NY1 reviews some of the films that made their debut in May.
May 13, 2008
"The Babysitters" Neil Rosen Review
A new film starring John Leguizamo and Cynthia Nixon has a premise that some might find interesting if handled the right way. It's called “The Babysitters.”
Leguizamo is Michael, a suburban dad who is not entirely happy with his wife, played by Nixon, and he also dislikes his job. One night, on the way to driving Shirley the babysitter home, he makes a pass at her. One thing leads to another and the next thing you know they become physically involved.
Shirley at the beginning of the film is portrayed as extremely moral and innocent. We're lead to believe that she has genuine feelings for this guy.
But after her brief encounter with Michael, almost overnight, she makes a completely unrealistic transformation. Not only does she start charging Michael for her extracurricular services, she enlists her friends at high school to form a prostitution ring which she heads up.
The other girls that she recruits, basically good kids and solid students for the most part, have no issue with any of this. They jump at the opportunity to make money being call girls and sleep with lecherous middle-aged guys, which makes the film even more ludicrous.
Of course, Nixon's character is in the dark about what's going on as Michael gets his friends on board for lusty activities with the babysitter-hookers in the neighborhood.
When some of Shirley's crew cheats her out of her cut of the money, she flips out, turns violent and starts behaving like a tough street pimp. It's ridiculous.
Writer and first-time director David Ross can't decide what he wants this film to be. At times, he's going for dark satire, but the tone he establishes early on makes that impossible. It's like a bad version of “Risky Business” meets an awful take on the movie “Election.”
Leguizamo, despite the awful material, manages to give a good performance. Nixon is wasted and all the girls are amateur-ish.
The first few minutes actually show promise, before it completely derails and becomes offensive.
Neil Rosen’s Big Apple Rating: 1 Apple
May 9, 2008
"Battle for Haditha" Entertainment Weekly Review
Nick Broomfield's searing and powerful “Battle for Haditha” is a speculative dramatization of events that led up to the November 2005 killing of 24 Iraqi civilians. Broomfield is best known as the one-man-band documentarian who made “Biggie & Tupac,” “Kury & Courtney,” and “Aileen Wournos: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” Here, working on a budget of just $3 million, Broomfield achieves the vivid desolation, the jagged and disquieting landscape of blood, terror, and chaos that one associates with war epics like Full Metal Jacket and Platoon.
“Battle for Haditha” shows us the Iraq war from both sides. Early on, we meet Ahmad, a bone-weary middle-aged insurgent who buries and detonates an IED in a tranquil domestic neighborhood. Ahmad has no illusions about the al-Qaeda operatives he gets the bomb from. He thinks they're “idiots.” Yet he wants the Americans out. Battle for Haditha also shows us the parallel story of a troop of U.S. Marines, led by Corporal Ramirez, a squad leader played with benumbed ferocity by Elliot Ruiz, who, like several other actors in the film, is a former Marine himself.
When that IED explodes, the retaliation of Ramirez and his fellow soldiers is portrayed unblinkingly, as a warped expression of duty and fear. At the same time, “Battle for Haditha” captures the ruthlessness of their actions in a way that makes you suck in your breath. To have captured this hell, and to have done it with this precise a blend of horror and humanity, establishes Nick Broomfield as a filmmaker of major dimension.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
May 7, 2008
"Speed Racer" Neil Rosen Review
The Wachowski brothers, who gave the world the “Matrix” films and “V for Vendetta” have decided to go another way for their latest movie. It's a big screen version of a 1960's Japanese cartoon -- “Speed Racer.”
Emile Hirsh plays Speed, a top flight race car driver. His father, Pops Racer, played by John Goodman, has designed Speed's thundering race car, the Mach 5, and his whole family which includes his mother, played by Susan Sarandon, little brother and even pet chimp are on board for Speed’s adventures.
But something crooked is going on in the world of racing.
Speed discovers that a manipulative tycoon is up to no good, defacing the good name of racing. So with the help of his one-time racing rival, played by Matthew Fox, and his girlfriend, played by Chrisina Ricci, it's up to Speed to set things right.
If only this movie were cool. It's not. In fact, the words “over-produced” and “boring” are more appropriate here.
The Wachowskis have used a tremendous amount of green screen and digital animation. Nothing looks real, which is OK if you were involved on any level in any of the races on-screen. But you won't really care what's going on in this movie at all. The plot is very confusing, the dialogue is childlike and the action jumps around so much you'll often be lost.
