Our Family Wedding (2010) 1/2

T

After a weekend of good films (three in a row) I was treated to this horrible mess of a film. I don't need to discuss the plot because you know the plot. There is nothing new here. It's called Meet The Fockers. Watching this film will steal a piece of your soul. Not a large piece, but enough that you will notice. The script is a mess. Every character in this film must be bipolar by the way they change attitudes toward each other on the drop of a dime. The acting is shit and the cast includes a damn Oscar winner. Forrest, do not pull a Cuba Gooding, Jr. Please, for all that is holy! 

I can't write anymore. In closing, the script, direction, and acting is the equivalent to a third grade play about Transformers and Bakugan. This review almost sucks as bad as this movie. Please, don't get suckered into this one.

Unthinkable (2010) ****

I

Let's look at the situation for a minute. You have a terrorist who has planted three nuclear bombs in three American cities. He has demands which can't be reasonably fulfilled. What do you do? Does Jack Ryan save the day? Does Superman fly in a grab the three bombs, hurling them into the sun? That's what would happen in fiction, but what happens for real? Unthinkable examines what would happen if the same scenario was posed to the United States right now.

Steven Arthur Younger (Michael Sheen) is the terrorist mentioned above. When he's captured the government is faced with two choices. The first is to allow the FBI interrogations unit headed by Agent Brody (Carrie-Anne Moss) do a traditional interrogation. The second choice is a man known simply as "H" (Samuel L. Jackson), who in a way is even more traditional than Brody in that some of his techniques go back to the Spanish Inquisition. Some could call H a sadist, others a surgeon. His is the governments ultimate tool in gaining much needed information. 

The thing about Unthinkable is that it makes you think right up until the end. Some of you will question your own ethics by the end of this film. Where is the line drawn? Do we honor the rights of one person at the expense of fifteen million? At what point do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one? When it's all said and done you wonder who was more sane- H or his government handlers. He knew his goal and how to achieve it. The film is a moral struggle that will pull the viewer into it's tug of war of conscious. A thriller that allows you to think, which is a rare commodity today. 

Despicable Me (2010) ****

Poor Gru (Steve Carell). He's at the bottom of his career. He's being shown up by younger villains like Vector (Jason Segel), who has just stolen one of the Pyramids of Giza. Gru is a washed up failure, but he has a job set up that will put him back on top- the theft of the moon and the last piece to his plan are three orphan girls selling cookies.

Being from the over saturated genre of computer animated films, Despicable Me is like the mirror of the standard rehash that we get every summer. It's not a dark film, but it does give off the vibe of being a distant cousin to the Addams Family. Where the comic strip was a macabre look at the nuclear family and the television show was a sort of anti-sitcom, Despicable Me is an anti-animated movie. Other than the three girls there are no heroes in this film- everyone is a villain. The main point of the film is who can be the baddest. Who can do the more dastardly deed? It's a competition of the infamous. Naturally the characters grow as the film progresses and the villainy isn't as pronounced as it was early in the film, but it still helps breath life in a stagnant genre. 

This is a film for kids and there are various prat falls and humor to keep the youngsters happy, but there's stuff for the adults, too. This isn't a complete infantilefest, so don't worry about going nuts for an hour and a half. Despicable Me is a well crafted animated film that doesn't really dare to break the rules, but bends them enough to be interesting. Other than Pixar films, this is one of the best animated films I've seen in awhile.

Inception (2010) *****

When you look at Christopher Nolan's filmography you can see a steady, recurring theme where the most basic set piece is the human mind. The mind is the central figure and how it is influenced by outside influences, developing into not what we want it to be, but what it has been through. It can't be trained, it has to be beaten like a piece of molten steel. You could create a sword or a shit shovel. Either way it goes through the process.

Nolan's newest film, Inception, is yet another examination of the brain, but this time the director has chosen to go deeper than ever, going into the subconscious, that Bermuda Triangle of the human mind where dreams rise and are lost forever, where connections are made that could never be achieved while we are awake. It's the place where our secrets come out to play. 

The story revolves around a new brand of corporate espionage. Basically, the idea is that people can infiltrate a persons dreams and get information. Of course in this era information can be worth millions, so the stakes are high. It takes a highly trained team to pull off such a maneuver, with the dreams being literally constructed and the subjects sedated so that their world is open for business. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the leader of his team, a man haunted by past memories and dreams. His team includes Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Ariadne (Ellen Page),and Yusef (Dileep Rao). Each has a speciality on the team, be it chemistry, psychology, or architecture. The thing about their newest assignment is that they need to do something different, something that has never been tried before. A failed extraction subject named Saito (Ken Watanabe) wants them to leave an idea for the heir of a major competitor (Cillian Murphy) to clear the monopoly that is standing in his way.

