Olga Kurylenko is probably one of the best elements of Centurion, a blood-drenched Roman Empire tale about soldiers and former gladiators in 117 AD up against their most advanced enemies, the Brits, Scots, and Irish. And let’s just say it’s no Roman holiday. But Kurylenko who befriended Mark Wahlberg in Max Payne (2008) and bonded with Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace (2008) plays a barbarian witch-like, wolf-like temptress who can go fist to fist with the best Rome has to offer, and do so without messing up her hair. If you’ve seen her in Payne or Solace and see her here you might be surprised to see her so athletic and evil compared to other more demure roles she’s had. As an antagonist, she beats the pants off of anything threatening Inception has to offer. Centurion has some nice surprises some of which are poetic in scope and composition as far as how director Neil Marshall (The Descent (2006)) fills many of the film’s frames with forethought into image design. Helicopter mounted cameras filming soldiers high above as they cross rivers and mountain tops adds a certain graphic majesty to the film that helps make up for other, more faulty areas of storytelling and plot. Regardless, it’s still better than most of the films out there and might be worth a look if you can find it at a local theater. If not, keep it in mind when next you want an adventure film the likes of The 13th Warrior (1999) or Excalibur (1981). As for Kurylenko, if she picks the right scripts we could see her winning a Globe or its equivalent sometime soon.

Hey, it’s a fun movie if you like this kind of thing—blood spattered walls from dudes who get their heads blown off, or chopped off with a machete, or stabbed with a machete.  Just as the title suggests, this film is about machetes and a guy named Machete (often pronounced MA-CHETTY in the film, the CH like cheddar as in this is some of the finest cheese you’ll see on screen) played by Danny Trejo, the veteran film and television character actor who has appeared in nearly 200 projects, often alongside the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Keanu Reeves, George Clooney, Steven Seagal, and recently in Predators with Oscar winner Adrian Brody.  Always the side-kick, or henchman on the bad guy’s team, or vampire bartender like in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), or just an extra badass in the crew who always sees an early demise, Trejo has played every type of character but never the leading man.

Young filmmakers take note: The Last Exorcism is rock solid in what could be considered inexpensive style.  We’re talking video camera, natural light, minimal lights indoors, and a rural setting—a farm house in the middle of nowhere—that for this little genre film is classic.  That and some blood, jump cuts, shaky camera and creepy violin scrapings can make for a pretty thrifty production cost.  Set in Louisiana, in what the main character Reverend Cotton Marcus calls “the part of the country that has flown under six different flags,” The Last Exorcism gets us grounded in character first.  It takes its time, builds itself up, pulls us in, and in a location filled with “a lot of illiteracy and poverty that when mixed with that stopped-in-time feeling” this little demon-possessed film unravels to deliver the goods.  To a certain degree.

The best parts of The Last Exorcism are Rev. Marcus’ road trip to said exorcism and the first thirty minutes which is really spent just getting to know this non-believing preacher who just happens to like performing magic tricks, literally and figuratively, for his congregation.  Played by Patrick Fabian who has done mostly TV gigs (Ted Price in episodes of Big Love, John Moore in Gigantic) he crafts the persona of a confident, sure-of-himself, happy-go-lucky kind of guy who loves his wife and son and his job as pastor of a church.  We spend a lot of time with Cotton, as he’s referred to, before we get into the scary, more intense portion of the rest of the film.  I can almost guarantee The Last Exorcism will give you goose bumps, make you jump, might even give you a heart attack if you’re not careful, but what it won’t do is give you a sense you’ve been dealt with properly in terms of a complete transaction at the movies.  In other words, The Last Exorcism will entertain you, make you laugh, then scare the crap out of you just before you realize you’ve been exorcised of another ten to thirty bucks, relatively speaking, and blaming box office demons for stealing your dough.

When was the last time you saw a girl’s long hair get caught in a spinning boat propeller and get wound up so tight that it ripped her scalp and face right off her skull? You say never? Well now’s your chance. Of all the films to use this old marketing ploy, 3D, to draw you to the theater Piranha 3D is the film most akin to its ancestors of the 1950s, which is to say it is 90% spectacle and 10% story and plays B feature film extremely well to the more A billed films. Or so it seems for the first hour of the film. Chock full of scantily clad youth, naked girls, blood and guts, horror and gore, all in glorious 3D it seems like any other badly made remake of an originally bad movie ready to placate to a youth market and rip you off by making you spend more for the unnecessary 3D technology. But at about one hour and one minute into the film, before you walk out and ask for your money back, stay seated and prepare for the most outrageously gory moments in film history. I guarantee you’ll see some things here you’ve not seen before in terms of blood, bones, and trauma. In fact, if you like gore you’re going to love this remake of the 1978 film that happened to be one of John Sayles’ first scripts and Joe Dante’s best direction prior to Gremlins (1984). For Piranha 3D, it is relative newcomer director Alexandre Aja’s (The Hills Have Eyes (2006)) turn and he gets this form of exploitation exactly right. But it’s not for everyone. For that person who likes flesh eating monsters and bones laid bare with the smallest hints of gnarled remains, yeah, this is your kind of film.

