Reel Thoughts: The Vamp Next Door

Now, come on! If Colin Farrell moved next door to you, in a dull, foreclosure-riddled Vegas subdivision, would you really wait more than five seconds before you were at his door asking for a little sugar? The new Fright Night is a meaner, leaner version of the 1985 classic, which changes up enough of the story to make it worth remaking. The original featured some bizarre casting including Stephen Geoffreys, a Tony-nominated actor who went into gay porn, and Amanda Bearse, playing Charlie’s virginal girlfriend a few years before she came out of the closet. William Ragsdale exhibited an acting range that rivals Zack Galligan in its lack of quality. Still, Chris Sarandon was a dark and sexy vampire nemesis and Roddy McDowell was a hoot as the faded TV ghost host Peter Vincent.

Fright Night 2011 takes advantage of the modern economic downturn to explain how a vampire could be preying on people without anyone noticing their absence. Families are fleeing their tract homes in Charlie Brewster’s (Anton Yelchin) North Vegas neighborhood by the truckload, so what who’s to know if they were foreclosed on... or fed upon? Toni Collette (who must have had Yelchin when she was 16) plays Charlie’s mother, a lonely real estate agent who is ticked at new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) who works nights in casino construction and has a butt-ugly dumpster in his front yard.

Narrative whiplash sets in as Charlie is informed that Jerry is a vampire by his nerdy former best friend Ed (McLovin’ himself, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) almost immediately. Ed had been tracing Jerry’s movements and managed to not-capture him on camera, and he begs his old friend to help him take the bloodsucker down. Once Charlie realizes that Ed was right, his buddy is missing, so Charlie seeks out Vegas Goth magician Peter Vincent (David Tennant, channeling Russell Brandt and Chris Angel), a dissolute so-called vampire expert. The drunken lothario is not very supportive, to say the least.

Fright Night ramps up the action above the original with Jerry baring his fangs early and launching an all-out assault on Charlie, his mom and his hot girlfriend, Amy (played by the unfortunately-named Imogen Poots). While the original’s acting was sitcom-my, Farrell’s hot, dangerous performance makes the new version sexier and funnier. Wait until you see how Jerry gets around the old, “Vampires can’t come in if you don’t invite them” rule.

Even the ubiquitous 3-D is used well in Fright Night. While Yelchin is a little long in the tooth to be a high schooler, he’s way better than Ragsdale, who inexplicably had a career after the 1985 opus. While Geoffreys was creepy and cringe-worthy (“You’re so cool, Brewster!”), Mintz-Plasse actually gets some sympathy as the spurned friend. Poots does well in the thankless girlfriend role, and Collette is fun to watch and really knows how to wield a realty sign!

If you’re looking for a fun night with a few frights, Fright Night should be just right.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Men on Film: Two Critics, One Day

Reverend's Reviews: One (Not Very Fine) Day:

July 15th is revered in Anglican Church circles as the feast of Saint Swithin (sometimes spelled Swithun), a 9th-century bishop of Winchester known for — in the words of his Wikipedia entry — "posthumous miracle-working." Swithin is referenced several times in the new movie One Day, opening nationwide today. If only the good saint's miracles extended to cinematic adaptations of bestselling novels; One Day could use one.

An uneasy mix of romantic longing and thwarted fairy tale, the plot follows two British friends and occasional lovers over a 20-year period beginning with their initial encounter on July 15, 1988. A middle-class, ambitious wannabe-writer, Emma (played by American actress Anne Hathaway), meets the wealthy, uninhibited Dex (Jim Sturgess of the Beatles-inspired musical Across the Universe) following their college graduation. The film subsequently revisits the pair each July 15th thereafter, and we watch the ebb and flow of their careers and angst-ridden relationship via vignettes accompanied by period-appropriate pop songs.

This "annual checkup" conceit ultimately proves precious and plodding, despite the occasionally clever ways each date is worked into the scene visually. I haven't read the novel by David Nicholls upon which the film is based (Nicholls also wrote the screenplay). A co-worker who has read the book informs me that the years and events aren't presented chronologically/sequentially on the page as they are on screen. I therefore suspect that events in the novel are presented in a more nuanced and layered way than they are in this heavy-handed movie version.

At least viewers are privy to some lovely scenery in Great Britain and France (shot by Benoit Delhomme) while we watch the lead characters struggle, work, love, grieve and skinny dip. By film's end, one of them learns "Whatever happens tomorrow, we've had today" as the result of a tragic twist so heavily foreshadowed in the moments before that it should surprise no one.

The cast can't be faulted for One Day's shortcomings. Hathaway and Sturgess are fine in their roles and have good chemistry. I am already weary, however, of Hathaway playing tortured romantic victims following this and last year's Love & Other Drugs. Here's hoping she gets to bust loose and kick some ass as Catwoman in next summer's The Dark Knight Rises. Patricia Clarkson (Far from Heaven, Easy A) is good as always in her brief turn as Dex's doting, terminally ill mother.

Directed by Lone Scherfig, One Day serves as a disappointing follow-up to her more subtle, Oscar-nominated film of 2009, An Education. It also represents a rare misstep for the usually reliable Focus Features, maker of such gay-interest successes as Brokeback Mountain, Milk and Beginners. Some fellow critics and audience members may find One Day miraculous somehow. By it's final 20 minutes, though, I was praying to Saint Swithin for deliverance.

Reverend's Rating: C-

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

On the other hand...