Inception is a film built on layers. As you watch the film you lose track of where reality exists and what the boundaries are to the imagination. It's an extensive work; an achievement that it has actually been accepted by the public at large. Cerebral films are hard to come by anymore with the same well worn plots and characters being recycled over and over again. Inception brings something fresh to a summer filled with big budget turds that fill cineplexes throughout the country. I will warn you that this is a film that you can't leave in the middle to get some Junior Mints or take a piss during. You will get lost. Just buy your shit and take your shit before you sit down and enjoy the wonder of another world that is just a rapid eye movement away. Inception is a masterpiece.

Play The Game (2008) *

Play the Game is about two playas. The first one is David (Paul Campbell), a sleazy car salesman who is your stereotypical man whore who knows all the moves, their counters and counters to said counters. So he will get shown up by a girl before the end of the film. The second player is Andy Griffith. Yeah, Sheriff Taylor. He starts out as your stereotypical old man, but by the end is the Ron Jeremy of the old folks home. It's role reversal, see? Get it? 

Let's be honest. The only audience for this film are people who are interested in seeing Andy Griffith talking about erections and having oral sex. No, it's not Thelma Lou, it's Seinfeld's mom.  If you take that away this film is a badly written, acted, and directed film that is such a cliche it's putrid. But Andy Griffith dresses like P Diddy. Pure crap.

Of course the use of Clint Howard as Andy's estranged son is of some importance.

A Single Man (2009) ****

Set in 1960, the year of Psycho and Kennedy, A Single Man follows the planned last day on earth for George (Colin Firth), a Londoner who teaches English at a Southern California college. We follow George through his day as he meticulously plans his own death. He has nothing left to live for. His partner Jim (Matthew Goode) was killed in a car accident, leaving a void in his life that not only can't be filled, but can't be fully expressed to anyone besides himself and his best friend Charley (Julianne Moore).

This is a very simple film. We basically follow George as he wakes up, takes, a shit, goes to work, buys bullets, lays his papers out for the poor person who finds him, and figures out where to blow his head off. As the day goes by, however, George has interactions with people. No one special, just people. An odd, almost stalker of a student, a little girl, a guy hanging out at a liquor store, and that voice of reason Charley. Director Tom Ford makes sure you realizes that George's life is bleak, but human companionship lightens up his life like a when a cloud gets past the sun and the lights come back on to scorch the grass and vinyl seats. It's a move that could be a major risk, but it works great.

This is Colin Firth's film, deservedly getting an Oscar nomination that he would have never won because this film is a little too small and there was no way to beat the Jeff Bridges juggernaut. He plays off of the cynicism that George has developed, delivering a character that doesn't believe in man or life anymore.His life has turned to shit right along with the rest of the world.

A Single Man is no tear jerker. It's goal isn't to squeeze tears from your eyes and to wrench your heart until you get that lump in your throat. It's more of a character piece with George as the front and center star, dealing with grief that he has to swallow and choke on every day since he got that phone call.  

Chloe (2009) **

C

Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) is a hooker. A busy hooker apparently. In a strange twist of fate that involves a toilet stall minus toilet paper she meets Catherine (Julianne Moore). It's just a chance meeting, but later Catherine sees Chloe and realizes that she needs her for something. You see, her husband David (Liam Neeson) has been out of town and little things have led Catherine to believe that he's been playing like Tiger Woods. So Catherine pays Chloe to tempt David. They meet and Catherine gets report. Then something strange happens- these sordid tales of dirty passion turn her on and that's not the only thing that's developing from the relationship between Chloe and Catherine.

For a film bragging a cast such as this, Chloe is a let down as a whole film. Neeson lost his wife during production of the film so his role is lessened and it shows. Moore and Seyfried are good in their roles, but as the film develops further and further and the time ticks away it becomes more and more hokey to and ending that seems to just plop there on the floor, no feeling and no real resolution other than "this is the end of the movie". It's like a jigsaw puzzle that you get all the edges done and it's going great, but then to fill in the middle- you slow down. 

But Chloe will be remembered by websites that bask in bare Hollywood flesh. I'm sure somewhere in this city right now there is some guy with "the scene" on a loop as he pumps gas. Someday this film will be a punchline. It will be mentioned in a teen sex comedy and I would just like to say that you heard it here first.