New Moon

My Aunt Gerta was a werewolf, so I think when it comes to New Moon I think I have a little prejudice in favor of “Camp Jacob” as the Twilight fans call the folks who choose lycanthrope Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner; tv’s "My Own Worst Enemy") over vampire protagonist Edward Cullen as they vie for the love of seemingly brain-dead Bella Swan. Okay, let me back up and be honest. My Aunt Gerta wasn’t really a werewolf. She just looked like one once menopause hit. Every month or so she’d sprout more facial hair than a sixteen year old Italian boy and gets as cranky as any wild beast in the woods. She’d growl and threaten to kill anyone who left a dish in her sink or snickered at her Frida Kahlo unibrow. Who knew all it would take to vanquish a werewolf is a simple estrogen patch?

So my perfect husband and I went to see The Twilight Saga: New Moon last weekend at the Essex Cinemas with a theater full of teenage girls, all of whom must have been under the impression that this was an audience participation film because they never stopped giggling, gasping and groaning from beginning to end. The fact that they reacted with such verve to every turn of the glacially s-l-o-w  moving plot seemed odd since one might expect that they would have read the Twilight books and already knew that it is a fait accompli as to who Bella was going to end up bumping nasties with for the long haul.

And speaking of which, I found my mind wandering during The Twilight Saga: New Moon to extrapolate a tad bit further than what author Stephanie Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (tv’s “Dexter”) probably wanted me to. For instance, in one pivotal scene, boring Bella (Kristen Stewart; Adventureland) fantasizes seeing herself in the future as an old woman with Edward (Robert Pattinson; Little Ashes), who has not aged at all. Her concern, as a human, is that Edward will lose interest in her since she will continue to age and eventually die. As if saggy boobs and wrinkles are the worst she has to worry about. After all, she’s having sex with a DEAD guy. Hello?!, and he’s 109 years old, so basically this is a love triangle between a teenage girl and an animated corpse and an animal that will leave fur all over the furniture. All of the violins in the world and sparkly special effects can’t cover up the fact that New Moon is a love story chalk full of pedophilia, necrophilia, and bestiality. Not to mention the possibility that Bella could get a bad case of fleas depending on whom she lies down with.

Oh sure, the “grand design” of New Moon is to fulfill every teenage girl’s need for romance, and on that level it is a great success. Considering the panting sounds coming from two rows behind us it was apparently also satisfying on a deeper level, hitting more than an occasional (G) spot that was sending the girls in the audience into a stupor. It’s understandable when you realize that for at least half the movie hunky werewolves Jacob, Embry (debuting Kiowa Gordon), Jared (Bronson Pelletier; tv’s "Renegadepress.com"), Paul (Alex Meraz; Two Spirits, One Journey), and Sam (Chaske Spencer; Red Dead Revolver) are shirtless and deliciously pumped up with more muscles than you’d find at a steroid rehab clinic. Much has been made in the press about Taylor Lautner’s transformation from 16-year-old kid actor to 17-year-old super-hunk in an effort to ensure that he wouldn’t be replaced in the role he originated in Twilight, and he has indeed undergone a remarkable change, though not as spectacular as the conversion he makes from Native American to Lycanthrope American thanks to some very slick effects. The sporadic move from species to species is fast and beautiful, not at all the grinding pain one has come to expect from other werewolf spectacles such as An American Werewolf in London and Wolf.

New Moon is like the flip side of its predecessor as Edward takes a long absence from the screen so that Jacob and his pack of hirsute relatives can step front and center. Unfortunately, the story still hangs entirely on Bella and her relationship with Edward. She pines for him throughout, treating Jacob more like a puppy than a big bad wolf, and, worse yet, he lets her. Granted, it might be more tolerable if someone other than Kristen Stewart was providing us with her usual one-note performance, a cross between a kind of vegetative state and death. Hopefully director Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) will poke her with a cattle prod to elicit a conscious response on-screen by the third film. Either that or just let Jacob bite her head off and find us a new female lead.

The gaggle of gigglers behind my perfect husband and me gasped in shock at the cliffhanger ending of the movie, which would come as no surprise to anyone who could actually read, but apparently the majority of these hormonal hussies was interested only in the movie version of these tales because reading is something they only do when required to by law. The concept of a film actually following the plot of its source material is usually rare in Hollywood, but Meyer has her hands all over these movies, much like J.K. Rowling has with her Harry Potter series. It shows, and for genuine fans of the written page this is a plus. For those of us in the audience who are forced to sit amongst the mouth-breathing gum-chewers without a clue it’s a curse. Maybe by the time The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is released they’ll have checked out the Wikipedia if nothing else so the rest of the theater can hear the dialogue on-screen. Let’s hope because I’m already whittling myself a couple of wooden stakes just in case I need to shut a few folks up.

