March 2010

Maybe it was an oversight, or maybe just a terrible editorial decision.  Or maybe it’s just how they do it.

The March cover of Vanity Fair looks beautiful, doesn’t it?  It’s their annual “Hollywood Issue” featuring all of “the fresh faces of 2010″; Abbie Cornish, Kristen Stewart, Carey Mulligan, Amanda Seyfried, Rebecca Hall, Mia Wasikowska, Emma Stone, Evan Rachel Wood, and Anna Kendrick.

Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz found the most accurate words to describe these beauties: with their “button nose[s]“, “downy-soft cheeks,” “patrician looks and celebrated pedigree,” their “dewy, wide-eyed loveliness,” and “Ivory-soap-girl features.”  All very beautiful girls and all very….white!  Actually, this very cover is being heavily scrutinized for its lack of color, and we don’t mean that drab, boring wardrobe either.

Not sure what happened with this years cover, but Vanity Fair has done alright in the past with their “New Hollywood” covers.  Take a look for example at 2008’s cover:

This is not an all white cover!….Oh whoops! That wasn’t the picture!

How about this one:

March 2008 Spread

Yes, that’s more like it.

Actually, this years “Hollywood” cover looks a lot like every other years.  I’m not saying that VF isn’t a good magazine.  It has great writers, stories and fashion pages, everything that makes up a good base for readership.  It’s just when it comes to their covers they are a little skewed and rarely pick celebrities that are not white or not slender.

Annie Liebovitz has done the photography for these “Hollywood” covers since it debuted in 1995.  Take a look at VF’s past spreads.  As you do, ask yourself: Is it really all VF’s fault? Or does Hollywood maybe have something to do with the selection of its leading ladies?  You make the decision yourself and tell us what you think in that handy comment box below, because, well that’s what it’s their for.

And while you’re at it…who do you think should have made this years cover?

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In perusing some other reviews of Funny People online I can tell already that it is going to be a slightly misunderstood film, which is tragic because the movie is absolutely brilliant. Many critics are criticizing director Judd Apatow for following up the likes of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up with a movie where he tries to act all mature before he’s really established himself as a serious director. Others say that just when he is about to approach something real about life and mortality, he loses his nerve and reverts back to profanity and low-brow humor. Normally I don’t pay much attention to other critics when I’m writing my reviews, but this movie is so outstanding that I feel compelled to defend it against people who missed out on one of its central and most important themes.

It is a little known fact that some of our most successful and talented comedians – Jim Carrey and Mike Meyers, as just two examples – have suffered immense personal tragedies in their lives, and have therefore turned to comedy from a very young age almost like an automatic defense mechanism to help them deal with their emotional traumas. For people like that, pursuing a life in comedy is as much of a psychological reaction to traumatic experiences as anything else, and Funny People is formed around this theme like a raindrop around a speck of dust. And the fact that most of the major characters are essentially playing themselves adds another level of realism to the proceedings that is almost nonexistent in the “low-brow” comedy field.

But make no mistake, Funny People is definitely not a low-brow comedy. And it is not Judd Apatow “getting all serious” after a stream of less intelligent comedies. It’s an amazingly well written and performed story of a professional comedian who receives some mortal news that he is totally unprepared to deal with. There are times when the movie approaches deeply serious themes and then backtracks into crassness and profanity, but this isn’t Apatow losing his nerve, it’s the very real people portrayed in the movie dealing with life in the best way that they know how. The movie exists firmly within the hermetically sealed environment of stand-up comedians, hence the title, but it is an amazingly heartfelt and realistic presentation of how they live through difficult times. And best of all, even amidst all the talk of disease and death, it’s still funny.

So here’s your plot in exactly 100 words – George Simmons (Adam Sandler) is a hugely successful comedian and actor who discovers that he has months to live. His success has left him so isolated that he has no one to turn to, and he deals with this news by lashing out at his audience. One such performance is followed by a young comedian named Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) who’s trying to make a name for himself. He makes fun of Simmons’ dark performance, earning himself a job writing jokes for him. Their resulting business friendship provides huge opportunities for comedic drama, and Apatow goes to town with it.

