Screenhead

Okay folks, brace yourselves, because I’ve got a real doozy right here for you today.  I’ve got no less than The Golden Boys here today, and though that may mean less than nothing, it shouldn’t…

…it’s David Carradine’s last movie.

And this time, his LAST time, he plays one of three retired sea captains who’ve decided to move in together.  And all’s well, until the three old salts realize they can’t cook or clean worth a…bilge bubble?  Okay, so my maritime similes aren’t up to snuff.  Anyway, the problem really comes in when they decide that one of the three needs to marry, and take the other two in as boarders.  But which one will wind up married, if any of them?

I’ll say this–this may be one of the best romantic comedies I’ve seen in quite some time, and I don’t ordinarily favor them.  Why?  Because this one, unlike the others (I’m going to answer both questions at once here) focuses on the comedy and makes the romance secondary.  The Golden Boys is downright hilarious, with a spectacular cast that literally brings the whole thing to a glorious, breathing life of its own.

David Carradine, by the way, makes…or rather made, sadly…an awesome elderly sailor.  Everyone else, meanwhile, plays their roles with ample skill and aplomb.

The Golden Boys is a charmer with plenty of laughs and some interesting romantic entanglements to boot.  There will also be plenty of surprises, as stuff you never see coming suddenly shows up.  I’m extraordinarily pleased with this one–guys out there looking for a date movie, take note: you’ll be able to stomach this one without much trouble and chances are the ladies will particularly enjoy it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands The Golden Boys a full eight out of ten for being charming and funny, with plenty of surprises to boot.

Yeah, I knew that’d get your attention.

Thing is, though, I’m not really cheating you. Kristen Bell is going to show up at least mostly naked in her upcoming movie When In Rome.  And she’ll be fifty feet tall.

Okay, so it’s a MURAL…criminy, people, what do you want from me? Blood?

Anyway, it’s When In Rome, and features a young single from New York disillusioned with love.  Like so many singles, she finds herself wishing she could change her circumstances.  Unlike so many singles, however, she finds herself stealing coins out of an Italian landmark known as the Fontana de Amore (shouldn’t that be “del”?  Or “della”, depending?), a fountain that’s supposed to help those who toss in a coin find love.  But when you, like our young single, steal coins from the Fontana, something much different happens.  You also steal the passion of whoever tossed in that coin…for yourself.  Whoever’s coin you take falls in love with you.

I’ve got to admit, this looks a little too half-baked and eighties for my tastes, but you can’t deny the appeal of a gigantic naked Kristen Bell.  And we’ll get to see how it all comes out January 29, 2010.

Maybe Zach Galifianakis is the brains of Hollywood after all.  Guy’s actually pretty lucid when you get him in the interview track–check out what he had to say when IGN asked him about the very idea of another Hangover installation:

[Director Todd Phillips] is writing the script. But I haven’t seen the script. I’m not running to do The Hangover 2. I told Todd, the last thing I want is the Police Academy chain all of the sudden, where I’m only known from… You’ve got to be careful with something like that. The movie’s really good, why bother with a sequel? And I’m not saying that I’m not going to do it.

I’m just posing these questions. These are things I ask Todd. Obviously, the reason is executives have Bentleys to pay for. I would love, love, love to work with those guys again. The script has to be good! But I’m working with Todd on a movie we’ll be shooting in about six weeks. So I’ll do that first, and then we’ll see how it goes.

Got to hand it to the guy–a lot of people would just throw themselves at it for the quick cash. Not so with Galifianakis, who at least has to think it over before selling out.  I did, however, enjoy the first Hangover, so if you’re up for another go-round, Zach, I’ll buy the first round.

If you haven’t asked this question of yourself at one point or another, then chances are you haven’t yet turned twenty five: what would you do if you had it to do again?  I’ve wondered that more than once, believe me–you wouldn’t think so, me living the dream of film criticism and all…but it’s true.  And in 17 Again, we’ll get to see just what happens when someone gets the chance.

Mike O’Donnell is a family man with regrets.  He could have, you see, gone on to college on a basketball scholarship, possibly even gone pro, but instead he married his pregnant high school sweetheart.  Doing the right thing by the young lady has left him disenchanted with life and constantly wondering about what might have been.  And when he gets the chance to be, well, 17 Again, he discovers that maybe he’s right where he should be.

