The reviews just keep on coming. I'll be back later this week with three more reviews: 13 (Tzameti), Jackass Number Two, and LOL. After that there'll be a small lull, because I'll be attending the Chicago International Film Festival from October 6-18. After that, I'll be armed with notes for reviews on potentially 30+ movies. It will be filmbrats' most comprehensive festival coverage to date. You definitely won't want to miss that. Keep checking back.



Little Miss Sunshine
Review by Jon Waterman

**

Little Olive has a dream to become a beauty queen. She entered herself into a regional pageant not too long ago, and came in second. Well, it turns out that the winner is eventually disqualified, and now Olive has a spot in the state competition. The only thing that can possibly stop her is her grown up family that she must rely on to get her all the way to Redondo Beach, California. Normally, that would be all well and good, except this family is the definition of dysfunctional, as is their car.

And the movie is the definition of conventional indie flick. The characters are your random assortment of mentally tortured individuals struggling to come to terms or accomplish one very specific thing by the end of the movie mixed in with one wacky free spirited voice of reason. The daughter wants to feel attractive and thinks that winning the competition will help; the son has taken a vow of silence until he can join the air force; the uncle’s failed suicide attempt left him trying to find a meaning in life; the father is trying to get a self-help book published, but it’s easy to see why he’s unsuccessful so far; and the grandfather tells it like it is. They’re all pretty bland and one-dimensional when you get down to it.
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++++++++



Snakes on a Plane
Review by Jon Waterman

*1/2

In Hawaii, Eddie Kim arranges to have a man killed. What he didn’t plan for was to have some cool dude named Sean witness the whole thing. Now Kim wants him dead, and he’ll go to any length imaginable to make it happen. FBI Agent Neville Flynn gets to him first and is able to get Sean aboard a cross-ocean flight to Los Angeles where Sean will testify and finally put that madman behind bars. Unfortunately, the trip won’t be nearly as smooth as they all think, because it’s soon discovered that Kim has thought ahead. He has put snakes on the plane!

The movie that the studio has actually been proud to promote as a B-movie delivers exactly what it promises. This movie is unusual. It’s certainly bad in a campy fun way, and any audience you see it with knows going in not to expect Oscar worthy material and they will gladly laugh along with you at the absurdity of it all. The producers knew it was being constructed in this way. It had to be if it were to work at all. The amazing part is that it somehow avoids coming off as a spoof or a rip-off of bad movies and actually becomes its own legitimately bad movie. But dammit if it ain’t fun to watch anyway.
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++++++++



Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Review by Jon Waterman

***

Ricky Bobby is the premier racecar driver on the NASCAR circuit. With a little help from his good buddy Cal, Ricky is consistently number one not only on the racetrack, but also with his fans and in his personal life. Everything is going perfectly for him, until one day when a new racer breaks onto the scene. A Frenchman named Jean Girrard appears to be a better driver, which sends Ricky Bobby into a tailspin that he must overcome if he’s to regain everything he worked so hard to achieve. USA! USA!

If you loved “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” then you’ll like this movie. Brought to you by director Adam McKay who co-wrote it with star Will Ferrell, this film is the second in the “Mediocre American Man” trilogy. It certainly fits the same mold. Take a doofus in a high profile position and exploit the stupidity of him and those around him for laughs as he sinks to the lowest of lows. It doesn’t fit the same funny mold, however.
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++++++++



Another Gay Movie
Review by Jon Waterman

*1/2

Four gay teenagers have just graduated from High School. Determined not to go off to college the virgins they are now, they make a pact to sleep with someone outside of their small circle of friends before the big Labor Day bash at Muffler’s house. They establish the ground rules and their preferred placement (top or bottom), then it’s off to the sexual races. Each of the four is out there looking for something specific, and of course they’ll come across the kinds of guys they find attractive. But can they close the deal on time?

Sound similar to “American Pie?” Well, it should. This movie is a spoof that straps on the gay face to many of the situations you find in that film that begat a wretched franchise. This film just begets wretched jokes. If you’ve never seen “American Pie,” that’s okay. I don’t think it will make any of the jokes funnier. It’ll only help the premise seem less familiar. Spoofing a movie so directly like this means it practically writes itself. Unfortunately, writer/director Todd Stephens still apparently got lazy.
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++++++++



Il Mare
Review by Jon Waterman

***

When Sung-hyun moves into his new house out on the lake, or “Il Mare” as they say in Italian, he finds a Christmas card addressed to him, the new tenant. It was left by Eun-ju, who asks that the new resident forward all her mail. This comes as a shock to Sung-hyun, because he’s pretty sure he’s the first tenant. Not only that, but it’s only 1997, not 1999 like the card states. He leaves a response in the mailbox attempting to straighten out the confusion, and the two begin corresponding with each other. The slowly sort everything out and discover that somehow they are in fact living two years apart, and they may just be falling for each other.

The film takes quite a while for the story to really get rolling. It’s easy to understand their disbelief and apprehension, considering time travel is possible neither in real life, nor within the constructs of this movie. Or at least so they think…. So, the first half or so is spent watching them try to figure out what we, the audience, knew going in. It takes even longer for them to really start developing feelings for each other, something we, the audience, expect and nearly need to have happen sooner.
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