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CINEMA SEEN - "Labor Dazed!" By William Margold Well over 50 years ago, I was subjected to my first encounter with an English teacher who wanted to know “what I did over my summer vacation?” Invariably I would print (my handwriting was dreadful) out some stylishly fashioned (even at seven, eight, and nine, I could put together words with an amusing flair) sentences, have them read in class, and then become the teacher’s pet for that entire semester. So…over the recent three day Labor Day weekend, I extricated myself from New York Yankee fretting, and TV watching, to have just enough movie-going adventures that I thought it would be fun to mention them in this two-part Cinema Seen series. On Saturday, I managed to play the “parlay game” by tactfully setting my sights on a theater showing at least two movies that I needed to catch up with. So I ventured to a multi-plex, figuring that I wouldn’t be noticed (in the holiday weekend crowd) shuffling from one auditorium to another. You’d be amazed how easy it is to look just lost enough to fit in with all of the other “sheepel” who baa-fully wander from one screening room to the bathroom or the concession stand, and then into the confines of another screening room. And if one’s eyes, stomach and bottom don’t all wear out, one can even pull off a “triple play.” But those days are long past the patience of my eyes, my stomach, and my bottom, so the best I can do now is “double-up.” FOUR BROTHERS (Paramount)---With at least one brother too many, this surprisingly un-involving affair from director John Singleton (who produced my highly praised “Hustle and Flow”) is reputed to have been patterned after “The Sons of Katie Elder.” Well…Mark Walberg is no John Wayne… and the rest of the “brothers” collectively don’t come anywhere near the relaxed style of Dean Martin, or even Earl Holliman. When their overly angelic foster mother is blown away in a mini-market robbery (wherein the robbers had orders to “hit her” for overly complicated reasons), the multi-racial boys: Walberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin and Garrett Hedlund come home (to Detroit) to “make someone pay.” However, one well-staged shootout in the street wasn’t enough for me, as I felt that I was paying the very steep price of over two hours of my holiday time. Of course, it was imperative that I saw this film because Terrance Howard (the magnetic star of “Hustle and Flow”) appears herein as a true rarity: an uncorrupt detective. THE 40-YEAR OLD VIRGIN (Universal)---While my virginity lasted until shortly after I turned 20 years old (I did try to lose it in Tijuana…not once, but TWICE---a story fit for other parts of this publication “back in the day”), the gently etched (by Steve Carell) soul in this surprisingly humane, yet honestly funny comedy, manages to steer clear of the velveteen clam for twice my (highly unenviable) record. The presence of the always charming, painfully pretty Catherine Keener as the woman who finally splays, I mean lays claim to our hero’s purr-suit, further maximizes the genuine warmth of the Judd Apatow directed production. What frightens me most here is that with “sequelitis” afflicting Hollywood, we might be visiting with Carell and Keener again in a couple of years. My advice, which I bet will go unheeded: “leave swell enough alone!” On Sunday, the persistent nagging of Brian “Movie Reviews and More” Sebastian for me to see a “truly wonderful film” finally caught up me, and because, in fact, I had nothing else to do, and because it was playing fairly close to home, I waddled over to see the most overrated film of 2004. MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (Warner Independent)---If I could have afforded airdropping a couple of hundred polar bears into Antarctica a few years ago, the incredible tedium of this plodding project might well have been prevented. An over-inflated escapee from what I seem to remember enduring as a 40 minute IMAX event over a decade ago, this 8O (!) minute muddle (solemnly narrated by Morgan Freeman) is about as cuddly as an iceberg. With the redundancy of the Charlie Chaplin-esque creatures making me consider “waddling-out” of the theater before the movie had frozen all of my senses, I survived by thinking of how many ways penguins could be cooked and served. And finally, how they would perform as live targets in a shooting gallery. And then it was Monday…Labor Day itself, and… …to be continued NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, September 29, 2005 issue. |