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Bring it On By Greg Walton Review Film Critic
BRING IT ON
If you think cheerleading is all smiles, kicks, and human pyramids...well, you're right. But as extensive programming on ESPN2 proves, there's an entire cheerleading sub-culture you and I will never understand. Grueling months of practice, meticulously choreographed routines, and cutthroat competition all played out before proud parents and a national audience of Cheerheads.
Bring It On is their movie. It feels their pain. It also mocks them, abuses them, and showcases some serious pom-poms, but all in good fun. And it's that sense of fun that wins out over a seriously deficient script, caught somewhere between a typical teen comedy and sports film franchises like Major League.
After three years as the reigning cheer-champs, the San Diego Toros discover their cheers have been swiped from an all-black East Compton squad, played by hip-hop recording artists Blaque. Facing a crisis of conscience, newly elected squad leader Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) decides to ditch the stolen routines and go with a professional choreographer, Sparky (Ian Roberts), to save their season.
Sparky (who describes cheerleaders as, "Dancers who've gone retarded") sells them yet another copycat routine, which results in the Toro's counting on their own originality and teamwork to put together a showstopping cheerapalooza to rival Compton and win nationals.
Rocky it ain't. But there's an endearing charm that pokes through all the tired teen cliches, mostly through the efforts of Dunst and her cheerleader in training, Missy, played by Eliza Dushku. All attitude and pent-up aggression, Dushky's transformation from militant rebel to the Litte Cheerleader Who Could is flat-out fantastic. Dunst brings a flighty, yet fragile edge to Torrance that Bring it On clings to - determined to convince an audience of disbelievers that cheerleading dreams CAN come true. Or that they're even worth having at all.
The cheers themselves are hyped-up club routines that resemble nothing you saw in high school - people jumping, flying, and tumbling through the air while the camera sweeps across the stage like a Hollywood musical. Bring It On comes at you with so much enthusiasm, you almost feel obligated to clap along. And after the lip-synced credit sequence set to a cover of Toni Basil's infamous Hey Mickey you'll be a Cheerhead too.
GRADE: B
The Cell
The Cell
By Greg Walton Review Film Critic
What really irks me about The Cell is how good it should be. Not could be, but should be. Here's a film whose script already had a running start (Dreamscape with Dennis Quaid explored similar mental terrain with a sci-fi slant), blessed with a gorgeous and talented actress in Jennifer Lopez (not to mention character actor extraordinaire Vincent D'Onofrio), and an eerie concept that opens up entire worlds of possibilities.
So what do we get to see? Lots of routine serial killer mumbo jumbo that looks like outtakes from Seven and Silence of the Lambs interrupted by shots of Miss Lopez covered head to toe (blasphemy!) in a funky body suit, interrupted by performance-art dreams from within a serial killer's mind.
These dreams are supposed to be shockingly original, but they just look like Metallica videos filtered through some Julie Taymor Broadway show. They may startle (that's easy with any self-respecting set of orchestra violins ala Psycho), but they never truly shock. The only really disturbing thing about The Cell is how much more attention is paid to its borderline banal serial killer than Lopez or her co-heroes.
As Catharine Deane, Lopez is the world's best looking shrink, still hip enough to smoke pot, but nurturing enough take on the tough cases. Jacked into the dream machine she enters the world of her patients, interacting in a sub-Freudian way to combat pesky emotional issues and childhood traumas. When the project is hijacked by the Feds, Catharine is sent into the mind of Carl Stargher (D'Onofrio), a psycho-sicko whose fifth victim's location is trapped inside his comatose head. If Catharine can't get the info in time, Carl's automated drowning pool will finish the job from beyond the grave.
From there the psychedelia begins. It's a long, strange trip - but the scenery is all pretty familiar. Some of the costumes are vividly outrageous and the score by Howard Shore is a perfect cacophony of screeches, gongs and exotic interludes. But The Cell locks itself into so many empty characters and flimsy backstories (turns out Carl was a mean guy because he had a mean Daddy) you almost wish the screenwriter had locked himself in a room for another few weeks and done right by us all.
Grade: C
Way of the Gun
By Greg Walton Review Film Critic
It'd be a cop-out to dismiss Way of the Gun as another Tarantino test-tube baby, especially since Pulp Fiction is more than half a decade in the distance. And writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has his own Oscar on display for The Usual Suspects, the tough talkin' gangster mystery from '95. Besides, the anti-heroes of Way of the Gun shoot people with a straight face, sparing us most of the pop-culture sarcasm that was the big T's trademark.
Mr. Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Mr. Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro, who looks more like Humphrey Bogart every day) are not nice people. They punch girls, shoot bystanders, and kidnap mothers-to-be like Robin (Juliette Lewis), the surrogate egg-receptacle for an aging millionaire and his trophy wife. Parker and Longbaugh's attempt at collecting the ransom is constantly thwarted by a quirky cast of bodyguards and bag-men, including Taye Diggs and James Caan. After some disappointingly predictable plot twists, the whole affair comes down to a wild west shoot-out in a Mexican brothel; blood, guts, and gunsmoke piled on thicker than a Gordita.
McQuarrie's priorities are script first, film second; which results in an ensemble piece where everyone, even the boring characters, get a couple primo lines. In some cases, particularly Caan as an old-school gangster caught between family and business loyalties, the results are genuinely powerful and honestly emotional. But more often, it feels like Way of the Gun sacrifices its central outlaws for some pseudo-spiritual high purpose- drowning in lackluster subplots and showboating screenwriter voice-overs.
Attention to detail and subtle character shading should be expected from the man who invented Keyser Soze, but McQuarrie is also surprisingly adept as an action director - cutting his shoot'em up scenes with an inspired, guttural glory. He brands Phillippe and Del Toro as icons of cool detachment, adrift in a world where the good guys don't always win...and neither does the bad guys. It's nihilism, country style.
Ultimately, Way of the Gun gets so caught up in its thematic cultural dissection - in a nutshell: the savages of society are still more civilized than the so-called civilians - there's not much room for anything else. It's almost a movie to remember. With too many flaws to forgive or forget.
Grade: B-
Highlander: Endgame
By Greg Walton Review Film Critic
Highlander has morphed itself from an overblown 80's rock opera into a cult with clout, spawning three sequels and two syndicated TV shows. But just about anything fits the cult demographic nowadays - watch out for midnight screenings of Battlefield Earth coming soon to an art house near you.
Highlander hooks its fans with swordplay, soap opera romanticism, and the continuing adventures of Connor McLeod, one of a race of immortals who roam the earth hacking each other's head off in pursuit of the ultimate prize - probably a big screen TV.
Endgame brings together Conner (Christopher Lambert, rough-hewn Highlander from the films) and Duncan McLeod (Adrian Paul, heartthrob Highlander from television) to face off against a supercharged immortal with ties to their past. There's some hot-roddin' heavies on the loose, a plethora of rather routine swordfights, and more beheadings than a block party briss. But Endgame primarly consists of fuzzy flashbacks, emphasizing the Doesn't it suck to live forever theme that passes for a plot.
Most of the action arises out of some complicated character development non-fans might have a hard time following. Even so, you've got to respect the straight face first time director Doug Aarniokoski puts on all this mythical mopiness. Several scenes (particularly Duncan's forced initiation of his wife into the immortal fold) truly succeed in folding the series' strengths with the film's spectacle. Enough to sell a few more Kitana swords on QVC anyway.
Grade: B- |
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