FILM REVIEW OF ''BRICK MANSIONS" (2014)

Acclaimed French filmmaker Luc Besson has a knack for recycling material.  Nevertheless, he knows how to write riveting action thrillers. “La Femme Nikita,” “The Transporter” trilogy, “Kiss of the Dragon,” “Taken,” “Taken 2,” “Lockout,” ‘The Family,” “Leon: The Professional,” and “Colombian” illustrate his expertise.  Besson’s heroes and heroines are stalwart souls who refuse to be intimidated by either formidable foes or odds.  Revenge usually lies at the heart of the matter, and the cruel, heartless villains get their just comeuppance by fade-out.  Back in 2004, Besson wrote a gripping little actioneer about French ghettos entitled “District B13.”  Essentially, “District B13” combined elements of the futuristic Kurt Russell sci-fi saga “Escape from New York” with “48 HRS.”  A convict who had murdered a corrupt cop in a fit of rage teams up with an indestructible undercover detective to infiltrate a crime ridden neighborhood.  They must retrieve a deadly bomb that has fallen into the hands of desperate drug-dealing criminals who live like warlords.  The possibilities for conflict are predictably rampant.  “District B13” served not only as the film title, but it also is the setting for all the anarchy.  Since law & order never prevailed in the District, Parisian authorities have sealed it off with impressive containment walls that enclose it like a fortress.  They are also evacuating their police forces to leave those lawless citizens to their own designs.  

Meanwhile, “District B13” gave audiences their first glimpse of stunt man David Belle.  Officially, Belle originated Parkour.  Parkour is a form of hand-to-hand combat where the combatant exploits his surroundings for maximum advantage.  Meaning, our hero searches first to find ways out of a predicament and then fights only when individuals block his escape route.  Belle qualifies as a competent enough actor, but his gift for adapting himself to his surroundings so he can elude the villains is extraordinary.  Belle performs his outlandish feats with the grace and agility of a youthful Jackie Chan.  The character that he portrays is not a professional lawman, criminal, or mercenary.  He is just a law-biding citizen seeking justice for others.  Later, in 2009, Belle reprised his role in the dynamic sequel “District 13: Ultimatum.”  He makes his English-language film debut in editor-turned-director Camille Delamarre’s “Brick Mansions” (** OUT OF ****), with the late Paul Walker as his co-star.  Since Belle speaks with a heavy French accent, Vin Diesel dubbed him for American audiences.  You’ll have to strain your ears to detect traces of that signature growl that has made Diesel famous.  Unfortunately, this lukewarm action thriller is neither half as good as either of the “District B13” nail-biters.  Belle upstages Walker in all their combat sequences, and the two actors display little camaraderie.  Perhaps the language barrier prevented them from bonding.  Presumably, “Brick Mansions” constituted little more than a paycheck movie for Walker between his “Fast and Furious” epics.  What is worst is that Besson has rewritten crucial parts of his original “District B13” screenplay for this flawed remake.  Essentially, it boils down to a case of fixing something that didn’t require fixing.  Indeed, Besson has taken the edge off the action in many instances and packed in the clichés that he didn’t stick in either of the “District” movies.

Basically, freshman director Camille Delamarre and Besson have transplanted the action to Detroit in the year 2018 and their dystopian storyline isn’t a far cry from the urban renewal machinations in the “RoboCop” franchise.  The “RoboCop” thrillers occur in Detroit, too.  Skyrocketing crime plagues the Motor City, and the Mayor (Bruce Ramsay of “Collateral Damage’) has constructed an impregnable wall around the troubled sector where the police wage a holding action until they can extract themselves.  In a sense, “Brick Mansions” resembles “The Purge.”  You can do anything you want within this labyrinth of housing projects designated Brick Mansions.  Sure, the storyline shares similarities with the latest incarnation of “Dredd,” except skyscrapers run by warlords don’t loom in this woebegone ghetto.  African-Americans traffic in drugs like heroin and cocaine, and Tremaine Alexander (Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, a.k.a. RZA of “American Gangster”) is the alpha male of Brick Mansions.  The first time we see our hero, Lino (David Belle of “Femme Fatale”); he is destroying a fortune in heroin.  Alexander’s gun-toting henchmen swarm into Lino’s apartment complex, but he manages to escape them because he knows every nook and cranny in the place.  Later, Alexander’s second-in-command K-2 (Grouchy Boy) comes up with a plan to lure Lino out.  They take his ex-girlfriend, Lola (Catalina Denis), as a hostage.  Miraculously, Lino breaks into Alexander’s stronghold and rescues Lola.  He and she hold Alexander at gunpoint so his ruffians won’t kill them.  At the police station, a corrupt cop turns Alexander loose and jails Lino.  In “District B13,” the hostage was our hero’s sister.  The sister made better sense in the first film than the ex-girlfriend.

