SAW 5 (2008)

“You won’t believe how it ends”, proclaim the posters for the latest ‘Saw’ movie. It’s a good strap-line, and for once it’s true. You won’t believe how pitifully anti-climactic the ending is; the film doesn’t so much end as come to an abrupt, bewildering halt. This underwhelming denouement aside, even the most die-hard of ‘Saw’ fans won’t credit how tedious, lame and pointless this fourth sequel manages to be. ‘Saw IV’ tried to jump-start the series’ failing heart by introducing a Jigsaw acolyte, Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor).



Padded out with multiple flashbacks to the four previous instalments, ‘Saw V’ details Hoffman’s training at the hands of the now-dead deviser of gruesome games. But another survivor of the last bloodbath, FBI agent Peter Strahm (Scott Patterson), suspects the heroic Hoffman of having had a hand in the killings. After all, Hoffman investigated every one of the murders, and had a personal vested interest in one of them – that of his slain sister.

Because all this boring police procedural stuff happens outside the slaughterhouse, any potential tension or suspense is dissipated. Meanwhile, inside the house of pain, it’s déjà vu all over again, as five incarcerated victims try to figure out cryptic video-taped clues, and escape fiendishly booby-trapped rooms. Yet not even these cruel engines of pain are as ingenious or horrific as those in the previous films. Any film that opens with a scene stolen from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ has much to live up to. Suffice to say, this doesn’t.

My Best Friends Girl (2008)

My Best Friend's Girl follows Tank (Dane Cook), a self-proclaimed rebound specialist who is hired by recently dumped men to help get their ex-girlfriends back. The masterful Tank takes these women out on a date that guarantees it will be the worst, most offensive experience they've ever had -- and they promptly run back to their old boyfriends with newfound appreciation.



Then Tank gets hired by his devastated roommate and best friend Dustin (Jason Biggs) to help him win back Alexis (Kate Hudson). Dustin and Alexis had been dating -- chastely -- for only five weeks when Dustin pours his feelings out to her over dinner. Stunned, Alexis breaks up with Dustin instead because she feels that she needs to play the field. Alexis has only had longterm serious relationships so far so she wants to experiment with commitment-free casual dating (and sex) for awhile.

Desperate, Dustin turns to Tank for help in getting her back. Tank reluctantly agrees, but discovers that Alexis is immune to his charms (or lack thereof) and she actually enjoys their awful date. They soon have a sex buddy relationship, even as an oblivious Dustin tries to win Alexis back. Much to his surprise, commitment phobic Tank finds himself falling for his best friend's girl. What will happen when the truth comes out?

Iron Man (2008)

By the end of his film Jon Favreau’s Iron Man is a light and fluffy character, a superhero colored in with bright bits of crayon, but he doesn’t start out that way. Ironically it’s early on in the story when Tony Stark, the man inside the bright red suit, is still a carefree playboy and globe-trotting arms merchant that he has the most edge. It’s there that Favreau’s superhero movie works best, as Stark is captured by a group of terrorists known as the Ten Rings (nod to all you Mandarin fans), injured, and forced to work in a dank cave designing weapons.

Left with no choice Stark sets to work making killing machines as they demand, he just doesn’t make the killing machine his captors expect. Robert Downey Jr. is understated and complex as Stark, slaving away in the dust, working in secret for his own freedom under the threat of death, turning his grave injuries into triumph. Favreau seems to know that this early origin story is indeed the best part of his script, since he lingers on it, spending nearly half of his unexpectedly lengthy film on this well staged and acted setup.

If you’ve seen the trailers then you know that Stark eventually gets out of the cave and you know how he does it. It’s the kind of moment that’s bound to elicit cheers from the audience, and it doesn’t hurt that we know he’s kicking terrorist ass. Once he gets home, Stark sets about re-evaluating his role in selling weapons to the murderers of the world. Deciding he’s had enough of it, he puts his mind to the task of figuring out how to stop it. Tony Stark isn’t just a wealthy arms dealer, he’s beyond brilliant. We believe that this charismatic man, this wealthy inventor with an oversized ego, might really come up with this particular answer. His answer is Iron Man.

It’s there that the movie starts missing beats. We meet Tony Stark’s assistant, the plucky Pepper Potts, played by terribly miscast Gwyneth Paltrow. Their scenes together are agony, and often seem utterly misplaced, as if they belong in an entirely different movie. We meet Stark’s business partner and mentor, Obadiah Stone played by a bald and bearded Jeff Bridges. There’s nothing subtle about Stone, or any of the limply mysterious plot devices surrounding him. You know what he’s up to the minute you see his chrome dome. We meet Stark’s best friend Jim Rhodes, the best character in the film’s supporting cast. His role is limited, but Terrence Howard acquits himself well and leaves us wanting more of Rhodes.

