George Monroe (Kevin Kline) is a centre-aged architect who is confronted with life-changing news and seizes the opportunity to begin living on his own terms. In the process of changing himself, those he was previously alienated from, including his ex-wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) and troubled teenage son (Hayden Christensen), set out on gravitating back to him, exclusive to pronounce their own lives affected in the most unexpected ways.

»
Adrenalin: Be The Rush
Adrenalin: Fear The Rush

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment

// R // Cortege 19, 2002
The Movie:

There was a point at the crack on in the career of Natasha Henstridge where it seemed as if her career would breakout into something bigger. In 1995, Henstridge starred in "Species", a sci-fi conceive of directed by the otherwise drama-focused Rodger Donaldson. Henstridge was certainly benumbing (a former model) and, although she had some lines in the picture, she seemed as if she had good enough adjacency and possible passive. Several years later, it seems as if that potential has been chiefly wasted; aside from memorable supporting turns in "The Whole 9 Yards" and "Bounce", Henstridge has starred in countless movies that did not pass go and went exactly to video. This 1996 picture, surprisingly, went into 51 theaters previously exiting hastily to video shelves.
"Adrenalin" (isn't it spelled Adrenaline?) takes place in Boston in the year 2007. A virus has entered the country and one mutated, homicidal individual is on the streets, with a few members of the police (including prior "Highlander" Christopher Lambert and Henstridge) on his trail. The remainder of the sheet, one looooooooooonnnngggg chase scene through a dark erection, involves such lines as, "he's abstention…and he's stinky" as well as the usual stereotypical lines - "I've got a unfavourable feeling about this", "why do we would rather to be heroes?" and other similar stereotypical banter. There's even several minutes of the 75 minute picture dedicated unqualifiedly to unnecessary statement discussing what the situation currently is when all that's going on is simply that the honesty a possessions guys are chasing the wild guy.
Some films have been described as "song long track sequence", but this literally is just that. There's no development to the characters whatsoever - I'm not asking for satisfactorily-defined characters in a film like this, but I'm not even Steven sure I got the names of most of the direct characters. The action, most of it taking place in a series of tunnels or buildings, is wicked and reminiscent of Peter Hyams' "The Relic", although this film isn't even as enjoyable. The performances aren't only good - Henstridge is at times lively, but she's the at worst element of fire. About the only indeed encomiastic thing in this film is the 5.1 soundtrack, which is over somewhat creepier and more effective than the movie could at any time faith to be.

The DVD

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This has the hallmarks of a Billy Wilder picture - Americans abroad, masquerades prime to moral transfiguration - and Wilder would doubtless have turned it into a blazing masterpiece. Wyler’s refinement was not particularly suited to comedy - the film is a little long, a little heavy at times, the spontaneity a small over-rehearsed - and he unambiguously makes a wonderfully enjoyable big. Hepburn is the Princess bored with protocol who goes AWOL in Rome; Peck (Holden would be experiencing been better, edgier) is the American journalist who has the poop bail fall into his lap; and Albert (the overcome performance) is the photographer who has to snap all of Hepburn’s un-royal escapades. This sort of thing was churned out by Lubitsch in the ’30s, on the Paramount back-plight; Wyler went on laying, and in 1953 that was a real eye-opener, Hollywood’s answer to neo-realism. The silver screen remains a great tonic.

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The crux of the problem arises in a scene where matchmaker/Beverly Hills princess Cher (Silverstone) tries to teach her project Tai (Murphy) what the word "sporadically" means (it refers to how often Silverstone sees new scripts): rather than let the moment play out in its own spectacularly ironic way, it comments on it with an arched eyebrow and a snort of derision from love-interest Josh (Paul Rudd).

Clueless

is never content to just let be, be the finale of seem, if you know what I mean–never content to trust its audience without having a smug jackhole remind exactly how vapid and, yes, clueless our heroines are. In this way it invites the audience to share in the scorn and contempt–

Clueless

is about being smarter than these classless bimbos, these proto-Paris Hiltons, and then, in the last reel, we're asked to give them a patronizing pat on the head. We're not exactly cheering Cher on as she proves incapable of driving a car, argues her way to better grades, or spends half her screentime with a cell phone glued to her ear–and neither is she, on the flipside, satirizing the way kids are today. Judging by the film's popularity, it's more of a documentary on how teens get their jollies off laughing at people to whom they feel superior.

Clueless

is drunk on its own cleverness and afraid, at the same time, that its target audience won't understand the joke, thus it proceeds to explain itself in studied detail. An awkward love affair between gnomish teachers Wallace Shawn and (associate producer) Twink Caplan has moments of genuine pathos, but because they're reduced to cutesy fetish objects for the patronizing manipulation of our stable of clothes horses, it's tough to separate our feelings of recognition therein from that cozy Red Cross tingle of relief at being better off, at least, than these lovable oafs. For all its meta-winking,

Clueless

is completely

sans

irony, substituting in its gaping absence a desperation to seem better than its premise.

