Catch and Release (1.5 of 5)

Chick Flick alert!! Deb was up for double feature, and this was number 2 (In more ways than one.) Ok Jenifer Garner is still cute in an alien kind of way, and she has the charm from ‘˜13 going on 30′™ but her excitement from Alias and Daredevil is nowhere to found. The story starts with wedding flowers being delivered to a funeral, you see her fiancée died during the bachelor party, funny’¦ I know, but not in this movie. By the end of the film, I am fairly sure he died during a fishing accident but seeing it would have helped this film tenfold. The rest is the banter between his two best friends (one of which is played like a hippy fuzzball by Kevin Smith) and a ‘˜Movie Director’™ friend from Hollywood. During the banter we find out that the fiancée was rich, no one knew and was paying $3000 a month to a woman in Los Angeles. It sounds like a lot of drama…but basically it was boring. Kevin wasn’t that funny, kind of sad mostly, Jennifer hooks up with the wrong guy in the end. And we find out the kid wasn’t really her fiancée’s. A chick flick’¦ directed by a chick’¦ for chicks, depressed ones.

Mel shot the film in HD’¦and while the lush jungle is Lush and the deep vistas are vista like’¦the action is very MiniDV. The motion blur gets irritating’¦and kind of takes you out of the moment by being too technological. Super 70 would have made this film phenomenal’¦but the budget vs. returns would have been in ‘˜Heavens Gate’™ territory. A feather in the cap for Mel’¦.but it’s not ‘˜The Passion’™ or ‘˜Braveheart’™’¦.just good storytelling with dash of history’¦.think ‘˜The Patriot’™’¦in underwear.

The Matrix Revolutions (4.3 of 5)

The Film itself gets a 3.8 but using all three films as I reference it bumps it up to one of the best overall trilogies to hit the screen. The final chapter does what it is supposed to do-wrap it up. In a truly tragic fashion, of the likes of Shakespeare, the story comes to a close the best way I can imagine. Hints were given throughout the trilogy on how it has to end, but to see them get there was wonderful and dynamic journey. I have read some reviews, and just like with the Original Matrix, I don-t think a lot of people-Got It- Some even were confused on what was the real world-and what was the Matrix-oh well. This installment is about the real-life war in the underground city Zion. The Machines decides to mount an offensive to kill all the humans. The battle sequences are brilliant and eye-popping. The humans use machine guns mounted on Mechanical Exoskeletons… ala-James Cameron-s ALIENS- The Matrix comes into play as Neo makes a pact with The Machine World to return harmony to the Matrix (sent into turmoil by a virus-like Agent Smith-see Matrix Reloaded) if the machines call off the attack on the humans of Zion. In the matrix there is a Hallway fight (Good-but Matrix 1-s was better) and the Final battle with Agent Smith (Superman style), which was amazing, but black suits fighting on a rainy night makes it a little to hard to follow. But like I said before-a great ending to a great trilogy.
So why isn-t it a 5?…well the emotional ride of the first one seems to disappear in the sequels. These feel more like video games we don-t have too much invested in. Sure I still love-playing Half-Life-but it was nothing like the first time we played Death match at the WDA Offices-that was almost magical. You care about Neo, Trinity and Morpheus-etc, but not nearly the same as the first film.
Trilogy Overview: The overall journey is a simple one, A rebel is enlighten to the plight of oppressed people (including himself) and is encouraged to join the fight. He is the one that stops the entire war and saves millions. Sparticus, Jeff Goldblum, Bruce Willis-.it-s been done. Now add some biblical subtext and shoot it like an Anime come to life and you have a trilogy with some of the best eye-candy and-ohhhhhh- moments in history. The cool factor comes in when you find out that machines are using human bodies as a power source and created a virtual world called the Matrix to entertain their minds and to keep them alive-. cool huh? While The LOTR trilogy is a beautiful and epic trilogy the wiz bang award goes to Matrix with its no holds barred R-rating. Another great point is the fact that not a lot of people get it, and it-s kind of fun to explain to them because they look at you like you are from another planet. Bravo-W- Brothers-take a year off-.you guys earned it.