Reel Thoughts: A Blue Valentine (That People Will Actually Want to Watch):

From Same Time, Next Year to (500) Days of Summer to last year’s brutal Blue Valentine, films that unfold on timelines are fascinating, because you get to see the characters change, sometimes radically, from date to date. One Day is like Same Time, Next Year in that we follow Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess on the same date over twenty-three years, starting with a night of passion on the graduation day in 1988 all the way to 2011. At first, the date skipping from year to year seemed too quick and too facile, but as the film progressed, you grow to love Emma and Dex, flaws and all. July 15th, or St. Swithin’s Day as Dex informs Emma after their not-completed tryst, grows dramatically in significance as the pair grow older.

David Nicholls has adapted his best-selling novel masterfully, showing Dex’s rise as a smarmy television host and Emma’s escape from a dead-end restaurant job to become the teacher and then novelist she always wanted to be. Of course, Dex’s superficial fame leads to a drug-addicted, sex-drenched superficial life that is bound to burn out, and it does. Through everything, Emma’s and Dex’s friendship and love survives, and this is what makes One Day so powerful and moving.

Everyone has regrets and wonders how there life might have been different if they had engaged with that one elusive person. Writer Nicholls and Danish director Lone Scherfig (An Education) frankly show the highs and lows that fate gives us, and never stoop to easy laughs or unearned payoffs. Hathaway and Sturgess each give incredibly nuanced performances, aided by the luminous Patricia Clarkson as Dex’s mother and a cast of fine British actors. Emma and Dex’s relationship is presented in a real, mature fashion, full of the fights and reconciliations that every couple faces.

Anyone who has ever experienced the highs of love and the devastating lows of loss will want to experience this One Day. Its hopeful ending will comfort you with the promise that life can rebound, even when you think it cannot. With Sarah’s Key, The Help and now One Day, the best movies of the year are finally arriving.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: Ch-Ch-Changes

The Change-Up is a "Career-Down" for everyone involved, a piece of cinematic baby poop so noxious, it could wipe out the rain forests. I was personally offended by every single minute of this stupid, curdled monstrosity. It is all the more depressing for how it sours the charisma of Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Olivia Wilde and especially poor Leslie Mann. The scene where Mann is forced to sit on a toilet and fumigate the bathroom with her Thai food diarrhea is the kind of thing you would force an actor to do when you really, really hate them. Similarly, Reynolds’ debased slacker and Bateman’s mopey drip make you wonder why they’re stars at all. My "Worst Movie of the Year" list just got a lot easier to compile.

Easily the worst entry in the Freaky Friday body swap oeuvre, The Change-Up presents us with two equally awful baby-men who exchange pea brains after peeing in a magic Atlanta fountain. Dave Lockwood (Bateman) is a work-obsessed family man while Mitch Planko (Reynolds) is a repulsive womanizer who trolls Lamaze classes for his sex partners. Alan Arkin plays his hugely disappointed father, echoing the audience’s feelings. Once they’ve traded places, each man ruins the other’s lives, and we couldn’t care less.

Trust me when I tell you that after the opening scene where Dave’s baby shoots projectile poop straight into his mouth not once but twice, the film only goes downhill from there. The story has no point, the characters change from scene to scene from hating the switch to loving it and the narrative has the momentum of a clogged sewer line. Only the least discriminating viewer could laugh at the admittedly outrageous and sometimes sickly funny sight gags without feeling supremely guilty and dirty afterwards.

The Change-Up even looks cheap and low budget. Supporting characters like Arkin’s newest wife look like they were plucked from a mall contest, and the Atlanta setting feels like the winner in “the cheapest filming location” sweepstakes (watch out, Albuquerque!). I hope that Bateman and Reynolds can change up their agents and get better parts in better movies.

Reel Thoughts Rating: F

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts Interview: Could It Happen Here?

When you listen to the vile rhetoric of Christian Conservatives like Michelle Bachmann and her “therapist” husband Marcus, who call LGBT people “barbarians” who are “linked to Satan”, it isn’t hard to sympathize with the foreign-born French Jews in Sarah’s Key, Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s heart-breaking drama based on the best-selling novel by Tatiana De Rosnay. Could such a witch-hunt happen again, this time to the LGBT community, the Mexican immigrant population or the Muslim community?

Director Paquet-Brenner pondered the question of whether such inhumanity as occurs in his film could happen again to another scapegoat minority when we spoke recently at the Phoenix Ritz-Carlton. “I don’t see gay people as different people, so I think everyone will appreciate the story. I am more in a political or religious perspective with Sarah’s Key, but I see where you are going,” Paquet-Brenner replied. “What is very important to me is that the film is universal, and so of course, you can include other minorities such as the gay community. I can see how someone especially in, how you say Deep America (Middle America), I understand how you can feel excluded or attacked, so you can definitely relate to these people. That is very interesting.”

Sarah’s Key interweaves two stories set almost seventy years apart in Paris. In 1942, ten year-old Sarah (the amazing Mélusine Mayance) is a Jew living in the Marais section of Paris when the police suddenly show up door-to-door to arrest all foreign Jews. Instinctively knowing that something terrible will happen to her family, she locks her young brother in a closet, assuring him that she will return. She is sure that her father, hiding in the basement, would come upstairs and free him, but he is found also and there is no one to save the boy as the family is taken to an indoor sports rink called the Vel’ D’Hiv.

In 2009, American journalist Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas) is investigating the infamous round up, where 13,000 French Jews were locked into the hot arena without food, water or bathrooms for three days, leading to conditions much worse than the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. Those who survived were taken to concentration camps, including Sarah’s family. In her research, Julia discovers shocking connections to Sarah through her French husband’s family, and she is determined to uncover the truth of what happened to the little girl and her brother, who escaped internment in the camps.