While this is going down in Brick Mansions, undercover cop Damien Collier (Paul Walker) has an agenda of his own.  His father, who was a decorated cop, died under suspicious circumstances when he plunged into the Brick Mansions.  Since then Collier has put Alexander on his short list of suspects who need to pay.  The Mayor has been planning to renovate the Brick Mansions when the gangsters steal a deadly bomb.  Collier accepts the assignment to retrieve the bomb.  He wants more time to acquire intelligence about the Brick Mansions.  The Mayor refuses to give him more time.  Instead, he pairs him up with Lino.  Naturally, the two men don’t trust each other.  Worse, the criminals have tampered with the bomb and activated its countdown.  Our heroes have less than 24 hours to disarm it.  “Brick Mansions” packs enough surprises to make it palatable, but this is pales by comparison with Walker’s “Fast and Furious” franchise, and the shoot’em ups and close-quarters combat are considerably less gritty.  “District B13” carried an R-rating, while “Brick Mansions” earned an PG-13 rating.  Only hardcore Paul Walker fans will appreciate his second-to-last movie.

                                  

FILM REVIEW OF ''SNITCH" (2013)

Arnold Schwarzenegger tangled with the Mexican Drug Cartel in the shoot’em up actioneer “The Last Stand” back in January.  This month the Rock wrestles with the same dastards in “Snitch.”  “Felon” director Ric Roman Waugh pits the six-foot-four inch former World Wrestling Entertainment champ against hoodlums armed with accents and submachine guns in “Snitch.”  This suspenseful but formulaic narcotics caper about a father who plunges himself smack in the middle of a drug war on account of his son telegraphs most of its punches before they land.  Our outnumbered protagonist is a fearless father determined to save his son from death in prison at the hands of the inmates.  Unfortunately, this loquacious crime thriller suffers from a case of pervasive ‘shaky cam’ cinematography.  Happily, “Snitch” shifts gears during its final quarter hour, and Waugh salvages this straightforward melodrama with some smashing automotive derring-do.  Before he started calling the shots as a director, Waugh coordinated and performed stunts in the “Lethal Weapon” sequels.  Mind you, the Rock has made better movies than “Snitch,” but this white-knuckle epic isn’t an outlandish exercise in gratuitous violence.  Waugh and “Revolutionary Road” scenarist Justin Haythe based their humorless undercover crime yarn on an episode of the PBS’ television series “Frontline” that first aired in 1999.  In real life, a desperate dad endangered his own life for the sake of his imprisoned 18 year old son.  The real-life father helped law enforcement nab narcotics dealers, but the local prosecutor refused to honor their side of the deal.  Of course, nothing as treacherous as this transpires in “Snitch” because the filmmakers bathe the Federal Government in a complimentary but gritty light.  

In “Snitch,” Dwayne Johnson emerges as a thoroughly charismatic hero.  In other words, he doesn’t mutate into a fantastic, larger-than-life, figure like The Scorpion King.  As John Matthews, the Rock owns a successful transportation company with a fleet of eighteen wheelers.  He resides with current wife, Analisa (Nadine Velazquez of “Flight”) and their young daughter Isabelle (Kyara Campos) in a spacious house. Meantime, Matthews’ former-wife Sylvie (Melina Kanakaredes of “CSI: NY”) and their 18-year old son, Jason (Rafi Gavron of “Mind Games”), have reverted to her maiden name of Collins.  As “Snitch” unfolds, Jason accepts a special delivery package from a friend who wants to him to stash his drugs for him.  Jason opens the shipping carton, finds a sack of Ecstasy pills, and then spots a DEA signal transmitter.  Moments later, Agent Cooper (a bewhiskered Barry Pepper of “Saving Private Ryan”) and his team storm Jason’s house.  They pursue the terrified lad on foot and in cars through the streets until they corner him.  As Sylvie and John learn in courthouse, Jason’s so-called friend struck a deal with Federal authorities to reduce his own prison sentence by implicating somebody else.  Although Jason admits he has smoked pot in the past, he doesn’t abuse drugs and hasn’t taken anything like the Ecstasy pills in his friend’s package.  Nevertheless, the amount of MDMA that the DEA caught him with lands him in prison for a ten-year stretch.  Naturally, John is as stunned as Sylvie is distraught, while U.S. Attorney Joanne Keeghan (Susan Sarandon of “The Banger Sisters”) refuses to cut John any deals