I am still reeling from the depressing experience of watching Bruno, and the immense feeling of disappointment that such trashy sex humor was supposed to be the best that we could expect at the movies these days, but Funny People has absolutely blown my expectations out of the water. It’s amazing to consider that there may very well be more sex humor in Funny People than there was in Bruno, even if only because of sheer running time, but this is sex humor done right. This is sex humor that is actually about something, that has intelligence and depth.

I know that sounds weird, but I am predicting that Funny People will be represented in several categories at the Academy Awards for 2009. Some of the possibilities are Best Actor for Adam Sandler, Best Supporting Actor for Seth Rogen, Best Actress for Leslie Mann, Best Director for Judd Apatow, and something in the way of Best Music and Best Screenplay. Best Picture might be a bit lofty, but at this point I wouldn’t mind seeing it at least get nominated. I hesitate to call these actual predictions because the Oscars can be so unpredictable sometimes, but mostly I’m just trying to impress upon you that you need to go see the movie. It’s a rare opportunity to see some of our most talented comedians (the horizonless stream of celebrity cameos provides one of the movie’s many charms) acting like real people while still acting like comedians. You’ll understand when you see it. Just make sure to go see it…

The Bean Meter

5 Beans out of 5.

Seth Rogen appeared on Jimmy Kimmel last night to promote his new movie Funny People. In the interview Seth revisits the first time on the show where he was kiss dissed by Megan Fox.

Remembering his first time, which also happened to be Megan Fox’s first as well, Seth says that before the show, Megan visited him in his dressing room and asked if he would stay with her on stage while she did her interview so she wouldn’t be so nervous. Seth graciously agreed.

After Seth’s interview, Megan came out and Megan goes over and kisses Jimmy on the cheek and than as Seth goes in for his cheek kiss, Megan backs away giving him her hands and says, “Thank you.” Ooooh burn!!!

Jimmy finds the old footage of Megan Fox’s entrance. Super funny. She totally kiss disses Seth. He hangs his head down low like, “What the hell just happened? How did I misread her signs?”

To promote their new movie Funny People, Seth Rogen and director Judd Apatow headed to the Howard Stern Show where Seth decided to dis his Knocked Up co-star Katherine Heigl for her criticizing their 2007 smash-hit movie in a Vanity Fair interview.

In Heigl’s interview she says that Knocked Up “paints the women as shrews,” and the men as “lovable.” Something Rogen thinks is unfair, considering her new movie The Ugly Truth. He responds by saying,”that [movie] looks like it really puts women on a pedestal in a beautiful way,” he joked to Stern. “I hear there’s a scene where she’s wearing … underwear … with a vibrator in it, so I’d have to see if that was uplifting for women,” the actor added.

Rogen is a little pissed at Apatow too for defending and making excuses for the b**chy actress. Apatow told Stern’s listeners that, “Heigl was probably doing six hours of interviews and kissing everyone’s a**, and then got tired and slipped a bit.” Rogen jumps in saying, “I didn’t slip and I was doing f—— interviews all day too … I didn’t say s—!” Rogen exclaimed.  But Apatow continued to defend the starlet, saying that she “could not have been cooler.”

Rogen, however, feels better since he’s not the only one on the receiving end of Heigl’s remarks.”I gotta say it’s not like we’re the only people she said some bat—- crazy things about. That’s kind of her bag now.”

Listen to Rogen and Apatow on the Howard Stern radio interview below – the Heigl comments begin at 7:15 on the slide.

Judd Apatow is the 20 Questions Interview for the upcoming July/August issue of Playboy Magazine which hits newsstands on June 19th.

Among the things Judd talks about is his directing style, living with Adam Sandler, mentoring Seth Rogen, crying at movies and his obsession with penises.

Check out some excerpts from the hilarious interview below:

On why penises are so funny (and are so often featured in his films): “A penis looks like a man with a big nose and large ears. [laughs] It’s a vulnerable area, so it’s good for comedy. But you have to be very careful about how much you show.”

On losing his virginity: “I said to the girl, ‘Hey, was it good for you, too?’ And she said, ‘Well, I guess it’ll get better eventually.’ Sadly, she wasn’t right. It wasn’t better for her or any of the women who subsequently agreed to sleep with me.”

On his love for Seth Rogen: “I don’t know if we should be married or if I should become his adoptive grandfather. Seth has said he thinks of me as his creepy uncle. [laughs] I like that.”

