Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

Precious is a truly remarkable film mainly for what is not on the screen rather than what is. I was very apprehensive about seeing this movie. The subject matter is as disturbing as anything I can recall in the last little while. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe plays Clarice "Precious" Jones, a 16 year old junior high school student who is sexually abused by her father and physically and emotionally abused by her mother. She has no friends in school and is constantly picked on for her obesity. She already has one child fathered by her own father and as the movie begins, we soon discover there is a second on the way. She lives in a hell few can imagine and the thought of going into the world with her seemed daunting as a viewer.

But this is where director Lee Daniels earned his best director Oscar nomination. During the times when a horrible instance of abuse is about to happen, we cut to the fantasy world Precious inhabits during these unspeakably awful times. Suddenly we are transported to a red carpet movie premiere where adoring fans call out for autographs from Precious. These fantasy sequences play out is rich vibrant colours which serve as a start contrast to the dull muted tones we see in her reality. This first person POV coping mechanism shields the audience as much as it does Precious herself. And they establish another important element without which the movie would not work – hope. Despite all that is wrong with her life we get the sense that Precious still holds out the faintest bit of hope that there is a better life out there.

So to answer the question – is this movie hard to watch? At times yes, but not as much as you would think.

The bulk of the story, set in Harlem in 1987, involves Precious going to a special school called "Each One Teach One." Here they take illiterate girls and bring them up to a level where they can acquire their GED. Even the decision to go to this school is tortuous for Precious. We get the sense that she is bright and likes school and yet is still unable to read or write. The reason soon becomes apparent when we meet Mary, her monster of a mother played by Mo'Nique. Mary not only frowns upon schooling for Precious, she is violently opposed to it. The very mention of attending the school sends Mary intro a screaming rampage where she tells Precious "School ain't going to help none, get your ass down to Welfare!"

Remarkably, Precious attends the school anyway and we soon see her starting to read and write in her journal. She is forming connections with her classmates and teachers and we are thrilled to be going on this journey with her. But Daniels is cognisant to not let us forget of the harsh realities that still exist for her. Just when we feel like we're watching the feel good story of the year, we get doused with the icy waters of her circumstances. Her schooling gets interrupted when she goes into labour with her father's child. She is now faced with a choice of giving up the baby and going back to school or keeping the baby and making it on her own. For someone who wants to be a good mother to her baby, this is not an easy choice.

Some of the most powerful moments in this film exist between Precious and her mother. Mo'Nique plays Mary with a hatred and bitterness for her own daughter that is unfathomable. I used the term "monster" before but really there is no other word that applies. Mary was perhaps the most terrifying and intimidating screen presence not named "Darth" or "Sith". Mo'Nique won the Golden Globe for this performance and if she doesn't win the Support Actress Oscar, a criminal investigation should be launched immediately. There is one scene in particular that is chilling. Precious brings her new baby home to Mary and Mary wants to hold him. We know she hates Precious for "stealing her man" so we fear for the safety of the baby. This scene serves as an example of how dramatic tension can be created with character rather than action sequences. It was as tense as anything I can recall in the theatre.

Mo'Nique is not the only excellent supporting player in this film. Daniels has a knack for finding people who can inhabit a role and make us forget the famous person playing them on the screen. Most noteworthy is the supporting performance turned in by Mariah Carey. Yes, THAT Mariah Carey. The movie was two-thirds of the way through before it clicked in for me who she was. Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write. Mariah Carey was very good in this film. Maybe there really is a hero that lies in her. Joining Carey is Lenny Kravitz who turns in a nice performance as Nurse John.

I thought Daniels struck a nice tone with ending, something that with a story like this is not easy at all. (TINIEST SPOILER WARNINGS HERE) This is not a happy ever after story but we are left feeling upbeat and positive at the end. The dragon Precious has to slay may seem insignificant compared to other films, but in this story we are left with the feeling that she just climbed Everest.

This will sound like cliché but this movie really is a story of the triumph of the human spirit.

 

Circumstances Under Which You Should See This Movie: You are a carbon-based life form.