-Harry Knowles www.aintitcoolnews.com

Out of Time (1.5 of 5)
Denzel/Florida/Dirty cops intriguing story-why only 2 stars? cause it was BORING!!!. It gets 1 point for being in focus. I went to the theater to see The Rundown, which despite what Yahoo Movies said, was not playing at my local theater. So Deb and I decided to see the next available movie. We have skipped over our normal theater going schedule to work on securing our new house, so 90% percent of the films playing we have not seen. I knew the film was a Elmore Leonard wannabe with a sub par film crew and uninspired performances throughout-but I knew it was going to be better than Good Boy. Well it just wasn-t worth it. Most of the time was spent ripping apart what was on screen: GPS-s working inside cases, shoddy police work, and god only knows what was in Denzel-s hair in that one scene. All the Episodes of Cold Case/CSI/Law and Order etc-were better than this 9 Dollar film. We figured it out way too early. The only laughs in the film wouldn-t even have registered in any other film. Ahhhhhhh it was almost like paying to see an Indie!!

Kill Bill (3.4 of 5)
Where to begin-.In Quentin style-the middle. The marquee piece of this film is the Battle at the house of blue leaves. A series of extended crane and stedycam shots that followed the whereabouts and fighting of some 80 participants. Shots that put Scorsese to shame and made the Disney execs cringe with the over all amount of blood loss. The dynamic colors of the entire film are wonderful, but in the middle of the biggest fight of them all- Quentin goes black and white. Can-t place the homage he was going for here. And it irritated me more than style was probably supposed too, here I was salivating at what would become a Technicolor blood fest, and I was bounced back to Seven samurai!!!. Only other cheese-out to me was the beeping whenever-The Bride-s- name was mentioned, She was supposed to be Eastwood-s-Man with no name- but come on-. just cut it out. The real power of the film was the ability to bring Hardcore Anime to life, much in the same way that The Matrix did. Oh yea , Lucy-s life was explained using Anime, and it worked very well indeed. Not a lot of Tarintino dialog, but the cool factor still permeated through the entire film. Uma was great and her journey is intriguing to follow. Limbs fly off people like Nerf rockets, so be forewarned when taking the squeamish to the film. The truly bright point to me was the scenes with Sonny Chiba. He had a style and class that raised the bar from a grind house pic to something a little more lasting. I am going to hold judgment on the Power Jew-s decision to make the film two parts when I see Volume II in February. But so far there were a few places that could use a trim in Volume I.

Finding Nemo (4.2 of 5)
Pixar has not failed. Every film they release is an unoriginal story that has been told so many times before. But the highly polished final product is storytelling with a stroke of mastery. Pixar and photo-realism do not mix, and I never want them to mix them. These are cartoons for the new millennia. That being said, Nemo is a little clown fish captured by a diver/dentist while, under the watchful eye of his sole (bad pun, he is a clown fish anyway) neurotic father. The film is the journey the father takes trying to get back his son. A journey that becomes a legend to the underwater community, and it is a big community. While the father, voiced by Albert Brooks keeps the movie together, it-s Ellen DeGeneres-s amazing performance as Dory that steals the show. Always airy and funny, but a touching lost soul too. Every character was fascinating and entertaining, Easily a top ten movie for the year and top 3 of Pixar productions to boot. Deb and I just saw this film last weekend and that-s 10 weeks after it debuted-most films leave the theaters after 6.