As writer-director, this is hands down Sylvester Stallone’s best “original” work in years. Let me qualify this by giving you the other films he’s written in the last twenty years or so: Driven (2001), Cliffhanger (1993), Over the Top (1987), and Cobra (1986). But there was a turnaround in 2006 with Rocky Balboa, the sixth effort in the Rocky franchise named after the title of the 1976 film that gave him Best Actor and Best Screenplay Oscars at the 1977 Academy Awards. And in 2008 he revisited his post-Vietnam era ‘80s M.I.A. savior Rambo, the fourth film in that series. Both critically well received, Rocky Balboa and Rambo were regurgitations of the same persona that kept him famous but with the added benefit of time, for which new generations could view these characters in action as staples of American pop culture—heroes of the Reagan-era eighties who took the world on and defeated the Russians single handedly—born again with a resurgence twenty-something years later in a patriarchal struggle to regain lost footing from the Clinton-era ‘90s. “Why did they pick you? You like to fight,” asks Julia Nickson’s character Co Bao in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). “I’m expendable,” says Rambo. “What mean expendable?” Bao asks. “It’s like someone invites you to a party and you don’t show up. It doesn’t really matter,” says Rambo. Well, if these ‘80s guys, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, joined by newer action figures Jason Statham, Jet Li, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, Terry Crews, and current UFC Heavyweight Champion Randy ‘The Natural’ Couture didn’t show up for this “movie party,” yeah it wouldn’t matter. But they do, and it does.

I haven’t seen a youth culture presented on screen so well since John Hughes did it with Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Pretty in Pink (1986). Only the caste system of suburban high school youth in those quintessential ‘80s teen films is replaced here with a social pecking order of DJ’s and rock bands. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is one of my favorite films of the year because of this reflection of today’s younger society—nostalgic of ‘80s teen films, yes—and within the context of mass audience Hollywood films I like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for its experimental feel: use of animation, text on screen, video game audio and visual effects, quick cuts and spatial editing that transports us instantly like a time machine across story time and space, and a laddered journey for love that could be, and quite frankly is, the basis of a video game. Plus, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World gives us hope that there are directors out there who can faithfully reproduce books for the big screen and do so with zing. The book in this case is the Manga-like graphic novella series created by Bryan Lee O’Malley from HarperCollins Publishers featuring twenty-two year-old indie band bass player Scott Pilgrim, rocking a 4000 series Rickenbacker in the band called Sex Bob-omb. Crazy, funny band name, difficult to pronounce? Sure, but what record store dust-bin garage band with galloping rhythms born of American punk godfathers The Ramones via marriage to Portland, Oregon Indie darlings Sleater-Kinney isn’t. Simply put, I like the way the Scott Pilgrim story is told and director Edgar Wright could quite possibly be the purveyor of John Hughes films I was looking for.

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg play New York Police Detectives in The Other Guys, as in the other guys in the police department who sit at their desks action-less pushing pencils and doing reports for the more muscle voiced and muscle bound adventurous guys played by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Looking his Robert Reed, Mike Brady Bunch dad best Ferrell is happy doing what he does as Detective Allen Gamble, having audited his parents when he was eleven and never put foot “all the way to the ground” to the pedal while driving a car. “It made me aroused,” he says upon finally doing so. Meanwhile, Terry Hoitz played by Wahlberg, wants action on the street so bad that he protrudes that frustration by yelling all the time, and on more than one occasion yelling out, “I’m a peacock, let me fly.” Yes, I’d like to see a more convincing testosterone-laden partner for Ferrell in terms of verbal and burly-esque inner turmoil, someone like Paul Giamatti in Wahlberg’s role. It’s a buddy cop movie along similar lines to this years earlier Cop Out with Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis but really it’s less buddy and more Will Ferrell’s show. He plays the part perfectly and The Other Guys fits seamlessly into writer/director other guy Adam McKay’s comedy dossier. One that could easily be labeled Will Ferrell’s Characters of Comedic Instinct.