2012

There are a lot of great things to be said about going to prison. Oh, I know nobody wants to go to prison, but if you end up there you can learn some handy survival tips that will make life all the easier when the world comes to an end in2012.  My cousin Henry has spent most of his worthless life incarcerated for one sleazy scheme or another, not the least of which involved attempting to rob a liquor store after just purchasing a bottle of Limocello from the clerk using his personal American Express card. Nobody said he was smart, okay? Despite this and his multitude of other failings, he has at least been able to impart his knowledge about some things that may actually prove useful in the new world order. For instance, how many of you know how to make stereo speakers out of empty soda cans or who can make a toilet bowl full of wine out of rancid oranges and a handful of ketchup packets? These may not seem like important life skills today, but wait until you’ve survived the Apocalypse and you may change your mind. Most of you may just think of prison as a good place to give up smoking or get a hepatitis-encrusted amateur tattoo, but Henry insists that when the rest of us are tits-up in a world covered in mud, it’s the inmates who will flourish. They know a lot of important survival skills that John Cusack (who stars in the film 2012) has ever heard of before. 

While Cusack’s character proves to be quite resourceful as the world is literally falling into pieces around him, there’s no indication that the writer/limo driver would know that if he needs something to eat AND to clean up with after a tsunami has just ravaged all of the Midwest he can always eat the bar soap they provide in prisons. It’s true. Since inmates were constantly eating soap to make themselves ill in order to be sent to the infirmary, the Department of Corrections now uses an edible soap that can’t make a person sick. Okay, so it’s not caviar, but come2012 every Taco Bell between here and Bratislava are bound to be 

That’s one of my biggest gripes with 2012, the movie. While the special effects truly are spectacular, the entire hullabaloo about THE BIG DAY coming is simply followed by the end credits once the CGI budget has been shot, and the aftermath of the tragedy is left to our feeble imaginations. I’m not lobbying for 2012 to be any longer by any means (Dear God, no! It already clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes), but it would have been nice to see some practical realities addressed, like how the survivors are going to recover and rebuild their lives (and civilization) in this strange new environment. I mean, it’s not like anyone can run to the nearest Cumby’s for a Diet Coke and a microwaved burrito when the urge strikes.

Nevertheless, 2012 really is a mammoth accomplishment for director Roland Emmerich. He blew up the White House in Independence Day, then froze the east coast in The Day After Tomorrow, so now he finally gets the opportunity to ruin the entire world as we know it. His mama must be so proud. 

The film is based on the ancient Mayan calendar’s coming to an end on December 21, 2012, at which time all of the planets in our solar system will be aligned in a configuration that happens only once every gazillion years. Somehow, by this happening, any number of people have extrapolated that this means the world is ending since, without a Mayan calendar, we’ll all be too stupid to figure out that the next day will be December 22^nd.  It’s based on the same principle I use with my bank account. If I still have checks then I must still have money, so I’ll just shop ‘til I drop.

Alright, so if you suspend your disbelief, you’ll enjoy the concept of 2012. Thanks to unprecedented solar flares in 2009, government scientists alert the President (Danny Glover; The Harimaya Bridge) of the oncoming disaster, and so a secret multinational effort is put into effect to build ginormous arks to save at least a fraction of mankind once the planet is savaged by all types of natural disasters. Totally by coincidence, of course, the President just happens to have a gorgeous brainchild of a daughter, Laura (Thandie Newton; W.), who is verycompatible with the senior geophysicist on the case, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor; Endgame). So ~ yadda, yadda ~ we get a whole little soap opera romance going with them, which seems a tad bit of a distraction from the beaucoup fires, tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions bearing down on the earth. 

Meanwhile, Cusack’s (1408) Jackson Curtis is a divorced father or two precocious movie-cute children, Noah (Liam James; tv’s “Psych”) and Lily (Morgan Lily; Pornstar). Of course Jackson still has feelings for his ex-wife (Amanda Peet; The X Files: I Want to Believe), who is now married to a nice-guy plastic surgeon named Gordon (Tom McCarthy; Duplicity). Do you smell more soap opera coming? You know it. This movie has more suds in it than a month of “The Bold and the Beautiful.”  This is the problem with 2012. It’s got way more plot than is necessary for this type of film. While it wants to humanize the effects of the worldwide calamity, it aims too much on humor (Woody Harrelson of Zombielandshows up as a nut-case doomsday-spouting radio host) and schmaltz rather than focusing on the actual devastation to the spirit of humanity that would be inevitable in such a situation. 2012 is far closer to an Indiana Jones adventure than aSchindler's List, not that’s there’s anything wrong with that. It just doesn’t feel “real”, and so don’t expect to see 2012 and leave petrified of the possibility that these events could ever actually happen, unlike the proceedings portrayed inParanormal Activity which seem to have rattled some folks to the core.

The effects in 2012 are as special as they can be, and that’s the main reason to see the film. The performers are all secondary to the destruction of Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Rome, but that’s okay. The CGI will have you puckering with the same excitement as a full body cavity search but without those unpleasant long-term effects, at least that’s what Henry told me to say, and he ought to know.