On Seth Rogen’s claim that his penis has gray pubes, looks very distinguished, and could teach a Harvard class in literature: “It’s a complete fabrication. I use Grecian Formula now. It still looks distinguished. From a certain angle it kind of looks like Ben Kingsley.”

On living with Adam Sandler (who co-stars in Funny People): “We had a good time together. It was a $900-a-month apartment. I paid $425, and he paid $475 because he had a bathroom in his bedroom. I had to use the guest bathroom. Most days we would sleep till noon, get up, eat, spend way too much time in a mall, do stand-up-comedy sets at the Improv and then eat again at 1:30 in the morning.”

On Adam Sandler demanding to see his manhood: “He used to say, ‘I just want to know what I’m dealing with.’ That was his only explanation. On some deeply macho level, I understood.”

On men crying in his movies: “I’m a big crier. Sometimes when my wife [actress Leslie Mann] and I are watching a movie we’ll both start to cry at the same time, and then we’ll slowly turn toward each other to acknowledge that it got both of us. That’s great and funny when we’re both crying, but it’s not so wonderful when I’m the only one in tears.”

On whether success has mellowed him, or if he still has the fierce ambition of a filmmaker with something to prove: “I know what it feels like to have your movie bomb. I know what it feels like to have your movie bomb even though you think it’s really good. I know what it’s like to have your movie bomb when you know it’s not very good. I know what it’s like to succeed with a movie you’re proud of. I know what it’s like to succeed with a movie even you don’t think is very good. I’ve been through all the permutations. After everything that has happened to me, I feel I can relax and take a deep breath. But as I get older, I realize nothing has really changed. The second I finish a movie, I always want to occupy my head with a new problem, a new project. If I were truly mature, I probably wouldn’t feel the obsessive need to keep making more and more movies. I would just smell a leaf for a few years and be satisfied.”

Make sure to check out Judd in Playboy on June 19th!

Watch a 13 year old Seth Rogen doing stand up comedy before he was famous below!

Cute kid… what happened??  JK… totes magotes… JK!

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, check this out. I just watched Monsters vs. Aliens, and now I am about to set a world record for the movie review that invokes the names of more previous movies than any other movie review that has ever been written in the history of mankind. With luck, I imagine this will surpass, for sheer public amazement, even the incredible 2004 world record of the oldest Jewish oral surgeon ever to travel across America on a bicycle without getting a flat tire. I’m gonna be famous!

And why would I attempt to do such a thing? Well, I believe in the theory that one of the most important ingredients for a successful animated film that is good for all ages is that it has to be full of clever homages to previous films that will be as much fun to point out as anything in the rest of the movie. So I guess you could say that if I’m successful in my world record attempt, it’s safe to assume that Monsters vs. Aliens is a pretty successful movie. Personally I thought the movie was awesome regardless of whatever fame I might achieve in the near future, but here’s hoping, right? If anyone from the Guinness Book is reading this, give me a call so we can get this thing off the ground!

First of all, here’s the story. A meteorite has been detected heading toward earth, and scientists determine that it is going to impact in Modesto, California, which reminds me of the astonishing accuracy of the scientists in Knowing, who managed to calculate and actual intersection where the impending object would hit. Due to its trajectory, the object slams into the ground near a church, nearly ruining the wedding of a Susan Murphy, who is about to marry her Anchor Man fiance Derek, who dreams of leaving his lowly TV existence for bigger and better thing, as did Nicholas Cage in The Weather Man and Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty.

"Come on honey, what's the matter? Fresno!"

Much to Susan’s chagrin, Derek has scrapped their honeymoon plans to Paris in favor of a romantic trip to beautiful Fresno, California which, as you know, has only been mentioned in a movie twice before, in Thelma & Louise and Con Air. Neither mention was very flattering, but no matter. Derek is planning to enter the 55th television market on the world famous Channel 23 in Fresno when  Susan has the misfortune to have a meteor land on her, though luckily she suffers no real injury other than a hyper-acceleration of her pituitary gland. In probably the movie’s most obvious reference, her character is lifted right out of Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, although my understanding is that her actual height in the movie is 49′11″.

