That is the least of the new film’s problems. I’m not sure why hordes of folks lined up to see this film back in April 2008, they might think Brittany Snow is adorable (which is possible) or today’s horror fans like PG-13 fare with cookie cutter plots, dumb bell characters, and next to no gore. The filmmakers also seem to get away with loads of horror film cliches, including dream sequences , the killer’s reflection in a mirror, and one kill site being the unfinished wing of a four star hotel.

Well, I take that back. They aren’t going to get away with it. At 88 minutes, the film should move at a brisk pace, but instead, it drags out to banality. The film literally loses suspense as time goes on. For this is the setup of the film: a few years after witnessing the death of her family at the hands of a psycho stalker (a teacher at her school,no less), Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow) attends Prom Night with her friends. Prom is held at a first class hotel. The kids have private rooms where, when they are not in the ballroom with the dancing and food, they go up there to fool around. Psycho Richard Fenton (Jonathan Schaech) has recently escaped from the looney bin, and he’s waiting up in the room to cut open dear Donna’s throat. The next hour or so her various horny teen pals go up there and get killed. Occasional hotel staff poke around, get killed. Fenton is also a master at stealth, which begs the question: why hide in the room and wait around? What if she never comes up to the room? Better yet, why can’t he just wait until she comes to aunt and uncle’s house? Well, that would require common sense, something the script desperately cries out for, and ends up wanting.

*********
Prom Night
Directed by: Nelson McCormick
Starring: Brittany Snow, Scott Porter, Jessica Stroup, Dana Davis, Collins Pennie and Johnathon Schaech

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a CIA analist in Nothern Africa who gets sent one of these prisoners and observes the interrogation process. Meanwhile, the prisoner’s wife (played by Reese Witherspoon) is trying to find out why her husband did not return from a business trip and why he seems to have vanished in mid air. In a third storyline we see a young boy and girl struggling with local traditions, culture and religion. Of course these storylines will all come together in the movie’s finale.

Rendition is beautifully filmed and very well-acted, but it’s most valuable asset is the moral dilemma of whether it is justifiable to pick up and hold someone based on very weak evidence if the lives of thousands may be at stake. It’s main weakness is that it takes sides in this debate too early on, and it deals with a very extreme example. The somewhat forced happy ending also weakens the movie’s message.

That being said, Rendition still is a powerful, well-made film with an interesting premise. Definitely worth seeing.

The stream of thoughts that are the crux of the novel are transferred to the film through the use of a voiceover. Vanessa Redgrave, who plays the heroine Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, does the majority of the narration. The plot of the film revolves around her and an ordinary day in her life in 1923 London. She is preparing for a party that she is hosting that evening for members of high London Society. It becomes clear through the voiceover that she hosts a lot of parties and it is one of her greatest enjoyments. Although this may seem a little mundane, we see through flashbacks as she’s thinking, that her life was not always so confined. As a young woman, before she decided to marry the politician Richard Dalloway, there were many other options available to her. Her friend Peter Walsh, who she adored, was completely in love with her, and wanted to marry her and take her travelling with him. She also had a good friend named Sally, and one night they shared a kiss that she has never forgotten about.

The young Clarissa (Natascha Mcelhone) decided to take the safe option though and married Richard Dalloway, who was considered a little dull, but made her feel safe. The voiceover tells us that after many years of marriage, Clarissa feels she has lost her individuality and is only known as Mrs Richard Dalloway, the wife of the politician. Although she never direcectly says she wishes she hadn’t married him, it is clear that she regularly asks herself the question ‘what if?’

There is also a sideline plot in the film which follows war veteran Septimus Warren Smith. He lives in the same part of London with his wife. They are going through a rough time, as he is suffering from delayed shell-shock. One minute he will seem fine, and the next minute he has delusions of his friends who died in battle and talks about killing himself. This part of the plot ends in tragedy. It is important to the film because it seems to strike a chord with Clarissa when she hears about it, and it gives us further insight into her character.

Although Mrs Dalloway isn’t the most thrilling of films as the plot is relatively simple and lacking excitement, it is definitely worth watching. It will probably make more sense to those who have already read the novel, but I think it does have qualities that even people unfamiliar with the story could enjoy. It reveals the thoughts and feeling of a type of character that films generally don’t dwell on, a respectable housewife in her 50s. Her pleasures are simple, but they are all she knows, and it was interesting to see her looking back on her life and watch her make the decisions that planned out her life.