Box (The)

I’m surprised there aren’t more people interested in seeing Cameron Diaz’s box. The national weekend grosses for her latest movie, The Box, shows that it earned only sixth place in the Top Ten movies at the box office and brought in an anemic $7.5 million dollars in its debut. Granted, at 37, Diaz is practically a dinosaur by Hollywood’s measure, her “best years” a decade behind her in an industry that treats actresses over the age of 28 as if they ought to be tossed in a wood chipper, but it amazes me that the star of both Charlie’s Angels and the Shrek franchise isn’t a bigger draw to a movie with her name over the title. Just the title alone ought to lure a few red-blooded men into the theater.

It’s a shame the film isn’t doing better financially because The Box has to be the best of the current crop of cerebral scarefests out right now. A hundred times scarier than Paranormal Activity and a thousand times smarter than The Fourth Kind, The Box is one of the creepiest movies I’ve seen in years. Sadly, there’s not much I can tell you about it because The Box is one of those sneaky little tales that starts like a simple enough story about one thing and turns out being something very much different by the ending credits.

I can give you an idea about the basic premise of The Box, or, more specifically, what unexpected visitor Arlington Steward (Frank Langella; Frost/Nixon) offers to 70’s suburbanites Norma (Diaz) and Arthur Lewis (James Marsden; 27 Dresses) at the beginning of the story.

When Mr. Steward appears he makes the couple a deal: he gives them a wooden box with a button on it and offers them $1 million dollars tax-free if they will push it. The catch? If they do, someone that they don’t know, somewhere in the world, will be killed. The moral dilemma is theirs to consider for the next 24 hours. It would take me about a millisecond to make up my mind, and my most important question to Mr. Steward would be “Can I only hit it once?” because I’d be tapping that button like a horny dog attached to a mail carrier’s leg. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I had a conscience once, but I lost it about the same time as I misplaced my virginity. I’m sure they are happy together, but I doubt I’ll ever see either again.

Of course there is much more to the tale than just these two sitting around in bad period fashions in front of eyeball-burning wallpaper while they wax poetic about whether to take the money and off somebody in the process. That would make for as big a bomb as watching Waiting for Godot starring Tom Arnold and Tori Spelling. Oh no, this is merely the tip of the iceberg of what goes on in The Box. The secrets involved are jaw-dropping in their intensity and source. What the Lewises don’t know (and the audience is made aware of just one step ahead of them) is that what is behind The Box has potentially earth-shattering consequences in ways that are barely imaginable.

Obviously, since this is a movie, you don’t have to imagine (too much) because director and screenwriter Richard Kelley (Southland Tales, Donnie Darko) is going to give you a peek ~ for at least as much as he wants you to see. Like with his previous films, Kelley does leave some things purposely ambiguous, but that makes The Box all the more fascinating and thought-provoking.

Look for any number of religious symbols as Kelley’s adaptation of Richard Matheson’s original story tries hard to incorporate several Old Testament themes into the mix, starting most undoubtedly with the Adam and Eve story, with Arthur representing Adam, Norma playing Eve, and Mr. Seward there in lieu of an actual serpent. Perhaps it is more than just a coincidence that The Box’s enticing button is big, round and apple red?

It’s a rare film these days that can generate actual discussion after it is over, but I guarantee that you’ll want to talk to your friends about this one. More than cheap effects and jump-out-of-the-shadows scares, The Box will stay with you long after you’ve left the theater. It’s just that good. 

Fourth Kind (The)

There’s a movie out about alien abductions called The Fourth Kind, as in one more than those Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I know a lot about this subject, having been abducted myself back when I was about nineteen. Okay, so the aliens who kidnapped me were a couple of cabin boys from a Lithuanian freighter that had docked along the East River, and it was a *tad* bit voluntary on my part, but I understand the pain of these folks from The Fourth Kind. Whether they’re from Eastern Europe or Alpha Centari, grabby hands poking at your no-no hole are all the same. 

 For those who are clamoring to actually see any of this type of personal space invasion The Fourth Kind is going to be a terrible disappointment. It has to be the first alien abduction movie to not feature any aliens and only one small abduction, and that takes place off-camera. I know what you are thinking, and, seriously, this sucks eggs. Even the schlockiest of crapola on the SyFy Channel will spring for a rubber mask with big eyes to give us a few (very, very few) chills. Instead, director and writer Olatunde Osunsanmi (WIthIN) has decided to turn The Fourth Kind into a faux quasi-documentary. This wouldn’t seem like such a big “bend-over” deal except that all the ads for the film make it look like this is going to be one huge scary-ass thriller. The previews show requisite creaky doors opening, a couple of close-ups of people screaming in horror, and quick cutaways of folks running through the darkness while the music shrieks like it was torn straight from the soundtrack of Psycho. If only. The only thing that made me want to run away was the snoozy script that left me biting the insides of my cheeks to stay awake through the whole thing. 