The military is called as she grows several feet per second, and miraculously they manage to arrive in about 20 seconds, helicopters and all, reminding me of the response (and the General) from The Iron Giant and the arrival of alien life forms hitching a ride to earth on meteors and such in tons and tons of movies, from the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers and modern remake The Invasion (which was a lot better than expected) to classic monster movies like It Came From Outer Space and War of the Worlds, 80s classics like The Last Starfighter, Enemy Mine, the bizarre sci-fi romance Starman, and of course Deadly Spawn (seriously did you see this thing? Hilarious!). Modern audiences might be more likely to notice more recent references, like the sporadically amusing 2001 comedy Evolution and the morbidly amusing horror comedy Slither (this one, of course, will likely be lost on the kids in the audience), although maybe it’s a sign of my age that the first thing I thought of when Susan started growing was that guy who turned into grass in the outstandingly stupid 1982 Stephen King horror movie Creepshow. What a mess that thing was. Anyway, getting back to more specific homages, Susan is then tied down in a remake of the same scene in Gulliver’s Travels, and pretty soon You might also find yourself remembering the hilarious bad movie adaptations of the imprisonment of King Kong.

The U.S. government's most top secret weapons!

So it seems that the U.S. government has been covering up its monster research so well that even the conspiracy theorists (do you mind if I count that one? Thanks!) obsessed with governmental cover-ups of Area 51 and other alien landings haven’t even noticed it yet. Once Susan turns into a giant, she is captured and imprisoned with other monsters who have been captured and are being secretly studied, and for convenience, the government renames her “Ginormica.”

Her cellmates include “The Missing Link” (a lizard-like creature with a Cheshire grin who looks like a cross between Godzilla, The Swamp Thing, and Will Arnett), Dr. Cockroach Ph. D, a bulgy-eyed insect in a lab coat who makes me think of Jeff Goldblum from The Fly had he not screwed up his experiment so badly. He also reminded me of “Mant,” the movie-within-a-movie in the classic monster movie parody Matinee, but has some of the same mannerisms of Abe Sapien from Hellboy and Hellboy II. And of course, we can’t forget about B.O.B., who is not really an homage to The Blob, they just animated it right into the movie, took a letter out of its name and replaced it with Seth Rogen’s guttural voicing. Nice work! Oh and there’s also a gigantic hamster that must be the cutest representation of a movie monster since the baby in King Kong Lives except that it’s the size of a blimp with a brain the size of a walnut and takes its voice from the pod-racing scene in The Phantom Menace. I’m pretty sure LucasFilm has that sound copyrighted…

All of these Little Monsters seem pretty harmless, of course, but soon we learn that with the meteorite came a monstrous robotic alien that looks like a Pac Man ghost with one eye. There’s a great scene where the military and government approach the monster where it’s partially buried in the ground, and no one less than the President of the United States personally approaches the beast to attempts to make contact, reminding me of that brief scene from the beginning of Troy (”Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn’t that be a sight…”).

Seriously, take away one eye and this is the alien robot...

After playing the theme song from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the helicopters leading the giant rodent around with a billboard of lights is also a throw-back to Close Encounters), Mr. President then breaks it down and churns out that classic 80s song from Beverly Hills Cop. You know the one I’m talking about.  You can, of course, insert your own connection to some kind of criticism of various presidents portrayed in movies like W. or even Frost/Nixon, although it would be an interesting debate about who exactly is being ridiculed in the president’s exit, where he is dragged on board Air Force 2 throwing up Nixon’s two-handed peace sign and yelling, “I’m brave! I’m a brave president!”

As is all too often the case, things don’t go exactly according to plan, and unfortunately the government’s best and brightest could only come up with such questions as “What would Oprah do?” and “Can we transport the U.S. to a safer planet?” so the government is forced to bring the monsters out of their half century of hiding to save mankind from the ravages of this robotic beast, leading to one of the best lines in the movie -

Missing Link: “Has the Earth gotten warmer? That would be really great to know that. That would be a very convenient truth.”

See what I mean?

Complicating matters is that a evil genius named Galaxar has a Hitleresque scheme to destroy the Earth and create his own planet called Galaxar (remember Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull? “Guess what I’m gonna call it!”) using an element called quantonium, which he’s trying to recover, and it’s up to our bizarre team of monster heroes to come to the aid of a race of people who have imprisoned them for decades.