“I often say that the story isn’t about a Jewish family, it’s about a family. The same thing could have happened in Rwanda during the genocide,” Paquet-Brenner explained. “It could happen to a gay couple living in Iran or Uganda.” He also knows that Scott Thomas’ following in the gay community holds appeal. “She’s an icon, right? I can see it because she is a very strong woman.”

The film is very faithful to the book. “I chose to work very hard on the screenplay, because if you try to fix it in the editing room, you’re dead. It has to work as a reading experience, and then it translates straight to the screen.” He did expand on what happened to Sarah, which turns out to be one of the film’s most touching parts. He split the filming in two to accommodate Scott Thomas’ schedule and to allow him to give the 1942 scenes the raw, hand-held camera technique that puts you right in the terrifying action.

“The thing with the round-up is that it’s not like the authorities were brutal on purpose with the Vel D’Hiv, it’s just that they were totally unprepared. In the police, you had people who were against it, and people who supported it. It was a very, very difficult time in France, society was totally torn apart. You had this Vichy Government who was collaborating with the Germans. My grandfather was a German Jew from Berlin and he was arrested by the French. It was very complicated. I like when Kristin says to the young journalist (who asks why no one objected to the round up), “What would you have done? You have no idea what you would do in that situation. Some people want to simplify it; I don’t.”

Paquet-Brenner has already received acclaim and French awards for his first film, Pretty Things, in which future Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard played twin sisters, one who assumes the other’s identity when she is murdered. The handsome director shows such mastery with Sarah’s Key, he deserves Oscar attention as well.

Sarah’s Key Review:

As terrible as it sounds, some films about the Holocaust and its aftermath leave you feeling unmoved, well-made though they may be. Schindler’s List was the most searing and gut-wrenching experience on the subject, and Sarah’s Key possesses a more modulated but similar power to devastate you.

Kristin Scott Thomas plays a part close to her life as Julia, an American married to a French man and living in Paris. Julia is a passionate journalist who wants to shed light on a shameful period in France’s history, when they aided the Nazis in persecuting the Jews. Like in Arizona today, however, it was the foreign-born who were singled out for arrest and who found themselves demonized by the politicians.

Julia discovers the story of one little girl who escaped in order to save her brother who’d been left behind in their Paris apartment, but she has no clue how close to home the story will hit. Gilles Paquet-Brenner does an incredible job putting you into Sarah’s life, and seamlessly layering it with Julia’s journey of discovery and heartache. The film leaves you feeling uplifted by the end, much like the experience of reading a perfect novel.

The performances, especially by young Mélusine Mayance as Sarah and Scott Thomas, will leave you catching your breath with their honest power. The story itself will reduce you to tears many times, but Paquet-Brenner is a compassionate director who cuts back and forth in time perfectly, saving you from dissolving into uncontrollable sobbing from the brutality of the 1942 atrocities.

Sarah’s Key is a mystery well worth unlocking, and you will find one of the best films of the year.

Interview and review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: Don't Be Stupid

In a summer full of pumped-up superheroes and marauding car-robots, Crazy, Stupid, Love. is a much-appreciated change of pace, a witty, hilarious and constantly surprising comedy for adults without a single “We got so wasted... what did we do?” joke. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who can do no wrong after I Love You, Phillip Morris) and starring a fantastic cast including Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei and Emma Stone, Crazy, Stupid, Love. is a multifaceted romantic classic in the vein of Love, Actually (maybe the secret of success is putting punctuation in your title).

Cal (Steve Carell) is blindsided when his wife of twenty-five years, Emily (Julianne Moore), announces over dessert that she wants a divorce, and that she slept with a coworker. Drowning his sorrows at a hip LA bar, he meets Jacob (Gosling), the ultimate player, who takes pity on the clothing-and-haircut-challenged Cal. Jacob gives Cal a macho makeover and ‘lessons with the ladies’, while finally meeting the girl of his dreams (Stone), who makes him want to reform.

Meanwhile, Cal’s thirteen year-old son (the unfortunately-named Jonah Bobo) is madly in love with his seventeen year-old baby sitter (Liv Tyler look-alike and America’s Next Top Model finalist Analeigh Tipton), who in turn, has a crush on Cal. Tomei has a priceless supporting role I can’t divulge, and suffice it to say, there are more surprises in Crazy, Stupid, Love. than in a case of Cracker Jacks. Ficarra and Requa, along with Tangled scribe Dan Fogelman, have mined yet another off-center piece of comedy gold.

Gosling seems to revel in playing off his good looks and killer abs, rather than hiding them as he did in Blue Valentine, and it is a joy to watch. Carell and Moore have such great, mature comic timing and chemistry that you can’t help but root for their success.  Stone is quickly becoming a Julia Roberts wattage star, based on this performance, Easy A and the upcoming The Help.

You would have to be crazy or stupid not to love Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Interview: Meet Harmony Santana

Gun Hill Road has been winning rave reviews from critics and audiences since its premiere in competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, the film — about a recently-released convict who returns home to discover his teenage son is living as a woman — scored the prestigious opening night slot at Outfest and a theatrical distribution deal. It will open throughout California and the US beginning tomorrow.

I had the opportunity to speak privately with Harmony Santana, who plays the movie's central trans character of Michael/Vanessa, as well as writer-director Rashaad Ernesto Green during their recent visit to Los Angles. Currently undergoing her real-life transition from male to female, the 20-year old Santana is stunningly beautiful both on- and off-screen. She was just beginning the process when Green cast her in Gun Hill Road.