Up In The Air

With most of the civilized world in the grip of Olympic fever these days, I'll give you my impression of Jason Reitman's Up in the Air in terms you can understand. Upon first viewing of this film I felt like I was watching a figure skater on top of their game. Everything about it was fresh, graceful, and moving. I believed that I was watching something truly special until...it happened. Like that figure skater with the seemingly flawless performance, Up in the Air stumbled right at the end. Was the stumble enough to ruin the entire performance? Probably not. But you can't help but think how good it could have been if it was just able to stick the landing.

This movie tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) a man who loves his job and everything that surrounds it more than anything else in life. This is not insignificant when you consider that he has one of the least enviable jobs in the world. He is a gun for hire in firing people in the business world. Clooney is able to portray Bingham as a man who believes there is dignity in what he does. We get the sense he believes what he says when he tells the recently canned, "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's because they sat there that they were able to do it."

The only thing more important to Bingham than the job itself is the lifestyle that accompanies it. The job requires he be on the road for more than 320 days a year and for Bingham, this is heaven. His greatest source of pride is his elite status with airlines, hotels and car rental agencies. This is a man so enamoured with the don't-be-tied-down lifestyle that he gives motivational speeches instructing people on how to free themselves of the things weighing them down in the world.

Bingham's perfect world order starts to unravel when he meets two women who will affect his life in different ways. The first is Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) whom Bingham meets one night while drinking alone in a hotel bar. The two use comparing elite status plans as a sort of foreplay and soon end up back in his room. Immediately, Bingham is taken by the beautiful woman who seems to get him in a way other women don't.

The second is Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is a recent top-of-her-class Ivy Leaguer who the company has brought in to shake up the termination business. Her idea is to set up a process where people are fired via a video conferencing system. She believes that a script can be developed so anyone could fire someone simply by navigating this new system. Naturally, Bingham hates, hates, hates this idea and not just because it threatens to destroy his perfect lifestyle. He genuinely believes the people getting fired deserve to have that human touch during the process. Bingham's boss, played by Jason Bateman, convinces Bingham to take Keener out on the road and show her the ropes.

This is where what is really great about Up in the Air really starts to shine through. Only upon seeing this movie for a second time did I appreciate the fact that this story is as much about Natalie's journey as it is Bingham's. What this movie does exceptionally well is set up Keener and Bingham as polar opposites in every way. They bicker like a married couple but not in a cliché way like you see in many movies today. There is no feeling that their bickering is masking the fact that they are really in love with each other. It comes from the fact that they both possess the capability to be "soft" and "cold". Keener can't fathom why Bingham never wants to get married or have kids. He makes the case that he has all the companionship he requires and in the end, everyone dies alone anyway. Some of this movie's best moments are when Keener and Bingham are sparring over love and relationships. In this instance, she makes the case for love and marriage while he is the cold one, stating that marriage is for suckers.

But when it comes to their views on work, there is a role reversal which gives both characters some depth. Now it is Bingham who is the "soft" one as he continues to insist that the job can only be done properly face to face. There is something cold and even cruel about doing what they do in a video conference. Keener is the "cold" one looking at the process only in terms of what is best for the company's bottom line. As the movie goes on we see the effect that they have on each other. We can see Keener's doubts start to creep in as she experiences the harsh realities of firing people up close. And while Bingham may not admit to subscribing to her world view in matters of the heart, his relationship with Alex starts to look more and more like a traditional relationship. It even gets to the point where Bingham asks Alex to be his date at sister's wedding saying that for once he doesn't want to be the guy by himself at a wedding.

And this is subtle transformation is why I believe Reitman stumbles a bit at the end. Up until this point, the movie does a flawless job of establishing Bingham's world and then showing how it slowly starts to unravel for him. We get the sense that perhaps he is no longer satisfied being locked away in his solitary existence and that he may see a future with Alex. Without giving away too much about how the movie ends, I can say that the stumble occurs in the vagueness of the ending. Has he changed or is the same as he was at the beginning? You'll have to watch and judge for yourself but I've seen the movie twice and I can't say for sure. There are those who prefer open endings but I'm not a fan. And in the end, this is the one stumble in the performance. But when you look at the film in terms of the journey that both Bingham and Keener experience and the effect they have on each other's lives, the stumble doesn't seem as significant.