The movie is presented in breath-taking 3D, although 3D remains nothing more than a gimmick. Many people think it’s the way of the future (”thewayofthefuture…thewayofthefuture…thewayofthefuture…“), but I just can’t see that happening. I wonder if this is the same way that people felt who doubted that sound film was the way of the future back in the 1930s, and that those of us resisting the coming of the 3D revolution are no different from the people (like Charlie Chaplin) who insisted that “talkies” were nothing but a passing fad. Time will tell. But regardless of the fact that the 3D doesn’t add anything to the story other than a shiny distraction in an already impressively animated and acted film, it’s clear that everyone involved with the movie had a blast with it, and it’s hard not to have a great time along with them.

Where's a Visine cannon when you need one??

But like I said, the movie is packed with homages and clever throw-backs to great films of the past, and I would hate to ruin the experience of looking for them yourself, but here are the ones that I found in some form or other and haven’t mentioned yet – Star Trek (”Code Nemoy!”), the War of the Worlds remake, E.T. (”E.T. Go Home!!”), Dr. Strangelove, Jarhead, Full Metal Jacket (trust me on those ones, they’re in there…), Coneheads, Monster Mash, Innerspace, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Journey to the Center of the Earth, TRON, Scooby Doo, The Clone Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey and hence WALL-E, The Twilight Zone, I, Robot, The Fifth Element, Antz, A Bug’s Life, The Quiet Earth, Spaceballs (this one’s actually mentioned in dialogue), Eagle Eye (but not in a bad way), I Am Legend, Ghostbusters, Vertigo, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with the rooftop chasing, Monsters, Inc. obviously, Aliens obviously, The Rock, Bicentennial Man (yeah I said it), , Independence Day (”A deflector shield. Typical!”), Edward Scissorhands, License to Kill, Police Academy 4 (Okay, this one is just because Derek’s exclamation “It never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever occurred to me” reminded me of Commandant Lassard’s sign “Have a very, very, very, very, very nice day.”), and of course, maybe the most important of all, Super Ducktales! Classic!

Happy hunting!

4.5 Beans out of 5.

In Vanity Fair’s April 2009 issue they give a tribute to the new comedians of our time. Vanity Fair’s photographers capture these funny men and woman as some of our favorite legends, from Russel Brand as Charlie Chapman to Seth Rogen as Frida Kahlo. For articles and video of these comedians visit vanityfair.com

Jonah Hill (Superbad), Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man), Jason Segel ( I Love You Man), and Seth Rogen’s (Knocked Up) tribute to the VF March 2006 cover

Russel Brand (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) as Charlie Chapman

Danny McBride (Pineabpple Express) as Jack Nicholson in The Shinning

Bill Hader (SNL), Anna Faris (House Bunny), Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) and Leslie Mann (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) as The Honeymooners

Amy Poehler (SNL) and husband Will Arnett (Arrested Development) as The Accomplices

Paul Rudd as Dr. Frankenstein

Jason Segel as Buster Keaton

Jonah Hill as George Washington

Seth Rogen as Frida Kahlo

If you haven’t been to the video store in the last couple weeks you have some serious catching up to do. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are together again and this time actually have some screen time together, Nicholas Cage is up to his old international assassin tricks, Seth Rogen and James Franco smoke it up good, Vin Diesel is a futuristic mercenary, and the guys that brought you such gems as Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and the Scary Movies return with another hour and a half of disappointment. And those are only last week’s DVDs. Bring on the microwave popcorn!

Pineapple Express (2008), R, 117 mins.

I saw a ten-year-old kid almost choke on an ice cube in the theater watching this movie because he was laughing so hard. I don’t know what exactly a ten-year-old was doing watching this thing anyway, but it’s definitely one of the funniest stoner movies I’ve ever seen.

The ’stoner movie’ is a pretty thin sub-genre, but when a good one comes along it’s always good for a few laughs, and Pineapple Express is certainly no exception.

Seth Rogen and James Franco each fit perfectly into the very different roles that they play, one a regular guy with a regular but thankless job, and the other a diligent weed dealer who provides the necessary, ah, escape. Both are equally aimless and unambitious until they become involved in an intricate web of danger involving the gangland underworld and corrupt cops.