Let’s be honest: this will ONLY be good if you can stand this sort of thing.  There are some good jokes in here, and Thomas Lennon is always a hoot in anything he shows up in.  It’s funny, sure–but it also tries really, REALLY, hard to be heartwarming.  Almost too hard, really.  But despite this, there’s actually a lot to like here.

The Screenhead Ten Scale is actually somewhat puzzled by this one, and in its puzzlement, hands 17 Again a six out of ten for being a fine example of a movie that only a certain kind of person will ever really enjoy.  If you’re looking for a comedy with a note of romance and and drama, and you can stand a huge load of Zac Efron, well, you should be in the right place.

You know that old philosophical argument? The one that supposes that we’re all just tiny specks comprising the atoms and molecules of some other, much larger universe?  Possibly even a much simpler one?  I once saw one version of this that postulated that we were all actually part of Ziggy’s big toe.  Yeah, the comic strip Ziggy.  Anyway, it might surprise you to know that Dr. Seuss, in his own inimitable style, actually took that ball and ran with it.  And since we were talking The Lorax yesterday, we may as well switch gears and talk Horton today, or, fairly recent release Horton Hears A Who.

In this animated movie, an elephant with more charm than good sense (and some unkind folks would substitute “good sense” for “sanity” here) one day discovers a tiny civilization living on a speck.  A speck of DUST, I believe–and he discovers it by way of his superior elephant hearing.  This civilization, known to all and sundry as Whoville   Previously they’d survived by living in a cave in which conditions were relatively static, but now their emergence into the larger world has left them at risk.  Thus it’s left to Horton to find them a new, similar cave-like environment.

Sure, this story only makes sense to small children and the clinically insane (where does Whoville get all the minerals it so clearly needs to build all that crap they’ve got in town?  The Whoville Iron Mines? Located on the speck of dust?) but once you work around the utter impossibility of it all, you’re left with a charming, raucously comic tale.  Even better, you’ve got great voice acting in the form of Jim Carrey and Seth Rogen, among others, plus some commentaries on the nature of faith in existence.  Just because you can’t see it doesn’t necessarily follow that it isn’t there.

The Screenhead Ten Scale rewards the stalwart pachyderm with a seven out of ten.  This plot couldn’t be much more far-fetched, but it will be entertaining.

So Michael Moore’s looking to drum up a little advance attention ahead of his upcoming “documentary”, Capitalism: A Love Story by announcing that it just might be his last.

Quoth Moore: “I have been working on two screenplays over the last couple of years.  One’s a comedy, one’s a mystery, and I really want to do this.”

It’s not such a stretch to believe that Moore wants to become a filmmaker; his “documentaries”, meanwhile, have been at least partially fiction for years, so why not lose that “true-story” veneer completely?  Even better, a movie merely written by Moore would mean that he’d be out of the shot, and we could actually see background for once.

Would the audience follow?  Possibly but not necessarily–Moore could probably do a very interesting political satire, assuming he actually took a run at it.  There’s no word as to what the content of his comedy or his mystery entails, so we’ll have a good long while to wait before we get to see just how Moore’s filmography turns out.

The Japanese sense of humor is a little odd, and translates more toward the bizarre and inexplicable than anything else.  You’ll get a perfect sense of that in Shaolin Grandma, a fantastic martial-arts comedy directly imported from the Rising Sun itself.

A postman finds an elderly woman dead in her house, and while waiting for paramedics to arrive,  he reads the long, confusing, and hilarious story of her life in several volumes of scrolls, including one really unpleasant one that discusses, in shudder-inducing detail, her sex life.

She’ll go from master of her own Shaolin Kung Fu dojo to one of the greatest entertainers in Japan and beyond.  And while there are plenty of laughs in here, there’s also plenty to think about.  Watching this little old lady, poised and calm above all else, move through life with more simple grace and charm than even Forrest Gump could generate is a genuine and very unexpected thrill.  One thing’s perfectly clear, this one is hilarious.  There are tons of great jokes in here, and probably plenty more I just plain don’t understand.