And eventually we meet the movie’s obligatory villain, an uncreative, familiar riff on the notion that every superhero must face his exact opposite and equal. The Hulk must fight the Super Hulk. Superman must fight three Supermen. Iron Man must fight the Super Iron Man. It’s not very creative, and their final fight leaves something to be desired.

The problems are all in the second half of the movie, where Iron Man stops being different and settles for being ordinary and at times even silly. It becomes a well put together, well polished, but very standard, paint by numbers superhero origin story. There are no surprises, and even while it remains immensely entertaining that’s somewhat disappointing after the first half of the film where we sit down and get to know a man who describes himself as a merchant of death. I wanted to see how such an obvious villain becomes a hero, and the answer is apparently that someone simply flips a switch in the script.

Yet I don’t want to sound like I’m down on this movie. Iron Man is a lot of fun, especially for a superhero origin story, since they so often end up going awry. While I wasn’t blown away by the final battle between Iron Man and the film’s baddie, there are other great action sequences. Unlike most superheroes, Iron Man isn’t about stopping petty criminals or stalking city streets. His mission is global, and his big coming out party happens in a dusty Afghanistan village, saving villagers and farmers… where absolutely no one is looking. It’s the best action sequence in the entire film, and the place where you’ll want to cheer, even though there’s no over muscled robot for Iron Man to face off against.

It’s also refreshing to see a superhero flick in which the hero isn’t some angsty teenager or a borderline underwear model. Tony Stark is a mature man, with deep rooted flaws. Unfortunately, Favreau’s movie chooses to ignore most of them when things really get moving. My hope is that with this as a setup, we’ll get more of the screwed up egomaniac lurking inside Tony Stark’s helmet, and maybe even a more worthy, creative villain as well. The film is filled with all sorts of geeky references hinting at things to come. Iron Man is good enough that you’ll look forward to seeing them brought to fruition in whatever sequels drop from this tree.

Wanted (2008)

Wanted tells the story of Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) a corporate loser that is set free from his boring existence when a woman going by the alias of "Fox" (Angelina Jolie) informs him that he is the son of the world's greatest assassin. Wesley quickly gives up on his chosen profession of keyboard monkey and turns to the world of professional killing instead. Fox takes Wesley to "The Fraternity" an organization of assassins lead by Sloan (Morgan Freeman) who tells Wesley that he and his group of murderers only kill bad people that are picked by reading the binary code contained in the fabric spit out by a mystical loom. After an hour's worth of the most boring training montages ever put to celluloid, Wesley is suddenly able to control the arc of bullets, run across speeding trains and survive bone shattering injuries by bathing in a pool of magic candle wax. But Wesley soon learns that Sloan may not be the good guy he pretends to be and suddenly nothing makes sense to him anymore, but that's probably due to his attempt to make sense of "Wanted's" underdeveloped script.
Wanted is an annoying movie on many levels, first and foremost is the fact that everyone in the film goes out of their way to look cool at all times. By trying so hard to be "bad ass" the entire cast just ends up looking like your Uncle trying on a System of a Down sweatshirt at the local Hot Topic while giving you the "double thumbs up" to remind you that he's the cool Uncle. Every "cool" moment in the film feels forced, by the second time that somebody shoots another person's bullet out of the air, the effect is completely mundane. Yet it occurs another ten or twelve times… in the same goddamn scene!!! The second most annoying thing about "Wanted" is that at least half of the film is shown in slow motion, the first fucking shot of the film is of a guy getting out of a cab …in slow mo!?!? I'm a big fan of director Timur Bekmambetov's prior films (Nightwatch and Daywatch) that gleefully rooted themselves in the style over substance category, but Wanted is just way too stylish to stomach. Every single action scene feels like you're watching somebody else playing "Grand Theft Auto 4," there isn't an ounce of originality present in the film and the coolness factor of slow motion aka "bullet time" action scenes dissolved after the first time I heard somebody mutter "Know Kung-Fu" at a VHS copy of Johnny Mnemonic.
The final straw of annoyance that broke this camel's back was the nonexistent plot or even an attempt to craft a cohesive storyline by the screenwriters. I won't even bother to call the douche bags by name other than to refer to them as the assholes who wrote 2 Fast 2 Furious. An example of Wanted's need to not only suspend your disbelief, but to actually dangle it over a pit of alligators occurs near the film's climax. At the end of "Wanted" Wesley storms a factory filled with the world's greatest assassins and not a single one of them can defended the heavily guarded compound or even get a shot to hit a guy that's only been training for a week or two at this killing thing. Compound that problem with hilariously one dimensional characters whose names should have been "Gun Guy," "Knife Guy," "Rat Guy" and "Chick that looks like a guy" and you've got yourselves one mind numbingly boring flick. And speaking of the chick that looks like a guy, why the hell is Mangelina Jolie an international sex symbol? She has all the curves and sexuality of your average teenage boy combined with one of those freaky looking Bratz dolls. In one scene she gets out of one of the magic candle wax ponds naked and when shot from the back I thought that Shia LaBeouf was making an uncredited cameo.
Wanted is a vague, ambiguous action film filled with unexplained super powers, magic knitting machines and more slow motion scenes that Battlefield Earth. I had extremely low expectations for the film going into the viewing, but I was at least hoping for an entertaining flick. Instead I spent the majority of Wanted's 110 minute running time checking my watch, rolling my eyes and wishing that I had come to the screening alone. Not for the lack of good company, I had a great time with the people I attended it with, but in all honesty if I had been there by myself I would have walked out of "Wanted" less than halfway in and I wouldn’t have even bothered to write a review for it. Simply put the only enjoyable moment I had during the entire film was when Wesley finally learns how to curve the bullet around an obstacle to hit a hidden target. My enjoyment had nothing to do with McAvoy's character succeeding at something he had continually failed at; it just happened to be the exact time I finally squeezed out a fart that had been building up inside of me before we had even entered the theater.