Most importantly, they constantly find themselves in the most bizarre and outlandish situations imaginable. Keep the tissues handy because you’ll laugh yourself to tears!

Righteous Kill (2008), R, 101 mins.

It would be putting things pretty lightly to say that the highly anticipated reunion of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino was a little disappointing. The last time they appeared in a film together was in Heat in 1995, where they had almost no screen time together. Now, they have nothing but screen time together, but unfortunately that’s about all the movie has, too. For all the hype, there was not only nothing new about Righteous Kill, it was a routine, even boring by-the-numbers action thriller.

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran NYPD detectives who have been friends and partners for about as long as either of them can remember. Their latest case is lifted right out of The Boondock Saints – a vigilante killer who is systematically killing off violent criminals who have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system.

Complicating matters are two other pesky detectives who have good reasons to believe that the two good guys might not be so good after all. It’s not a bad movie, but definitely a clear case of the whole being distantly less than the sum of its parts.

Babylon A.D. (2008), PG-13, 90 mins (Director’s Cut – 161 mins!!)

Ok, so I might like to take the time to suggest that you take the time to notice the discrepancy between the official running time of Babylon A.D. and the running time of the Director’s Cut. Evidently the studio cut out a whopping 71 minutes of Director Matthieu Kassovitz’s epic vision, which might be part of the reason that he publicly disowned the movie before it was released.

After having seen it, it’s not hard to see why. I don’t know that it’s bad enough for a professional filmmaker to make such a critical and decisive move as publicly abandoning the movie, but it was definitely a pretty good letdown.

In my review I mentioned that it might be worthwhile to wait and see if the entire original film would be released on DVD, but unfortunately I’m in China and all I have access to is massive quantities of dirt-cheap illegal DVDs, although I don’t know that I would have the interest to sit through three hours of Babylon anyway. But if I do you’ll be the first to know!

Bangkok Dangerous (2008), R, 99 mins.

I love Nicholas Cage, but before you take that as a recommendation to watch his latest action cheesefest, I should also mention that I love Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van-Damme, and really, really bad horror movies. Cage is once again squeezed into a role that doesn’t remotely fit him – a high-level assassin (cleverly named Joe) with the greatest job. He gets to travel, the money is good, and he gets to ride around on cool BMW motorcycles. The only drawback seems to be that he is occastionally put into situations where he has to approach strangers in foreign countries while they’re in the middle of eating dinner and ask them to help him kill people.

here are a lot of roles that Nicholas Cage can do really well. He was perfect in The Rock, he inhabited his roles in Adaptation and Matchstick Men, and he even played a good investigator highly disturbed at his subject in 8mm, but here we’re expected to identify with this guy who is having conflictions about being given an assignment to kill a politician who happens to be a good man. It creates a confusing feeling when we’re expected to aspire to the moral high-ground of a contract killer.

Cage has done a lot worse, but he’s also done a lot better…

Disaster Movie (2008), PG-13, 88 mins.

Ok, so if there is one movie that you should avoid watching for the rest of your life, this is probably it. It is a stupendously idiotic “comedy” without a thought in its head. It’s a sad, genuinely despressing representation of how deeply the spoof film has sunk since the times of the great comedies of Mel Brooks and Leslie Neilsen.

Not that we should be surprised. Film school dropouts Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have been dropping these bombs in theaters for more than a decade.

I pride myself on my movie knowledge, but I am at a loss to explain how they’re still making a profit on these things. Will we ever catch on and stop paying to see them?

.

Mirrors (2008), R, 110 mins.

Alexadre Aja, the man behind the intensely creepy 2003 film High Tension and the intensely crappy 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes has now brought us something in between. Kiefer Sutherland adds credibility to the otherwise unoriginal horror film Mirrors, about an exiled New York City cop who soon finds himself battling a mysterious force hidden behind every reflective surface that is endangering his sanity, his life, and the lives of his family.

I understand people who feel that there is something inherently wrong with paying real money to watch Jack Bauer scream at his reflection for two hours, but as a creepy horror film it’s hard to say that Mirrors isn’t a success, It’s full of clever homages to old horror films, and the last five minutes are worth any other disappointments in the rest of the movie.

The Family That Preys (2008), PG-13, 111 mins.

