AWN Blogs

Considered by many to be the quintessential stoner flick, I wonder if being stoned is a requirement? If so, then you lose a large portion of your audience. Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin might have written this obvious druggie road flick while high. Both considerations might make some sense of why anyone would think this meandering mess is funny.

Pedro De Pacas (Marin) is looking to score some marijuana. Anthony "Man" Stoner (Tommy Chong) is a jobless hippie whose father Arnold (Strother Martin, THE WILD BUNCH) kicks him out of the house. After Pedro picks up Man hitchhiking along the freeway, they begin a series of misadventures where they narrowly miss incarceration time and time again. On their tail throughout is humorless Sgt. Stedenko (Stacy Keach, TV's MIKE HAMMER), who seems to have been given the bottom of the class from the police academy to be on his Narc squad. Pedro drops by to see his cousin Strawberry (Tom Skerritt, ALIEN), a paranoid Viet Nam vet, who might have some good drugs. Later they end up deported to Mexico, smuggling pot across the board in a van made of pot, and entering a battle of the bands contest.

So many times throughout the film, I envisioned Cheech and Chong sitting around the writing table, smoking dope, and giggling while they said, "hey, it'd be cool if we drove a big van made of pot." Some of the juvenile material tickles the funny bone from time to time, but it's all the same and gets tiresome. How many times can you tell a joke regarding the size or contents of your joint? Nothing is particularly interesting about either of the characters. They're just stoned losers. So all the humor is tired syndicated sitcom punchlines.

Lou Adler, the record producer, directed this, Cheech and Chong's first, movie. Adler has no sense of timing or pacing, which drains the humor from what could have been some funny slapstick moments. When the stoner material burns out, they go for lazy toilet humor. Eating dog tacos in Mexico and having to take a crap — oh, the height of comedy. From the writing to the direction, everything reeks of amateurs goofing off for 80 some minutes. I would have said that the producer should have asked for his money reimbursed, but Adler produced this as well, so I guess it was his prerogative what he wants to waste his money on. And it's your prerogative what you want to waste your time on.

Many action movies are just elaborate chase sequences strung together. Too many of these action movies turn off their brains while they're doing it. The best action movies establish their iconic heroes' personalities and then let those personalities shine through during the chases. Jason Bourne isn't as suave as James Bond or as witty as Indiana Jones, but he's more badass. I've come to respect his skills over three pictures. Matt Damon has created an iconic movie hero.

This third film in the series continues Jason Bourne's search for the truth about his past. Newspaper reporter Simon Ross (Paddy Considine, IN AMERICA) has gotten a CIA contact to speak about the mysterious assassin Bourne. This brings out the big dogs, lead by ruthless CIA agent Noah Vosen (David Strathairn, GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK), who seems to have a vendetta against Bourne. Bourne's nemesis from THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, Pam Landy (Joan Allen, UPSIDE OF ANGER), has come to believe that Bourne shouldn't be treated as an enemy, but a lost and confused ally. Bourne will run all over the world looking for the next clue, running into old friends like CIA agent Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles, SAVE THE LAST DANCE). Each move brings him closer to finding out how Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn, THE RIGHT STUFF) and Dr Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney, TOM JONES) play in his past.

It took Universal nearly 70 years to bring Winifred Watson's light farce to the screen. Pearl Harbor derailed a musical rendition in 1939 and its been on the shelf ever since. Indian-born director Bharat Nalluri brings the same qualities to the final 2008 production as if it were produced in the '30s. There's nothing modern about it and that's meant as a great compliment.

Frances McDormand (FARGO) plays the terribly frumpy title character whose assertiveness has lost her one governess job after another. Desperate, Guinevere swipes the business card of a choice assignment at the agency, and shows up the next morning early. The job is for fledgling actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams, JUNEBUG), and when Miss Pettigrew goes to wake Miss Lafosse's "boy," the former nanny discovers the naked theater producer Phil Goldman (Tom Payne, TV's SKINS) in bed. It's not a governess job, but a social secretary post. A position Miss Lafosse desperately needs. She's sleeping with Mr. Goldman to land a plum part, lives in the lavish apartment of shifty nightclub owner Nick Calderelli (Mark Strong, STARDUST), and is in love (even thought she won't admit it) with the poor piano player Michael Pardew (Lee Pace, THE FALL). Miss Pettigrew's quick thinking gets Miss Lafosse out of some touchy situations throughout the day, impressing adulterous fashion designer Edythe Dubarry (Shirley Henderson, TOPSY-TURVY) and her charming lingerie designer boyfriend Joe Blomfield (Ciaran Hinds, MUNICH).