Gomorra (2008)

Five stories set in and around Naples, where the residents' lives are dominated by organised crime outfit, the Camorra. Based on the best-selling non-fiction book by Roberto Saviano

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Gomorrah is a compelling re-invention of the Italian mafia movie. Adapted from Roberto Saviano's book of the same name, which sold over 1.2 million copies in Italy alone, Matteo Garrone's film is the very antithesis of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy. While the opening scene, a multiple hit in a tanning salon, may suggest otherwise, this is a film that does not set out to glamourise the lives of gangsters.

The film oscillates between five separate stories all touched by the shadowy world of the Camorra, the mafia-like crime organisation which originated in the Naples region. Totò (Abruzzese) is a 13 year-old boy who delivers groceries and becomes enticed by the world of crime after he finds a gun and stash and returns the illicit contraband to the rightful owner. Likewise, Marco (Macor) and Ciro (Petrone) are two foolish young lads with ambitions to take on a boozy local Camorra boss.

Meanwhile, a tailor named Pasquale (Cantalupo) in a mob-funded fashion business secretly goes to work for rival Chinese manufacturers, to give them "lessons" in his craft. A businessman, Franco (Servillo) arranges for toxic waste to be dumped on mob-owned land, while he offers university graduate Roberto (Paternoster) a chance to work for him. Finally ageing mob soldier Don Ciro (Imparato), who delivers money to the families of prisoners affiliated with his clan, finds himself in a wilderness as his bosses lose control.

Garrone, one of six writers on the project including Saviano himself, has no qualms about dropping audiences straight into this disorientating world - one that is also decidedly everyday. While the likes of Marco and Ciro begin the film, quoting from Scarface - Marco even wearing a replica of Tony Montana's infamous red Hawaiian shirt - there is little else movie-like about these wannabe gangsters. Even the scene where Marco and Ciro uncover a shipment of weapons, spraying bullets gleefully across a river, is almost laughable given that they're dressed in only their underwear.

Attempting to show how criminals live side-by-side with local law-abiding residents, Gomorrah does very little in attempting to mythologise the life of crime. The action takes place primarily in the decaying and decidedly unglamorous Naples suburb of Scampia where these criminals do their business in disused buildings, grim housing blocks and dingy bars.

In some ways Gomorrah recalls Ricky Tognazzi's 1993 film La Scorta (The Escort) a similarly downbeat take on the Sicilian mafia. Indeed, the only glamour on show is a world away, as we briefly glimpse a television news-clip showing Scarlett Johansson on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival.

Garrone and his fellow writers have a knack of crafting memorable scenarios - such as when Totò and some other lads prove that they're "men" by wearing a (very ragged) piece of body armour and taking a bullet from a gun at close range. There's something very desperate about this, a feeling that pervades the film as a whole. Invariably some strands of the story, which don't overlap greatly, are more compelling than the others - in particular the Marco/Ciro and Pasquale narratives - but there's no doubt that Gomorrah knits together to create an impressive patchwork impression of the modern-day mafia.

Verdict

If you want to see a gangster film that isn't all about stylized violence, then Gomorrah is for you. More thoughtful than most gangland films, its attempt to show how organized crime has infiltrated every level of society is impressive.

Babylon A.D. (2008)

Hollywood hasn’t been kind to Vin Diesel. His last movies haven’t done too well at the box-office, so it wasn’t much of a surprise for him to want to return to the science fiction genre that spawned his career a decade or so ago (remember Pitch Black?). Good for him, as I’m sure on paper Babylon A.D. looked like a promising mixture of Blade Runner and Children of Men. Unfortunately, it’s delivered in a crude, unfinished way that is sure to add another notch onto Diesel’s “why did I star in this movie” belt.