Ok, so I’m going to just go ahead and admit that I never managed to bring myself to watch this movie and I’ve felt a little guilty about that ever since, but it’s not until now that I feel a little sense of vindication about that. It was a popular disaster, with a whopping 2.8/10 user rating on the IMDb.

For those of you who are still interested, here’s what it’s about -

While paternity secrets, marital infidelity, greed and unsavory business dealings threaten to derail both families, Charlotte and Alice decide to take a breather from it all by making a cross-country road trip in which they rediscover themselves and possibly find a way to save their families from ruin in “Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys.”

Sounds fascinating!

Appaloosa (2008), R, 115 mins.

So the tagline for Appaloosa is “Feelings get you killed.” If there has ever been a statement made that appies to all westerns, that’s probably it. I have never been much of a western fan, and except for the occasional Eastwood fix or Back to the Future III I have generally avoided them until the highly impressive 3:10 to Yuma really changed my mind on the whole genre.

Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson star as two lawmen assigned to defend an lawless town in the 1880s from a brutal rancher named Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). Soon their friendship and ability to protect the town are both challeged by the arrival of a young widow plays by Renee Zelwegger.

Ed Harris turns in a brilliant performance both in front of and behind the camera, and you can always count on Viggo Mortenson and Jeremy Irons to do something cool. See this one.

My Best Friend’s Girl (2008), R, 101 mins.

Jumping on the bandwagon with Matthieu Kassovitz about badmouthing your own movies, Dane Cook famously berated the poster for this movie as its release date approached. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the poster, at least it’s honest because it doesn’t look anything different from any one of countless dozens of goofy romantic comedies that have come along over the years, and MY Best Friend’s Girl is certainly nothing new.

Dane Cook plays Tank, the best friend of Dustin (Jason Biggs), who is faced with the unenviable task of taking a girl on a date that is so catastrophically bad that she will decide that she should go back to Dustin after all. Needless to say, things don’t go quite as planned.

Let’s just hope she doesn’t figure out that her boyfriend was the star of Loser or all is lost!

Swing Vote (2008), PG-13, 120 mins.

Before you express your amazement that Kevin Costner is still coming out with almost unnoticed movies, you should also realize that Swing Vote also stars not only Dennis Hopper, George Lopez, Kelsey Grammer, and Stanley Tucci, but the great Judge Reinhold! That should be reason enough in itself to see it!

It’s not exactly a stretch of the imagination to come to the conclusion that the movie is a response to the tense political climate of our time. We have seen two of the most controversial presidential elections in American history twice in a row, so if anything it’s amazing that it has taken this long for someone to come out with a movie where all the madness comes down to just one guy’s decision.

It’s an entertaining exploration of the complexities and inadequacies of our electoral process, as well as a fantasy film in which the fate of the higest office in America could come down to the whim of a lovable, beer-slinging loser. Here’s hoping!

Brideshead Revisited (2008), PG-13, 133 mins.

Ok, so I guess I may as well warn you that Brideshead Revisited is based on a British novel from 1945 and is nearly two and a half hours long. Sounds a bit like homework to me.

It is, however, a well-made and intelligent World War II drama about the loss of innocence and a unique look at the life of aristocratic British life in the 1940s. It’s interesting and meaningful but hardly a thrill ride. I recommend it if you happen to be in the mood for a little historical love story and maybe even a little cognitive activity in your weekend moviegoing. Enjoy!

If Kevin Smith can’t do anything new with the romantic comedy genre I think it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s never going to happen. The first 45 minutes or so of Zack and Miri Make A Porno have some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a movie since Pineapple Express (which was written by fellow funnyman Judd Apatow). The scene where Zack is talking to the two gay guys at the high school reunion cost me a perfectly good cup of delicious iced coffee, most of which ended up in my lap and sprayed all over my coffee table. I think I rewound that scene and watched it over again about 15 times before I finally heard everything over my laughing.

But there definitely comes a point in the movie where the predictability factor shoots through the roof and, despite Kevin Smith’s undeniably outstanding writing skills, the movie takes a serious downturn.