Circumstances Under Which You Should See This Movie: You're aching to see a good movie with solid performance free of the usual Hollywood clichés. Under these circumstances I would suggest seeing Up in the Air.

Valentine’s Day

Remember the early days of photocopiers? You could duplicate a document and it would be an exact replica of that document only just a little imperfect. You could see smudge marks and the paper wouldn't be as clear as with the original. Then if you made a copy of the copy, it was even further away from the original. Keep making copies from copies and soon what you were left with is a greatly inferior product which is almost unrecognizable from the original. This process is what I was reminded of after seeing Valentine's Day.

In 2003, the team behind Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill came up with the ensemble multi-storyline romantic comedy Love Actually. Due in large part to the skilful writing and directing of Richard Curtis, this became a huge success both critically and financially and created the original which would others would inevitably copy. Last year's He's Just Not that Into You, was the first generation copy. Not quite as sharp as the original but sufficiently funny and sweet when it needed to be. Watching Valentine's Day, I felt like I was watching a seventh generation copy. You could see the connection between it and the original but the difference in quality was remarkable.

Valentine's Day is directed by Gary Marshall who treats it like an episode of This Is Your Life, bringing back an all-star cast from his previous films. Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman) appears as a soldier returning home for one day to spend Valentine`s Day with someone special. Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries) plays a recent English Lit grad who struggles with juggling jobs as a receptionist and a phone sex worker. All while trying to keep the latter from her new boyfriend played by Toper Grace. Other storylines linclude:

• A flower shop owner (Ashton Kutcher) who proposes to his girlfriend (Jessica Alba) only to have that proposal met with a lukewarm reception.
  
• An elementary school teacher (Jennifer Garner) decides to surprise her dreamy doctor boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey , like I had to tell you) and ends up getting a surprise of her own.
  
• An aging Pro football quarterback (Eric Dane) decides to use Valentine's Day to make a shocking announcement. Without giving it away, picture Brett Favre meets Johnny Weir. It`s faaaaabulous!
  
• A fifth grader desperately tries to get flowers to the object of his affection. She must know how he truly feels.
  
• A sports reporter (Jamie Foxx) is assigned to do a man-on-the-street interview on the meaning of Valentine's day and makes a connection with a PR agent (Jessica Biel)who is down on love and hates Valentine`s Day.
  

And that`s not even all of the superstars and their storylines. I still haven`t covered Bradley Cooper, Queen Latifa, George Lopez, Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner, and Shirley McLain and Hector Elizondo. If you`re as bored of reading about the all-star cast as I am of writing about it, you start to get a picture of where this movie went wrong. In this instance, more is not necessarily merrier.

What the filmmakers failed to appreciate is that for the audience to get invested in the lives of these people we need to spend enough time to get to know them and then care when their lives start spiralling out of control. And when you only have so many minutes of screen time, it is nearly impossible to give these characters enough breathing room to make their journeys seem authentic. What's unfortunate is it's not like there weren't stories that could have been really interesting.

With the Eric Dane QB character, it would have been really fascinating to see where that storyline would have developed after he made his big announcement. Unfortunately the only thing we see with him after that is the reveal of who his Valentine is. I really liked the development of the Topher Grace and Anne Hathaway relationship. But because of too much time wasted on say the adorable but pointless storyline of the two Taylors, the Toper/Anne storyline had to take huge shortcuts that undermined its effectiveness. The same applies to the realization that Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner make. Because they have to bring it in for a landing sooner than it really should, it detracts from the emotional impact it has on the audience.

It's not just the oversaturation of A-list talent that holds this back from being on par with a Love Actually. A lot of the time, the comedy comes off as sit-com hacky. Ashton Kutcher tells his friend how he loves this day because everyone of happy and filled with the spirit of love. Then he pulls out into traffic and almost collides with another driver who promptly screams at him and chews him out. An obvious and flat punch line. The first time we see Anne Hathaway doing her phone sex job, she is on her cell phone outside an apartment building and within earshot of a middle aged woman in a bathrobe. When Hathaway makes mention of a three-way, the woman says "Let me get freshened up and I'll be right there." I almost expected to hear the CBS laugh track.

