AWN Blogs

Mega-producer Brian Grazer, who is best known for being Ron Howard's producer, made some ripples in Hollywood when he announced that he was producing a NC-17 documentary on the influences of the porno flick, DEEP THROAT. Instead of being a truly provocative expose of the history of porn, the film from directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ends up being something that would be a good extra for the next anniversary DVD edition of the infamous porn film. So to answer the question that everyone will want to know going in — yes, there is pornographic content in this film. For the most part it's nothing more gratuitous than anything on late night Cinemax. What earns the film the NC-17 is a clip of the act that earned the film it's name and made its star Linda Lovelace a porn legend.

Named by THE TIMES OF LONDON as one of the most controversial films of all time, ROMPER STOMPER is everything AMERICAN HISTORY X wished it were. In not making a movie "about" skinheads, director/writer Geoffrey Wright makes the best movie about skinheads. We are put directly inside an Australian white supremacist gang and the film only gives us a troubled outsider as our in-route into the story. It's unflinching about the violent lifestyle of skinhead gangs and never forces characters to have epiphanies where they learn that racism is bad.

Hando (Russell Crowe, 3:10 TO YUMA), leader of the skinhead gang, is enraged by the growing number of Vietnamese immigrants buying property around his neighborhood. Along with his quiet right hand man, Davey (Daniel Pollock), and the rest of the thugs, he brutalizes a trio of Vietnamese skateboarders, which includes Tiger (Tony Lee), a young man who vows revenge. At the local bar one night, Hondo sets his eyes on Gabe (Jacqueline McKenzie, TV's THE 4400), a trouble epileptic girl, who has some serious daddy issues. The gang's violent attacks on the Vietnamese will have their repercussions, leading to more and more desperate actions.

In general I love Westerns. They often work as simple morality tales, but the more ambitious ones serve as metaphors for the era in America in which they were made. With the excellent remake of 3:10 TO YUMA coming to theaters this Friday, this seems like a great week to dedicate This Weekend's Film Festival to the Western.

Often referred to as the "dead" genre, Westerns were once the most popular form of film in the U.S. Many were just escapist fun, but the truly great ones took on a grander scale. The good and the bad in the genre did often have one thing in common — characters who live by a strict code of honor. Or in some cases found one. In the new YUMA, Christian Bale's character has a strong sense of duty to what is right… and so does Russell Crowe's killer in a way. So I've chosen a selection of five great Westerns that feature characters with a unique sense of justice. So saddle up for a lineup worth your weight in gold.

It is hard to review or even watch this film without the memory of HOOP DREAMS coming to mind. Where that groundbreaking documentary blazed trails in uncovering the inner city push for children to strive for NBA stardom as the way out of poverty, this film has shades of that larger social issue, but mainly serves as a look at one coach and one great player and what happens along the way as they strive to win a state championship. My memories of HOOP DREAMS always fall back to the people and their struggles while HEART OF THE GAME just plays out like a great sports flick.

Bill Resler takes over the girls' team at Roosevelt High School with the plan to run the full court press the whole game. He trains the players to be in better shape than their opponents. In his first season, he wins coach of the year, leading the girls to an undefeated season. At this time, Darnellia Russell was making waves across town playing ball in junior high. With pressure from her family, the tough-minded and confident African-American girl decides to travel across Seattle to attend the majority white Roosevelt in an effort to receive a better education.

Noel Coward adapts his own stageplay into a screenplay, which was brought to the screen by director David Lean before the famed helmer went on to make classic Dickens adaptations and widescreen epics such as LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. However, Lean started his career with this great light entertainment. With witty dialogue and that effortless British suave demeanor, BLITHE SPIRIT floats across the screen like a smooth waltz.

In researching his next book that features a homicidal medium, Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison, UNFAITHFULLY YOURS), along with his wife Ruth (Constance Cummings) and their friends Dr. George and Violet Bradman (Hugh Wakefield, 1934's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH & Joyce Carey, IN WHICH WE SERVE), hold a séance with the genuinely loony Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford, MURDER AHOY). After some seemingly sketchy hocus-pocus, everyone believes Arcati to be a charlatan except for Charles, who begins hearing and seeing the ghost of his dead wife Elvira (Kay Hammond). At first Ruth believes Charles is playing with her then she believes he has gone cuckoo, but a floating vase of flowers convinces her that there is now one too many wives in the Condomine household. And so does the wisecracking Elvira. In trying to solve the situation, the help of Madame Arcati and the Condomine's shy maid Edith (Jacqueline Clarke) will be needed.

This modern REAR WINDOW riff with high-tech gadgets is tightly written for two acts shying away from typical teen movie boo moments and illogical twists in exchange for old-fashioned thrills. Lead Shia LaBeouf (HOLES) has this entire film for himself and sets himself up to become a real star. He has an effortless charm that puts him in the ranks with Tom Hanks. Even when the movie begins to spell things out for the illiterate film viewer, we like LaBeouf's character enough that we still care about what he cares about.

