Rajeev Masand – movies that matter : from bollywood, hollywood and everywhere else

February 19, 2009

Cast: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

Director: Jason Reitman

Who would have expected laughs from a film that taps into two of the most relevant fears and anxieties of our times? Up In The Air, directed by Jason Reitman, turns a story about air-travel and redundancy into a smart, poignant, and oddly comical film experience.

George Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, a bachelor and professional corporate downsizer, who spends some 322 days a year in a business-class bubble, flying across America and firing luckless company employees whose bosses are too cowardly to do the dirty job themselves.

Just so you understand the man we’re dealing with, Bingham is emotionally detached from the real world, happy to be notching up air miles, and miserable about having to return for even 40 or so days a year to his characterless apartment. Home, as we hear him say sitting in his reclining airline seat, is right here.

His carefree existence leaves him free for casual no-strings-attached encounters with fellow business traveler Alex (played by Vera Farmiga), who schedules her flights to synchronize their one-night stands. His perfect life is threatened, however, when his company hires dynamic, twenty-something newbie Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick) who reckons she can do Bingham’s job more efficiently by firing people over the Internet.

The film works from the moment in because it’s so sharply written, and because it avoids cliché and sentimentality at every unpredictable turn. It’s not easy to find sympathy for a man who makes a living firing others, a man who isn’t interested in real relationships, who really wishes he didn’t have any responsibility to family. But Clooney and his director Reitman pull this off superbly, and they do it without turning Bingham soft, allowing you instead to see him with his warts and all.

The scenes in which he fires company staffers are chilling, and it helps that the director hired many real people who were recently laid off, to play those roles. The humiliation, the anger, the desperation on their faces is more convincing and authentic than actors might have been able to bring.

Despite its often grim subject matter, Up In The Air offers an enjoyable balance of laughs and sorrows. Both actresses — Farmiga and Kendrick — provide some flawless support, but it’s Clooney’s show from start to finish, and he plays Bingham with just the right combination of melancholy and charm.

I’m going with four out of five for director Jason Reitman’s Up In The Air. It’s an insightful comedy that will linger in your mind for days. Don’t miss it.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

February 12, 2010

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt

Director: Joe Johnston

The Wolfman starring Benicio del Toro is a spectacularly silly remake of the 1941 classic werewolf movie starring Lon Chaney Jr. This brand new version set in 1891 England stars del Toro as Shakespearean actor Lawrence Talbot who returns to his family’s estate after his brother’s murder at the hands of a mysterious creature. This unhappy visit reunites him with his estranged father (played by Anthony Hopkins) and his brother’s fiancée (played by Emily Blunt), but when he himself is bitten by the beast, he too becomes a werewolf on the run from angry locals.

Despite its sturdy cast, some neat special effects, and the appropriately gloomy camerawork and set design, The Wolfman never quite succeeds as a thrilling B-movie, burdened as it is with that ponderous story of a prodigal son who must finally confront his family’s dark past. Too much screen-time is wasted in profound verbal exchanges between Talbot Sr and Jr, when what you really want more of are some good old-fashioned scares.

There’s one really delicious scene in a mental asylum where del Toro’s character, strapped down into a seat, transforms into the beast before a packed hall that only moments ago was mocking him for his hallucinations. Alas there aren’t too many such spine-tingling moments that might have elevated this plodding saga into a fun-fueled ride.

Emily Blunt is always watchable, even in her bit part here; while Anthony Hopkins’ indifference suggests he’s too bored to bother with a performance. It’s Benicio del Toro who brings that doomed quality to his central role, but fails to invest any humanity in the character, and as a result you can’t empathize with his unfortunate condition.

Ultimately, The Wolfman is cheesy Hollywood schlock, and while it’s not a complete waste of time, I can’t honestly say that it’s anything more than a time-pass viewing. So two out of five for The Wolfman; it’s not scary enough to be exciting, and not campy enough to amuse you.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

February 12, 2009

Cast: Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel

Director: Garry Marshall

It must take a special kind of talent to make a film as bad as Valentine’s Day. This alleged romantic comedy from Pretty Woman director Garry Marshal features an all-star cast of Hollywood’s brightest actors, and yet manages to waste every single one of them in dull, thankless roles.

Opening on the morning of February 14 in Los Angeles, this film follows 21-or-so characters as they live out every romantic-movie cliché you can think of over the course of one full day. Ashton Kutcher plays a florist who proposes to his girlfriend Jessica Alba. He spends pretty much the entire day mooning over her to his co-worker George Lopez and his best friend Jennifer Garner.

The best-friend is all gooey-eyed for her own boyfriend, heart-surgeon Patrick Dempsey who seems to have hardly any time for her. Jamie Foxx is a TV sports reporter who’s been assigned to cover a fluffy romantic story, much to his chagrin, and Jessica Biel plays a publicist who throws “I Hate Valentine’s Day” parties with her single, cynical friends.

Queen Latifah stars as a celebrity agent, whose assistant Anne Hathaway discretely doubles up as a phone-sex operator even as her boyfriend Topher Grace wonders about those mysterious calls she always leaves the room to answer. Julia Roberts is a soldier making a 14-hour journey so she can spend her one-day-leave with her true love, while Bradley Cooper plays her curious co-passenger on the flight.

Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo play a long-married couple raising their young grandson who’s dealing with his first crush, while his babysitter Emma Roberts is contemplating her ‘first-time’ with her boyfriend.