Valentine's Day is not a terrible movie. It's just not a very good one either. It is light and enjoyable on a surface level and there are times when you smile at the adorable antics up on the screen. It's just sad that with all that star power, this is the highest they could raise the bar.

 

Circumstances Under Which You Should See This Movie: You're the number one golfer in the world and for some reason you find yourself in a position where you have a lot of making up to do with your wife. She loves light fluffy "chick flicks" and she wants you to take her out to the movies. You are afraid this may not be what you hoped for in a movie but you have no more capital in the marriage and must do pretty much anything she says for the rest of your lives. Under these circumstances, I would suggest you see Valentine's Day.

The Wolfman

Let The Wolfman serve as exhibit "A" of a theory I've purported for a while now. If you have a monster movie, it will only work if the monster is the bad guy. It is nearly impossible to have a story work where the protagonist transforms into a rampaging Monster.

Ang Lee couldn't pull it off when he tried to launch The Hulk franchise in 2003. Louis Leterrier couldn't do it when he tried to reboot the same franchise five years later with The Incredible Hulk. And the recent Wolfman movie falls short for the exact same reason the others did. No matter how charming or charismatic the man (Eric Bana, Edward Norton, or Benico del Toro) may be, the monster can do nothing but grunt, growl, and destroy things. Ultimately, this makes for a lousy hero. We can't root for, empathise, or identify with a rampaging monster. And since the Monster can't communicate, there is no way to advance the story in a meaningful way.

The latest film to attempt the monster-as-protagonist vehicle is The Wolfman, Joe Johnston's remake of the 1941 horror classic. This movie stays true to the original to the point of keeping the same character names and premise. Lawrence Talbot (del Toro) learns of his brother's death and returns home to England to his family's spooky mansion. While investigating his brother's death, he is attacked and bitten by the Wolfman. Gypsies save his life but inform him that once bitten, he will forever turn into the beast himself.

I will give The Wolfman this, the attack scenes are believable and sufficiently gory. Johnston does not hold back in showing the brutality and the savagery of the Wolfman. The problem is, there is little else this movie has going for it.

Emily Blunt is wasted in a film that forgets she is there for a good chunk of the movie. As Gwen, the grieving fiancé of Lawrence's late brother Ben, Blunt does a very nice job with the scenes she has. It appears as if there is supposed to be a love story developing between Lawrence and Gwen but this gets shoved to the side when Lawrence is too busy eating people's guts. Then when Lawrence needs help, he finds Gwen and suddenly, they're in love (or something like it). We're to believe that she is not intimidated by his monstrous alter ego because she sees the true beauty within him. This might be believable if they had spent more than seven minutes of screen time together up to this point.

The ultimate undoing of this film was that it was just plain boring for too much of the time. And that is saying something for a period monster movie with a romantic subplot. The truth is, I really couldn't care what happened to him. I should have been desperately rooting for them to find a cure for his "wolfitis" so he and Gwen could be together. But I didn't care if they lived happily ever after or he dined on her entrails. And that is the surest sign you have a movie that doesn't work.

I could tell early on I was bored because I kept thinking of scenes I wanted to see that were included in better movies in the genre. The first time I saw the wolfman in a full shot, my mind went immediately to Teen Wolf (1985). So instead of being frightened of the scary wolfman on the screen, all I could think is "He's probably really awesome at basketball. I'd love to see this wolfman dunk on a couple of dudes!"

Not knowing the wolfman mythology as well as I do, say vampire mythology, I found parts of this movie to be very informative. I have collected some wolfman rules should any of you suddenly find yourselves being transformed into wolfmen.

RULE #1 – WOLFMEN ALWAYS EXIT A BUILDING BY JUMPING OUT THE NEAREST CLOSED WINDOW. I don't know what wolfmen have against walking out an open door but clearly it is never done. You would think these guys have stock in the local door and window company the way they shatter windows whenever leaving a building. Whatever the reason, this appears to be a hard and fast rule.