     

The story of The Fourth Kind is fairly simple: Psychologist Abbey Tyler (Milla Jovovich;Resident Evil: Extinction) has moved her family to Nome, Alaska after her husband’s recent death and quickly finds out that several of her patients are suffering from intense anxiety and paranoia as well as sharing a common memory of being stalked by a big white owl coming for them in the night. So she tapes these patients while hypnotized and what happens next is supposedly Blair Witch Project scary. The only problem with this is that people went into The Blair Witch Project without expecting to see an actual witch. People coming into The Fourth Kind want to see some honest-to-God fake aliens, and there are none to be seen. Complicating things even further isThe Fourth Kind’s allegation that the unseen entities terrorizing people are more than just aliens from outer space. It seems these critters speak ancient Sumerian, and in the small translatable bit of dialogue uttered by one of the “possessed” victims being taped the visitor identifies itself as God. Hmmm. So suddenly we jump from Close Encounters territory to shades of The Exorcist. 

            

One unusual element to The Fourth Kind is Osunsanmi’s decision to use a split-screen in various parts of the film and have his actors recreate the hypnotic sessions “real” patients, i.e., “characters” had with therapist Abbey Tyler while grainy footage of the (alleged) “actual” taped meetings run simultaneously. Ironically, it is the “actor” actors’ mouthing the identical dialogue as the so-called “real victims” that is more convincing than those in the film who purport to have been abducted. Obviously the “real” footage is as fake as the recreations, but it does help generate a sense of legitimate dread for those viewers who can’t help but be drawn in to the drama. 

    

It’s doubtful skeptics are the ones who will be filling theater seats for The Fourth Kind, so the movie relies on that already built-in audience willing to suspend its disbelief and go with the flow as presented by Osunsanmi and company. Unfortunately, the key role of the “real” Dr. Tyler is played by an unnamed actress who looks like she just stepped out of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. The perpetually vacant stare, her pasty-white face, stringy hair and never-ending flat affect are way over the top, making it hard to believe she could ever be a competent psychologist no matter how many times she’s been on the receiving end of an alien probe. Jovovich is more believable, and actually does a reasonable job convincing us that Dr. Tyler has the balls tom stand up to the local sheriff (Will Patton; The Canyon), whose basic job in the movie is to bully her and imply that he is a heartbeat away from arresting her for the murder of her late husband. 

       

Dr. Tyler’s involvement in the death of her husband Will (Julian Vergov; Fake Identity) is crucial to the bigger story. Was he killed by aliens who have invaded the Tyler home? Did Abbey kill him while under the influence of some otherworldly source? And what, if anything, do her kids know about the events of that night? Son Ronnie (Raphaël Coleman; It’s Alive) is a constant source of hostility and bitchiness which Abbey tends to ignore even if the audience can’t. While fifteen year old Coleman is effective playing a ten year old, “Ronnie” comes across as a punk in need of a swift kick (or anal probe) in the ass. Okay, so maybe he’s mad that his Dad is dead and he has an idea that Mom is responsible, but does he have to be such a shmendrik about it?

Elias Koteas (The Haunting in Connecticut) is also on hand, lurking through most of the picture as Abel Campos, a skeptical colleague of the late other Dr. Tyler. What he adds to the mix is a tip of the hat to those who might think that these proceeding are a load of crap. He reminds me of Ohio Representative John Boenner. He’s kind of an a-hole, but is still worth enduring just so you can have someone to kvetch about later. He’s as close to a villain as the movie gets, especially since we never get to actually see the invaders. 
   

The Fourth Kind is the only movie I’ve seen that opens with its star addressing the audience with "I'm actress Milla Jovovich and I will be portraying Dr. Abigail Tyler in the movie… What you are about to see is extremely disturbing." This alone is disconcerting, but what follows with the mixture of “real” (actually real fake) and cinematic is a clever conceit even if it ultimately falls apart by the end. The Fourth Kind tries very hard to make a case for alien abductions but it ends up being more about the smoke and mirrors of filmmaking. If you are planning to go to see The Fourth Kind for chills and thrills I’d recommend you try The Box instead. Now there is a real freak-out, and it’s playing right next door to The Fourth Kind at both the Essex Cinemas and the Cumberland 12.