Bland, boring and frustratingly formulaic, Valentine’s Day is best described as a dumb distant cousin ofLove Actually, but without the sharp wit of that excellent British rom-com. It’s just a sickeningly sappy film with so much talk of flowers, gifts, cards and romantic dinners that by the end of those two long hours, the sight of a couple even holding hands is likely to make you vomit.

This Valentine’s Day, if you want to break up with your partner, this is the film to take her to. I’m going with one-and-a-half out of five and a thumbs-down for Garry Marshal’s Valentine’s Day; it’s contrived and predictable, and like an oversweet pastry it makes you sick to the stomach.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

February 05, 2010

Cast: Matt Dillon, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Amaury Nolasco, Fred Ward

Director: Nimród Antal

Armored starring Matt Dillon is a heist-gone-wrong movie that, ironically enough goes terribly wrong in its final minutes.

A bunch of talented actors including Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich, Columbus Short and Dillon himself star as disgruntled security guards on a fleet of armored trucks carrying millions of dollars. Stuck in that low-paying, dead-end job, surrounded by all that money but none of it theirs, the group decides to hijack their own vehicles and pocket the 42 million-dollar payload. All goes according to plan until the straight-arrow rookie Ty (played by Short), an Iraq war veteran, decides he wants out when an innocent bystander is killed in this operation. The group won’t let him walk, so he locks himself and the money inside one of the trucks while the rest figure out how to tear through the armored vehicle.

Simplistic in its premise, most of the film unfolds in an abandoned warehouse, and in real time. It’s watchable because it’s a believable story about ordinary guys who think they can get away with their crime without spilling any blood. When things go wrong however, they reveal just how desperate and dumb they are.

Armored isn’t exactly an edge-of-the-seat thriller, but there are some tense moments as you watch Ty use his war skills to protect himself and the cop who happens to chance into the warehouse. It’s in the last act that it all becomes totally preposterous for the sake of a compromised hopeful ending that doesn’t ring true at all.

Nevertheless, it’s an easy one-time watch if you don’t set your expectations too high. Two-and-a-half out of five for Armored; it’s not a bad option on a day you have nothing better to do.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

February 05, 2010

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler

Director: F Gary Gray

Law Abiding Citizen starring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx is a stomach-churning revenge thriller that’s lacking in logic or rationality, but packs enough of those jump-in-your-seat moments for it to qualify as a half-decent watch.

Ten years after witnessing the brutal murder of his wife and daughter, Clyde Shelton (played by Butler) begins a terrifying campaign of revenge against everyone responsible for his tragedy, including public prosecutor Nick Rice (played by Foxx) whom he holds responsible for one of the two killers being let off lightly.

Shelton delivers his own brand of justice to both killers, first making sure the one convicted suffers a slower, longer, more painful death than he was meant to. Then he hunts down the one who got away and slices and dices him into pieces, while videotaping the entire execution. He sends a DVD of this gruesome slaughter to the prosecutor’s home so his little daughter can see it.

Shelton’s promptly arrested and imprisoned, but manages to continue his serial killings from behind bars, smirking all along, never denying his actions, but raising the frightening possibility that someone outside is helping him.

To some extent the film works on a visceral level; it succeeds in shocking you with the manner in which Shelton turns vengeance into a game. You’re just as baffled as the characters in the film are as to how he manages to further his rampage from within the walls of a maximum-security prison, although the big revelation is a complete disappointment.

Law Abiding Citizen also offers itself as a critique of the American judicial system, but that’s really pushing it too far. In the end the film gets tiresome and repetitive because it can’t seem to develop its promising premise beyond a string of grisly mysterious killings.

I’m going with two out of five for Law Abiding Citizen. What could have been a Silence of the Lambs-style chilling thriller, ends up a dumb, blood-splattered B-movie. Watch it if you’re not turned off by gruesome violence!

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

February 05, 2010

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, Kristin Davis

Director: Peter Billingsley

There’s an old joke in Hollywood that no script written at a Starbucks has ever gotten made into a film. It refers to the fact that just about everyone in Los Angeles is trying to write a movie; everyone with a laptop in a coffee-shop is more than likely hammering out a script.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Couples Retreat is the kind of film that was probably written at a Starbucks. But I know that’s not true; it’s been written by two of the film’s stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, who probably knocked it out in their plush condos in the Hollywood Hills.

Fourteen years ago, the two guys starred in the far superior Swingers (which Favreau wrote incidentally), a comedy about twenty-something guys figuring out life and women as they traversed through the LA social scene. Coming from the same team, Couples Retreat is an utterly unimaginative letdown.

This film follows four couples as they visit a luxurious tropical island resort for sun, sea, spas and sex, but end up having to do lots of therapy and soul-searching instead.

Laughs must be drawn from such clichéd gags as untimely erections and suggestive yoga poses, and if that doesn’t work for you, surely you can’t resist the sight of a kid peeing into a model toilet in a furnishings store!

Fine actors like Jason Bateman, Kristen Davis, Jean Reno and Vaughn and Favreau themselves are wasted in this un-funny comedy about marriage mash-ups, which expectedly ends in a syrupy-sweet climax.

The actors spent a month shooting this film in gorgeous Bora Bora so it’s not like they went home empty handed from this experience. But I can’t think of one reason I’d recommend you watch this film. Not even for AR Rahman’s score, which is just as uninspired as the film.

One out of five and a thumbs-down for Couples Retreat; it’s so formulaic and fake you really couldn’t care less if these couples stay together, get divorced or are eaten up by sharks!

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)