"I was looking for the genuine article," Green said. "I was looking for a real transgender person to play this transgender teen role, which was really hard." It took Green two months of searching through New York City nightclubs, GLBT community centers and drag shows before he was referred to Santana during NYC's Pride events. Santana was working an HIV prevention booth. Green described the part of Michael/Vanessa and asked Santana to audition even though she had no acting experience apart from a high school play.

Of her first professional acting experience, Santana glowingly recalls "It was like I was living a dream; I loved going to set, and the makeup and hair, everything." She said she found great support during the three-month shoot from her much more experienced co-stars Esai Morales (La Bamba, Caprica) and Judy Reyes (Scrubs), who play her parents. Santana gives an outstanding performance, and has already followed it up with what she describes as "a bitchy role" in not one but two entries in the Eating Out comedy series. "This is the start of my career," Santana says of her plan to become a successful actress and ultimately play non-transgender roles.

I asked her how she is both like and unlike the trans character she plays in Gun Hill Road. "We have the same boy problems; I think all transgender people do," Santana said in terms of the similarities. That being said, she had a boyfriend of two months at the time of my interview and reported things were going well. Of the differences, Santana noted her relationship with her father is much more estranged than that shown in the film between Michael/Vanessa and her father. "I haven't spoken to my dad in like four or five years," she said. Fortunately, Santana's family ties with her mother and 15 siblings are much stronger and they have been very supportive of her personal transformation. "I also didn't go through the physical stuff." Santana says in comparison to the abuse that Michael/Vanessa endures from her father and others.

Family isn't only the dominant theme in Gun Hill Road but was, according to Green, the inspiration behind his screenplay. "Someone very close to me in my life went through something similar, where he had a child in transition," Green shared. "I watched their family deteriorate over the course of a few years because of his inability to accept his child's transition, but at the same time he loved his child so much and I saw a child without her father." In the wake of this experience, Green decided he "wanted to make a piece of art that didn't necessarily give all the answers but at least pointed them in the right direction."

Audience response to the finished film (both nationally and internationally) has been tremendous, according to both Green and Santana. "People's eyes are being opened to a world they thought they knew but now they are getting to see another side of it," Green said. Santana has experienced viewers "coming up to me and hugging me and crying and saying how much the film means to them." She appreciates in particular a group of lesbians who came up to her and told her how much she is inspiring them, as well as Facebook messages she regularly receives saying the same.

As a trans person herself, I asked Santana about when she first began realizing she was different from other boys. "I was in the second grade," she replied. "I had gone into the bathroom at school and another boy followed me into the bathroom. We started making out and that was my first kiss ever. It all went from there." The three of us laughed as Santana debated whether her personal and romantic experiences have gone uphill or downhill after that early start.

Santana offered the following advice to other trans people: "Be yourself, be happy, and have hope in your family; they might not be supportive now but it takes time." Even if things don't work out, she spoke encouragingly of finding "family in other places, especially among your friends."

For more information on Gun Hill Road, visit the film's official website.

Interview by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Reel Thoughts: Red Hot Cookie

Melissa Leo wasn’t always a tough older woman with years of experience showing on her face, like her roles in The Fighter and Frozen River. Back in the mid-eighties, Leo was a fresh-faced redhead whose first starring role was as innocent teen hooker Cookie in the Roger Corman exploitation film Streetwalkin’, available on DVD today. The film’s director, Joan Freeman, intended the film as a serious examination of prostitutes in New York’s Times Square, which was a hotbed of sex clubs and adult movie houses in 1985. As she explains in the commentary, however, she understood that she was making a Roger Corman film, which meant that every ten minutes or so, there needed to be nudity, violence or both.

Like an R-rated version of Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” video, Streetwalkin’ tells the story of a girl who’s been kicked out by her alcoholic mother and flees to New York City with her little brother. She’s at the Port Authority Bus Terminal for all of five minutes before handsome but unhinged Duke (hunky Dale Midkiff in full Elvis impersonator mode) picks Cookie up, compliments her and turns her into a streetwalker. Her fellow working girls include the statuesque “Queen Bee”, played by the luminous Julie Newmar with an unidentifiable accent, Heather (Deborah Offner), Phoebe (Annie Golden) and Star (Khandi Alexander). When Duke beats roommate Heather savagely, Cookie realizes that he is a certified psycho, so she looks for help from another pimp named Jason (Leon). Duke’s “lesson” doesn’t go as planned, and soon Cookie, Queen Bee and Star are fighting for their lives on the mean streets of New York.

Streetwalkin’ also stars Antonio Fargas, a.k.a. Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch. The film is a fascinating time capsule of pre-Disney Times Square and Leo does show the depth and complexity she’d later exhibit in Frozen River and her Oscar-winning work in The Fighter. She also shows a bit of skin, although it’s doubtful that many lesbians will enjoy it due to its violence and abuse towards women.

Since Streetwalkin’ is a Roger Corman production, it does have a bit of grindhouse and camp appeal, but you’ll be surprised at how real its seedy setting feels. The commentary by Freeman and producer Robert Alden (who were married when the film was made) gives an intriguing look behind the scenes of a low budget movie.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: Absolution Day

If potential and casting were all that mattered, Cowboys & Aliens would be a surefire hit. Unfortunately, perhaps driven by the oh-so-serious Daniel Craig, everyone involved decided to fight every impulse to inject humor, lightness and originality. Don’t get me wrong, Cowboys & Aliens is extremely well made and Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell and Olivia Wilde give good performances. It’s just that they could have called the thing “Absolution Day” and called it a day. It is so by rote, I expected Bill Pullman to show up as President Grant to deliver a rousing battle speech before they kick alien butt. Cowboys & Aliens is perfectly serviceable and gets the job done, but it could have been so much better.