Michael Jackson ~ This is It

These days it isn’t that hard to grab yourself a fan base. Heck, even Spencer Pratt and his Will o’ the Wisp flesh-colored beard have people who worship him, and that is not so far from adoring a hemorrhoid with a transparent merkin on his chin. My cousin Winona, whose only discernable talent seems to be the ability to breathe with her mouth closed, has a Facebook page with 874 “friends.” Okay, so “friends” may not be exactly the same as “fans”, but considering she lives in a single-wide near an ice-flow along the James Ross Strait in Nunavut, EBF, Canada and spends her days knitting custom yarmulkes for people’s pets, it proves that almost anybody with an Internet connection can find someone to like them. Granted, I’m assuming that at least half of those 874 “friends” are actually human and at least 10% of those have truly met her, so apparently there really is a sucker born every minute. We don’t even invite Winona to family reunions, but that is mostly because everyone in her immediate gene pool knows that it is impossible to tell which of her eyes to look into when trying to carry on a conversation with her. Unfortunately, Winona was born with two lazy eyes, and neither one of them has wandered onto the same path since. My Uncle Dominick, her father, always said the biggest blessing in Winona’s life was that she was born a girl because with those eyes she’d never be able to write her name in the snow, if you know what I mean. Rumor has it she may have drowned the family cat trying to take aim, but that’s a visual I try not to think about.

Speaking of trying to avoid something, I waited until a week after it premiered to see Michael Jackson: This is It because I had about as much enthusiasm for hearing or seeing anything more even remotely associated with Michael Jackson as I do for giving Larry King a Brazilian wax with my teeth. I’m sorry, but I was never a fan of the self-proclaimed “King of Pop.” Maybe that title was part of the problem. I don’t really like people who crown themselves as royalty. It’s not much different than what George Bush managed to pull off in 2004 or Idi Amin did in 1971. I will give him credit though. Calling himself the “King of Pop” may have proved to be a self-fulfilling prophesy; perhaps I should begin referring to myself as the “Queen of the Internet” and wait for the riches to roll in.

You know, liking Michael Jackson has not been an easy task. With everything from his bizarre fetish for cosmetic surgery, the peculiar way he dressed his children in masks whenever they went out in public, his odd penchant for obtaining The Elephant Man’s remains, and, of course, that whole child-diddling issue all act as heavy barriers to my even wanting to bother with acknowledging the talents the man had. He went out of the way to separate himself from the masses with his weird tastes, whether it was by bleaching his skin, wearing those odd militaristic (yet fabulously sequined) costumes in his private life off-stage, or by turning his home into an amusement park where his best friend and companion was a cranky chimpanzee named Bubbles, Michael practically begged to be mocked. It almost seems like he wanted us to think he was crazy. Maybe he was; Jackson’s personal life was a mess and apparently always had been thanks to his hideously abusive father. The days of his “Thriller” fame were only a painful memory of when Michael was a young, sexy, black man long before he morphed into a middle-aged, androgynous-looking white woman. It’s only now, after his death, that the truth about his rampant drug use has been revealed and has clouded his reputation even further.

Still, despite all of his peculiarities, there was an amazingly talented person behind the tabloid headlines and Michael Jackson: This is It is a grand opportunity to see the legend devoid of his peculiarities and revealed to be the great musician he actually was. While Michael Jackson: This is It is not what one could call a great concert film, it is a very personal event. Made up of footage from Jackson’s rehearsals for his planned London comeback concert series, Michael Jackson: This is It strips away a lot of the “exotic” hoopla that always followed Jackson and concentrates on the artist at work. Michael is shown working with his dance troupe, his band, and choreographer and director Kenny Ortega (who assembled the footage and brought Michael Jackson: This is It to life) as he works to develop the precision moves and cues he has always been known for in his act. Whatever questions people may have held about him being too frail or drug dependent to perform this comeback should be doused by the picture of the man on-screen. Michael was on fire creatively and physically, able to manage moves no ordinary 50 year old guy could do.

Michael Jackson: This is It is Michael Jackson at his best. There are updated versions of several of his past hits, including a peek at was to be a new 3-D “Thriller” and a salute to his years as the front-man for the Jackson Five.  The most fascinating thing though has to be seeing ~ even in small glimpses ~ the kindness of the man that is usually lost in the hype and mythology that surrounded him in life and now continues since his death. How rare to see an artist of his stature granting those in his circle time on-stage during his show to shine as individual talents beyond being his “background” performers. Truly, Michael had a generous spirit.

I’m sure Michael Jackson: This is It won’t be the absolute last we hear from the deceased singer considering the huge archives of his work that must exist, but this is definitely a fitting tribute to Michael and a gift to his fans worth cherishing. I’ll admit I may not have been one before, but after Michael Jackson: This is It I have a newfound respect for the man even if it does mean I have to admit I was wrong about the man. Better late than never I suppose.

Paranormal Activity

Last weekend my perfect husband and I went to the Essex Cinemas to see Paranormal Activity. Dale Chapman, the always genial manager of the theater, told us that people were coming out of the movie completely freaked out, scared senseless by this supposedly terrifying saga of a young couple haunted by an unseen entity in their oh-so-chic San Diego McMansion. He remembered a gaggle of teenage girls who were so frightened after the 8:00 pm show on Friday that they were afraid to go home for fear of what might be lurking in the dark. Uh huh.

