items tagged with Michael Douglas

EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

The protagonist of director Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s famed 9/11/01-themed novel and adapted by screenwriter Eric Roth – is Oskar Schell, an 11-year-old Manhattanite who tells a new acquaintance that he was once tested for Asperger’s syndrome, but that “the results weren’t definitive.” My first thought upon hearing that admission was that Oskar’s folks really should’ve sought a second opinion, because with young actor Thomas Horn tearing through breathless reams of stream-of-consciousness dialogue, his condition seemed definitive as all-get-out. My second thought, which I only fully composed during the end credits, and which I apologize for in advance, was that watching Extremely Loud was like watching a movie while an 11-year-old with Asperger’s yammers in your ear for 130 minutes.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

As someone who really and truly adores the X-Men movies - even the Brett Ratner one, which hardly anyone likes - I was prepared to accept any number of flaws and disappointments in X-Men Origins: Wolverine just for the chance to watch Hugh Jackman bear his adamantium claws and toss off a few pithy, sarcastic zingers. And for a while, Jackman's presence was enough.

Bella (PG-13) - Alejandro Monteverde's drama, which concerns the friendship between a chef and a newly pregnant, newly unemployed waitress, received the People's Choice Award at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. Um... who are these "people," exactly? Space people? Because I can see how Bella might be confused with a great movie if you didn't understand a word of human conversation. Even then, of course, you might still be put off by the film's bizarre editing (with flash-forwards routinely, meaninglessly interrupting scenes-in-progress) and lackluster photography; Montevrede shows more interest in food than in his stars. And then there's that baffling ending, which seems to set the film up for a sequel - one that fills in that massive "Huh?!?" of a climactic plot hole. But it's still the mawkish, maudlin screenplay that does it in; Eduardo Verástegui (looking uncannily like Jim Caviezel as Christ) and Tammy Blanchard (as ever, looking uncannily like Judy Garland) are stuck with unplayable dialogue and baldly written characters, and the movie shamelessly plies on the merely-functional supporting stereotypes. The movie is pro-life and pro-family with a vengeance, which might account for its (limited) popular success. I just wish it were also a little pro-brain, and a lot anti-cliché.

LITTLE MAN and YOU, ME, & DUPREE

Much as I try to prepare for every new cinematic experience with an open mind, sometimes it simply can't be done, as when the advertisements for a new release proudly proclaim: "From the creators of White Chicks!" So it was this past weekend, when Little Man, directed and co-written by White Chicks auteur Keenen Ivory Wayans, debuted. I'm not sure I can adequately express just how much I was not looking forward to this comedic opus; not only did I not laugh once at the grotesque White Chicks (nor, for that matter, at Wayans' Scary Movie and its first sequel), but as I recall, through the entire course of its running length, I actively frowned.
Read More About Stunted Adolescents: "Little Man" And "You, Me & Dupree"...