, and it even references the MTV show "My Super Sweet 16." Nothing draws more attention to a movie's own self-awareness than being featured on a TV show. And a dog named Paris that follows Meredith around? Are dogs even allowed in school?

The five lead actresses are awful. Just terrible. I think the performances would have been more convincing if they had been given by the Bratz dolls themselves. That's actually an interesting prospect. For some reason Jon Voight is in this as the principle and Meredith's father. I couldn't fathom what possessed him to appear in this cesspool.

I'm not sure who this movie is targeting. I would assume it would be the audience that would watch "My Super Sweet 16," but I'm not sure. Maybe the same crowd that enjoys the Avril Levigne peppered soundtrack. Again, I'm not sure. Possibly fans of director Sean McNamara's other work- a whole plethora of Disney Channel shows and kiddie movie sequels. (Anybody see his crowning achievements Three Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain?) My only hope is that they come out with a sequel. Maybe Homies: The Movie- based off those toys that cost a quarter in restaurant lobbies. There's a reason this is on IMBD's bottom 100 movies of all time.

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0/5