Craig plays a mysterious stranger who isn’t Clint Eastwood, who shows up in the lawless town of Absolution in the New Mexico Territory circa 1875. He has a strange bracelet and no memory, but it appears that he is a train robber named Jake Lonergan, who is wanted for murder. Wilde plays a prairie knockout named Ella, who seems to know where Jake has been and what the bracelet means.

Ford is Colonel Dolarhyde, the iron-fisted boss of the town, whose ne’er-do-well son Percy (Paul Dano) is a drunken blowhard itching for a fight. Soon, the townsfolk have more to worry about than Percy’s random shooting of deputies; alien ships appear and start snatching people and blowing things up. Jake’s arm shackle activates and helps him blast one of the invaders out of the sky, and he realizes that he is the only one who can beat the aliens.

Cowboys & Aliens echoes Super 8 with its underground slimy creatures, but it is totally missing the latter’s sense of wonder and exuberance. Director Jon Favreau knows action and he does a good job with the battle scenes. Craig gives gravitas to his character, and makes you feel for the loss of his love (Abigail Spencer). If the screenwriters had just embraced the premise’s campier aspects, Cowboys & Aliens could have been out of this world fun.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: Criss-Cross

Who doesn’t smile when they think of getting revenge on a “horrible boss”? Neither as bad as I feared nor as good as it could have been, the star-studded black comedy Horrible Bosses (which opens today) is a gender-swapped 9 to 5 for the recession era.

Three pals, played by Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman and Charlie Day, each have bosses from hell who make their lives miserable. Nick’s (Bateman) is by far the worst, a megalomaniac named Davis Harken, played to malevolent perfection by Kevin Spacey. David delights in humiliating Nick while dangling a never-to-be promotion in his face. He even made him stay at work late when his “Gam-Gam” was dying.

Kurt (Sudeikis) loves his boss (Donald Sutherland) but hates his sleaze ball son Bobby, played by a gleefully slumming Colin Farrell in a nasty comb-over. Guess who kicks the bucket, leaving the chemical company in the hands of Bobby the tool? Dale (Day) gets no sympathy from his pals about his boss troubles. Slapped with a “Registered Sex Offender” label for urinating in an empty playground at midnight, Dale takes the only job he can get, which is as a dental assistant for a voracious man-eater named Julia Harris, DDS, hilariously played by Jennifer Aniston. Her non-stop sexual come-ons are more than the meek and mousy Dale can take.

A drunken night together inspires the trio to plan taking out their troublesome terrors, leading to a comedy of errors that is an entertaining diversion for the audience. Jamie Foxx has a funny cameo as the guys’ “murder consultant” named Motherfucker Jones.

Horrible Bosses is one of those juvenile adult comedies like Hall Pass, Bad Teacher, The Hangovers 1 and 2 and Bridesmaids. It is big on lowbrow laughs and short on character development, especially for the females in the cast. I can see why Aniston enjoyed her role, getting to look gorgeous and basically emasculate Day the whole movie long, but I’m surprised that she didn’t in turn ask for some miniscule nods at a character other than the Skinamax vixen she’s asked to play. Sudeikis’ lothario routine seems like delusional posturing, yet his character scores with every woman he wants, which is all of them.

If you accept that Horrible Bosses is a bit of white male wish fulfillment and enjoy it as such, you’ll have a lot of laughs. There are enough terrible bosses out there to make that part of the story universal. However, I don’t see the film ever inspiring much praise among women, straight or gay. There are so many gay male sex jokes, as is usual in this kind of film, that gay men may enjoy all the subtext flying around. A case can even be made that Dale’s revulsion at Aniston is due to him being in the closet.

Reel Thoughts Rating: B

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: Ryan Reynolds’ Green Bland Turn

They say that sci-fi or comic book “origin story” films are often boring due to all the exposition necessary to start the franchise. A fellow critic always says that any movie that starts with voice-over narration is automatically going to suck. Then, there is always the possibility that some actors can’t overcome lazy writing and end up looking amazing but bland. The latter would be my guess why Green Lantern looks so good but feels so empty.

Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, a generically cocky fighter pilot with daddy issues (his hero father died in a plane crash) who is also afraid of commitment. Thanks to helpful narration at the beginning, we know that the universe was created by a set of “Guardians” who have harnessed the green power of “will” (I wonder what Fundamentalists think of that?) and have entrusted the safety of the universe to an elite group of peacekeepers called the Green Lantern Corps. As the film opens, a trio of aliens crashes onto a desolate planet in “the Lost Sector” unleashing a malevolent entity known as Parallax. The big-headed villain feeds on fear, sucking the life force from any living thing he meets and swallowing planets whole. He wastes no time mortally wounding the Green Lantern who imprisoned him, sending him plummeting to Earth to look for someone to take his mantle before he dies. The Green Lantern ring “chooses” who will possess it, and for some reason the ring thinks professional screw-up Hal is the best man on Earth for the job.

While the writhing Parallax speeds across the galaxy towards Earth, a wormy scientist named Hector Hammond (played by Peter Sarsgaard) gets infected by some of Parallax’s yellow fear mojo and begins getting a swelled head, literally and figuratively. He is an old schoolmate of Hal’s and is obsessed with Hal’s old girlfriend Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), and his jealousy makes him a perfect proxy villain for Parallax.

Green Lantern has many plusses going for it. It has the most impressive use of 3-D effects I’ve seen in a live-action film. Reynolds, although dull in the role, looks amazing in his skintight costume. Tim Robbins has fun as Hector’s father, a questionable congressman, and it is always a pleasure seeing Angela Bassett, even in a throwaway role like this.