John Matthews decides to take matters into his own hands.  He persuades an employee on his payroll with a criminal record, David James (Jon Bernthal of “The Walking Dead”), to introduce him to a notorious drug dealer.  This kind of unethical behavior on the part of our hero reflects just how desperate he is to intervene for his son.  Earlier, John tried to infiltrate the local street gangs and gotten beaten up for his trouble.  Eventually, David James comes around and takes John to talk with a two-time loser, Malik (Michael K. Williams of “Gone Baby Gone”), who proves to be a pretty shrewd gangsta.  James and Malik, it seems, knew each other before James decided to go straight for the sake of his wife and son.  John convinces Malik that he needs the money to bolster his declining business.  Afterward, John sneaks back to give Keeghan his news, and Agent Cooper provides him with back-up.  Basically, John plans to let Malik use his tractor-trailers to traffick in narcotics.  During the illegal deal, John and James barely escape, but their initial misfortune turns out to be fortunate.  Whereas John had negotiated a deal to hand Malik to her on a platter, he has an even bigger offer for her.  The local leader of the Mexican Cartel (Benjamin Bratt of “Catwoman”) contacts John in person because he believes there is a place for him in their criminal family. 

The filmmakers turn up the heat on our hero.  When John sees Jason in prison, our hero is shocked by his son’s battered appearance.  Apparently, Jason isn’t holding up too well behind bars, and this compels John to fight even harder.  The problem is John has gotten himself in too deep. The suspense mounts when cartel gunmen pay a surprise visit to John’s house.  Moreover, they learn about Jason through a uniformed contact in the prison, and the pressure rises for our hero to perform.    The cartel wants him to drive a fortune in cash, approximately $83-million in greenbacks, in the trailer of an eighteen wheeler to the border.  John suspects they mean to kill him.  Agent Cooper warns him to be vigilant.  

“Snitch” amounts to an okay actioneer.  The sensational driving stunts pump up the film.  Meantime, the supporting cast spends most of the time on the fringes.  Sarandon’s prosecutor rarely leaves her office, while Barry Pepper stays out of the Rock’s way.  Benjamin Bratt has little time to develop his characterization of a lethal cartel drug leader beyond the stereotypes that we have grown accustomed to in these movies.  Similarly, Melina Kanakaredes is confined to the sidelines.  Essentially, “Snitch” implicates the mandatory-sentencing laws that compelled a father to fend for his son.  Ironically, the same laws Waugh’s movie rants against serve to bring down the villains.

FILM REVIEW OF ''ROCK OF AGES'' (2012)

“Hairspray” director Adam Shankman’s cinematic adaptation of the 2006 Broadway juke box musical “Rock of Ages” (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as a predictable but entertaining tear-jerker enhanced by an oldies soundtrack of Top-40 hits.  Watching this agile musical comedy romance is like attending a concert, except instead of Styx, Journey, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Steve Perry, Poison and Europe warbling their own songs, we get Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Russell Brand singing them.  Lip-synching or not, the cast performs the lyrics well enough to make you want to tap your toes, clap your hands, and perhaps join in on the vocalizations.  Of course, the old-fashioned, boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-wins-girl back love story that brings everything together is sheer hokum.

Although Tom Cruise is billed last in the opening credits, the “Mission Impossible” superstar steals “Rock of Ages” from young, star-crossed lovers Diego Boneta and Juliana Hough.  They represent the usual, dewy-eyed hopefuls who pour into Hollywood each day yearning for the success, fame, and immortality.  Unfortunately, despite their sympathetic personalities’, Boneta and Hough emerge as cosmetically captivating cookie-cutter hero and heroine.  You know from the get-go they will survive the trials and tribulations that they encounter and come up none the worse for all the wear. 

Meantime, Cruise is the only character with shades of depth, and he isn’t afraid to ridicule the larger-than-life character of veteran rocker Stacee Jaxx.  Oddly enough, when he stars in his own movies, Cruise is serious, straightforward, and as shallow as the “Rock of Ages” leads. Here, Cruise delivers a performance brimming both with bravado and abasement.  In the movies he doesn’t produce, Cruise has fun skewering his image as well as playing outlandish characters.  Remember that obnoxious Hollywood producer that he played in the war epic parody “Tropic Thunder?”  Cruise is every bit as hilarious there as he was here.  Even if you hate him, you’ll enjoy the way that he skewers himself without mercy, while looking cool in a cretinous sort of way.

