Mrs Dalloway is based on the famous Virginia Woolf novel of the same name. The novel is mostly the thoughts and feelings of a respectable married lady named Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, and there’s not a great deal of action. Therefore, transferring this to film must have been a difficult task, as what makes for compelling reading does not necessarily make compelling viewing. Director Marleen Gorris did a good job here though, and the film manages to express a lot of Mrs Dalloway’s most complex thoughts and feelings.
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Vantage Point is the kind of film where the viewer can admire the idea behind it. It involves an assassination attempt on the President Of The United States (William Hurt) while on some sort of anti-terrorist summit in Spain, followed up by a series of explosions and chaos, and a hunt for the terrorists responsible. Who the bad guys are, and how they pulled off the elaborate scheme is chronicled through eight different eyewitnesses. Each point of view, which begins around noon to up to, and then just after, the assassination attempt, gives off a small piece of the puzzle. The Rashomon like structure is well done-too much for it’s own good.
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The pop culture jokes and high school woes of terror come fast and furious in Drillbit Taylor, a very funny and amusing film, that suffers from poor casting and another return to the well for Seth Rogen, who co-wrote the script, also wrote last year’s comedy classic Superbad. While the teens in Superbad are a few years older than the teens in Drillbit they might as well be related. That’s not a bad thing; the real question is why would John Hughes use a pseudonym (Edmond Dantes, a reference to The Count Of Monte Christo) to cover up that he co-worked with Rogen on the story-or did Hughes have anything to do with it at all, if he was rewritten and re-invented? I’m pretty sure he wasn’t party to the casting.
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On the surface, it feels nothing is wrong: the combination of novelist James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and David Ayer, who directed Harsh Times and is most known for writing the scripts for Training Day and adapting Ellroy’s Dark Blue to the screen. Yes, the pair up seems like a good combination-at first. See, there is only so many corrupt and “bend-the-rules to get the bad guys off the street” police officer stories one can see without saying “I’ve seen all that in other films before”. That’s regardless if anyone watches TV’s The Shield or loved…well… L.A. Confidential or Training Day and for that matter, The Recruit, the latter which was written by Kurt Wimmer, who rewrote Ellroy on this film.
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If you appreciated the tragically underrated Wonderboys, chances are that you will find pleasure in watching Smart People. The central character, Lawrence Wetherhold is played by Dennis Quaid–in perhaps his best performance in years. He is an obnoxious, smug college professor of English literature. Along with a great supporting cast (with one exception), Smart People wows its audience with wit but it’s hardly destined for greatness.
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Oh, the good old days, how we miss them. Once upon a time there was this wonderful talented actor turned director who went by the name of Rob Reiner. When his name was on a picture, the picture cried out quality entertainment. Then it seems some time after The Ghosts Of Mississippi the director of those terrific films The Princess Bride and A Few Good Men among others just made a streak of clunkers. I’m still crossing my fingers that the jinx will end one of these days. The Bucket List confirms I’ll still be waiting.
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The Bug War wages on in the third Starship Troopers outing, and like the previous sequel, straight to video. However, unlike Hero of the Federation,the low budget is well hidden, giving off an impressive step forward, and an actual cast member from the first film returns- although getting Casper Van Dien back as Johnny Rico most likely wasn’t hard to do, seeing how Dien has carved a notch in the DVD market anyway. But the real promise of this installment is that there is now a little more in common with the film series inspired by the Robert A. Heinlein novel.
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