Given the high expectations for Green Lantern, it may well do blockbuster business, and I have to admit that my friend, who is a longtime fan of the comic book, enjoyed it immensely. For the uninitiated, however, Green Lantern is a comic book movie to leave on the newsstand.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: The Last Time I Saw Paris

Who would have guessed that Woody Allen’s 41st film, starring Owen Wilson of all people, would be one of the best pictures of the year? After the nightmarishly shrill You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which all of the ingredients (acting, story and direction) were curdled, Midnight in Paris is a fine, light French soufflé that harkens back to my favorite Woody Allen masterworks, such as Manhattan, Bullets Over Broadway and The Purple Rose of Cairo. It is the story of a nostalgic screenwriter who escapes from his Hollywood hack life into the golden age of Paris in the 20’s via a magical midnight limousine ride.

Like a Twilight Zone episode written by an English Lit major, Midnight in Paris is a wonderful fantasy filled with characters like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gil (Wilson) is thrilled to find himself among his literary heroes, as well as rubbing elbows with Picasso, Dalí, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker and director Luis Buñuel, all played by wonderful actors like Kathy Bates, Allison Pill and Adrian Brody.

Creatively stifled by his money-and-status-conscious wife, Inez (Rachel McAdams, in the film’s one bad, thankless role), Gil comes alive with his 20’s cohorts, and falls in love with Adriana (a luminous Marion Cotillard), an art muse already linked to Picasso and Modigliani. Is it cheating if it’s in an alternate reality? There is no explanation for how or why Gil keeps finding his way back to the 20’s, nor does there need to be. Wilson does a great job as Allen’s stand-in, and his innocent love of the period will draw in viewers, even if they (like me) have no idea who Djuna Barnes was!

As with most time travel tales, there comes the time where the hero must decide in which world he wants to live, and I am not completely satisfied with Gil’s choice. It almost feels as if Allen realized that he had to tie things up in a hurry... although, given his perfectionism, that seems unlikely. At least in the similarly-themed Night Gallery episode, “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar,” a wrecking ball ended the story with a bang. Then again, with wonderful performances like Bates’ Stein, Pill’s flighty Zelda and Corey Stoll’s manly Hemingway, maybe I just didn’t want Midnight in Paris to end.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts Interview: Cole Burden Takes the Watch

Hailing from Rome, Georgia, Cole Burden is a long way from Paris, but he still finds himself climbing a barricade and fighting for French independence eight times a week. As Courfeyrac in the hit musical Les Misérables, which has launched its 25th Anniversary tour, he is part of a band of idealistic students who rise up against the oppressive government. Given the current climate of union-busting and stripping rights from public employees, Les Misérables couldn’t be more timely.

Set in the early nineteenth century, Les Misérables is Victor Hugo’s epic story of love, revolution and redemption, centering on Jean Valjean, a former prisoner, who spends his life trying to help others, but is pursued by Inspector Javert, who vows to bring Valjean down no matter how long it takes. A love triangle develops between Cosette, Valjean’s adopted daughter, Marius, an idealistic student, and Eponine, the daughter of the cruel couple who raised Cosette before Valjean rescued her. The show’s staying power has always been its gorgeous score, featuring songs like “I Dreamed a Dream”, “On My Own”, “Bring Him Home” and the comedic “Master of the House.”

“It’s nice to stay on the go. I like that lifestyle,” Burden explained. The handsome twenty-seven year old actor gave up plans to sing opera when he realized that he would be relegated to doing the same few roles due to his vocal range. “I’ve always been drawn to acting, in film or on stage. I just happen to be able to sing.” Musical theater fulfills him more. He has been in workshops of Yank!, the musical about gay soldiers in love during World War II, and played Buck Barrow, Clyde’s brother, in the new musical Bonnie and Clyde by Hunter Foster of Urinetown fame.

“I think I’m the only actor in musical theater who had never seen Les Miz,” Burden laughed. “It’s such a rewarding show to do because I do a lot of workshops of new musicals and you’re trying to get a feel for what the audience thinks. With Les Miz, it’s so great because it’s such a ‘sure thing’ every night. The audience is singing the finale with us every night. I think every actor needs to experience what it’s like to do such a hit, because that’s not always the case. It’s nice to do something that everybody loves.”

Being in the ensemble means that Burden is working non-stop. “I think I have fifteen costume changes,” he explained. “It’s a lot of fun. I get to be a little bit of everything. I’m a sailor, I’m one of the poor at the beginning of the show, and I’m Courfeyrac, one of the students, who’s told, “Courfeyrac, you take the watch”. I’ve started a blog on my website called “Taking the Watch” where I let people know what’s going on on the tour. I also understudy Bamatabois, who’s one of the fops. I get to put on a lot of make-up and beat up on (downtrodden heroine) Fantine, so that’s a lot of fun.” Burden’s blog gives a rare look behind the scenes at an actor’s life on the road, including one incident where the infamous iPhone Daylight Savings glitch made him late to a performance. “I just want to talk to people about life within Les Miz. Nothing personal, but there are so many fans of the show that I think they’d love to hear stuff that goes on. It’s such an epic production, I think that there are lots of interesting stories that one can tell.”

Burden devotes a lot of his time to raising money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. “It’s so important as an actor to stay abreast of what’s going on, for lack of a better term, ‘in the real world’.” He is committed to making sure that people continue to fight the spread of HIV, and is proud that they as a cast have already raised more than $75,000. “Just the difference (in attitudes about AIDS) as a gay man between being twenty-seven and twenty-three... it’s like there’s a complacency about unprotected sex. I just don’t understand where that comes from. I guess we’re just getting away from an understanding of how it all originated. It’s very scary, actually.”