And of course, for extra fun, there will even be some of those great and downright implausible action sequences where even little old ladies can fling themselves around and deliver kicks that can send people flying for blocks.

Sure, this is intended to be a parody of Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer, but it turns out to have plenty of reason to watch all by itself.  The Screenhead Ten Scale gives it a solid eight out of ten for sheer laughs and entertainment value.  The ending will be mostly incomprehensible, but other than that, the rest of the movie will be sweet.

I have to admit, I’ve always held the MTI video lineup at arm’s length.  Sometimes, they manage to get some really effective pieces clocked out, and other times, they don’t succeed so well.  It’s a real “feast or famine” situation, and the only difference is whether or not they managed to find a script that works with their generally low budget standard.

Moscow Chill, one of their newest, works.

Featuring Norman Reedus, the actor who brought us some really sweet performances in both The Boondock Saints and The Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, Moscow Chill introduces us to a downright uber-hacker (who is in fact so leet that he can cause ATMs to jackpot via remote) who’s been recruited from prison by Russians who want him to use those magnificent skills to recover forty million dollars for a Russian mob figure.  Of course, it’s hardly as easy as it sounds–is it ever?–and so our hacker and his newfound Russian buddies will have a lot of problems on their hands.

Yes, this is an action movie.  Sure it is.  It’s also got a little bit of crime drama / thriller element on its side.  But, much in the same way as Ocean’s Eleven did, it also packs in a healthy slug of comedy.  I was downright astonished with how often I found myself chuckling at the antics of Moscow Chill.

There really is a lot to like here–the scenery is beautiful and widely varied, if a little on the gray side, the performances are solidly done and highly believable, the plot itself is taut and well done.  There’s just so much to enjoy it’s hard to walk away from Moscow Chill feeling dissatisfied.

And when I even managed to spot some romantic entanglements going on in here, I couldn’t believe it.  It was downright unsettling to discover that this, which I thought would be just another action flick going in, turned out to be a possible date movie.  Fellas, remember this one: Moscow Chill has plenty for not only you but also for the lady in your life as well.  Rent this one and you’ll get a night’s entertainment that she’ll enjoy too.  And there’s never anything wrong with that–plus it gets you brownie points next time you want to see Face Slicers 17.  Not that there really is such a thing, but you get the general idea.

Okay, granted–it’s low-budget and a smidge predictable, but only a smidge.  You can pretty much see coming how things will go for Ray, and it won’t be much of a surprise how the whole thing turns out.  But that’s all right–we’re not here for twist endings.  We’re here for a fun little action movie with some good laughs and a little Russian flavor on the side, like sour creme on borscht.

Moscow Chill proves to be effective on a whole lot of levels, and is surprisingly enjoyable for its low budget.  The Screenhead Ten Scale rewards effort, and thus is happy to hand it an eight out of ten.  Low budget, sure, but low class?  Never.

There are phrases you never want to hear people say.  You’ll hear several of them in Big Stan.

Despite a really, REALLY unpleasant beginning in which Rob Schneider talks an elderly woman into buying a time share by alluding to the neighborhood in which she’ll be surprisingly popular, Big Stan, one of Schneider’s newest titles and one of David Carradine’s last, is going to bring a whole lot of laughs.  This is despite the fact that it’s one of the crassest titles released in some time.

Big Stan is all about Stan Minton, a shady real estate shyster who finds himself doing a three to five year stretch in prison for fraud.  With six months to go before his sentence begins, Minton turns to a man, The Master, to teach him how to be a kung-fu badass.  Thankfully, The Master is played by David Carradine, so you know that Stan’s going to be taught right.  When Stan finally reaches prison six months later, he becomes an agent of change…until the warden decides that Stan’s OLD talents are much more valuable to him.  Will Stan take the easy way out?  Or will he serve his time in peace?

I hadn’t expected so many laughs to come out of this one.  I really hadn’t.  In fact, I was expecting yet another godawful Deuce Bigalow or something else to come boiling out of this mess.  The fact that it had gone, pretty much, direct to video was scarcely encouraging.