I haven’t seen so much hoopla over a “scary movie” since The Exorcist was first released back in 1973. Now this was a national trauma. People passed out, threw up, broke down and checked in to mental institutions over that religious potboiler. I couldn’t imagine Paranormal Activity was going to be that creepy. Many people have also compared Paranormal Activity to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, but I think that is mostly because both films were shot on the cheap and done in a documentary style. There is one other parallel which is more Blair Witch than Exorcist and that is that it’s what you don’t see which creates the spooky atmosphere. For those looking for out-and-out gore, there’s Saw VI, also currently playing, but Paranormal Activity aims for a more intellectual scare. It’s what isn’t obvious in the night that first time writer/director Oren Peli wants to have you fretting about.

In Paranormal Activity, happily unmarried Katie (Katie Featherston; Mutant) and Micah (Micah Sloat, in an impressive debut) are living a dream lifestyle for a 20-something couple. Micah is an apparently very successful day trader while Katie is a graduate student, living a (seemingly) cushy life without a worry in the world. At least they were until Katie admits to a wee problem she has endured since she was a kid. It seems a malevolent spirit has been reaching out to her ever since her family home mysteriously burned to the ground when she was only eight. Oh my, just a little thing to have kept secret until after she and Micah had shacked up together. So, for the next fifteen years or so she has done her best to ignore the poltergeist on her tail and has managed to do fairly well at it until now. How fortunate for her that Micah lists his two favorite hobbies as videotaping everything he can and pissing off evil ghosties as often as possible. How unfortunate for us that this pretty much constitutes the gist of the rest of the movie.

The tiny sounds that terrify these un-newlyweds just show how young and impressionable they really are. It also shows how much things have changed in the last thirty years. With a weekly dose of guts and grossness splayed out across the screen (and by this I mean movies like the Saw series and not the latest Lindsay Lohan release), Generations X, Y and Me have become completely desensitized to gore and the shock value of a single head turning around and spewing pea soup at the camera. It’s what they don’t see that scares them. Maybe this explains why today’s group seems to lack the same enthusiasm for sex that mine did in our 20s. You know the saying: “How you going to keep them from upchucking the farm after they’ve seen Paris?” A steady stream of snatching a glimpse (or glimpsing a snatch) of every starlet from Ms. Hilton (who has had more men spend the night in her than every stayed at one of the hotels bearing her family name) to Britney Spears (and who hasn’t speared that thing?), the prospect of what could happen between the attractive Featherston and Sloat when they hit the sheets seems to have been replaced by the notion that watching them cower on the corner of the bed is more entertaining than the obvious.

One thing is clear: this Paranormal Activity is definitely for younger people. Anyone who has been married for more than ten years will attest that waking up at the tiniest noise just doesn’t happen. At my house things creak, go bump in the night, and mysterious rumblings occur regularly, and I’ve become so used to all the racket escaping from my perfect husband while he blissfully snores and farts himself into oblivion that it would take a jetliner crashing into our bedroom to disturb my slumber. And anybody with children will tell you that if they hear weird noises in the dark they aren’t going to get out of bed until one of the kids screams that someone has lost an eye. In real life, only the young and childless are going to believe in the spirits Paranormal Activity has to offer. Perhaps, for them, the movie should have been called Paranoid Activity instead. 

Law Abiding Citizen

I have a friend we’ll call “Gale” to protect her anonymity because her story is one of raw lust, not meant for mixed company or to be shared at dinner parties.  “Gale” is a fifty year old woman with a teenager’s crush on Scottish actor Gerard Butler. Say his name and she squeals like she’s been goosed hard. Say it twice and she’ll have to change her panties she’ll get so excited. So you can imagine when Butler’s latest release, Law Abiding Citizen, opened this week it would be inevitable that I would take my BFF to see the movie, but not before I grabbed a few towels, a bottle of disinfectant, and a roll of Saran Wrap® to ensure the quality maintenance of her theater seat in case seeing Butler’s presence on the big screen proved too overwhelming and “Gale” lost all her bodily functions at his first appearance. If only I could get her to put me in her will I’d put some energy into arranging a face-to-face meeting between the two. That way we’d both win. She’d die happy and I’d be rich. The only loser in that scenario would be Gerry because I’m sure “Gayle’s head would explode upon laying eyes on him and he’d be stuck with brain goo all over his snappy designer duds (not to mention her eyes, really laying upon him somewhere).