RULE #2 – WOLFMEN MUST GET RE-DRESSED BEFORE APPEARING AS HUMAN THE MORNING AFTER. It seems every time a guy transforms into the wolfman, we see him breaking through and tearing off his human clothes. But when we see him the next morning in human form for, what can only be described as the "wolfman walk of shame," he is fully dressed in those same clothes. Wolfmen must be very bashful about their bodies. I guess it's okay to eat the guts of any man woman or child who crosses your path but appearing nude in public is socially unacceptable.

RULE #3 - WOLFMEN HAVE ONLY ONE WAY OF SETTLING DISPUTES. Becoming a wolfman will pretty much spell the end of your career in conflict resolution. Once you become of full-fledged wolfman, you have only one way of settling disputes and it does not involve mediation. Not unless, mediation is a code word for disembowelment. But that seems unlikely.

 

Circumstance under which you should see this movie: You really want to drop $12 but you don't want to be saddled with all that story and character development. Ideally, you're just looking for some CGI gore and the occasional wolfman on wolfman brouhaha . Under these circumstances, I would suggest watching this film.

Five Movies To Get You In The Olympic Spirit

There is an epidemic spreading across Canada and it has me greatly concerned. With the Olympics now upon us, I fear many Canadians are suffering from a condition that medical experts call Olympics Hype Deficiency (OHD). OHD occurs when you find yourself not completely jacked for the upcoming Winter Olympiad.

The leading cause of OHD is often a lack of television network promotions in the weeks and months leading up to the games. Perhaps if CTV and TSN had bothered to let us know that the Olympics were coming to Vancouver this February, we would not be in this state.

How can you tell if you suffer from OHD? It's easy, just name aloud the Jamaican born member of Canada's bobsleigh team. I'll wait, go ahead.

Any time now.

I'm sorry but since you didn't immediately name Lascelles Brown, I'm going to have to conclude that you are not sufficiently jacked for these Olympics.

To cure what ails you, I suggest the five movies that will get you in the Olympic spirit. I should note that these are not necessarily the five best movies involving the Olympics. Munich (2005) for example is an excellent movie but not a real spirit booster. This movie will make your Olympic spirit want to crawl in to bed with a tub of Chunky Monkey ice cream and not come out for three weeks.

So here in ascending order are the five movies to get you in the Olympic Spirit:

5. BLADES OF GLORY (2007)

This is not a great movie. Heck, I'm not even sure if this is a good movie. But it is fun and certainly captures the drive and desire of making it to the Winter Olympics. Will Ferrell and Jon Heder are very funny and are complimented by excellent supporting performances by real life husband and wife comedy duo Will Arnett and Amy Poeller. I thought Jenna Fischer gave an underrated and overlooked comedic performance in this movie.

4. THE CUTTING EDGE (1992)

If you love figure skating movies and Blades of Glory is just a little too silly for you, watch The Cutting Edge with D.B. Sweeny and Moira Kelly. Sweeny plays Doug Dorsey, a former hockey player driven out of the game after colliding with figure skater Kate Mosely (Kelly) at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. As training begins for the 1992 Games, Mosely can't find a partner who will work with her and Dorsey is relegated to playing semi-pro hockey. Mosely's coach tracks down Dorsey and convinces him to be her partner and get one last shot at Olympic Glory. Can the spoiled skater and gruff hockey player find a way to work together to achieve their dreams both on and off the ice? You pretty much know the answer but it is a decent film if you are a fan of the sport.

 

3. COOL RUNNINGS (1993)

With Canada boasting an actual Jamaican bobsledder on our 2010 team, how can I not include Cool Runnings on the list. Many people fondly recall this movie as the funny true-life account of the Jamaican bobsled team that competed at the 1988 Calgary Winter Games. This movie has even more sentimental value for me in that I consider it to be John Candy's last really good film. Candy played the coach who was charged with taking a group of novices who had never seen snow before and turning them into genuine Olympic bobsledders. This movie was better than I expected at the time and still holds up more than 15 years later.