Same problem applies to Matthew Leutwyler's winking gorefest

Dead & Breakfast

, a spam-in-a-cabin flick that takes its cues from

The Evil Dead

pictures and

Dead Alive

but comes off as a flick wilfully goofy without any commensurate smarts or, really, any truly memorable geek thrills. Lacking much in the way of visual signature, it's a lot of flat jokes layered in among a few uneven gross-out gags. Everyone in the cast is so

Clueless

-ly self-aware that it veers dangerously close to undermining the very undertone of

gravitas

that made the films

Dead & Breakfast

obviously reveres so great. When the movie and its horde of two-stepping hick zombies pause in their siege on our surviving heroes to "Thriller"-dance to Greek chorus Zach Selwyn's hick-a-billy croon, there's just a little too much winking in the air of its one idea stretched until the white shows.

It goes down like this: a group of attractive twentysomethings are stranded in the middle of nowhere, check into a mysterious roadside attraction run by some freak (David Carradine), and before you know it, the whole town erupts with the pitter-patter of the soft-shoe shuffle of the shambling undead. There're moments to love: Jeremy Sisto (essentially the same one-dimensional character here and in

Clueless

) spends the last part of the film as a severed head puppet; a massacre at a hoedown showcases a pretty neat geysering stick-to-the-eye; and a religious fanatic gets the top part of his head blown off. But there's simply not enough energy to the carnage, not enough verve in the jokes, and no centre to the production. In fact, possible heroes keep getting dispatched, and that lack of focus kills any possibility for identification. No Ash emerges from the wreckage–and that's bad news for the picture.

Dead & Breakfast

is a parsing of better splatter flicks; and like a Cliff's Note, it's good for cheating but bad for a screenplay.

Paramount refurbishes

Clueless

, the flick-that-spawned a television show (and the

Legally Blonde

franchise–and possibly greased the way for Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore and Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson) with a cosmetic makeover on DVD: a slipcovered, sparkly pink monstrosity outfitted with a handful of documentaries mixing old junket and B-roll footage with new interviews. The sparkling 1.85:1 anamorphic presentation of the film itself is such a drastic improvement over the late-1999 issue that it's almost like watching a different movie. (Unfortunately, it also isn't.) DP Bill Pope's traditionally-dark, colour-saturated cinematography is given a brightening that lends the flick glow in its details, while grain has disappeared and black level is corrected up. The DD 5.1 audio appears untampered-with and does well with the dialogue and the sometimes-oppressive pop soundtrack. At least the

Radiohead

tune ("Fake Plastic Trees") sounds good–even if its only purpose is to be mocked by the idiot heroine.

"The Class of '95" (18 mins.) kicks off the festivities with a sort of self-bemused style that fits the film just fine, locating a few of the principals (though not, curiously, Silverstone) reminiscing about how much fun they had and how great the project was and so on and so on. The only thing of any interest is the recounting of how Silverstone's hilariously ignorant pronunciation of "Haitians" wasn't scripted and was, in fact, a reflection of Silverstone's actual ignorance. Meaning that at that moment in the film when we're laughing uproariously at the sucking stupidity of this character, we're actually laughing uproariously at Silverstone's real stupidity. That everyone's so delighted by her gaffe kind of underscores the meanness at the base of this endeavour. Most shocking to me is the revelation that actress Stacy Dash was 28-playing-17 and looks young for the role. "Creative Writing" (10 mins.) is Heckerling recalling the genesis of this piece intercut with more dusty stories of how the project used to be called "I Was a Teenage Teenager", and of how the film's similarities to Austen weren't accidental at all! "Fashion 101" (11 mins.) has Donald Faison speculating that Mona May's costume design for the film was actually influential somehow to the way people dressed in the mid-nineties, to which I say, Whatever.

"Language Arts" (8 mins.) pats itself on the back regarding Heckerling's astonishing mastery of pseudo-teen vernacular…but, you know, of the many ways that

Clueless

is no


Heathers


–here's one. Onwards: "Suck & Blow: A Tutorial" (3 mins.) is a circa 1995 on-set thing with the kids giggly about the hormonal party game; "Driver's Ed" (4 mins.) is an increasingly desperate bit concerning the difficulty of driving on the freeway in L.A.; and finally "We're History" (9 mins.) offers more reminiscences, including Heckerling acting a little defensive about her approach to her happy bimbos. A recounting of Paramount's Sherry Lansing loving the flick is the highlight of the piece (for which Silverstone remains absent). Two trailers for

Clueless

plus forced trailers for

Airplane!