The biggest failures of the film are the lack of character development and back story. Vin Diesel is mercenary named Toorop, living in what I suspect is a war-torn Russia. Why have the Asian and Eastern European countries gone to hell? If the movie going to give visions of an apocalyptic future, there had better be at least a 20-second blurb on how it got there. Off tangent, Toorop is hired to escort a young girl named Aurora (Mélanie Thierry) and her caretaker Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh) to New York City in six days. Again, why is Canada and the United States in perfect shape, if the rest of the world isn’t? Should I assume we blasted them back into the Dark Ages? And although director Mathieu Kassovitz at least tries to explain Aurora’s “gift” and why people are willing to kill for it, it’s done haphazardly and late in the game — so late in fact that by that time the payload is delivered I realized I really didn’t care anymore.

Then there is the action. For an action/adventure movie Babylon A.D. is a bit on the weak side too. There are the consummate explosions, car chases and fights, but they’re lackluster and very un-actiony. Everyone appears to be just going through the paces — even Michelle Yeoh, who is usually good for some impressive martial arts, barely breaks a sweat. To give you an idea as to how poorly everything is setup, there is a scenes when Toorop is thrust into a plexiglass cage with some mindless gladiator. I was looking forward to a gritty, bloody mixed martial arts fight but only got a menacing statement from Toorop of, “You wanna fight?”, one or two punches and a quick choke — how anti-expectational! The only standout scene that comes to mind is a snowmobile chase in which an impressive backflip is worked into the mix. Hell, even the final showdown with a power corrupted high priestess played by Charlotte Rampling is nonexistent. Are we to believe she just lets Toorop walk off into the sunset? Are we to believe he lets her go off of to live her villainous life unmolested too? Gimme a break.

It was said that the executives at Twentieth Century Fox meddled throughout the making of Babylon A.D. due to cost overruns and creative differences. I can’t for the life of me figure out what could have cost so much more than expected. As for creative differences, did they request all the rewrites and/or reshots that caused this film to play out so poorly? While that may be a possibility, I find that difficult to fathom too since the cyberpunk book that the film is based on, Babylon Babies by Maurice G. Dantec, isn’t exactly literary gold. The only thing I can definitively blame them for is the fact they wasted space on some 3400 screens across the nation. This was undoubtedly meant to be a straight-to-DVD feature.

Eureka (2006)

To outsiders and recent transplants, the Pacific Northwest remains a bit of an enigma. Not the cities, mind you -- the secret is out, way out, that Vancouver, B.C., is beyond cool, that Seattle is a place of unparalleled beauty and that Portland has a pristine public transportation system. And dirty, dirty strippers.

What fascinates people is the incredibly varied nature that surrounds these and other urban centers -- deserts, mountains, empires of pine and cedar thick enough to hide lots of strange, creepy things.

It probably was a foregone conclusion that when the producers of Sci Fi's "Eureka" were looking for a setting for their bizarre hamlet, the Pacific Northwest would win, hands down.

The nation may be full of little towns sequestered from the rest of the world where a U.S. marshal conceivably can get stranded after crashing his car, but let's face it: If "Eureka's" Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson) and his kid, Zoe (Jordan Hinson), spun off the road in bayou country, viewers would start humming the theme to "Deliverance."

Getting lost in the Northwest brings scenes from "Twin Peaks" and "Northern Exposure" to mind, translating to a friendlier kind of sinister.

Not to mention smarter. Eureka, Carter discovers in tonight's two-hour pilot, is a town in which mild-mannered guys build deadly contraptions in their basements, where children write lengthy equations on the sidewalks for fun, and where the police carry unusually complicated guns.
Following World War II, the story goes, President Truman enlisted the help of Albert Einstein to gather the world's finest minds in one place that no one would ever pinpoint. There they could invent and perfect a galaxy of contraptions to make our lives better, and make the military more intimidating.

As one would expect, something goes horribly wrong with one of those experiments, and Carter rolls up his sleeves, signs a few non-disclosure agreements, and saves the day.

It's all very quirky. Too quirky, maybe, for an audience that is used to spaceships, robots and explosions.

Though every episode promises an "aha!" moment based in quantum physics and obscure scientific laws, this world is relatively flat, conceptually speaking, in comparison to the complexity woven into series such as "Stargate SG-1" and "Battlestar Galactica."

This does not mean "Eureka" is a complete waste of time. Not at all. The characters are fun, Ferguson is believable and pleasant, the script is solidly constructed, and the visuals are slickly produced. All in all, it's a sweet series and probably not long for this world.

But that will depend on whether the darker forces at work in "Eureka's" community can take this story beyond its current mundane direction.