Dir: Marleen Gorris

Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Natascha Mcelhone, Rupert Graves

The film itself opens with a gripping ‘teaser’ of sorts, as a news crew covers the anti-terrorism summit. “GNN” producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver) calls the shots from inside the cable channel’s trailer. The cameras capture the shooting, an explosion a few blocks away, and finally a second bomb that kills one of the GNN cameramen and a brash reporter who minutes before risks her job as she makes her politics come off as unprofessional. The results of the opening grabs attention, draws us in. It couldn’t be any better.

Then we see things from the perspective of Secret Service agents Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox). The character of Barnes echoes a slight bit of that from Clint Eastwood from In The Line Of Fire from the early 90’s; after taking a bullet for the President from an earlier attempt, Barnes suffers a slight bit from bad memories and slight paranoia. There is a question of whether or not he is ready to be back on the job so soon. The events unfold as they should: only now, the film has taken a wrong turn at the conclusion of the Barnes’ cliffhanger. Our next “vantage point” comes from a suspect who is a a Spanish police officer, and he believes his ex-girlfriend has fallen in with bad people. However, the repeat of the events that happen as they should does not take the viewer by surprise. We are also informed that he is a officer assigned to protect the Spanish Mayor, and that an eyewitness says he isn’t the shooter because he has the event caught on his camcorder. That eyewitness, Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker) has his story which stops the film cold, as we are more involved in the thriller aspect of the film, and not his story in particular, and the little girl in danger literally screams plot contrivance. Our next points of view involves plot twists and twists within twists, and then Quaid actually BECOMING a Clint Eastwood clone when Eastwood did these kinds of films. That car chase, while well done and rivals the Bourne films (then again, this film doesn’t have any camera angles jittering about 24/7) is a little too late, because by that time, it is clear that we were hooked with the action thriller, and the Rashomon idea comes across as a gimmick that was never really needed. The film also didn’t need the dumb plot twists, which aren’t needed, because the film started off more smarter than that. Speaking of one of those twists. I have one question: if the bad guys knew one truth, why bother with the deception in the first half of the film, which story-wise, was more effective to begin with?

********
Vantage Point
Starring: Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver and Eduardo Noriega.

Directed By:Pete Travis

With the exception of Alex Frost, who plays the bully Filkins, who bears a passing resemblance to a young John Cusack, the casting of the film is rather lazy. It’s not that the actors aren’t good, it is simply because it appears Seth Rogen rewrote the script to tailor it for a less raunchy but small sidenote to Superbad, which also had jokes about puberty, sex, porn and teen drinking. More specifically, Owen Wilson has played the same character over and over and over again. So much so that if the film didn’t look like a encore of Superbad it could pass for a prequel of You Me & Dupree. I am usually more thrilled when Owen Wilson plays against the beach bum cardboard caricature, not so much when he is a hustler who lives near or on the beach.

He plays the tile character of the film, a homeless AWOL soldier who takes nude showers in open public (although if he simply washed himself in the ocean at night, he might draw less attention to himself) and who converses with other homeless hustlers and thieves as they hang out of cafes, waiting for people to leave early, as they finish up the leftovers. All Drillbit wants to do is get enough money and flee to Canada. I suspect after his daring daily exposure, it is only a matter of time before the MPs catch up to him. He takes a job as a bodyguard for three youths who are harassed and beaten up by two bullies who are widely feared in school halls. Drillbit poses as a substitute teacher, before long has an unrealistic fling with the English teacher (Leslie Mann) and aids his “clients” with self esteem as well as having a set up series of short lived humiliation gags on the pair of bullies.

The film’s best gags come in during the interview for the bodyguard, which has an assortment of great cameos, be it UFC fighter Chuck Lidell, a hilarious Frank Whaley, and Adam Baldwin- who fended off young bully Matt Dillion in 1979’s My Bodyguard and then there is a sendup of 8 Mile where Filkins is a Rabbit/Slim Shady wannabe. There’s also a touching side story of Wade falling for Brooke (Valerie Tian) and there were times in the film where I wished that the story would have just been about those two. Yes, the film needed more of all the above. As the film progresses it comes clear the big laughs come in the montages and the smaller moments. The big payoffs are not so big, and the lead character simply does not work in the film. Is the lead character of Drillbit Taylor even needed all that much?

