Kim Gentes

Warning! Good Movie, Racy Approach

Samuel Jackson, Christina Ricci and Justin Timberlake make serious statements in "Black Snake Moan", a movie too complicated to recite without giving away the reason to go see it in a theatre. But the complication is not the clarity of the plot, it is in the humaness of the lives of the people portrayed. These are real people. Broken people, with pain ridden lives. The events and connection might seem complicated, but the pain is simple- its the devastation of abuse, objectification of women, and sexual dysfunction.

Beyond that, you should see the movie yourself, if you want to learn something. But be warned- this movie is a torrid of language and scenes that will offend. No child at all should see this movie. NC-17 would have been a more appropriate rating.

While the three headliners (Jackson, Ricci and Timberlake) do their acting well, but most surprisingly Timberlake is convincingly human in his role as a dysfunctional, failed military recruit.

But the acting surprises are best left in the supporting actors roles where John Cothran Jr (who plays a forthright preacher) and Michael Raymond-James (who plays a completely despicable friend to Timberlake) each command their parts with perfection. They should be looked at for awards, in my opinion.

Again, only see this movie if you can handle explicit coverage of a tough topic related with sexual pain.

Don't- I repeat don't- bring your non-artsy, straight laced, people who don't understand the ethos of human struggle and pain. They will condemn you and everyone involved with the movie. And they may be right, but they would also miss a movie that actual hits head-on the topic of sexual abuse and lifelong additions and the roots of such behaviors. And how some parts of small-town America uses their attempts at Christian spirituality and "blues" music to face it.

For sure it is worth while; for sure it is interesting; for sure it is riveting. It just isn't for everyone. You've been warned.

The theatre was silent in shock !

X-men Mutate to Final Stage

X-Men III: "The Last Stand" is a graphically powerful and purposefully driven story of the mutant children and their telepathic teacher, Charles Xavier. But the story is not so much driven by a fine plot as it is by the weight of numerous stories from the comic book series. In an apparent attempt to appease Stan Lee, X-Men III attempts to wrap several X-Men stories into a movie that incorporates many bits and pieces of X-men comic lore. The result is an overly detailed script that leaves far to much to the screen writers and nothing to the audience. While the special effects are impressive, the story drones on and on about mutant rights and political, governmental and societal injustice against them. Unless you are an X-men comic book fan, watching this film still leaves you wondering why all the regular humans would be so adamant on snuffing out the cool guys with all the powers.

The acting is fairly good, along with the effects, and plays an important part in holding the story together. But the movie relies too much on Hugh Jackman's Wolverine character and this ultimately leaves the film wanting for strong lead. Aside from some notably funny lines, Jackman resorts to the angry razor-knuckled freak to try to rage his way through every conflict. It works but only for a while. After a few confrontations, the audience starts to look for intelligence and interest. But what it gets is more and more mutant powers sprayed all over the screen to help make everything better.

Sad as that might be to any other film, it actually works here and the action ultimately is what this film is all about. One wishes the director would have recognized this earlier in the film, though, because much of it is spent building a plot of human interest (ok mutant interest), not super powered show off time. But the culmination ultimately feels contrived and personal connections of this film feel left out there to blow in the storm.

I liked the film, because it represented the powers of the characters well and fed some decent battle scenes. But I lament the loss of focus this movie has with deciding what it is about. It felt like a thoughtful, but drawn out thinking movie for the first 70 minutes. But for the last 30 minutes it goes bonkers with power mongering and special effects. One expects some of this from a comic book series, but it is very plausible as a good fiction movie.

Watching the "Last Stand" of X-men III was a bit like Jean Grey's character- a splintered division of various stories from the X-Men comic book story line. If you are an X-Men fan from the comic book days, you may be in for a complete revisit of the true Jean Grey story and destination of the Phoenix. In the original comic book series, Phoenix becomes so powerful; she is a godlike being able to resurrect herself from death. But in this movie, Jean Grey and her story line is much cohesive, presumably to help save the audience the untenable myriad of plots that can't be understood by anyone without mutant level intelligence (for more info on the real Jean Grey story/ aka comic books, see en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Jean_Grey [remove the spaces from that URL] ).

Of notable interest in this film is Ellen Page as Kitty Pride (Sprite for the X-followers), who does a nice job of developing a enjoyable and personal heroine. Kelsey Grammer does very well as Beast making the character real to me, even more so than the comics, and that was refreshing. Rebecca Romin also does very well as the Raven Darkholme / Mystique character, becoming interesting and surprisingly human.

You will find some good acting here, but it's a little hard to like it all. Overall, its a good action movie to fill up your violence dance card. But as a thoughtful film it fails. This would not normally be a problem for an action / superhero movie, but because this film tries to force itself into making social commentary for about 65% of its length, the fact that it never really develops more intellect through its conclusion is disappointing.