Coincidently, when the last Steve Carell film Date Night was released earlier this year I was more eager to write about my pre-screening of Kick Ass. Here on the eve of Dinner for Schmucks, starring Carell and Paul Rudd, I’m more impassioned to write about a recent screening of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a genre bending film of similar graphic book origins like Kick Ass recently getting buzz from San Diego’s Comic Con. But that will have to wait until August 13th (Please Note: Scott Pilgrim actors Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman and Pilgrim director Edgar Wright will be appearing at Criminal Records on August 10th from 3PM to 4PM). It does beg the question though, in light of thunder-stealing hipster friendly films like Kick Ass what demographic does the future hold for Steve Carell? Is he being pigeon holed as a comedian playing it safe, destined to perform in films that take the fewest risks when reaching out to a larger audience? I say no. Not yet anyway as you’ll see in Dinner for Schmucks, a silly but heartwarming, human interest comedy that tugs on your sympathies much the same way a Judd Apatow film might. Or an old Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin film might. Carell plays Lewis to Rudd’s Martin so well that the film almost seems nostalgic. Some of it is a mess, no doubt but to director Jay Roach’s credit, director of the Austin Powers films and Meet the Parents (2000), this familiar but insufferably sweet, gag fest of a movie is like eating spaghetti with your hands—once you get the sauce on you and let yourself go it makes the rest of the meal easier to enjoy.

I can’t remember the last time I heard the words “money shot” but Salt has what could be the best money shot of the year. That’s the wow-factor shot where everyone and their mother working on a film strive to achieve the most outrageous, spectacle of a moment usually contained in one shot. It’s a manifestation of sight and sound you only see in movies and is suppose to give the audience a jolt of excitement, usually during or around the most climactic moment of the film. And Salt has that kind of shot. You’ll know it when you see it, if you go see the movie or at least when you get around to seeing it if you ever see it. And I say see it for this reason alone. The rest of the film is a simple, by-the-numbers spy thriller with story and plot we’ve witnessed several times in better films like The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and its 2004 remake, or to similar films like The Package (1989) and Most Wanted (1997). To Jolie’s credit, she does Barbie on steroids well and knows how to focus a stare so well that her big blue windows-into-her-soul eyes nearly hypnotize us into believing the film is worthy of its briny title. Salt, it’s heavily seasoned with sharp action but in desperate need of a little more spice.

Inception is an overly ambitious, wordy, and claustrophobic work of art meant to impress as equally as entertain. And I like it for those reasons. It seems like Christopher Nolan, the director of The Dark Knight (2008), Insomnia (2002), and Memento (2000) is at least trying to be inventive with this novella-like presentation of what could be considered a heist film. That and it reminded me of how good The Matrix films might have been had Nolan resolved that trilogy. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page, with great turns by Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy, Inception is The Story about a crack team of dream technicians hired by a global magnate to infiltrate a business man’s dreams and plant the seed of an idea that will alter the direction of that individual’s corporate decisions. Packed with an almost tangible feeling of suspense right from the get-go, the path we take to get through Inception is seemingly intricate and full of explanation. Just like it is when explaining a dream, the simplicity of the sleep events suddenly become more elaborate as we try to describe them. You would be smart to prepare for a film like this by getting into your favorite Stanley Kubrick frame of mind. Even if it doesn’t make complete sense, you’ll at least experience the feeling of being there. Having already planted the seed of The Story, here now are The Goods, The Flaws, The Call.

Predator (1987) and Predator II (1990) were pretty good. In my opinion. The rest, AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) and AVP Requiem (2007) were examples of exploitation of past film and video game success, a way to draw you in by title alone and barrage you with special effect after special effect to make an extra buck. The kind of thing you do when you’re at the end of your franchise’s run; when you start to see box office results dwindle film after film. Here, in Predators we go a little nostalgic, revisiting the 1987 original in look, feel, and pacing; action sequences and scenes full of conflict occur in more succession with shorter periods of dialogue and get-to-know-each-character moments as the film progresses. I loved Predators for this reason alone, the plot structure, and the simplicity of the story. The clever dialogue and situational humor that develops is just the icing on the proverbial melting lights-are-on Krispi Kreme donut. Let me just say, if you’re a fan of sci-fi and action films, and liked any of the Predator films, then Predators produced by El Mariachi wunderkind director Robert Rodriquez, starring Oscar winner Adrian Brody and Oscar nominated actor Laurence Fishburne, is a must see. Talk about a reboot, Predators is defibrillator extraordinaire bringing back to life a franchise on the brink of extinction.