*******
Drillbit Taylor: Budget Bodyguard
Starring: Owen Wilson, Troy Gentile, Nate Hartley, David Dorfman and Alex Frost.
Directed By: Steven Brill

That by far is the biggest problem with Street Kings. While it’s a great introduction to the character of Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) who bends the rules in order to catch (or, more to point, execute) low level gangs who deal in drugs, illegal firearms, murder and child abduction. The rule bending and cover up style is a mantra of his unit, which is led by Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker). They are a little mad at Tom for not calling them and getting them “a piece of the action”, but it’s nowhere near as irritating as Tom’s former partner (Terry Crews) from his previous unit, who is suspected of talking to the Internal Affairs Division, headlined by Captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie). Intending on confronting his former friend with the issue, Tom sees a team gang-bangers pull up to the store and as he tries to convince his former partner of the robbery about to happen. However, it becomes evident moments later that it was a hit on his fellow officer and not a random holdup.

It isn’t a shock or surprise who is really behind the cop killing, either directly or indirectly. I don’t even have to say it. Perhaps Tom suspected it from the start and was in denial over it, since his team isn’t above shooting his spare gun into a dead man, and giving out the message not to talk to the IAD, even if they know by reputation he won’t sell them out. When he decides to go after the cop killers with Detective Diskant (Chris Evans), Wander tells him to back off. It could be assumed that other officers are cracking down on the hoodlums of L.A., but it is never seen or said. If that doesn’t spell it out in case anyone missed it, the question no longer becomes who or why, and the film drags on because of it. Don’t they trust him enough to let him in, or better yet, confess they did it and say ‘we own you’? The only saving grace is a possible “eye opener” for Tom, but he does figure it out (or accepts the truth of his denial) the question is raised: is he doing it for revenge? If so, he’s learned nothing. The end of the film has what is supposed to be a big reveal, but once it dawns on the brain, there is a puzzle of how that character exactly…

Never mind. That plot hole does not fall on James Ellroy, but on Kurt Wimmer, whose written word tends to get on the nerves. It’s not that I”m opposed to street profane language in crime thrillers, it’s just that it seems like everyone is a bit excessive about it, trying to out curse each other. It seems the f bomb is the only word they know, and it roles off the mouth every few seconds. When hard profanity is spoken when needed and not forced it has more impact. When everyone parrots each other and the scenes are either on the nose or are forced, it becomes bad acting through bad dialog. Boredom or laughter soon follows by hearing it and by watching it. In this case, it’s boredom, because there are no major or minor twists or turns. Everyone is cynical. Everyone is guilty.

*****
Street Kings
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Forest Whitaker, John Corbett, Naomie Harris and Terry Crews

Directed by: David Ayer

Sarah Jessica Parker plays a former student (now love interest) of Professor Wetherhold, while Thomas Hayden Church gives another great performance as his lazy and intellectually inferior adopted brother. However, I must admit that the real reason I wanted to see this film was because of my new favorite actress, Ellen Page. Eagerly awaiting her next performance after Juno, I was once again charmed with her quick-witted but lonely character, Victoria, the daughter of Professor Wetherhold.

The casting is superb, except for Sarah Jessica Parker. Once she entered the movie, I thought I accidentally hit the remote and flipped to a Sex in the City rerun. There was more heat coming from a cold-cut sandwich than she had with Dennis Quaid. To her defense however, her character is essentially a plot device to force the Quaid character out of his miserable existence.

Overall, the film is entertaining, but sometimes feels disjointed and half-baked. Relationships are formed but mature at too brisk of a rate. Then there are inconsistencies, most notably, in the character of Victoria, the high achieving young Republican. Having lived in a college town the majority of my life, I still have yet to meet a Republican who would choose intellect over morality. Without getting too political, but my observation has always been that Conservative-Republicans feel they are morally superior, while Liberal-Democrats feel they are intellectually superior.

