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Starring: Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes Review: There's a shining moment in this uneven spin on Grumpy Old Men when Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson, playing feuding backup singers on an R&B comeback tour, stop in the desert to change a flat tire. Instead, they break into an impromptu version of the soul classic "I'm Your Puppet," riffing off each other with waves of affection that flow right off the screen. Mac died shortly after wrapping the movie, as did Isaac Hayes, who does a cameo as himself. Soul Men is a chance to salute these masters of mirth and music. Take it. Rating: 2 Stars |
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Starring: Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott, Elizabeth Banks Review: Sometimes a shamelessly stoopid, proudly profane R-rated comedy is all you want out of life. Role Models more than fills the bill. It's killer funny. Cheers to Paul Rudd — he should be a star by now — who takes just the right wry comic tone as Danny, an L.A. misanthrope flushing his life down the shitter. Danny and his sex-crazed partner, Wheeler (Seann William Scott, the immortal Stifler), earn cash by selling Minotaur energy drinks. Wheeler wears the hairy costume. Danny drives the monster truck, until self-loathing prods him to use the vehicle as a WMD. The result is a jail sentence that Danny's lawyer love (the underused Elizabeth Banks) gets reduced to 150 hours of community service, but not before dumping him. And so sit meets com, as our boys are enlisted by Sturdy... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Asa Butterfield Review: You may not buy into actors playing Nazis with high-toned Brit accents, but the power of this Holocaust tale sneaks up and floors you. Writer-director Mark Herman has adapted John Boyne's novel with admirable restraint. Eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) isn't pleased when he and older sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) are forced to leave their friends in Berlin and settle in a remote area where Bruno's commandant father (David Thewlis) has been stationed. The kids and their mother (Vera Farmiga) believe the fence they see outside their window encloses a farm, not a concentration camp. Bruno even ventures out of bounds and meets Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), the boy in striped pajamas behind the fence. They develop a dangerous, covert friendship with devastating results. Delicate... Rating: 3 Stars |
| Starring: Paris Hilton Review: The idea of the director of Saw II, III and IV going at Paris Hilton seems like just revenge for her punishable assaults on acting. In this atonal, faux-arty rock opera about a futuristic bull market in internal organs, Hilton is suitably clueless as Amber Sweet, the daughter of an aria-singing mob boss (Paul Sorvino). Amber trades in her organs like fashion accessories. But a new pancreas costs money. Don't pay, and the Repo Man will tear out your guts. It gets worse, much worse. Talented actors are involved, and I will spare them by not citing their names. "Happiness is a warm scalpel," sings Hilton. Misery is enduring this Rocky Horror Paris Show. Rating: 0 Stars |