 

2. CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1981)

This film is to Olympic movies as the Rose Bowl is to college football games. The grand-daddy of them all! Had we been on the cusp of the Summer Olympics, this may have found its way to the top of the list. And while this will do nothing to get you pumped for snow boarding, hockey and figure skating, it is a beautiful movie about the Olympic Spirit of sportsmanship within competition. It tells the true story of two British sprinters at the 1924 Olympics. Eric is a devout Scottish Missionary who runs because he knows it pleases God. Eric is Jewish and runs to escape prejudice and cement his place in society. The crux of the film involves Eric's dilemma about running on a Sunday. He runs to please God but he won't run on the Sabbath. This is an excellent blend of sports, racial tensions, and human drama. If you have not seen this movie, do so soon.

1. MIRACLE (2004)

I know, I know. It's blasphemous to promote a movie about the Americans winning hockey gold but the truth is, this is a really good movie. If this movie can't get you pumped about the Winter Olympics then you will never be cured of your OHD. Kurt Russell takes on the role of Herb Brooks, the tough and demanding coach who led a group of college kids in one of the greatest single game upsets in hockey history. This movie does a nice job of illustrating the biggest challenge the Americans had which was overcoming their tribal differences. In the late 1970's there were only two American hotbeds of hockey – Boston and Minnesota. The Boston kids and the Minnesota kids didn't much like each other and getting them to play as one cohesive unit was Brook's biggest challenge. If you haven't seen it, now is the time to give this a look.

 

That's it I've done all I can do to combat OHD. The rest is up to you. I do see a day when OHD is no longer hanging over us like a dark cloud. I see a day when everyone from coast to coast is sufficiently jacked about the Olympics. Why am I so optimistic? Well, to answer Al Michael's 30 year old question...yes, I believe in miracles.

 

Think I've left a classic off the list? Feel free to tell me all about it in the comments box.

From Paris With Love

From Paris With Love is pornography for the National Rifle Association. I don’t think that’s an accident because reviewing this film is not unlike what a review for a pornographic movie would be like:

...we meet a couple of one-dimensional characters, there is bad dialogue with unforgiveable double entrendre, there is a razor-thin plotline, and then every ten minutes or so the “good stuff” happens. More bad dialogue, more scenes with no intent of developing the story and then in another ten minutes, more “good stuff”

I put “good stuff” in quotes because much like a porno, whether it really is good stuff or not is in the eye of the viewer. In this movie, the “good stuff” involves Charlie Wax, played by a bald and goateed John Travolta, killing bad guys like he’s getting paid by the corpse. The body count made me feel like I was watching somebody play Grand Theft Auto rather than watching a major motion picture. But I get the feeling director Pierre Morel (Taken, 2008) knows he has nothing more here than a hollow shoot ‘em up, so he may as well get his money’s worth.

If only the audience could say the same.

Before I go on, I want to debunk something I’ve been reading on the boards and have been hearing for years. Defenders of this movie and others like it chastise critics for being too hard on what is supposed to be merely a popcorn movie. As an action movie, they believe it is not supposed to hold up to any form of critical analysis and anyone who does so is a pointy-headed academic type who should stick to watching “art” movies.

Let me state unequivocally that people who hold this point of view are ill-informed at best, but most likely, are just morons. Two of the best movie-going experiences of my adolescence were Lethal Weapon (1987) and Die Hard (1988). These had every bit of shoot-the-bad-guys enjoyment as the current crop of action movies. What made these movies great was the filmmakers used plot, story and character development as a frame on which to hang the action set-pieces. We genuinely cared what happened to Martin Riggs and John McLane. That’s what created the suspense. Those movies shone under critical analysis and they are the gold standard for all that follows in the genre.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that From Paris with Love fails miserably because there is no plot, story or character development to speak of. In the opening scenes, we meet James Reece (played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the assistant to the American Ambassador to France who moonlights as an aspiring special ops spy. After completing a routine mission which is seemingly beneath him, he gets the call to step up to the big leagues. He is to pick up his new partner at the Paris Airport and assist him in whatever needs to be done. At the airport we meet Charlie, who shows us he’s cool by being loud and defiant to the French Customs officers who are detaining him. Charlie wonders how they can mistreat an American after they saved France’s bacon in not one, but two world wars. What did I say about porn for the NRA?

