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Reviews
Harry Brown (2009)
Gran Death Torino Wish
Take the plot of "Death Wish," add the plot of "Gran Torino," throw in the score from "Taxi Driver," plus a mail-it-in performance by Michael Caine, and you've got a pretty bad movie. Caine averred in pre-screening remarks at the Toronto Film Festival that his character was not a vigilante because he did what he had to do, not what he wanted to do. Vigilante or not, his character faces off against a nasty bunch of caricatures in seamiest London, and predictably blows them all away. The film could not be more formulaic, from its multi-racial villains to its soft-but-tough policewoman (well played in a losing cause by Emily Mortimer.) This dog has not augmented Caine's distinguished career.
A Little Trip to Heaven (2005)
The Coen brothers minus a sense of humor
Director Baltasar Kormakur leaves Iceland to make an American movie, except he really doesn't, and that's a large part of the problem. Kormakur actually shot this film in Iceland, and it would take a hyper-credulous viewer to accept these stark landscapes as Minnesota. "Heaven" is a dark tale about insurance fraud. Dark in every sense of the word, as several early scenes are nearly invisible. The plot is murky; the cast's accents are all over the lot, especially Forest Whitaker's. Whitaker's attempts at Minnesotan leave him somewhere between Duluth and Dublin. The ending is intended to be richly ironic, but falls absolutely flat. For a far better experience, see Kormakur's "101 Reykjavik."
Jeux d'enfants (2003)
French comedy of the worst kind.
Who could possibly sympathize with these two obnoxious protagonists? What's intended to be a light, frothy comedy about neighbor children who can't give up their childhood game of dare even as they age well into adulhood, comes off more as an exercise in cruelty and petulant self-indulgence. As children, the pair are unbearably precocious; as adults they're intolerably immature. It's a bad combination.
The Cooler (2003)
Starts well, throws craps.
What a terrific setup: Macy, the man who turns hot gamblers cold just by being in their midst; Baldwin, the tough-as-nails old-school casino boss; Stone, the hard-bitten cocktail waitress with a fondness for likable losers and getting naked. Alas, despite a fine cast and some genuinely erotic moments, the movie takes a disastrous turn about halfway in, becoming melodramatic, sentimental, and--worst of all-- predictable. But it's worth seeing if only for the phenomenon of Baldwin as DeNiro pitted against Stone as Stone in an eccentric replay of "Casino."
L'idole (2002)
All the wrong accents
Australian director Samantha Lang has made a movie in Paris, in French, with an American actress playing an Australian actress, and a Chinese-American actor playing a Chinese-French retired chef. Intriguing? For a while. Leelee Sobieski's French is surprisingly good, much better than her acting. James Hong is a fine actor, but clearly an American guy struggling with his French lines. The story (two characters, each alientated in his/her own way, thrown together in a Parisian apartment building)is ultimately trite and uninteresting. Jean-Paul Roussillon does a nice job as the nosy downstairs neighbor, and child actress Marie Loboda could be Emanuelle Beart's little sister, much as Sobieski could be Helen Hunt's little sister.