“Rock of Ages” opens in 1987.  Tulsa, Oklahoma, native Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough of “Footloose”) has packed all her autographed classic rock albums—we’re talking vinyl—and has boarded a Greyhound for Hollywood with the dream of becoming a rock and roll starlet.  No sooner does our cute heroine hit Hollywood than a low-life hits her.  He steals all her albums.  A bartender’s assistant, Drew Boley (Diego Boneta of “Mean Girls 2”), consoles her about the loss of her valuables.  Later, Diego manages to land her a job at the popular Sunset Strip nightclub called ‘The Bourbon Room.”  The owner, Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin of “The Departed”), hires Sherrie against his better judgment.  Dennis detests young girls yearning to yowl their way to stardom.  Something that he sees in Sherrie prompts him to make an exception.  Sherrie assures Dennis that she can waitress with the best. 

Meantime, Dennis is struggling to keep the doors of The Bourbon Room open.  He owes a mountain of unpaid taxes.  Dennis’ right hand man, Lonny (Russell Brand of “Get Him to the Greek”), believes rock and roll will save them.  Dennis doesn’t share Lonny’s optimism.  Ultimately, Dennis books rock star sensation Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise of “Risky Business”) because the veteran rocker plans to go solo.  This engagement will mark Stacee’s last show with his band Arsenal.  Dennis and Stacee have known each other from the get-go.  Stacee got his start at The Bourbon Club.  The news that Stacee Jaxx will appear at The Bourbon Room comes at the same time Los Angeles conservatives are poised to launch a campaign against Dennis' notorious night club.  L.A. Mayor Mike Whitmore (Bryan Cranston of TV’s “Breaking Bad”) responds to pressure to sanitize the Sunset Strip.  As it turns out, the mayor’s secret weapon is none other than his trophy wife Patricia. Mrs. Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones of “No Reservations”) rallies the churches together to protest against “sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." Patricia and her fervent supporters turn out in droves to condemn not only The Bourbon Room but also Stacee Jaxx.  According to Patricia, Stacee Jaxx spews “sex, hateful music, and sex.” Ostensibly, Patricia abhors the rocker because he seduced her vulnerable roommate at UCLA and took advantage of her.

As the crowds assemble outside, chants and protests mingle in the evening air.  Dennis dreams about the mint that he will make until he learns that the act scheduled to open for Stacee Jaxx has bowed out.  At the last minute, Dennis agrees to let Drew and his band warm up the house for three songs only.  Earlier, Drew had lamented to Sherrie during a romantic encounter at the famous Hollywood sign that he suffered from stage. Fright.  Now, he fears the paralysis will strike the next time he climbs on stage.  Miraculously, Drew sheds his fears and lights up the crowd, so much so that the man who promotes Stacee Jaxx, Paul Gill (Paul Giamatti of “Shoot’em Up”), wants to immortalize him.   At this moment, Drew catches a glimpse of Stacee Jaxx adjusting his jeans as Sherrie turns away from him.

Director Adam Shankman and “Tropic Thunder” scenarist Justin Theroux, original Broadway musical writer Chris D'Arienzo, and “Just Go With It” scribe Allen Loeb never let things slow down during this two-hour plus musical.  Indeed, they have made changes.  First, Patricia Whitmore replaces the characters of German developers, Hertz Klinemann and son Franz, who wanted to demolish The Bourbon Room.  Second, Stacee and Sherrie never have sex.  The problem is that "Rock" lacks a genuinely treacherous villain.  Meantime, each song punctuates the plot and serves as commentary.  The assortment of songs captures the cacophonous 1980s when flamboyant, long-haired rockers ruled.  Everything about “Rock of Ages” reeks of nostalgia, especially the way it makes fun of the boy bands.  Occasionally, the filmmakers allow a glint of reality, such as when our heroine winds up pole-dancing.  The choreography is nimble as well as interpretative.  Aside from the rather obvious love story, “Rock of Ages” contains two other romances.  Stacee Jaxx plunges for a “Rolling Stone” reporter, and Lonny and Dennis discover why they love to sing duets.  “Rock of Ages” celebrates the spirit of rock and roll without wallowing in its decadence.

FILM REVIEW OF "CONTAGION" (2011)

Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Elliot Gould, Sanaa Lathan, and Jennifer Ehle all contend with a mysterious global virus in "Traffic" director Steven Soderbergh's nimble global disease thriller "Contagion" (*** out of ****) that Gwyneth Paltrow precipitates. Mind you, "Contagion" is nothing like director Wolfgang Petersen's germ warfare thriller "Outbreak"(1995) with Dustin Hoffman. Soderbergh and "Bourne Ultimatum" scribe Scott Z. Brown maintain an impersonal rather than a glamorous tone as this international medical procedural maps the spread of a pandemic which can kill an individual in three days. Researchers christen the virus, MEV-1, and stare in horror as the virus wraps its lethal tentacles around the globe, killing one in every four people and terrifying everybody else. Not long after the viral outbreak, people become leery of mingling in public. The policemen and hospital workers strike. Society and the rules which govern it collapse, and pandemonium engulfs everyone. Indeed, Soderbergh has assembled an impressive celebrity cast, but limits their presence throughout the matter-of-fact 105 minutes so nobody stands out like in his "Ocean's" franchise. The characters belong to one of three groups: first, the field agents who encounter the disease first hand; second, those behind the scenes who struggle to develop a vaccine; and the administrators who must control the hysteria. Unfortunately, despite his admiral efforts to give "Contagion” a documentary flavor like the classic 1965 "Battle of Algiers," Soderbergh sacrifices the usual Hollywood heroics which would make the action appear charismatic. Doctors and researchers disobey their superiors and take chances that they are ordered not to take. Predictably, mankind survives but the pandemic takes the world to the brink. Watching "Contagion" is like watching the anatomy of a disaster on Public Television. You will exit “Contagion” knowing that you touch your face 2-thousand times a day. When you aren’t touching your face, you are touching something else or somebody else who may be infected with germs. Inevitably, as liberal-minded as Soderbergh is, "Contagion" boils down to a cautionary yarn about tampering with Mother Nature. While the Asians play a major role in the virus, the virus come about as the result of an American corporation that destroys the wilderness with no thought about the consequences. You might not want to dine out at an Asian restaurant after you watch this atmospheric thriller.

“Contagion” opens during the second day that the pandemic has spread. Traveling business executive Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow of “Country Strong”) has attended a groundbreaking for a new factory in Hong Kong. Afterward, she celebrates with several colleagues at a casino in Macau. What poor Beth has no way of knowing is that she has become infected with a virus that came about as a result of the construction of a new factory. The company bulldozers drove huge bats out of their nesting area, and the bats relocated to a swine farm where they infect the pigs with their guano. Beth flies back to the U.S. and squeezes in enough time for an extra-marital fling in Chicago before she goes home to her dutiful husband Mitch (Matt Damon of “Hereafter”) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Meanwhile, other people that Beth came into contact with in Hong Kong are dropping like flies. A waiter collapses, and one of Beth’s colleagues dies aboard a commuter train in Japan. Initially, when Beth left the casino bar, she forgot her drink. A Ukrainian woman hands Beth her cell phone that Beth had forgotten. The woman is found dead in her motel room later by motel authorities. Eventually, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, investigate and suspect that Beth is patient zero for the epidemic. Meantime, things worsen for Mitch when his elementary school age son Clark (newcomer Griffin Kane) dies from the virus, too. Incredibly, Mitch learns that he is immune from the disease and he takes his daughter Joy (first-time actress Anna Jacoby-Heron) out of school and refuses to let her boyfriend visit her for fear that he may contaminate her.

In Atlanta, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne of “The Matrix”) sends Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet of “Titanic”), an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to fly to Minneapolis to supervise the investigation. Meantime, the World Health Organization in Geneva dispatches its top epidemiologist Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard of “Inception”) to China to search for the origins of the disease. Not long afterward Mears comes down with the virus via infected motel workers. A brilliant civilian scientist, Professor Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould of “Ocean’s Eleven”), at Stanford becomes the first to create the virus in his laboratory, while one of Cheever’s own CDC staff physicians Dr. Ally Hextall (two-time Tony-winner Jennifer Ehle of “The Adjustment Bureau”), concocts a vaccine by experimenting on herself rather than waiting. Ironically, both Sussman and Hextall achieve their discoveries because they violate CDC policy. They discover that the disease contains genetic elements from bat and swine viruses. At this point, virtually everybody around the world is wearing a mask for safety’s sake. Cheever confides in his wife that she must leave Chicago and come to Washington. Thieves break into Cheever’s home and threaten his wife Aubrey Cheever (Sanaa Latham of “Love and Basketball”) while they ransack the premises vainly for the vaccine. The CDC establishes a lottery to determine who gets the first vaccine shots. Throughout this global crisis, a lone-wolf journalist, Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law of “Cold Mountain”) who believes in criminal conspiracies has been blogging about the disease. He claims that he came down with it and used another prescription drug to cure himself. Homeland Security officials eventually arrest him for spreading rumors.

Although Soderbergh and Burns do an exemplary job of covering all the points on the compass of the global pandemic, they end up giving their one-dimensional characters the short shrift, especially the WHO epidemiologist in China. We never get to know any of the characters beyond the glimpses that we are given. Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, and Matt Damon fare better than Jude Law, Elliot Gould, and Marion Cotillard. Indeed, Soderbergh shows us the frightening logistics that complicate finding a cure for an unknown virus, but “Contagion” never generates any charisma.