I am not as huge of a fan of Kevin Smith as some of my friends. One of my best friends grew up in New Jersey right next to where Clerks was filmed and has thus developed kind of a special relationship with Smith’s films, but while I enjoyed Clerks and loved Mallrats and was mildly impressed with Chasing Amy (except for all the screaming), I haven’t been very interested in anything Smith has done since then. I was outwardly bored with Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back seemed like such a cash-in to me, I still haven’t gotten around to seeing Clerks II and I’ll probably never watch Jersey Girl. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are in that thing, for God’s sake.

What if this guy got you pregnant?

But for a good portion of Zack and Miri I thought that I had been missing something all along, or at least that I had forgotten the undeniable charm of Smith’s work. It’s true that he is a brilliant writer. He can create conversations that have a hugely profane but still realistic flow, and with actors like Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (and a whole list of others) nailing all of their lines, it makes for something special in the comedy department. Sadly, the movie is so predictable that I almost feel like I should give you a spoiler warning just to tell you that.

Zack and Miri are life-long friends who have a relationship of convenience. They enjoy each other’s company and have a real friendship, but they are roommates primarily for financial reasons. They both have dead-end jobs and rely on each other to share the rent and bills, but a variety of factors (mostly Zack’s inability to put their utility bills above a “Fleshlight” on his list of priorities) they eventually find themselves months behind on their bills and unable to pay their rent.

Jason Long, who I still haven't forgiven for the relentlessly stupid Jeepers Creepers movies, gives one of the funniest performances in the movie.

One day Miri accidentally allows herself to be filmed by a couple of teenagers while she’s changing clothes in plain sight at the coffee shop where Zack works and the video shows up on the internet with hundreds of thousands of people watching it daily. Not a bad turnout for what is really a pretty thoroughly uninteresting video, but no matter. This gives Zack the idea that they should make a porno. Even if only the 800 or so people from their high school graduating class bought a copy for $20 a pop or so, it would instantly solve all of their financial problems.

It’s interesting to notice that Zack and Miri suffer through more moral and emotional torment trying to accept the idea of having sex with each other than they do about selling their naked images to the porn industry. I would have thought that crossing the line into making porn movies would be a pretty big step, but not these two. You see, it seems that Miri’s parents are dead and Zack grandparents are dead (?), so they have no one to be disappointed in them. It is, however, one of the film’s clever accusations of the public at large that the only reason that everyone doesn’t get involved in making porn is because they’re worried about what their parents would think.

The cast and crew and cast of Zack and Miri Make A Porno.

They amass a makeshift crew made up of Lester the Molester (Jason Mewes), a stripper named Stacey (real life porn star Katie Morgan), an aging stripper named Bubbles (Traci Lords) who earns her name with a rather disturbing trick that she does at bachelor parties, and Barry, a black man named Delaney (Craig Robinson) with a brutal marriage to a black caricature of a wife and more than his share of financial problems himself. Jeff Anderson also pops up occasionally.

The first half of the movie is some of the best work that Smith has done in years. The dialogue is hilarious, none of the film’s admittedly extensive profanity seems overdone, and even the characters are believable as they make this completely unbelievable plan. I spent most of the first half of the movie trying to figure out what was going to go wrong and prevent the porno from ever being filmed, but I spent the second half watching the movie slog through a sadly lengthy list of romantic comedy clichés as it labored toward the obligatory Hollywood ending.

As was to be expected, the awkwardness angle is tapped like an empty beer keg in Zack and Miri's scene...

I understand that the word “porno” has generated some controversy, prompting some newspapers to refuse to print ads for the movie and some theaters to refuse to show it. I’m wondering if Kevin Smith predicted this and if it was part of his decision to use this title, since getting his film banned from select theaters and newspapers is probably the quickest and most efficient way to ensure it’s success. At any rate, it is another sad, sad sign of the times when the word “porno” will generate frantic animosity, but no one has a problem with blood-soaked, degenerate films like Hostel and the never-ending Saw films from being shipped to theaters. Go figure.

The comedy in Zack and Miri Make A Porno is definitely successful, particularly for the first half of the movie, but the romance doesn’t work as well. I’m not sure why Smith would so heavily cater to a mainstream audience with the overall arc of his film quite this much, but the pandering doesn’t quite ruin the hilarity that preceded it, so at least there’s that. If the comedic tone of the first half had made it all the way to the end we would have a comedy classic, but this is still one of the better comedies to come along recently.

The Bean Meter

3.5 Beans out of 5.