This is a classic case of style over substance. Some may say that from a visual perspective, it looks good and it does, but it doesn't really matter if I don't care one iota what happens to any of the characters.
The whole experience is like watching someone else play a bad car racing video game. It's a visual assault and I was embarrassed for some of these first-rate actors to be in this production and have to recite some of this ridiculous dialogue.
Perhaps young kids aged six to nine might get some sort of thrill out of this for a few minutes, but for everyone else on the planet, run at top speed away from “Speed Race.”
Neil Rosen’s Big Apple Rating: 1 Apple
April 23, 2008
"What Happens In Vegas" Neil Rosen Interview
In the new romantic comedy “What Happens In Vegas,” Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher are two New Yorkers who meet one drunken night in Las Vegas and wake up the next morning to find out that they got married. Once Kutcher wins a $3 million slot machine jackpot, they are forced by the courts to stay together, despite hating each other's guts, until it's decided who gets the money.
Neil Rosen spoke with Kutcher and Diaz about Vegas regrets and filming in New York City.
Click the Real Video links above to view the complete report.
If you want to see Ashtron Kutcher and Cameron Diaz in "What Happens In Vegas," it opens this week.
May 2, 2008
"Iron Man" Entertainment Weekly Review
In “Iron Man,” Robert Downey Jr. doesn't dial down his eager narcissistic wit. As Tony Stark, a high-living celebrity weapons contractor who is wounded on a trek through Afghanistan, only to transform himself into a hulking mechanical rocket man, Downey, whoever he's talking to, is really just nattering to himself. His mocking, crumpled charm never disappears, even when he climbs into his “Iron Man” machine suit, with its whirring, clicking limbs, flamethrower arms, and the mask of a medieval knight. Out to destroy the weapons he once created, he becomes a rock-'em sock-'em robot for peace.
“Iron Man” is a Marvel comics adaptation in which a routine story line has been burnished with great elegance and skill. The director, Jon Favreau, doesn't exactly have a big sci-fi track record, but he draws on his humanistic gifts to create a compellingly down-to-earth superhero fantasy. The effects sequences, in which Iron Man zips through the air like a toaster that's been shot out of a cannon, never let us forget that this gold-titanium hulk has been built, from the ground up. And the casting is aces. Jeff Bridges, as Stark's corporate partner, looks as scary as a cult leader in his shaved head and bushy beard, but Bridges uses that wry, trust-me voice to create a timely portrait of stylish power.
Gwyneth Paltrow, as Pepper Potts, Stark's selfless girl Friday, manages the neat trick of taking a character who's a pre-feminist throwback and playing her with a liberated twinkle. Too often, superhero films feel like a different species of entertainment from the smudged comic books that spawned them. Iron Man takes you back to the days when you sprawled out in front of those books, flipping through the adventures of a guy who was too vital, and vulnerable, to ever be a mere special-effects object.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
May 1, 2008
"Made of Honor" Neil Rosen Review
Patrick Dempsey, best known these days for playing so-called McDreamy on TV's “Grey's Anatomy” is starring in a big screen movie. It's a romantic comedy and it's called “Made Of Honor.” Dempsey plays a womanizer whose best friend is Hannah. Despite how he treats other girls, he always shows Hannah the utmost respect and puts their friendship up on a pedestal. But lately Tom has grown tired of playing the field and wants to settle down.
He decides that maybe the great love of his life has been in front of his eyes for years, namely Hannah. It just took him way too long to realize it. But with Hannah now engaged to another man, who's from Scotland and with Tom performing the duties of maid of honor, he has to do everything in his power to get her to call her impending nuptials off.
Tom tries to become the perfect maid of honor. His plan is to gain Hannah's trust and in the process show her why she might not be well suited to her current fiancé. In the process, the makers of the film try to mine comedy out of typically female bridal shower activities, done here by guys. The film borrows liberally from many other movies and if you're looking for originality here, you be better served looking elsewhere.
The plot as well as the jokes are also pretty predictable. But here's what does work. Dempsey exudes charisma. He elevates the material to a higher level and actually is quite entertaining to watch. He also has great chemistry with Michelle Monaghan, who plays Hannah and she also does a nice job.
The sequences that are filmed in New York and Scotland are nicely shot and show off both locales. Basically, “Made of Honor” is a chick flick, geared to Dempsey's female fan base and if you fit into that category, you'll probably have a decent time here. Guys might not be thrilled, but they're not who the filmmaker's are going after. My 14-year-old daughter loved it and girls who fit that demographic will be equally enthralled.
Neil Rosen
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