FILM REVIEW OF ''COUNTRY STRONG" (2011)

Oscar winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow of “Shakespeare in Love” gives an electrifying performance as a country music superstar in “The Greatest” writer & director Shana Feste’s “Country Strong” (**** out of ****), an earnest tabloid tearjerker about a troubled country crooner in decline. Actually, Feste’s film owes a great deal to the venerable Hollywood soaper “A Star Is Born” that charted the fall of a superstar and the rise of a talented newcomer. Ironically, Feste has said that she drew on the travails that Britney Spears endured when her career took a downward spiral. Mind you, all country music yarns about warblers basically conform to a familiar storyline. You know that “Country Strong” is going to be about the headlines and the heartaches that a vocalist wallows in when either he or she tries to cleanse their shattered souls with booze, pills, and extramarital affairs. Feste’s superior screenplay with sympathetic characters and surprises galore as well as top-notch thesping by an all-around brilliant ensemble cast make the formulaic subject matter far better than you can ever imagine. You don’t have to groove country tunes to wade into this melodrama ripe with interesting characters and raw predicaments. Paltrow’s offbeat casting is a bonus and she dominates the action even though she is often out of the limelight with real-life country singer Tim McGraw playing her husband. Anybody who loved “Walk the Line,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Nashville,” “Sweet Dreams,” and “Crazy Heart” will find this 117-minute, PG-13 pseudo biographical drama as musically rewarding as it is psychologically riveting.

Grammy winning country music sensation Kelly Cantor (Gwyneth Paltrow) is in rehab when “Country Strong” begins. A year before the pregnant Cantor performed on stage in Dallas and tripped over a cable. She plunged into the audience and suffered a miscarriage. Later, the authorities arrested her because she had been drunk when she had her tragic accident. While in rehab, our recovering alcoholic meets a talented young singer Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund of “Georgia Rule”) who dreams of pursuing a career in country music. Beau prefers to play honky-tonk bars where people drink and listen to his tunes rather than tour. Nevertheless, he gets to meet Kelly while she is in rehab, and they have an affair. Before Kelly is fully prepared to leave rehab, her career manager/husband James Canter (Tim McGraw of “The Blind Side”) secures her early release. Symbolically, Kelly totes around an orphan baby quail in a tiny wooden box that she has been nursing back to health. Principally, James wants to get Kelly back in the spotlight on stage before she is written off as a ‘has been.’ He has lined up a three city tour: Austin, Houston, and finally Dallas. Beau doesn’t think that James’ idea is a good one. Naturally, Kelly is ready, willing, and eager. One of the conditions that she decides on before they leave rehab is that Beau accompanies them on tour. Of course, James suspects something is going on between Beau and his wife. James and Kelly aren’t the ideal couple since she lost his baby in an alcohol fueled frenzy on stage. As if to counteract his wife’s demand, James finds a beautiful young singer, Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester of “Date Night”), to open for Kelly. Kelly warns Chiles to stay away from her husband. Meanwhile, Beau pokes fun at Chiles’ clean-scrubbed image as a beauty pageant queen with school teacher parents.

Although Beau and Kelly make out behind James’ back, you know that Beau and Chiles are intractably drawn to each other because they are so antagonistic when they see each other. Beau’s prediction that James took Kelly out of rehab too early comes true when she cannot make her first stage appearance. Kelly’s publicist claims that a bad case of food poisoning kept the superstar from performing at her Austin comeback concert. Indeed, things grow progressively worse for our heroine. She blows her stack when James gives a song that Kelly wanted to record to young Chiles. While they are touring Texas, Beau finds himself attracted to Chiles and he tells Kelly that he doesn’t like having her behind James’ back. Despite her multitude of problems, Kelly rallies when she appears in concert in Dallas where she took a dive a year ago. Eventually, Kelly mends fences with poor Chiles and gives her a laundry list of suggestions about life, love, and performing on stage. Moreover, the sagacious Kelly sees right through Chiles’ squeaky clean image. Never lie to your fans, the two-faced Kelly advises Chiles.

Writer & director Shana Feste does a superlative job orchestrating her characters. Just when you think that you have a character pigeonholed, the character performs an about-face that catches you off-guard. Perhaps the most ironic element of “Country Strong” is Tim McGraw’s turn as the heroine’s music manager. You’d think that McGraw would have taken the plum role that Garrett Hedlund landed, but it is McGraw’s offbeat casting, like Paltrow’s, that gives “Country Strong” its strength. Incidentally, Paltrow warbles her own tunes. Meantime, Leighton Meester registers an excellent performance and proves that her insecure character is far from the shallow princess that she appears to be from the outset. Although this $15-million movie takes place in Texas, Feste and company lensed it primarily in Tennessee. “Country Strong" unspools like a series of memorable high notes.