Director Robin Swicord adapts Karen Joy Fowler's bestselling novel into a smart romantic comedy that takes helpful cues from the literary master of love, Jane Austen. When so many rom-coms these days are about bickering shallow women or females who have problems saying on their feet (you know pratfall after pratfall), it's quite refreshing to see a funny love story based around characters reading. Even better the comedy comes from the characters and their natures.

Jocelyn (Maria Bello, THE COOLER) is a successful single woman, who is content with being unchained from a man. Her best friend Sylvia Avila (Amy Brenneman, TV's JUDGING AMY) is going through a tough divorce, after her husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits, TV's L.A. LAW) springs on her that he has found another woman. Their daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace, TV's LOST) is an adventurous lesbian who is impatient and rash with love. Bernadette (Kathy Baker, TV's PICKET FENCES) is Jocelyn's older free-spirited friend, who has been blissfully married several times. One night at the movies Bernadette meets the unhappily married Prudie Drummond (Emily Blunt, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA), whose snooty personality seems in complete conflict with her jocky husband Dean (Marc Blucas, TV's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER). Bernadette invites Prudie to join their Jane Austen book club, where each member leads the discussion on each of Austen's novels. To fill out the group, Jocelyn ropes in sci-fi loving tech millionaire Grigg Harris (Hugh Dancy, BLACK HAWK DOWN) to the club as a possible romantic interest for Sylvia even when its clear that Grigg has eyes for her.

Based on Richard Yates' celebrated novel, Sam Mendes' screen adaptation is a battle between the easy course and the road less traveled. Set in the 1950s, the original book was an indictment of the conformity of the Eisenhower era, however, the film carries into today a difficult examination of nothing less than the meaning of life. This challenging material is at times hopeful and at other times desperate. In AMERICAN BEAUTY, Mendes showed that he understood suburban malaise. Now he returns to the same world without the comforting veil of real world fantasy, lying bare hard truths that we pretend do not exist.

Frank and April Wheeler, played by TITANIC's famed couple Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, are what appears to be the ideal couple. They live in a nice home in the suburbs with their two kids. Frank has a good job at the Knox Company and April is a stay-at-home mom. However, this is not the life they had planned for themselves when they first met. Having served there in the war, Frank has always wanted to return to Paris, and April had trained as an actress. Frank doesn't even know what he's selling at his "good job" and local theater just isn't enough to fulfill the emptiness inside April. She has a plan, which everyone thinks is childish, but it's exciting for both her and Frank. Sadly life seems to always get in the way of our grand plans.

Just in time for New Year's, This Weekend's Film Festival provides an eclectic lineup of New Year's Eve set films. Each of the five films feature New Year's at a key moment and a few capture the essence of New Year's as well. New starts and redemption. Tragedy and survival. Families and betrayal. To celebrate the New Year, TWFF gives you drama and good cheer. So, crack open the champagne and cozy up by the TV, This Weekend's Film Festival provides the entertainment.

We start with a bang. One of the greatest sequels of all time, THE GODFATHER: PART II continues the tale of Corleone crime family. Michael Corleone, played icy cold by Al Pacino, is now at the height of his power. He wants to take the family legit, but does not want to loosen his grip on power. In flashback sequences, Robert DeNiro gives an Oscar-winning performance as Michael's father Vito, the iconic role originated by Marlon Brando. The more we learn about Vito's emergence into crime, the more we understand the moral decline of his son. Michael's ruthless business dealings threaten to lose him the family he so desperately wants to protect. In Cuba, on New Year's Eve, as revealers party the night away, the dawn of the Cuban revolution plays as a backdrop to the revolution in the Corleone family, via the break between Michael and his naïve, older brother Fredo, played by the late great John Cazale. As I said in my original review, "Few sequels are this great. I called the original GODFATHER a cinematic miracle, so what does it say about GODFATHER: PART II that it’s just as good as its predecessor?"

The only sequel to follow its Oscar-winning original into an Oscar win, Francis Ford Coppola's THE GODFATHER: PART II continues the tale of moral decline of the once promising Michael Corleone, as well as the rise of his father Vito. Dark irony casts a shadow from the father's tale to the son's. The more Michael attempts to take the Corleone family into legit business, the more he slips further into the seedy underworld where he came. The really question is how far will he sink?