The film is not frightening and won't be a problem for children 10 or over, in my opinion. X-Men II suffers from some slight episodic doldrums as well, with everyone waiting around at the end hoping some eerie reference to a next movie might occur and well.... (I won't tell).

My recommendation- go see if it you like X-Men. Go see it if you like superhero movies. Its a fun, if not inconsistent ride into the mutant world. Still it is worth you money in the theatre.

Abandon Ship! No Titanic, this movie Sinks...

This film has decidedly realistic tinge to all of its visuals. But what "comes to life" here is nothing short of grisly scenes of people dieing in a more realistic way than past oceanographic fear films. Scenes of people that really look like people dieing, being impaled, electrocuted and drowned certainly come through as crisp special effects.

The basic plot line of this movie (buoyed a script adapted from the novel of the same namesake) is actual interesting. This is a remake of the successful '72 film "The Poseidon Adventure", but it neither lives up to the book or the movie that precede it. So the characters are trying to survive on a ship headed for the deep six. You have your standard heroes, standard sacrificial characters and standard last minute escapes. But there is no real thinking, no real hope, and then no real excitement when each successive challenge is overcome. You want to find some characters to like, so you will enjoy the movie, but each time you find one, they are killed off.

What remains is only a very few good moments of film making. The rest is stereotypical explosion after explosion. Then more people dieing... yada yada yada. I know we should all feel bad about this, but the movie treats everything so haphazardly, the moviegoer starts to feel like that too. Nothing has depth, intelligence or moments of brilliance. By sheer luck (and seemly) cute subplots, the few survivors are somehow redeemed as being smarter than the couple thousand other schmucks that suffer a watery grave. There is one powerful, but quick moment of moral decision that is important. It teaches us that sometimes we must decide to live and in the process evaluate one human's life over another. Whether you like the contrived situation or not, you do find yourself having to press a moral decision. At least that is done.

But after that, the best part of this watery movie is when I went to the lavatory to take a break. My recommendation? See the original movie, and save this for a day when you have seen about every other tragedy movie you ever wanted to see. The actors here aren't convincing and don't save the film.

It's actually not a bad opportunity for Kurt Russell to do something admirable, but his thing character finds himself playing disappointing portrayals of both politicians (how is that possible?) and firefighters with one stereotype after another. Josh Lucas is carelessly pushing through obstacle after obstacle to be the backbone of this film, but he barely survives.

It's not a horrible film, but it has no zest, no reason, no edge and no results. It just sits there and drowns in its own massive heap of sinking emptiness. All those great effects go down with this film, which is surely going to disappoint from the huge amount of over hype promotion it has received.

Give me a life jacket!

If you must see this, leave the kids at home. No one under 13 should see this film, because the portrayals of death are as realistic as you might find in such a scenario.

Good Action Floats a Weak Story

Cruise delivers a predictably intense performance on action sequences, while Michelle Monaghan endears the crowd to a warm love interest on this 3rd installment of Mission Impossible films. Initially, I liked the opening sequence pulling you right into the action, and creating some tension, but it was soon apparent that the writing or directing would hold this film together. Even and casting of Lawrence Fishburn and Ving Rhames in supporting roles doesn't add anything significant to the collection of clich'd plot turns this money-grabbing film draws you through.

But, really, this is not all that different from most action films of this type. The real problem is that the hopeful fan of good action looks for things to get better: hopes that directors and writers will stop reusing one another's ideas; hopes they will stop reshooting the recognizable car explosions and high wire action for another 200 million dollars in the studio bank accounts. We hope, but this film doesn't help us achieve those hopes.

Yet, the action is good, the explosions do deliver, and the tension and fights are worth seeing? Worth paying $9 per person? Well, I don't think so.

So who should go? Well, action and Cruise fans will find this film a quick jaunt on another reasonable ride of thrills. But even they will be looking for a little more "fresh" twists and effects than just a sideways explosion blowing Cruise into a nearby car, which is what we see in the commercials without paying a dime. Seems kind of lame that it is also the best action in the movie.

What was real disappointing here was that the standard problem of a government agent being in conflict with an inside agent gone bad. And add to that the capture of the love interest to hold it over against the hero. Now come on- why can't we get off those two cliche'd plot moves. It's tiring and we all know how they turn out. How about a good old fashion bad guy who just needs the pulp beat out of him? Oh well... I guess we'll just have to settle for rehash # 17... at least the action is engaging, if not imaginative.

See it if you have nothing else to do. Otherwise, wait for the video on a night at home. One thing parents of teenagers who may want to see this-- the film has no sex scenes or any nudity, and the language is fairly clean. The violence is still there, but not gore-laden and not intense.