FILM REVIEW OF "SHAFT" (1971)

The NAACP gave up trying to persuade Hollywood to cast more African-Americans in films and television shows in 1963 and resorted to legal measures and economic sanctions. Consequently, blacks began to appear in both major and minor roles in greater numbers. Actor Sidney Poitier emerged in the late 1960s as the first truly popular African-American actor and qualified as an example of "the model
integrationist hero." By the 1970s, African-Americans had turned up not only in ghetto-themed movies but also every other film genre and television show. Meanwhile, the discrimination that black actresses encountered simply mirrored the shortage of roles white actresses had contended with in Hollywood since time immemorial. Former Cleveland Browns football star Jim Brown rose to prominence in the wake of Sidney
Poitier as the new African-American hero. Poitier and Brown served as precursors for Blaxploitation.

Eventually, the pendulum swung from one extreme with the racist depiction of blacks as subservient Sambo characters before the 1960s to the newest extreme with blacks portrayed as Superspades in what later constituted a cinematic phenomenon called Blaxploitation. Essentially, the golden age of Blaxploitation movies occurred between 1970 and 1975 and these movie targeted primarily black audiences. Blaxploitation heroes and heroines displayed a social and political consciousness, and they were not confined to single roles. They were cast as private eyes,
policemen, vigilantes, troubleshooters, pimps, etc. In each instance, these characters worked within the system, but they did so as they saw fit and sought to improve the African-American community. Not surprisingly, blaxploitation heroes often clashed with whites, but they refused to depict whites in strictly monolithic terms. Good whites and bad whites jockeyed for prominence in the films. Although one NAACP official described blaxploitation as just "another form of cultural genocide," African-American audiences flocked to see them. Blaxploitation movies knew no boundaries and encompassed comedies, musicals, westerns, coming-of-age dramas, slave plantation films, and horror movies.

Director Ossie Davis' urban crime thriller "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1970), about two African-American N.Y.P.D. cops, Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge), based on the Chester Himes novel, paved the way for the movement. When the film premiered, critics did not categorize Cotton as blaxploitation. Interestingly, the term "black exploitation" first appeared in print in the August 16, 1972, issue of the show business newspaper "Variety" when the NAACP Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch president, Junius Griffin, coined the term in a speech about the derogatory impact of the genre on African-Americans. Later, black exploitation was abbreviated as blaxploitation. The two films that historians have classified as "germinal" were independent filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles' "Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (1971) and mainstream director Gordon Parks' "Shaft" (1971). Peebles's film supplemented the content of Davis' film with sex and violence, and Sweetback's success with black audiences triggered the blaxploitation craze, one of the most profitable in cinematic history. Major Hollywood film studios rushed similar films into production. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer followed Sweetback's
success with their private eye thriller "Shaft" (1971) starring model-turned-actor Richard Roundtree as the equivalent of Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade gumshoe character in "The Maltese Falcon." Some critics complained that movies like Shaft simply substituted blacks in roles that were traditionally played by whites. Initially, MGM thought about of rewriting the African-American lead in Shaft, based on Ernst
Tidyman's novel as a Caucasian.

As a detective movie, Shaft observed all the conventions of the genre. The action opens with the trench coat-clad protagonist wearing out shoe leather in Manhattan to the tune of Isaac Hayes' iconic, Oscar-winning theme music. The lyrics provide a thumbnail sketch of the hero's persona. Private detective John Shaft lives up to those lyrics as "the cat who won't cop out when there's danger all about." At this point in the action, Shaft makes his rounds and checks in with his people and learns that some people are looking for him. Mind you, not only are some hoods looking for our protagonist, but also the N.Y.P.D., in the person of Lieutenant Vic Androzzi, is looking for Shaft. Androzzi has been hearing some bad things and wants to check up with Shaft of what's happening. Meanwtime,an infamous Harlem crime lord, Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn), loosely based on real-life criminal Bumpy Johnson, hires Shaft to locate his missing daughter Marcy. Shaft goes out looking for an old friend who has gotten into the revolution frame of mind, Ben Buford and he finds him at Amsterdam, 710. The villains stage a raid on Ben's building and only Shaft and Ben survive a massacre. Eventually, Shaft discovers that the Italian mafia has abducted her and he assembles a motley crew of black militants called The La Mumbas to help him rescue Marcy. Ben Buford (Christopher St. John of "For Love of Ivy")is the man in charge of The La Mumbas who helps Shaft out during the rescue in a blazing, shoot'em up finale in the last scene. Shaft and Buford have a face-to-face confrontation when the latter accuses the former of being a "Judas." The success of Shaft spawned two sequels "Shaft's Big Score" (1972) and "Shaft in Africa" (1973) and later a short-lived television series. Many blaxploitation movies gained notoriety for negative portrayals of African-Americans trapped in the ghettos that resorted to crime and
vice to triumph over their hostile surroundings and oppressive white
landlords.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE HANGOVER'' (2009)