There’s nothing despicable about Despicable Me. Actually, for Universal Pictures, a studio not known for animated films, they should be proud to have a product that can go toe to toe with DreamWorks Animation and Disney. Far better than Sony Pictures’s animated films of late, Open Season 2 (2008) and Surf’s Up (2007), and looking just as good as the Golden Globe nominated Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009), Despicable Me represents a new dawn for Universal who haven’t had an animated hit since The Land Before Time (1988). Not that they haven’t tried. Both Universal films Curious George (2007) and Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000) made a combined $84.5 million in their entire domestic runs while the gigantic Toy Story 3 made $110 million its first weekend, now sitting at $313 million since June 18th. Despicable Me is no Toy Story 3 for sure but I would almost say it goes down a bit easier, and more entertainingly than TS3. Don’t get me wrong, I think TS3 is the best film of the year so far but Despicable Me might be the summer sleeper of animated films, and I don’t mean zzzzzzzzzz.

Superman II begat Howard the Duck which begat The Golden Child which begat Power Rangers which begat Mortal Kombat which begat The Matrix Reloaded which begat Star Wars: Attack of the Clones which begat this total blow of hard earned dollars. The only way I can describe it is to use the same kind of parable Bible speak M. Night Shyamalan uses for this his 9th feature-length film as writer-director, and that is to say a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. And therein lies the problem. Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999) and Signs (2002) had success and to a certain degree, and rightfully so in terms of portraying characters outside-the-genre. But somewhere along the way the long, amateur delivery of dialogue, the lengthy takes where actors reel off long pages of words and give expressions of stoic inner turmoil, finally caught up with him becoming his signature traits rather than his flaws. And part of the problem I have to say is that it’s because he’s a writer-director. Not everyone is cut out to do that. Shyamalan’s credit at the end of The Last Airbender is Written by, Produced by, and Directed by. Way too many “bys” for M. Night. He only needs one and that should be either Written by or Directed by. Hey, but kids will probably like The Last Airbender because it centers around a ten to twelve-year-old named Aang played by Noah Ringer who is the reincarnated Avatar, a supreme master of the elements Air, Water, Earth and Fire—the four parts of power and peace that in The Last Airbender world (like the ring in Lord of the Rings) bind all people and nations together. Kids will enjoy the adventurous Tai Chi, Martial Arts journey Aang must take to restore peace. But adults might be journeying back to the box office seeking a refund, as some threatened to do at the sold out, packed screening I sat in.

The Cullen kids are back and this time they’re teaming up with Jacob’s wolf pack to protect Bella and save the rest of the humans from an army of New Borns—red-eyed newbies so blood thirsty in their initial phase as vampires that they’re oblivious to the rules of civilized interaction with humans, thus more prone to ripping the heads off of unsuspecting victims and sucking them dry. Victoria, the elusive, burdened, cold-hearted bitch is still out for Edward and somehow figures into the mix of things. Do I care? Not really. But I think fans who read the books and follow the characters faithfully will not be disappointed. This the third installment with regulars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner has a little more action and less of the brooding, longing, tear-eyed stares. It does have some cheesy dialogue for sure which only Pattinson seems to deliver solidly and mask the ridiculousness of it all. But Eclipse like the other Twilight films doesn’t escape it’s SyFy channel feel. As movies, I just don’t see it. Here are nine things, however, to know about Eclipse that might make a difference.

Looks as if Adam Sandler who wrote this film learned a few things working with James L. Brooks on Spanglish (2004) and with Frank Coraci on Click (2006) because Grown Ups, Sandler’s 30th or so feature film, has that life lessons learned feel to it with the substance of family and friends as its framework. Here’s a bunch of guys—Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock, Sandler, and David Spade—who as friends in real life get together in Grown Ups for the funeral of a childhood mentor. They each bring their wives and kids, except Spade who’s single in the film, and all stay afterwards at the summer lodge they visited as tweens, before tween was a word. The premise sounds like grown-up stuff, which I was concerned about after seeing the trailers, but Grown Ups never gets too serious to lose the Sandler brand of comedy usually involving an adolescent sense of man-child humor: jokes that often play on bodily fluids, noises, shapes, and functions. And believe it or not that’s a good thing. It’s consistent with what Sandler knows, what he’s had a success with, in films like The Waterboy or The Wedding Singer, both from 1998. But Sandler’s greatest strength as an actor, and as a filmmaker, is what he seems to carry with him in life, which is humility, a certain shyness you often see in him…in interviews, sometimes mumbling his words, fidgeting in his seat, holding his hands nervously together in his lap. When he puts that on display in front of the camera it solidifies a personality trait we don’t often see in movie characters, or in celebrities, today. An unpretentious way of behaving we expect grown-ups to be examples of.