, "Charmed" The Complete Second Season,

Mad Hot Ballroom

,

Tommy Boy

,

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

, "Laguna Beach" The Complete First Season, and "The Brady Bunch" First Season round out the exhausting single-disc presentation.

Still, it's not as exhausting as the special features for

Dead & Breakfast

, which kick off with two feature-length commentaries. Sigh. The first features Leutwyler, F/X man Michael Mosher, and cast members Erik Palladino and Zach Selwyn. It's the usual yakker with the boys commenting on how hot they think the girls are and how cool they think the special effects are if they do say so themselves. There's a little self-awareness about how superfluous it was to include an


Evil Dead


poster in the background of one scene–but it sort of ends there. Leutwyler resurfaces in the second, even more collegial (if also proportionately less informative) yakker with cast members Ever Carradine, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Palladino (again!), and Oz Perkins. "Did he spend the

whole

shoot with that thing in his eye? Gross!"

A 10-minute, non-chaptered deleted/extended scenes is all dialogue, and a three-minute blooper reel is the usual assortment of flubbed lines and motorcycles not starting. One-minute of "additional music" is just another croon from the croon well. A large poster and stills gallery plus a trailer for the film itself shares space on the disc with a fine if dedicatedly unspectacular 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer and a booming DD 5.1 mix that makes decent use of the surround channels. Forced trailers for

Man with the Screaming Brain

,

All Souls Day

, and

It Waits

finish off the DVD.

-



Walter Chaw

© Film Bird Important; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in all in all or in part, without the express sanction of its prime mover.



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DVD


GRADES


:


Conception


A


Sound


B

Extras


B-


DVD


VITALS:


Running Time

97 minutes

MPAA

PG-13

Aspect Ratio(s)

Olive is a small dog with a big
heart… who loves Christmas more than any other day of the year. When she
hears an announcement that due to one of his reindeer being injured, Santa
Claus may cancel Christmas unless “all of the other reindeer” help
out, Olive (voiced by Drew Barrymore) becomes convinced that he really said
“Olive, the other reindeer,” and sets out on an unlikely mission to
convince Santa that she’s the right dog (uh, reindeer) for the job. Along the
way she meets a variety of characters who either befriend her, like Martini the
escaped zoo penguin (voiced by Joe Pantoliano) or hinder her, like a deranged
postman.

Olive, the Other Reindeer
may very well entertain the younger set, but the audience who will appreciate
it more is adults. This short animated film purports to tell a fairly
straightforward story, along the lines of so many other Christmas specials:
Christmas is in danger, and everyone is sad, but Olive will save the day and
bring the Christmas spirit to everyone! And on that level, it’s an entertaining
story; what makes it more fun is how it tweaks the conventions along the way,
and handles the whole thing with a wry and adult wit.

Olive, the Other Reindeer
picks up on the familiar Christmas plot of “We must save Christmas!”
and gives it a remarkably realistic spin. You might be wondering how I could
use the word “realistic” in the context of a film about a talking dog
who decides to fill in as a flying reindeer, but it’s true. We all know that
“Christmas specials” are really about people, emotions, and
relationships; the “Christmas miracle” of the standard holiday film
is generally brought about by people suddenly finding kindness and fellowship
in their hearts. What we find in Olive, the Other Reindeer is that most
of the characters are… well, a lot like real people. Her owner Tim takes out
his frustrations on her after learning that Santa is about to cancel Christmas.
Her new friend Martini is happy to let Olive help him stay out of trouble, but
hesitant to go out on a limb for her. The people she meets on her voyage to the
North Pole range from apathetic to actively hostile. Yet the film doesn’t
become cynical; in contrast, it maintains an upbeat tone, with a smidgen of
ironic acknowledgment of human nature.

Another aspect of Olive, the
Other Reindeer that struck me as nicely done is how the film neatly
sidesteps any religious aspects of the holiday. Santa Claus-like figures appear
in a number of different folklores, not necessarily related at all to the
Christian aspect of the holiday; he’s a figure who stands for generosity and
the spirit of goodwill and charity, which are cross-cultural virtues.

Have you ever noticed that just
about every animated film has some musical numbers? So does Olive, the Other
Reindeer… except that they’re witty and slightly parodic of the typical
sappy songs that get shoehorned into so many animated features. The two
contemporary-style songs here are quite well done, and will certainly bring a
laugh to viewers. Visually, Olive, the Other Reindeer is distinctive as
well; it’s a startling mix of 3D and 2D animation, with a definite slant toward
the abstract.

In the end, Olive, the Other
Reindeer pokes fun at the whole holiday hullabaloo, but it does so in a
gentle and ultimately kind-hearted way. We all know that life isn’t really so
simple as it is in Olive’s world, where ensuring that Santa delivers his
presents is enough to bring happiness to all… but the cheerful ending
nonetheless reminds us that happiness and goodwill are worth striving for, and
that we can achieve more than we think, if we don’t just give up. As far as
messages for younger viewers go, that’s a good one in my book.