Even though the character had this major inconsistency, Ellen Page still gives an excellent performance. However, I am a little concerned. Seeing as this is another role in which she portrays another precocious teenager, I’m nervous that studio execs will type cast her. The only real departure I’ve seen her do was her performance in An American Crime (perhaps the most disturbing film I’ve ever seen.)

If you’re in the mood to watch a witty comedy or are just a fan of either Dennis Quaid or Ellen Page than Smart People is your type of brain teaser. Just don’t expect to IQ to go up. Smart People is smart, but not brilliant.

It’s not that The Bucket List is a bad movie. It does not start out that way. When we are introduced to the two leads, one of them, Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson), is a millionare who has made his fame and name through varied hospital chains. He’s used to being pampered, and when he becomes ill with cancer, becomes a patient in one of his best hospitals. He’s also subject to rules which he helped implement, so that means he gets a roommate, Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman), who had once studied to be a history professor, but due to circumstances and errors of the past, wound up being the head mechanic at a body shop. He, too, has cancer, and for him, it’s another trip to the hospital. When these two characters meet and are informed of a sad reality that lies ahead for both of them, and the Bucket List of the film is created, it’s nothing short of gold.

The film seems to go a bit slow in the Hospital scenes, but that’s fine by me. If you ever been in a hospital for anything, one of the sad agonies is that time does appear to stand still, and you are at the mercy of whatever the nurse decides to inject into your vein. We have also seen at some point in our lives, had loved ones who have suffered injury or illness, so in every way, there is something to identify with here. The two actors, Freeman and Nicholson, are great together, and the simpleness of the location and story make the first half of the film worthwhile. The first half. Then, the film take a huge nosedive where…okay, I guess I could accept the two guys traveling to Rome for one last getaway, and the idea that Ed Cole was there before…but there’s something that just nagged at me when they dive out of planes, race cars and then at one point, Ed hires a prostitute to tempt Carter to cheat on his wife of many years. Ouch. The film has a tough time recovering from the sitcom moments and tasteless actions. Also, the issue of Ed reconciling with his estranged daughter is brought up; there is, to me, a odd question of why that communication could not have happened sooner. Deep down, I grew wary of these two main characters. The film wrongly tries to be a feel good movie about being depressed. Watching two characters whither away while they go on safaris and crazy adventure isn’t as fun as it sounds. In fact, it is rather selfish. Consider that neither man’s family isn’t with them on any of these events nor witness to them. When the family or friends do call, they are insulted or put off. Think of it this way: someone you love and respect is living out their last months. By not having fond memories of the last great hurrah is nothing more than cold-hearted theft, be it home or abroad.

I have concluded there was a request missing from the bucket list. The 13th wish should have been this: ask the real Rob Reiner to please stand up and cease his losing streak. At all costs.

*******

The Bucket List
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson, Rob Morrow, Sean Hayes and Beverly Todd.

Directed By: Rob Reiner

There is little to no mention of the events of the previous film, no lame ‘body snatcher’ bugs here. We will get the staples of the first film: nice gore shots, uni-sex strip downs, the dark humor and political satire. The new film also tosses in religious satire as well, although there were a few occasions where it got on my nerves. Generally, all you could possibly hope for and more or less get in a ‘Starship Troopers’ film. Most characters are intentionally written as gung-ho airheads and/or careless souls like the previous two films anyway, so it’s not out of line not to expect the same.

There are three main selling points of Starship Troopers 3. I would like to say Casper is one of them, but he really isn’t. When Casper’s off screen the film moves forward in oddball yet more engaging directions, which here is selling point number one: Jolene Blalock. The best two things about the actress are evident here: she’s better in a sci-fi action B film (or series) than she is in a contrived thriller, and that her character, Captain Lola Beck, is one of the few characters that seem to have any depth. That’s not a good thing, really, when she looks like Angelina Jolie from Sky Captian when first introduced, and has little to do in the first twenty minutes of the film. It’s worse when she plays it tough, like-able and straight when everyone else in the film trips over themselves in attempting to play mindless saps. What this accomplishes is that it makes her and her character out of place.