He’s glad that Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, a play about the early days of the AIDS crisis, is back on stage in New York. “I draw a correlation between that play and what happens to the students in Les Miz. It’s about standing up and fighting, literally going into the streets and fighting for a cause that you believe in. In Les Miz, it’s about children and education and the decline of Paris and we have to take control and get it back together because the government is not going to. I relate more to seeing a film like Milk and seeing what Harvey Milk really did for the gay community. That’s something as a person that I can relate to, that I’m passionate about.” Burden hopes that people of all generations can take the message from Les Misérables that you have to stand up and be willing to fight against those who want to keep you down.”

Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: Absolute Beginners

Parents are mysterious creatures to their kids, and sometimes it takes a lifetime to figure them out. Mike Mills’ engrossing and uplifting film, Beginners, seeks to document his own experiences with his parents, in a fictionalized way. It is such a specific, personal journey, full of details that you know came straight from Mills’ life, yet Beginners feels relatable to anyone who has turned around a strained relationship with a parent or anyone who has embarked on a romantic relationship not knowing if they have what it takes to make it work. The film has whimsical elements, like the way Arthur the Jack Russell Terrier has ongoing subtitles to reveal his feelings, but overall, the film is a leisurely-paced love story paired with a late-in-life coming out tale.

Oliver, played by Ewan McGregor, is packing up his late father Hal’s (Christopher Plummer) belongings as the film begins, and in flashback, you are introduced to the man who, after being widowed at age 75, decides to come out of the closet. The film is both a tribute to a man who, being a product of the 50’s, denied his true sexual orientation his whole life, only to embrace it in the end, and an intelligent examination of the effect parents have on their children and the way they interact with others. Oliver is closed off emotionally, and doesn’t stick with relationships very long. He watched his mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller), who made Oliver her confidant and surrogate best friend, suffer from the loneliness of being in a marriage with a closeted gay man. At the same time, Hal was a distant and absentee father.

Oliver meets French actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent from Inglourious Basterds) at a costume party where she is playing mute to save her voice. Their courtship is sweet and tentative, since both come with a lot of baggage. Hal, on the other hand, embraces every aspect of gay life, trying out bars where youth rules supreme and then settling in with a great group of “Prime Timers” who host movie nights and dinners out in West Hollywood. He even gets a wild and crazy boyfriend named Andy (ER’s Goran Visnjic, in a horrible bowl cut). But Hal’s days are numbered, it turns out, and Oliver becomes much closer with his father than he ever was growing up. Mills keeps the tone even and mostly light-hearted, but the reality of losing a parent is explored in a way everyone can relate to; don’t be afraid if tears flow... it’s good for you.

Beginners has many moments of emotional truth, and the performances could not be better. Plummer is sure to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and he does a great service to a group in the gay community that tends to be ignored, namely older gay men. McGregor has a much quieter role to play, but he does it with his usual intelligence and intensity. Laurent is quirky and beautiful and Cosmo the dog makes the perfect cinematic companion for Oliver. If you can handle a summer movie that isn’t full of shape-shifting robots or Caribbean pirates, Beginners is a nice, quiet beginning to the season.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: The X Factor

The new X-Men film is first class all the way. But what did you expect? Starring James McAvoy and the sizzling Michael Fassbender, and directed by Matthew Vaughn (the man who brought us the hugely entertaining Kick-Ass), X-Men: First Class reinvigorates the series by going back to its groovy, swinging roots. Part adventure, part history lesson and all-exciting, Vaughn’s film delves movingly into what made young Holocaust survivor Erik Lehnsherr into the villainous Magneto, played by Sir Ian McKellen previously. McAvoy is a perfect, compassionate counterpoint, as the telepath who would be Patrick Stewart, a.k.a. Professor X.

The story of these friends and future enemies begins in the 40’s, when Erik reveals his mutant power over metal in an attempt to save his parents, and at the same time, young Charles Xavier finds a familiar blue shape-shifter stealing food in the kitchen of his family’s palatial Westchester mansion. Raven, a.k.a. Mystique, played by Jennifer Lawrence of Winter’s Bone fame, who cements her reputation as a strong, committed actress who is ready to assume any role that would have earlier been given to Leelee Sobieski. But if Young Magneto and Junior Professor X are friends, who is their super-villain nemesis? That would be the utterly evil Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a former Nazi scientist and current mutant collector. The action moves to 1962, where it turns out the Shaw is primed to bring about nuclear war via the Cuban Missile Crisis.

X-Men: First Class echoes J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek prequel in that we are introduced to many characters who will be very important in the X-Men’s future, with enough nodding cameos to tickle fans of the film series. The rest of the cast is impressive, including Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man) as Beast, January Jones as Emma Frost, and Rose Byrne and Oliver Platt as the only good guys in the US Military Complex that will eventually demonize all mutants.

The awesome sixties production design is a character unto itself, even if I doubt miniskirts were all the rage that early. X-Men: First Class truly succeeds in creating human stories amongst the action sequences. Fassbender’s quest for vengeance is a powerful plot, and the mutants’ quest to be accepted for who they are and not be hated and feared for it continues to strike a deep chord with LGBT audiences.

The best thing about X-Men: First Class is that you don’t have to have seen anything that came before to appreciate and follow the plot. In a summer that will be jam-packed with monsters, wizards and superheroes. X-Men: First Class graduates with top honors!