Okay. So maybe I exaggerate slightly, but “Gale’s” unfettered fluttering of the heart for the Great Scott is a wonder to behold. I will admit I do find Butler mildly attractive, especially as he was playing the caring and oh-so-sensitive dead husband to Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You. Of course, in that he was a corpse and so his compassion comes mostly off-screen and after a terminal cancer diagnosis, so it makes sense in a way that belies his macho image in other movies like 300, Gamer and The Ugly Truth. Those films seem more in line with what I imagine the “real” Gerard Butler to be like. He probably has a good sense of humor (he’d have to since he spent the entirety of 300 in a leather mini-skirt), an intensity to his concentration (hey, killing hundreds of guys out to get him as he did in Gamer takes focus), and he’s had a string of other women he’s left in his wake (as was implied in The Ugly Truth). That’s an important point: I don’t see Gerard as the marrying kind, at least not in this decade. Just in 2009 so far, he’s been alleged to have dipped his pen in the inkwells of a legion of Hollywood hotties, including Jessica Simpson, Shanna Moakler, Jennifer Aniston, Cheryl Burke, Cameron Diaz, Priyanka Chopra, Josie D`arby, Rosario Dawson, Kola Boof, Naomi Campbell, Cassandra Hepburn, Chiara Conti and a handful of other models and pass-around-honeys that regularly make Page Six for no other reason than that. Dear God, if a woman was as promiscuous as Gerry, she’d either be called the town slut or at the very least she’d be a Kardashian. Meanwhile, man-whore Butler gets a pat on the back from Hollywood and a wink of approval for all his efforts by the tabloids. I just hope he has stock in Church & Dwight Inc., Co. (the makers of Trojan™ condoms).

I guess it is because of Gerry’s public persona that I found Law Abiding Citizen a bit of a stretch from its first frame forward. In it, Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a happily married husband and father to a six year old girl. I mean, really? My first thought was “I didn’t know this was going to be a science fiction flick” but before I could even whisper this incredulity to “Gale” intruders broke in and killed the mother and kid and left Clyde for dead without us ever getting to know exactly why the murderers chose the Shelton family to slay. A motive would have been nice, but then again, this picture is all about Clyde’s motives, so the mother and daughter are quickly dispensed with and the action flashes forward to three years later and the execution of one of the two killers. The other, thanks to a plea bargain deal made with Assistant District Attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx; The Soloist), gets only ten years in prison even though Clyde begged to testify against the guy. Einnie meenie chilly beanie and we flash forward again ~ this time ten years (and the movie is only 15 minutes old). Amazingly, none of the principals seems to have aged a day in that quick decade despite all the stress, though I think my Sour Patch Kids® tasted like they had just passed puberty about now.

Now Nick’s been promoted to DA and he and wife Kelly (Regina Hall; Superhero Movie) are no longer kissy-huggy newlyweds. Now they are parents to nine-year old daughter Denise (Emerald-Angel Young; tv’s “Life on Mars”) and sniping at one another like old pros. As for Clyde, apparently he’s been watching all the Saw movies over and over because he is cooking with gas when it comes to having made plans for the newly paroled child-killer.  Violence ensues and when the police show up to arrest Clyde he, naturally, strips naked so Butler won’t break his streak of exposing his ass-crack in all of his movies. I think he and Ewan McGregor are practicing the old Scottish game of ‘Butt Bingo’ to see who can show the most anal roughage throughout their career. But I digress.

From this point Law Abiding Citizen takes a whole other turn and becomes some sort of high-minded vengeance flick in the tradition of Death Wish. Clyde rails on about the nightmarish mistakes the justice system continues to make and how he blames the District Attorney and judges involved in his case and that of his family’s killers as perfect examples of how easily manipulated people can be. When a female judge sympathizes with him and offers him bail, he lets loose a diatribe of profanity against her for not throwing the book at him. Later, she learns just how serious he was when he told her he’d prove to everybody just what an “empty-headed c**t” she really is. You’ll understand exactly what I mean by that when you see the movie, but you can pretty much take that literally, if you get my drift, and I know that you do.

The tension and excitement that keeps Law Abiding Citizen at the top of its game comes from the well-edited (Sarah Farrand; Grace) and superbly directed (F. Gary Gray; Be Cool) behind-the-scenes team as well as the chemistry between the principals, Foxx and Butler. An effective score by Brian Tyler (The Final Destination) also ratchets up the suspense and hits all the right notes to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The mystery of how an incarcerated wing-nut in a maximum security prison is managing to commit a series of remarkably designed and executed murders without ever having a single visitor or phone call from someone acting as his accomplice will keep you wondering right up to the last reel just how he is pulling this off.

I’m surprised Law Abiding Citizen hasn’t gotten a lot more buzz than it has. It certainly deserves an audience. Granted, the plot does ask that you suspend your belief more than once ~ coincidences are too...well, coincidental, to be believed anywhere but in the movies ~ but Law Abiding Citizen is still bloody good fun and definitely worth a look-see.

Where the Wild Things Are

Contrary to what you may think, Where the Wild Things Are is not a documentary about the goings-on in my boudoir. Nor is it an expose of what you are going to find in Khloe Kardasian’s lingerie hamper, though there are critters in the movie Where the Wild Things Are that probably resemble what you’d find in her underpants if you looked at them under a microscope.

Believe it or not, Where the Wild Things Are is a(n alleged) children’s movie, although with a well-deserved PG rating I would hardly encourage anyone to grab their six year old and rush out to see it. This thing is downright creepy ~ Blair Witch Project creepy ~ without the swearing, but still managing the low-budget feel and wilderness motif that makes a big city gal like me long for room service and fluffy towels.

