Carancho (Movie Review)
02.11.2011 | By SBC Staff |
02.5.2011 | By SBC Staff |
‘The Roommate’ starring Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester, should be considered an official remake of Barbet Schroeder’s 1992 hit, ‘Single White Female’. Its plot, a roommate with a mental disorder who wants to look and be just like her friend, are almost identical. This new remake version, perhaps intended for a younger female audience, is unexceptional. It fails to improve upon the original, from its acting to the dialogue to the direction, it might as well have been sent straight to DVD, or Lifetime. But because its two female leads are so beautiful and sexy, it unapologetically slips into the realm of guilty pleasure.
The premise of ‘The Roommate’ is slightly different than the ‘SWF’. Sara Matthews (Minka Kelly) a new college student is assigned to room with Rebecca (Leighton Meester), a rich, pretty girl who unbeknownst to Sara, suffers from a personality disorder. As time passes by, their relationship grows stronger and Rebecca becomes more possessive of her friend. Little by little we see her eliminate all the things that make Sara unhappy until her ‘good’ intentions become too dangerous to ignore.
Yes, it is true that the script has no surprises or twists worth being excited about, the direction of Christian E. Christiansen is trite and worthy of Lifetime’s top 10 best, and the thrills are stale and flat, but Roommate’s sexiness and attractive cast, are hard to knock. As a result, the ‘bad’ aspects are amusing and you just go along with it waiting for another hottie to get killed or pummeled.
Whether it is a coincidence or just deliberate casting, Kelly and Meester look like twin sisters, Meester looking a tad younger. Nevertheless, it works specially well when Meester ‘becomes’ Sara in the final stretch of the film.
All in all, ‘The Roommate’ is a forgettable film, but it is never so bad that it sinks to the point of you walking out. People will laugh and enjoy the bad brushing it off as cheap escapism on a good, fun Saturday night out with the ladies.
02.1.2011 | By Jack Rico |
Sanctum is a survival action thriller that boasts a high-concept premise but fails to deliver. Despite the name attached to the production, this film sinks under the weight of clichéd dialogue and lackluster execution. It is a cautionary tale about how 3D gimmicks cannot salvage a generic script. Read More
01.29.2011 | By Jack Rico |
En lo que se puede describir como un sueño realizado, los dos más grandes titanes del cine hispanoparlante, el actor español y ganador del Oscar, Javier Bardem, y el director mexicano y nominado al Oscar, Alejandro González Iñárritu, se unen por primera vez para traernos ‘Biutiful’, una cruda y trágica cinta que arrolla los sentidos. Read More
01.20.2011 | By Jack Rico |
The modern romantic comedy ‘No Strings Attached‘ starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman is surprisingly not as bad as I expected. The film benefits from an interesting premise, good chemistry between the stars and appealing situations that will easily engage romantic couples looking for a fun time at theater.
The plot centers on Adam and Emma (Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman), childhood friends who try to maintain a strictly sexual relationship, but it’s not long before they both discover that love is impossible to resist.
The romantic comedies of today, a.k.a rom-coms, tend to be very formulaic, predictable and unoriginal, but this one, because of its R rating, takes advantage of it by being mischievous. Of course, you’ll experience all the typical ploy devices inserted into these movies such as the irritating best friends, the poppy soundtrack, and of course, the ultimate declarations of love at the end of the movie. Nevertheless, the film aims to reach adults, in particular those who have been through experiences like this at some point in their lives. The movie has shades of the recent ‘Love and Other Drugs’ (Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway), whose plot also involved a woman who just wanted a purely sexual relationship. Her reasons were different and legitimate as opposed to Portman’s character. The tone was also more dramatic and not as playful as this.
Much of the upbeat tone of ‘Attached’ comes from the cerebral dallyings of screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether, who has built a real and authentic narrative that reflects the times we live in today – an ode to a sexual revolution that has become part of the natural order of things. The dialogue is another matter. Phrases like, “I’m warning you… if you come closer one more step, I might never let you go”, sound like scratching nails on a chalkboard. To be frank, no right-minded man would dare say something like that in real life because he runs the risk that the woman who hears it will throw up on him. Defects like these run rampant in every rom-com, but here you get over it because Portman’s and Kutcher’s charm is irresistible.
Portman, a soon to be Best Actress winner at this year’s Oscar for Black Swan, is exploring a new genre with great results. She plays a sexy, beautiful, confident woman who is not shy in proving she has a fun side to her. Mix that in with her dramatic strengths and you have an actress who won’t keep on embarrassing the genre any further. Do not be surprised if we see her in more romantic comedies in the not too distant future. Kutcher on the other hand, is overshadowed by Portman’s screen presence and skill. Even though he looks the part perfectly, his limited acting range fails him time and time again in the climactic moments of the finale.
The director Ivan Reitman, creator of such classic films as Ghostbusters, Stripes, and Twins, in this instance chooses to leave vulgar comedy to the side and focus on the psychology of the principle relationship. As a result, the film feels adult and less silly.
‘No Strings Attached’ is not compelling as ‘When Harry Met Sally‘ or as savvy as ‘500 Days of Summer,’ but it achieves its objective of being a pleasant diversion for a couples night out at the movies.
01.14.2011 | By Jack Rico |
For those moviegoers expecting to see the same ol’ Vince Vaughn rambling nonsense for kicks and giggles, you’re in for a surprise that might make you rethink paying to see one of his films again. ‘The Dilemma’ is a comedic drama that has more drama than one would like from their Vaughn films. There are some hard laughs, but very quickly you’ll experience that this isn’t what you paid for.