S.W.A.T. (3.2 of 5)
Always digged they way Mark Shera whipped that repel rope around to the theme music way back before Star Wars made me all glassy eyed for sci-fi. That was one of the many instances of childhood TV that made me like the intros more than the show itself. Maybe I am built to cut trailers and intros more than anything else. Anyways-the 2003 version of S.W.A.T is basically a big budget version of FX’s-The Shield–if you love that show-you will love this movie. But there lies the problem–The Shield- is a TV show- I don-t want a TV show on the big screen. I pay the 8 bucks to take me farther, show me the bullet taking the guy down, show the cussing, and show the explosions. The written story is a good one: Make a misfit S.W.A.T. team, arrest the biggest crime lords son, offer 100 million to anyone who busts him out, drama and explosions galore. But the film is shot a little to episodically and the emotion of the situations is lost. The biggest problem for me was the restraints of the PG-13 rating they were going for. This needed to be gritty and it couldn-t be. The right people were in place: Colin was perfect, Jackson was perfect, Hell, even Josh Charles was perfect. But it all just clicked on a lower level that I wanted it to. But that-s just me-I ALWAYS want True Lies and T2. And a side note, while I understand when a trailer is made it is sometimes early in the editing phase of a film, and a shot or scene in the trailer is omitted from the final cut. This time around there were easily 4 shots and scenes cut from the trailer. When Michelle says-cause it tickles me- in the trailer-it was a deciding factor in me seeing the movie-and after watching the film-It needed it back in!

The Hulk (3 of 5)
In a new twist the Avi Arad/Stan Lee team at MARVEL decided to hire a Drama director Ang Lee for this yarn. The results are a mixed: While much more emotionally deeper than most comic book movies the action suffers in a 90% CGI environment. There are no laughs, no applause, no nothing really. The saving graces to the film are the editing and acting. The-Comic Book / 24- type scene changes were fun and made a drab pace seem more interesting. The acting was superb. The ending was anticlimactic, the effects we good-but you could tell something was a bit off. Very nice to see the Super Cobra finally make it to a film. Everything just kind of fell a bit flat-Hulk 2 should be better.

Lets start by saying I liked the first one. Well-photographed MTV / USA style with lots of Hong Kong type fights. Simple, stupid and fun.
So now comes the sequel: Bigger Faster and Uncut-snicker. McG took what he had and went bigger, More wire work, less clothes, dumber acting, bigger stunts-.results: Coooool and stupid as expected. My only real problem with the film is the realm of impossibility that is achieved in the final sequence. Meaning: while the entire movie had scenes that were impossible, mathematically they COULD work. The final chase between Cameron and Demi was IMPOSSIBLE to do-and pissed me off just like the opening sequence of GOLDENEYE when the final few seconds of the stunt was done as a special effect-dammit!-special effects in a bond stunt-what the hell!!.
Anyways-the film was on par with the CA1 on the enjoyment scale-albeit a little more pornographic in a Austin Powers kind of way. I would put either one in my DVD player just to watch the pretty bodies and colors.

Bad Boys II : 7-18- Great rookie effort by all involved on the first one. This one will be bigger and better. It-s the Travis lock of the month.
Lara Croft – Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life: 7-25 First one a bit stupid, but the foundation was soild, the visually great Jan DeBont takes a turn and it looks very good so far.
SWAT : 8-8 Very stylish and a great shoot-um-up premise
Freddy Vs. Jason: 8-15 test audiences love it, and that means something in these films.
Jeepers Creepers II: 8-29 1st one was a truly wonderful horror flick, looks like more of the same.
Once Upon a time in Mexico: 9-12 Part three of the El Mariachi/Deserado series from Robert Rodriguez. He has not let me down yet.
Underworld 9-19 Something a little different from blade, and the effects look clean.

And a little further down the road:
Kill Bill: 10-10 Teaser just makes me want more, Video store junkie making a Kung Fu flick-what can go wrong!
Return of the King: 12-17 Finally get to close the book on a history making series.
Matrix Revolutions: 11-5 ..Ditto!

Once I heard this was in the making-WITHOUT Cameron-I cringed. But my faith in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (opps-was I supposed to say that) was always solid, so I dropped my doubts and went in clean. Guess what-it was pretty good. A step down from the-Example of PERFECT Filmmaking- that was T2. But the story had merit and the characters grew and were fun to watch. I have gotten into discussions on whether the TX was an upgrade or downgrade of the T1000, and that alone told me there was something to this film. The camerawork so-so, but 10 years ago this would have been great. But with T2 and the Matrix films in the mix, visually it just seemed-well-so so. Arnold walked through this (but that-s OK) Loken didn-t bring much but boobs (that-s really OK) but Stahl and Danes brought quite a bit to the table. They grew the most and using their point of view to the movie kept it grounded. The-mine is bigger than yours- stuff was fun: bigger trucks,bigger helicopters,bigger everything. Hydrogen fuel cell destruction was kind of cool too; even paying homage to the way the first T101 bought it. And while I liked the ending-hint–It is inevitable- I wanted 10 or 20 more minutes to take it farther. So if a sequel comes cool-if not, this was by far the weakest of the three.