“Old School” director Todd Phillips finds himself in fine form once again with a farcically funny, guys-gone-crazy, hootenanny “The Hangover” (**** out of ****), the flip side of the darker 1998 Christian Slater facsimile “Very Bad Things.” Starring Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha, and Heather Graham, this side-splitting Sin City ‘lost weekend’ gives new meaning to the old adage “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’ A riotous, rip-snorting, R-rated, road-trip comedy from fade-in to fade-out, this opus about three groomsmen and a bachelor sowing wild oats takes many unexpected twists and turns throughout its hysterical 99 minutes to keep you laughing long after the end credits. “Four Christmases” scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who also penned “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” have concocted a fresh, funny, and far-out misadventure that consistently delivers laughs based on the comic formula of incongruity. Our sympathetic heroes spend the entire time behind the eight ball dealing with one trial and tribulation after another so outlandish that you cannot help by howl at each new revelation.

Doug Billings (Justin Bartha of the “National Treasure” movies) is due to wed his wealthy fiancée Tracy Garner (Sasha Barrese of “Legally Blonde”) in two days. Before he gets hitched, Doug’s two best buddies—school teacher Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper of “He’s Just Not That Into You”) and dentist Stu Price (Ed Helms of “Semi-Pro”)—along with Tracy’s weird brother Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis of TV’s “Tru Calling”) take him to Vegas for a last-minute blow-out. Tracy’s father Sid (Jeffrey Tambor 0f “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army”) hands Doug the keys to his classic Mercedes convertible and entrusts its care to him. Sid admonishes Doug not to let Alan get behind the wheel, and Doug and his cronies hit the road for Caesar’s Palace. No sooner do they arrive than they alter their plans. First, they check themselves into an expensive $4, 200 a night villa. Second, they ascend to the roof to toast Doug’s future with shots of Jagermeister. Third, cretinous Alan laces their liquor with Rohypnol or roofies, a date-rape drug that he mistakenly believes is Ecstasy so they can really enjoy themselves.

Phil, Stu, and Alan awaken the next day to a trashed villa. Alan waddles off to take a whiz and discovers that a real-live tiger—stripes, claws, and all—is lounging in their bathroom. Our heroes regroup and deduce that they have spent the wildest weekend of their lives. Phil wears a medical bracelet from his night in the emergency room where doctors treated him for a concussion. Not only has Stu lost one of his front teeth, but he has also lost his mother’s Holocaust ring that he planned to give to his girlfriend Melissa (Rachael Harris of “The Soloist”), when he proposes marriage to her. Incidentally, Melissa believes the boys are enjoying a wine tasting weekend in the woods rather than a bachelor party in Vegas. Nothing really awful happens to Alan because he qualifies as his own worst enemy. Alan discovers, however, that they have an infant in their closet. When the guys descend to the parking lot for their Mercedes, they are surprised when the valets whip a Las Vegas police cruiser up to the entrance for them.

Principally, our heroes remember nothing from the previous eight hours thanks to the roofies. Worse, they find neither hide nor hair of Doug. Indeed, Doug has vanished. Phil, Stu, and Alan set out to retrace their evening’s revelry in an effort to recover Doug. Stu learns he has married a stripper, Jade (Heather Graham of “Say It Isn’t So”), who is wearing his mother’s Holocaust ring, while a couple of Asian thugs want to pound them into the pavement for stealing $80-thousand from their whiny boss, Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong of “Role Models”), who has lost is dough as well as his duds.

Todd Phillips relates most of this madcap merriment in flashback. No stranger to comedy, Phillips also helmed “School for Scoundrels’ and “Road Trip,” and he keeps the humor in high gear. One of the funniest scenes finds our hapless heroes making a deal with the Las Vegas Police to drop their grand theft auto charges if they participate in a tazer demonstration. The LVPD let elementary school aged children tazer them. Eventually, our heroes find Doug but they also have to tangle with Mike Tyson as well as Doug’s testy fiancée. Tracy demands unequivocally that they haul themselves back to L.A. for the wedding. Predictably, our heroes damage Sid’s priceless Mercedes and snap scores of incriminating photos of themselves at play. Unlike “Very Bad Things,” “The Hangover” will keep you doubled up in hysterics!