But if you didn’t know about it before, you do now–direct to DVD is not the trash heap it once was.  In fact, it’s becoming rapidly the wave of the future.  Cheaper, faster, easier–and we get solid product in rapid order.  Big Stan is an excellent example of how the industry is moving.  Fairly big names (let’s be honest here, most people recognize the name “Rob Schneider” when they hear it) making solid if low-budget titles.

Okay, sure–no one’s ever going to mistake Big Stan for Oscar material.  There are metric tons of rape jokes in here, and other, much less savory topics.  But there’s also plenty of action and lots of choice top-rank comedy.  There’s lots to love about this truly surprising charmer.  And I mean surprising–I was caught completely off-guard on this one.  I never expected I would laugh like this at a Rob Schneider film, and yet, laugh I did.

Most of us who remember Rob Schneider’s early career, back before the full-page ads and the relentless screaming at critics and other assorted garbage that he willfully cluttered his career with, remember him as a stand-up funnyman, the kind who could deliver laughs regularly and with great force.  Of course, that all started to fall apart about midway through, but perhaps the whole direct-to-video thing will be good for Rob’s career.  Maybe it’ll let him get that old funny back, and give us all reason to keep watching.

Maybe…but I’m not holding my breath.

The key take-away here, however, is that Big Stan is going to prove to be an excellent experience, with plenty of laughs, and once you get past the outer shell of crass humor, you’ll find all those laughs and be glad for every one.  Big Stan takes home a seven out of ten on the Screenhead Ten Scale for doing what it set out to do, if not necessarily in the best way.

So pretty much every Neil Gaiman fan on the face of the earth was looking forward to this one, even if all he had to do with it was writing the original novel on which Coraline was based.

This one is all about the little girl who’s been named in the title–Coraline.  Coraline’s got two very busy parents, and as so often happens, usually without intent, Coraline grows to feel ignored by her parents, who are, as most parents know, constantly neck-deep in work.  Thus, when Coraline finds a door to another universe located in her own house, she’s pretty eager to plunge into it.  The universe she finds is a lot like our own, only much, much better, with lots of excitement and interesting things happening and people who are actually happy to see her, or at least more inclined to act like it.  But as is generally the case with anything Neil Gaiman comes in contact with, just because it looks like a fantastic netherworld into the depths of a greater universe than our own, doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t actually containing some really nasty unnamed–or possibly unnamable–horrors.

The absolute unsettling beauty of this movie is just amazing.  The figures are all realistic, but without trending toward that “uncanny valley” tendency that would elevate this from unsettling to creepy. The background music is even better, alternating between the soft and gentle to the upbeat and jazzy, with occasional forays into the dark and foreboding.  I don’t ordinarily comment on a movie’s soundtrack, but when it’s as perfect as this one is, it requires some special attention.

Even better, the backgrounds they’re set in are perfect for each character.  Seems like everybody in this movie is insane for any of a variety of reasons, with only the possible exception of our heroine Coraline.  And frankly, the fact that she’s the only one experiencing this “other world” casts serious doubt on the whole thing.

A special note–even the Michigan lore aspect of Coraline is quite real.  When Coraline’s friends refer to her as a “troll” and a “loper”, those are both ACCURATE names.  A “troll” in Michigan is a person who comes from below the Mackinac Bridge, or the LOwer PEninsula, which explains “loper”

The thing that you really need to be aware of with Coraline is that, despite the fact that it’s rated PG, it’s really quite a bit too dark for the younger set.  Seriously–I wouldn’t let anyone under the age of at LEAST eight watch this movie without severe threat of nightmares.  But past that point, you’re likely in for a really rousing family adventure with lots of fun and some amazing sights.  I’m actually really pleased at how this turned out.  It’s got plenty of thrills and a little action packed into this clearly family fare.

Granted, it’s not one for the littler kids, but anyone from probably about eight on up (and don’t think that this is just for kids, either–it’s a solid story with lots of good surprises packed into it and some absolutely beautiful visuals.  Coraline pulls down a full nine out of ten on the Screenhead Ten Scale, mostly because it misses its target market by just a little bit, and not everyone in its upper audience is going to enjoy a–let’s face it–cartoon.  But still, for those willing to try, Coraline will be a fantastic adventure, in every sense.