This launches the buddy cop portion of the film, and here is where the wheels simply fall off. One major reason is that I don’t know who the main character is. It sets us up with James (clever name for a wannabe spy), but as soon as Charlie enters the film, he completely dominates it. This relegates the guy we are supposed to care about into supporting role territory. This could be okay except that Charlie nothing more than a one-dimensional caricature of an action movie hero.

There is an attempt to portray James as someone who dreams of being a big-time spy but has a hard time (literally) pulling the trigger when it is crunch time. The only problem is that the way is played out at the end is cringe-worthy. It is so bad, you almost wish they hadn’t tried. Without giving away too much, it involves James trying to sweet-talk a suicide bomber out of detonating. Need I say more?

The other fatal flaw with this film is the complete absence of any type of villain. Here is the Roger Ebert rule with this genre – the action-suspense movie is only as strong as the “bad guy”. Again, think of Die Hard as the classic example. To this day I can’t see Alan Rickman without getting the chills just a little bit. Here, there isn’t any one character vying to be the villain. And the one person who gets portrayed in the role of antagonist comes off as silly as they do predictable.

The movie has taken a lot of ribbing for having the John Travolta character say he has to have a “Royale with cheese” whenever he is in Paris. I think that was entirely appropriate for the movie. It is intended as a clever wink to Pulp Fiction, but I think they stumbled ass-backwards into one piece of symbolism that actually works. This movie is a lot like a quarter-pounder. When you are experiencing it, you might convince yourself you are enjoying it, but ultimately, all it does is leave you unsatisfied and craving a real meal. This movie makes you long for the action and character development we saw in Pulp Fiction. The title (a not-so-subtle nod to the Bond franchise) makes us wish we were watching the fun and impressive action sequences of a James Bond film. And the attempts at action hero cool lines clang like Rasheed Wallace’s three-point attempts when they are supposed to sound as clever and spontaneous as the lines shot out by Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

From Paris With Love; I know Die Hard. I grew up on Die Hard. You are no Die hard!

Circumstances Under Which You Should Watch This Movie: It’s the year 2021, you are home alone with the television on Peachtree TV and they are running this movie in the middle of the afternoon. Shoddy construction results in the sudden crumbling of your house leaving you trapped under heavy debris while miraculously the television is still functional. The remote is now 20 feet away and to retrieve it would require chewing off your own leg. Under these circumstances, I would suggest watching From Paris With Love.

Guess Who's Coming to the Blogosphere?

If you're like me, you surf the net and think "This is all well and good but what the internet really needs is another blog." Well fret no more, your prayers have been answered. Today I am excited to unveil "Seluke's Movie Reviews" a blog which will, on a regular basis...wait for it....review movies.

Now you're probably thinking "Great because the one thing I could never find online is an unqualified yahoo weighing in on all things pop culture." Let me make two observations here: (1) you sound quite cynical and were likely not hugged enough as a child and (2) I would like to think that the one thing I bring to the table is bone fide credentials.

So who am I? I am a professional screenwriter, story editor, and producer who has been writing and making films for nearly 15 years. I have sold screenplays to some of the top producers in the country and have given workshops on screenwriting and story deconstruction. Currently I am reviewing films for CBC Information Morning.

What I would like to put out in the universe is an analysis of the current releases that looks beyond just whether or not they are worth plunking down the $12. More than just a thumbs up or thumbs down, I think people deserve to know if a movie works, why it works and what they can expect. And if it is not worth the $12, why it is and where exactly it falls short. I don't believe it is all a matter of opinion. My experience is that a story (in either the script or screen level) works or it doesn't. My job is to find the answer and share it with anyone who cares.

I recognize not everyone is going to agree with what I am going to say about these movies. In fact there is a whole segment of society which does not see eye to eye with me. I coined a phrase for this group of people - "idiots". These people cannot be taken lightly. Idiots are a big part of the movie going public. How else can one explain the box office success of Dane Cook?

Truthfully I welcome all dissenting views as long as they are about the movies themselves and not personal attacks. The one thing I will not tolerate is postings which are nothing but personal attacks and character assassination. Remember what I always say "Don't hate the player, hate Dane Cook"

Okay, maybe one personal attack but that's it.