'Bride Wars'

by

Randy Cordova

- Jan. 8, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Let's use the release of

Bride Wars

to officially retire Natalie Cole's

This Will Be

as the go-to theme for lame big-screen comedies. The tune already has popped up in

Must Love Dogs, Taxi

and the Lindsay Lohan version of

The Parent Trap.


Bride Wars

blasts it in the first 10 minutes and does nothing to reverse the song's losing streak.

There are other early signs that

Bride Wars

is in trouble. To begin with, the premise isn't all that great. Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are best pals who share a dream of getting married at New York's Plaza Hotel.

When the women get engaged at the exact same time, they both go down Plaza dates in June, a sheer three months away. Apparently, booking the Plaza is as easy as getting into your local VFW meeting.

Because of a receptionist's snafu, the two wind up scheduled for the same day. Despite their 20-year friendship, neither will give up the date. Like all successful, mature women, the two decide to deal with the situation by viciously turning on each other.

Emma sends Liv sweets to fatten her up so she can't fit into her Vera Wang wedding dress. Liv sabotages Emma's visit to a tanning salon. Their shenanigans make Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz look like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi by comparison.

Director Gary Winick (

13 Going on 30

) doesn't have a good grasp of the material; then again, he doesn't have much to work with. Most of the gags fail to pay off. In one sequence, Emma and her fiance are sent to a sham choreographer to work on their wedding dance. It's a setup that could be amusing, but it goes nowhere in Winick's hands.

When it comes to the stars, Hathaway is the better of the two. She's feisty and charming; thanks to her big brown eyes, she resembles a wounded fawn when she cries. That's about all the role demands from her.

Hudson fares a lot worse, as she is starting to look and sound exactly like her mom, Goldie Hawn. Unfortunately, here she looks like Hawn at 45, and Hudson is only 29. She also has hardened and lacks her mom's warmth; she's like Hawn's evil twin rather than her offspring.

The movie ends with the door wide open for a sequel; one can't imagine anyone involved jumping at the thought. Well, except for Natalie Cole, who must love those royalty checks.

Reach the reporter at

randy.cordova@arizonarepublic.com

or 602-444-8849.

20th Century Fox

Kate Hudson, left, and Anne Hathaway in "Bride Wars."

More on this theme

'Bride Wars'

Director:

Gary Winick.

Cast:

Anne Hathaway, Kate
Hudson.

Rating: PG, for suggestive content, language and rude behavior.

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Beowulf (2007)
: Action/Adventure, Animation and Fantasy
: 1 hr. 53 min.

Leader

: Robert Zemeckis

Producer

: Jack Rapke, Robert Zemeckis, Steve Bing, Steve Starkey

Distributor

: Paramount Pictures

Let off Date

: November 16, 2007

Writer

: Roger Avary

Articles:


:: Synopsis

In the time of heroes comes the mightiest warrior of them all, Beowulf. After destroying the overpowering demon Grendel, he incurs the undying wrath of the beast's ruthlessly prepossessing mother who thinks fitting use any means possible to ensure vindictiveness. The ensuing epic battle throughout the ages, immortalizing the name Beowulf. Academy Award® winner gaffer Robert Zemeckis tells the oldest epic tale in the English language with the most modern technology, advancing the cinematic forum through the magic of digitally enhanced live battle. A stellar cast is led by Ray Winstone ('The Departed'; 'Ribald Beast') in the title place. Joining him are Academy Award® conqueror Anthony Hopkins as the cursed King Hrothgar, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, Crispin Glover, Alison Lohman and Oscar® Conquering hero Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother.

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The Alexandria Celebratory Oversee Orchestra arrives in Israel from Egypt for a cultural event, only to find there is no delegation to meet them, nor any arrangements to get to their stopping-place of Petah Tiqva. When they find their own ride, they attain instead at the remote town of Beit Hatikva. Stuck there until the next morning’s bus, the band, initiate by the repressed Tawfiq Zacharya (Sasson Gabai), gets help from the temporal café owner, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), who offers to hoodwink someone a carry out them up towards the dusk, with lend a hand from Simon (Khalifa Natour). The tenebriousness passes inaudibly enough, but with some profound exchanges and secrets confessed.

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In October 1962 the detection of Soviet missiles in Cuba triggers a political crisis that
threatens to escalate into atomic confrontation. With the assistance of Attorney-General
Robert F. Kennedy (Steven Culp) and Presidential advisor Kenny O’Donnell (Kevin Costner),
US President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) attempts to negotiate the withdrawal of the
missiles without the use of military strikes.