The second selling point is the Marauders unit themselves. Impressive on a low budget and closer to the Heinlein book, the concept is all too brief, and it might as well be a Hitchcock McGuffin. It’s that great…and that disappointing. Now you them, now you don’t. Great disappearing magic act, though.

The best selling point of the third film is the upgraded Bugs themselves. The Brain Bug, more older and more angry, returns from the first film, we get a Super Brain Bug named Behemecoatyl (possibly a nod to the Bible’s Old Testament Behemoth), “bug bombs”, and an impressive giant scorpion. As with the first two selling points, the new bugs are wasted in the film, although I’m sure it had to do with low budgets, and getting away with what the filmmakers can. Edward Neumeier, who wrote and directed this -he also penned the script for the first film- I’m sure did the best he could given the budget. However, there is one bug that does something rather inexcusable: after having hapless humans trapped with nowhere to run, it doesn’t even play sadistically with them it just sits there, waiting for someone to come along and shoot it up. LAME. That’s like showing a hungry man a full plate of steak and potatoes, but you give him only two drops of steak sauce and a spoonful of gravy.

*************
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
Starring: Casper Van Dien, Jolene Blalock, Boris Kodjoe, Amanda Donohoe, Marnette Patterson and Stephen Hogan

Directed by: Edward Neumeier

The two leads Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet, who has more exposure due to a flashier antagonist bully role. Both are so well that it is amost a shame that they are even in this picture. But if there was ever a remake of Top Gun, Faris could pass for Tom Cruise and Gigandet would get the Val Kilmer role. That’s not a joke. Faris strongly resembles an 80’s Cruise, and I’m sure that hasn’t gone unnoticed. Djimon Hounsou is in a supporting and servicable role Jean Roqua, the ju-jistu trainer who helps out Faris’ character Jake Tyler. There’s a touching backstory regarding Tyler’s error of letting his father drive intoxicated, which resulted in tragedy. There’s realism in that Tyler cannot forgive himself and thus has anger issues. There’s good drama where he has to overcome fears and peer pressure. His little brother Charlie is in need of a big brother, and looks up to him. Great stuff. The rich kid-bad boy rival Ryan (Gigandet) is set up well, and there’s a small scene where we see where his issues may have originated from. The fights are well staged too.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is about all the accolades I will bestow on this entertaining but overwhelmingly idiotic film. There are so many, so many, so many plot problems with the picture that maybe the picture has to be seen in order to even be believed. Let me run it down: on the first day of being in his new school, Tyler stops a fight between two kids, unaware that the “fight” is a rite of acceptance into Ryan’s inner circle. Max Cooperman, the kid who was involved in the ‘match’, suggests that that sort of thing happens on a regular basis. The questions never come up: doesn’t anyone in the faculty know about these things? Parents? Are *all* the students in on this? It is then said and shown (to my disgust and dismay) that a good number of the teens who watch the ‘beat downs’ put them up on YouTube for the world to see. Later, when Tyler loses his cool once again, the video of him beating up some guys in a traffic jam is on YouTube. We are also told that “one of the guys he beat up is in a coma in the hospital’. Realistically, the trainer hears about this and kicks him out of the gym. Unrealistically, he has mercy and changes his mind. Unrealistically, if one has evidence of an assault and battery that puts a guy near his deathbed, it doesn’t matter where the victim is from (he’s dismissed as a gangbanger when there is no evidence to support it), it’s still a crime. At no point does Tyler take responsibility for his actions. At no point is he arrested and spends even a night in jail.

There is also another fight, which it is implied that despite property damage to cars and risk of death, *nobody* calls security, *nobody* calls the police. The crowd watching is a mob, taking pictures and videos, with the intention of loading it up on YouTube, and the ‘winner’ gains respect. In another scene where there are no such camera phones, another character is put in the hospital. Nobody talks to the police, much less the doctors. The parents, we are informed, hardly visit the kid. The less said about love interest Baja Miller (Amber Heard) the better. You can figure out which side of the love triangle she’ll follow. You can also correctly guess that she is a character well named, for she has a pair of sand dunes of her own, and that every MMA match has in need of a ring girl.

**********

Never Back Down
Directed by: Jeff Wadlow
Starring: Sean Faris, Cam Gigandet, Amber Heard, Leslie Hope and Djimon Hounsou.