Ghosts of the Abyss (4 of 5) IMAX 3-D
While most IMAX films are rides more than journeys, this film has an underlying soul that explains quite a bit more than the Titanic films could. 60% percent of it is still a-Ride- taking us to the bottom of the ocean to see the sunken behemoth in 3-D. showing us new gadgets and neat graphics and spilt screen views of where we are. Cameron isn-t even in the film all that much, he lets friend and actor-Fuck You Asshole- Bill Paxton (that-s right he said it first) be his voice and eyes. As we see different things, little history lessons pop up and new heroes are created. A good, extremely well filmed journey through time. Then near the end something unexpected happens, one of the ROV units losses battery power and get stuck in the wreckage. After some meetings they try the gutsy move of using the other ROV to try and snag it. And it gets stuck too. After an hour of frustration Cameron takes the controls and gives it one last try-they are freed-yea!!!. On they way back up elated with their triumph they log the experience 6:30PM September 11,2001. When they hit the surface they are told the news, and it hits like a ton of bricks, and the moviegoers feel it too. Wonder and emotion in a 1 hour film-brilliant.

SeaBiscuit (4.7 of 5)
About as-near perfect- of all the films this year! History channel with a budget! If you don-t cheer for everyone in this film something is wrong with you! That being said: still only places behind 85-s-Phar Lap- but stays ahead of Casey-s-Shadow- show position as the best horse movie ever. A rich and methodical telling of the West Coast phenom that beat the Triple Crown winning goliath-War Admiral- in a match race during the depression. Where the film really shines is in the relationships that are created along the way. Seabiscuit is the catalyst for a true rag tag group of individuals to be national heroes. The races are well filmed but nothing too new until the final race, which has some truly amazing slow motion shots including the money shot of Seabiscuit-s front hoofs almost hitting you in the face down the home stretch. The real charm to the races for me came with the conversations between Red Pollard and George Wolff during the race. The planning, the plotting, the-have a nice ride- stuff gave me goose bumps and made the races an emotional roller coaster instead of just an tense adrenalin rush. My grandfather raised racehorses and I can remember countless trips to Agua Caliente in the late 70-s to see-Castle Run- and Second Place- dash for the line. And seeing Seabiscuit get his start there and staying in the stables south of the field brought back all the trips, and walks, and brushings from my youth. Bridges had a bit of-Tucker- in the presentation but everyone else brought some truly inspired performances to the table. A Tobey supporting actor nod may come his way. This movie is a keeper and not just because it is a great history lesson but it also to shows how to make a emotionally perfect film with out shoving down your throat. Note to my mom: bring a whole box-.you-ll be crying like clockwork on this one.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider- The Cradle of life. (2.5 of 5)
She-Bond II mixes one of the best cinematographers (but not directors): Jan De Bont, Best Body/Acting ability ratio for brunettes: Angelina Jolie, and the most locales since Cubby still pulled the strings at Pinewood studios. Add them all together and you get a film better than TR1 but worse than just about anything else. With the three Items listed above you should be able to hit this one out of the park. But the polish just wasn-t there. You don-t care about any characters, the special effects where in no way great (done better in most films 10 years ago) and it took almost an hour just to get interesting. All nipples aside, Angelina did great (and her makeup artist was top notch too) but she seemed to be begging to want a better movie. Probably the same exact thing said after Tomb Raider 1 rolled its credits.-Gun Fight in the lab- and-Beasties at the Cradle- were high points but all were item done better in other films. There is potential in the franchise but if you can-t hit the mark with talent like this or by episode 2, you are in for a world of perpetual mediocrity.