The film begins with an origin story of Vito (as an adult played by Robert DeNiro, HEAT) in Sicily. We see how violence touched his life at an early age and how it has had a hold on him his entire life. He escapes Italy for America, where he starts a family, working as a shop hand. When his kind boss must fire him due to the extortion of the neighborhood's gangster, he questions the ruthless control Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin, THE CONFORMIST) has on their fellow Italians. Instead of ruling over them, he feels a Don should protect them.

GHOST TOWN presents a very well worn premise — a living human is tormented by ghosts looking to make amends for unfinished business in their lives. This isn't even the first time the premise was done this year (OVER MY DEAD BODY came earlier in the year). But few are written and directed by David Koepp, writer of SPIDER-MAN, CARLITO'S WAY and JURASSIC PARK. They also don't have the comic talents of Ricky Gervais, BBC's THE OFFICE and EXTRAS.

Gervais plays dentist Bertram Pincus, a man who doesn't even like being around other people. As a dentist he can just shove cotton balls in their mouths. During a routine colonoscopy, he died for a few minutes, and ever since, he sees dead people. The recently departed Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear, AS GOOD AS IT GETS) in particular won't let Dr. Pincus alone. He wants Pincus to help him break up the relationship of his former wife Gwen (Tea Leoni, SPANGLISH) and her civil rights lawyer finance Richard (Billy Campbell, TV's THE 4400). It seems unlikely that the impersonal Pincus could woo Gwen away from Mr. Right, but when he stops being a jerk, he can be quite charming. But as we learn right from the start, Gwen has a thing for jerks; Frank was cheating on her.

Memory is a funny thing. We remember bits and pieces of things. Influential people's faces, but not their names. Memories that seem so real to us that never really happened. Memories forgotten because they are too painful to bear. Director Ari Folman addresses his own tricks of memory in his new animated documentary WALTZ WITH BASHIR. Folman has discovered that he has no memories of his service in the Israeli army when it occupied Lebanon. So he sets out to interview those that may have served with him to reawaken his memory.

One night at a bar, Folman's friend Boaz Rein Buskila confesses that he has been plagued with a dream of dogs chasing him. The angry dogs stem back to actions he took during the war. Folman now realizes that his only memory of his service is floating naked in the ocean as bombs rain down on the Sabra and Shatila zones, where the massacre of Palestinians took place. Folman visits his friend Ori Sivan, a shrink, who tells him to seek out those he served with to help remember. In his ocean memory, Folman is with his longtime friend Carmi Cnaa'n, whom now lives in Holland. He is very reluctant to talk about anything that happened during the war.

If Joel and Ethan aren't making dark crime thrillers, they're making dark comedies. With the release of their spy spoof, BURN AFTER READING, on DVD, This Weekend's Film Festival takes a look at their comedies. This lineup of laughers isn't what one might expect. There's a trilogy. A short. A Cannes-winning Hollywood satire. A dark screwball romance. And a film based on Homer's THE ODYSSEY.

BURN AFTER READING closes what George Clooney lovingly calls his trilogy of idiots with the Coen Brothers. He plays a Treasury employee who gets wrapped up in an idiotic blackmail scheme conducted by his latest fling Linda Litzke, played by Coens regular Frances McDormand, and her dimwitted, fellow gym co-worker Chad, played hilariously by Brad Pitt. The scheme revolves around fired CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) and his missing computer disc. As I said in my original review, "Spy flicks add plot pieces one on top of each other, building to the point when the complete picture becomes clear. BURN AFTER READING has devious fun with that." Those familiar with the genre will find subtle smart pokes lurking in every corner. Driven by a great cast, which also includes Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and J.K. Simmons, the ironic story unfolds with one bit of stupidity falling upon another until the entire plot is rolling out of control. In the end, everyone is left wondering what it all means.

After his overly ambitious, flawed experiment, THE FOUNTAIN, director Darren Aronofsky for THE WRESTLER dials back down to an indie scope where he shined in his debut film PI. Like the world of drug addicts in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, Aronofsky creates the world of AAA-level local pro-wrestling with sadness and accuracy. When the screenplay plays too close to the well-worn script for underdog tales, Aronofsky just tags his teammates Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei and they deliver a smack down performance that wins the match.

Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Rourke, SIN CITY) was once on the top of the wrestling game, playing big matches in Madison Square Garden. Now he's performing gymnasiums for peanuts. His body is broken down. He lives in a trailer park and is behind on the rent. He works a day job at a grocery store. His college-aged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE) hates him for choosing a rock 'n roll lifestyle over her. He confuses the attention of an aging stripper named Cassidy (Tomei, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD) as real affection. Then after one particularly brutal match, Randy must confront the reality that he might be able to wrestle forever.