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts Interview: Mamma's Boy

When Mario Matthews goes to a nightclub and an ABBA song is playing, he knows all the words. That’s because he’s been employed in a touring show of Mamma Mia! on and off since 2007. Matthews is part of the handsome male ensemble and is an understudy to Sky, the romantic lead.

“ABBA has been very good to me,” Matthews said of the Swedish pop group whose classic songs from the 1970s are the source material for the musical now on tour (and currently playing at ASU Gammage through May 22). It features songs like “Dancing Queen,” “The Winner Takes It All” and “Waterloo.”

In the story, Sky is about to marry Sophie, a 20–year–old girl living on an idyllic Greek island with her mother, Donna. Sophie desperately wants her father to walk her down the aisle. The only problem is she has no idea who he is, and her mother’s diary reveals that it could have been one of three different men. Sophie invites all three to her wedding hoping that she will figure out her parentage when she meets them face–to–face. Meanwhile, Donna and her two best girlfriends reminisce about when they were a singing group known as Donna and the Dynamos. The stage is set for a comedy of errors and a few love stories. And then there’s a gay surprise.

Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfreid, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan starred in the 2008 movie. But the stage musical also continues to be popular in New York City and on the road, a testament to the music’s infectious enthusiasm.

“I think that after the movie came out, it really gave us a boost,” Matthews said. “People really enjoy Mamma Mia! Everyone recognizes the songs, it’s a really fun–filled show, and the book in general is done really well in how they include the songs in the story. If anything, people can relate to love, because Mamma Mia! is about the aspects of finding love within yourself, finding a long–lost love or finding a new love. It’s so relatable in that way,” he said. “It’s about expressing individuality.”

Matthews, a native of Oklahoma City, said he’s happy at the positive response the show receives, even in conservative markets. He also says that the gay audience will enjoy the show’s spectacle. “Every gay man loves a little sparkle in their life! What’s been most exciting about our society is that it’s constantly growing and evolving, and people are becoming more gay–friendly. I think that’s awesome,” he said. “It’s great to see people becoming more understanding.”

Matthews, who also has been part of the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular ensemble, urged aspiring performers to pursue their dreams. “But with that dream comes a lot of hard work,” he said. “Everybody on this tour has had a long trail of hard work; they’ve gone to school, taken voice lessons, dance lessons, acting lessons, and almost everyone has gone to college,” Matthews said. “If you really want something to happen in your life, it can happen, but it takes work.”

Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: Love Under the Big Top

Circus movies are a tough thing to pull off. The Greatest Show on Earth was widely considered the worst Best Picture Oscar-winner of all time (at least until Crash crushed Brokeback Mountain). Tod Browning’s Freaks was so disturbing for its time that it was banned for thirty years in England. Joan Crawford’s Berserk! was disturbing for a host of other reasons. And don’t forget Big Top Pee-Wee… oh, you already did. While Water for Elephants isn’t likely to spur a generation of kids to run away and join the circus, it is a handsomely-made, pleasingly old-fashioned love story set against the backdrop of a struggling circus during the Great Depression.

Robert Pattinson gives a strong, impassioned performance as young Jacob Jankowski, but to be honest, he gets a huge boost by being introduced as an older man played by Hal Holbrook. Holbrook’s haunted eyes do more heartbreaking acting than most young actors do with their whole performance, and it can’t have been easy playing a lonely widower so soon after losing his wife Dixie Carter last year. The older Jacob is found soaking in the rain by the manager of the Circus Vargas, apparently having been left behind by his nursing home bus. Charlie (Paul Schneider), the circus manager, gets into a discussion of big top disasters and discovers that Jacob was there in 1931 for the infamous Benzini Brothers catastrophe.

Caught off guard by a faded picture of a beautiful woman on an elephant, Jacob reveals that she was Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) and that the ringmaster in the photo was her husband August (Christophe Waltz, in a brilliant, violent performance). In 1931, Jacob was a Cornell veterinary student with a bright future, but his parents were tragically killed in a car accident, leaving Jacob bereft, and as it turns out, without a home. His parents had spent everything and gone into debt to send Jacob to college, and the realization is more than he can handle.

Jumping a passing train, he finds that he has inadvertently “run away to join the circus.” The Benzini Brothers Circus is run by the dedicated but ruthless August, who rules his people as harshly as he does his poor animals. Despite its PG-13 rating, you may find it hard to watch his brutal attack on Rosie the elephant, August’s latest “star attraction”. Jacob and Marlena bond over their love of animals, first her prized show horses and later Rosie, and Jacob’s veterinary skills prove invaluable to the circus. It doesn’t take long before August’s violent outbursts drive Marlena and Jacob together, but getting away from August may prove deadly. Anyone whom he deems a threat or a financial liability is routinely “red-lighted”, tossed from the fast-moving train by August’s goons.

Witherspoon plays against her natural alpha personality to play the passive Marlena, but she demonstrates strength when needed as Marlena finds her independence. She effortlessly evokes Jean Harlow. Waltz proves that his terrifying Col. Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds wasn’t a fluke. He mines complex depths from his villainous character, showing the scared and insecure man beneath the monster. Pattinson is a better actor than he’s given credit for, and he makes Jacob a fully-rounded hero.

Water for Elephants is gorgeously-rendered and emotionally satisfying, apparently streamlining Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel for the screen without losing any of its power. Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Francis Lawrence do a masterful job showing the hardships of the Depression against the tattered magic of the circus. Tai the elephant also deserves special mention, since Rosie is a vital part of the film’s success. Water for Elephants is not a film full of surprises, although what Marlena’s fate was and how Jacob ended up forgotten in a nursing home are questions you want to see answered. Sometimes, a well-made, romantic classic is just what the veterinary student ordered.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.