First, let me give you the gist of what Where the Wild Things Are is about. It is essentially a simple tale spun off from a ten sentence (!!!) 1963 bestselling book written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak about  a boy named Max (debuting Max Record) who has a fight with his mother and is sent to his room where he spends the evening envisioning himself as the king of an island of monsters. Eventually he gets homesick (and hungry) and wants to come home, wrapping up his punishment and imaginary adventure just in time for dinner. The End. Okay, so it’s ten lines. You can’t expect Shakespeare, but apparently you can expect generations of kids to grow up on this book like it is the pre-adolescent equivalent of the Talmud or something.

 

So when the movie opened last week, a flock of the young’uns who work at the Essex Cinemas were all in a froth wanting to see it. They were practically devastated when I arrived on Friday afternoon and I told a quartet of concession cuties on duty that I was there to see Law Abiding Citizen instead of Where the Wild Things Are. They were hoping I’d be their envoy to witness the first showing so I could report back immediately afterward on just how wonderful it absolutely had to be. It’s just as well I missed that premiere because I also missed the Jim Jones’ special Sendak Kool Aid® recipe apparently the rest of the world was drinking back in the day. Not only had I never read the book I had never even seen it except in passing while strolling through various bookstores over the years. Now, my penance for living a hedonistic lifestyle and using birth control had caught up to me and I was being forced to face my ignorance of all things popular amongst the elementary school set. Granted, director Spike Jonze (creator of tv and film’s Jackass series) does make some changes to Sendak’s original story (there’d have to be in order to stretch his ten lines into a 95-minute film), but the tone and the monsters are transferred from page to cinema without losing any of their original charm, if you want to call it that.

Personally, I didn’t find these critters all that charismatic, but it’s probably because I am a pragmatist. When Max meets his new pals late at night, illuminated only by firelight, they are grunting and growling and the biggest of the lot is on a rampage of destruction  ~ not exactly an introduction I’d find enticing for making friends. Worse yet, as soon as Max is sized up by the group, the female monster, Judith (voiced by Catherine O'Hara; Away We Go), not only suggests eating him, but also chastises him for probably having “crunchy, little bird bones” that will be a problem to swallow. What the hell kind of a ‘good time’ image is that for an impressionable four or five year old to think about? Their parents might as well take the kids to see Saw VI for that kind of educational experience. Oh sure, by morning, things lighten up in more ways than just having the sun come up, and everyone is having a “rumpus” of a good time demolishing trees throughout the forest Where the Wild Things Are, but I found myself more concerned about whether Max was going to get covered in ticks from riding on the backs of these hairy beasties or if the creatures would all die once their woods were clear-cut in another week or so of this senseless deforestation. It’s never clear how long the monsters have lived on this (imaginary) island, but I imagined the desert that head monster Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini; tv’s “The Sopranos” of course)  and Max travel through was probably last week’s State Park.

Nothing much happens in Where the Wild Things Are that doesn’t happen in any human home populated with a pre-teen herd. The monsters bicker, they play, they collaborate on projects, and then they turn on one another. Okay, so Carol does rip his best friend’s arm off, but doesn’t that happen all the time with kids? At least he sticks a tree branch in the open wound as a replacement limb. Limb? Ha, I kill myself.

The problem I have with Where the Wild Things Are has to do with the subliminal messages it sends to kids that today’s parents seem to be missing. Maybe parents are so cowed by their children they don’t even realize bad behavior when they see it anymore. I don’t know what world they ~ or Max’s mom (Catherine Keener; The Soloist) live in, but if I was Max’s mother and he got up on a kitchen counter in his dirty shoes and screamed “FEED ME, WOMAN!” at me he’d get himself locked in the nearest broom closet without dinner or consciousness before he had a chance to run away. Instead, she squirms and begs him to be quiet for fear that her date (Mark Ruffalo;  What Doesn't Kill You, in a throw-away three or four line role) in the living room might hear. Please, Louise! I’m sure her date would be just as happy to see her sell the kid to a circus freak show than get saddled with this little candidate for a Ritalin Ranch somewhere in Idaho, so if she knocked him off that counter he’d just ask for a little more wine and a lot more coochie by evening’s end.

Max is 100% a juvenile delinquent in the making. In the first ten minutes of the movie the kid is off the hook with his rage and destroys his sister’s personal property when he trashes her room, he mouths off at mama, runs away from home, commits grand theft when he steals a sailboat, then vandalizes the vehicle by carving his name into its beautiful teak wood hull. He barely meets the monster squad before he lies through his teeth and even commits identity fraud. Hmm. I’m not sure he’s the one we should be worried for so much as about. He has the potential to become another Jeffrey Dahmer by the time he turns 16. I mean, think about it, after all, this is his funky fantasy, and he’s the one dreaming about how tasty the meat of human flesh will taste coming off the bone. Where the Wild Things Are, indeed.