After a recent tragedy, 17-year-old Kale (LaBeouf) becomes a troubled young man, which leads to another violent outburst that lands him under house arrest. His mother Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss, THE MATRIX) cuts off his Xbox Live and iTunes, leaving him very bored confined in his house. So he starts spying on the neighbors, especially his pretty new neighbor Ashley (Sarah Roemer, THE GRUDGE 2) and the creepy Mr. Turner (David Morse, THE GREEN MILE). When signs start piling up that might link Turner to a recent murder, Kale, his best friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo, ROCKET SCIENCE) and Julie begin to stake out the man, which becomes more and more dangerous at every turn.

With 18 seasons behind them on TV, The Simpsons have moved from "what is wrong with America" to an American icon. The show is now the longest running sitcom in U.S. TV history with no end in sight. Now the adventures of everyone's favorite dysfunctional family have been transported to the big screen. The canvas of the story is bigger, but it's still THE SIMPSONS with a colossal mess-up by Homer as the center of the story.

Homer (Dan Castellaneta, who also voices Barney, Grampa, Krusty) adopts a pig, but really doesn't know how to care for it. With Harry Plotter (that's the pig's second name) grabbing his attention, Bart (Nancy Cartwright, who also voices Ralph, Nelson) wishes he had a father who actually paid attention to him, leading him to bond with uber-good-doer Ned Flanders (Harry Shearer, THIS IS SPINAL TAP). When Marge (Julie Karvner) tells Homer to get rid of the silo of pig waste in the backyard, Homer cuts corners in an effort to get free donuts and dumps the silo in Springfield Lake, which pushes the already putrid waters over the edge. This spurs EPA head Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE) to convince President Arnold Schwarzenegger (Shearer) to put a dome around the town of Springfield and plan to turn it into the new Grand Canyon. So in an effort to save himself and his family from an angry mob of Springfield townfolk, Homer packs up Marge, Bart, Lisa (Yeardley Smith, AS GOOD AS IT GETS) and baby Maggie (Cartwright) and heads off to Alaska. But as things get worse in Springfield, can Marge motivate Homer to become a hero?

Based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, STARDUST is a humorous fairy tale in the vein of THE PRINCESS BRIDE. It might not be as witty or funny as Rob Reiner's classic, but it is vastly entertaining and the grand romance is so charming that even if we kind of know where the story is going, it doesn't matter, because we want to see it go there. Filled with aging witches, cross-dressing pirates, ghostly princes and blimp-powered air ships, this is one of the most fun films of the summer.

Tristan (Charlie Cox, 2004's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE) is in love with the town beauty Victoria (Sienna Miller, FACTORY GIRL), who promises to marry him instead of the rich Humphrey (Henry Cavill, I CAPTURE THE CASTLE) if he brings her back a fallen star within a week. Tristan uses a magic candle from his mother and ends up right were the star landed. However, it turns out that the star is a woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes, ROMEO + JULIET). Tristan promises to give Yvaine his magic candle to get her back home if she travels to see Victoria with him. So this starts their journey, which is nothing but smooth.

The epic apology for his racist BIRTH OF A NATION, INTOLERANCE is often used as an apology for film critics who want to recognize D.W. Griffith's accomplishments without embracing the hard to recommend NATION. In retrospect, Griffith's follow-up to his most notorious film is an overlong experiment that saves itself by coming together so well in the end. At its time of release, audiences were turned off by the four interwoven stories from four unconnected ages as well as the three plus hour running time. Modern audiences will have the same issues. Much like a crumbling ancient ruin, there is much to admire about INTOLERANCE as a historical document, but as a modern piece of art it has not held up over the test of time.

This pseudo-critique of the Catholic church has as much depth as a piece of artistic social rebellion as someone running into a church and screaming obscenities at the top of their lungs when no one else is around. Possibly amusing to the perpetrator, but no one else. Director Ken Russell strings together every possible image and/or action that could offend a devotee without any real substance behind it. Further diluting this "expose" is the setting of 17th Century France when it is clear the modern church is its target, yet never clearly laying out what point, if any, it wants to make about the modern church. This self-indulgent mess will most certainly ruffle the feathers of the more prudish viewer, however everyone else will be laughing their pants off at the absurdity of it all.

Dedicated rabble-rouser and liberal advocate Michael Moore has returned with a new documentary skewering the U.S. health care system. Whether you're liberal or conservative, most Americans have or most likely will have some horror story, thanks to our broken medical establishment. This is the footing from which Moore comes from, making his least divisive and most emotional film ever.

Possibly taking a note from his critics that he mucked the camera in his other films, Moore doesn't make an appearance in SICKO until far after the mid-point. The film starts with personal stories from folks who have been affected by bad HMOs. One uninsured man had to chose whether to reattach the tip his ring finger or his middle finger after a sawing accident. A woman's ambulance ride after a bad accident was rejected by her insurance because it wasn't pre-approved. Another woman was approved for surgery, but later rejected because her insurance company said she failed to list a yeast infection on her application, thus voiding her policy for withholding a prior medical condition. In two heartrending sequences, a mother talks about being forced to take her sick infant from one hospital to another because the closer hospital was not in her medical group and another woman who works at a hospital talks about the hospital's medical board rejecting her husband's bone marrow transplant, because it's an "experimental" treatment.