The movie centers on a commitment-phobic guy (Vince Vaughn) who struggles with two dilemmas: whether to pop the question to his long time girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) and whether or not to tell his best friend (Kevin James) that his wife (Winona Ryder) is having an affair.
‘The Dilemma’ seems to be an experimental project for Vince ‘The Rambler’ Vaughn. Here he revisits his old dramatic chops, and even though he doesn’t shame himself, it’s clear that he cannot excel within the frames of the genre. Interestingly enough, Vaughn has worked in various dramatic films before (Psycho, A Cool Dry Place, Return to Paradise, South of Heaven, West of Hell), but never with real success. The harsh mashup of comedy and drama here never really finds a harmonious balance and instead seems abrasive and distracting at times. The Coen Brothers are masters at merging both categories masterfully (Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona), but director Ron Howard (Apollo 13 The Da Vinci Code), a virtuoso in his own right, seems astray at best. When you look at his body of work and you look at this movie, it is as if they are two completely different directors. The Howard touch is nowhere to be seen.
Screenwriter Allan Loeb (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) concocted a script with some hilarity, uncomfortable drama and much unwelcomed filler. The stuffing throughout the second act was blatant and just intolerable. There was no need to over-flesh the obvious theme of the film.
The cast had some highlights and some low lights, one of the lows being Channing Tatum. The up and comer, who plays the lover to Ryder, had no business working in a comedy, even if it was one with dramatic tones. Each scene where he had to sound funny or look funny was amateurish. A definite miscast. Vaughn, James and Ryder were very good when they dealt with their independent scenes. In Vaughn’s case, the toast scene monologue was a classic. His rambling, though old and unoriginal, had a nasty and hostile bite to it this time around. That was fun to watch. Â
Comedic dramas are populating theaters more than ever and we as audiences are going to have to get used to our comedians wanting to expand their range to include drama (remember Ben Stiller doing the awful ‘Greenberg’ or Adam Sandler doing Funny People). Therefore we have to choose wisely and The Dilemma is definitely not a wise selection.
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01.9.2011 | By Jack Rico |
Season of the Witch is Nicolas Cage’s new paycheck. He sleepwalks through the whole film with a narcotized stare yearning for someone to yank him and offer him Leaving Las Vegas all over again. Read More
12.8.2010 | By Karen Posada |
Who doesn’t want to go see a movie starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, two of the biggest stars of Hollywood; specially when it is the first time they encounter each other on and off the screen? Did I mention they have some of the biggest female/male followings? These give ‘The Tourist‘ a recipe for success. Unfortunately, these great actors are not enough; neither are the great sceneries or the storyline that has the potential to be #1 at the box office. It was disappointing not to see many action scenes (when Jolie is one of the best female action stars out there) and to experience so much sexual tension (no one can deny these two could deliver some steamy scenes in the right movie). Basically, this movie has everything it needs, but it didn’t reach its potential to make it worth the wait at the movie theater.
I got the pleasure of experiencing the first scenes of the movie, which are set in Paris and taking a cruise down the Seine river shows the authenticity of the set, as well as the romantic feel of it. Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck told me how he wanted to bring the glory days of Hollywood back on screen, which he believes to be those of films like Casablanca not films like The Transformers. He also told me how tough it was to make such a different film from The Lives of Others, he had to remind himself not to get too dark. He definitely achieved his goal, he made an elegant, sophisticated and somewhat romantic film.
The main focus of the movie is Elise Ward (Angelina Jolie), an English woman who lives a life of loneliness and luxury. She carries a day to day routine in Paris, where she is patiently waiting to hear from her lover. Her lover Alexander Pearce disappeared after stealing millions from his former employer, a gangster named Shaw (Steven Berkoff), he is also wanted by the London police for not paying back taxes; the main investigator is Acheson (Paul Bettany) who’s made it his life’s work to catch this guy. Elise finally changes her routine when she is instructed by Alexander to get on a train to Venice and choose a stranger to be him. We see men melting at Elise’s sight, but she chooses Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) an American math teacher who is touring around Europe to forget his past love. Frank follows Elise’s game nervously, he can’t shake off her charm and doesn’t understand why she would pick him. Elise is very self assured and starts molding Frank into what she needs quickly, she is aware of her impact on others. When the train reaches Venice they each go their separate ways only for Elise to reappear minutes later to take him into the ride of his life. She introduces him to her life of luxury, he goes along without questioning much until everyone that is after Alexander Pierce begins to think Frank is him and start following him with guns. We follow Frank to his imprisonment in Italy and the rest of the labyrinth this mysterious woman built for him. We slowly start getting to know Elise, trying to figure out whether she is “good or bad” is the rest of the story.
Frank is one of the least physically attractive characters Depp has represented, but the utter innocence and niceness is Frank’s appeal. This is one of Jolie’s most girly, elegant and sophisticated roles; her sex appeal can’t be denied here since that’s Elise’s greatest tool. Elise is meant to be tough but at the same time feminine and it’s really hard to see Jolie in a role like this; she herself told me that was the biggest challenge in this film for her, to “slow down”. Bettany has shown us what a great villain he can be in movies such as The DaVinci Code, although he’s not directly a villain here; his character’s frustration makes him one of the most real characters in the film.
The best things in the movie: the scenery, locations like Paris and Venice elevate its elegance.Also, Depp’s character, he is the hilarious part of the movie; he really is one of my favorite parts of the film. That said, this movie calls for a lot of action and if they would have let Jolie loose at least a couple of scenes that would have really helped. The romance in the film is very light, yes they wanted to keep it PG-13, but it needed some sex scenes; the sexual tension takes away from the joy of the movie. There are a couple of twists in the movie which are appreciated but the grand finale is not so grand, it is predictable more than anything.