Nothing much to say about Knight and Day except that it’s a fun date film. Mostly a romantic adventure film with some fish-out-of-water comedy and explosives to keep the guys interested it tells the story more from her point of view than his. Her being Cameron Diaz who plays June Havens, a young woman on her way to visit her sister in Boston who is randomly chosen by secret agent Roy Miller, played by Tom Cruise, for what appears to be some sort of amusing cloak and dagger development involving the CIA. Knight is obviously a play on words, as Cruise is the knightly agent supposedly gone rogue but who is always there saving the damsel in distress. For Cruise this film is a smart move because the focus is not entirely on him; he doesn’t come off as a star or a celebrity, no politics, nothing to prove, he’s just a mechanism in the plot to set the girl off on an adventure. And if there’s one thing Cameron Diaz does well it’s play the girl. The girl next door I should say.

This is the oddest little comic book action film I’ve ever seen and I say little because the running time feels like an hour. Because of the time to money ratio alone I’d say it’s a definite no go as far as dollars you’ll spend at the theater. But when it comes around to DVD or cable I’d say check it out mostly because of its bizarre Civil War setting and the unlikely hero of Josh Brolin’s character, Jonah Hex, a DC Comic character on the South’s side of the war come to life through death, who speaks to the dead, and who yields two rotating Gatling guns on his horse as if the animal were a Marine Super Cobra helicopter over Al-Qaeda territory on the boarder of Pakistan. If it weren’t for the fast pace of the film, and Brolin himself, star of W (2008) and No Country for Old Men (2007), the film would severely suck. As it is though, it stands on two very wobbly legs.

Hard to believe it’s been fifteen years since Pixar first introduced us to Woody and Buzz and the rest of the living toys of the Toy Story world. Now they’re back in 3D in 2010 and this third time is most definitely a charm. It’s by far the best of the sequels combining the buckets of sweet, melancholy warmness of sentiment the Pixar folks rung out of Up with the oodles of adventurous predicaments the hidden plastic ecosystem of the many toy species generally find themselves in when children leave them behind every day. Or when they leave them behind for good. Toy Story 3 is similar to the atmospheres of other Pixar films Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles, but better. So good in fact that I predict it wins Best Picture at next year’s Oscars, being the first animated film to ever do so. At the very least, it’s the best film of 2010 thus far.

Look out Hollywood, there’s a new franchise on the block and it doesn’t include superheroes or characters from video games.  Instead, it’s old fashioned adaptation of TV shows for blockbuster theatrical release and this one includes top shelf production value that’s well worth the money.  I’ll give you The Call early and say this big screen revival of the show The A-Team that ran on NBC from 1983 to 1987 is a no brainer: spend the ten and have fun, then later contemplate why summer movies can’t all be this action-packed and agreeable.  With mediocre film after mediocre film it’s easy to forget that there is such a thing as skill in the art of Hollywood filmmaking, and that cream really does rise to the top.  The A-Team’s leader John ‘Hannibal’ Smith played here by Liam Neeson loves it when a plan comes together, but I love better when a movie comes together.

The Story:  A rag-tag bunch of Army Ranger misfits join together and bond in...


 

Get him off of drugs, get him out of your girlfriend’s bed, get him out of trouble in the clubs but at the very least get him to Los Angeles’ famous Greek Theater, known for its intimate outdoor setting (roughly seats 5800 people) with past performances by the likes of Phoenix, Pearl Jam, Wilco, The Who, The White Stripes, and The Dave Mathews Band, to name a few. Reprising his role as Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) is Russell Brand, big coiffed, thin rocker-esq English comedian-actor who looks like he just stepped out of British TV’s The Goodies (1970) or The Young Ones (1982)—certainly a cross between George Harrison, Ricky Gervais, and Nigel Planner who played Neil the stoner from the latter of those two shows—with a little Monty Python in him for sure. This Judd Apatow production extracts the usual charm and sweetness from the grit and grossness of situational humor like his other films 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) or Knocked Up (2007) without making you feel hung over. If anything, Get Him To The Greek might leave you feeling a little hungry for more.