The Screengrab : queen latifah

Unwatchable Recap: 61-70

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Welcome to part four of the Unwatchable halftime report. New Unwatchable content is coming soon (watch this space tomorrow for a special announcement), but before we tackle the 50 worst movies of all time according to you, the IMDb voters, we’re taking a moment to look back at the horrors we’ve already survived. And remember, when I say “we,” I really mean me. I’m the one who actually has to watch that stuff. Your part of this process is simply to read what I write and laugh at my expense. Join me now for another ten classic moments in the annals (or perhaps anals) of Unwatchable.

70. Epic Movie. “The only good news is that, much like Spartans, Epic Movie barely crosses the 60 minute mark before the extended credits, complete with dance sequences and hee-larious outtakes, begin.”

69. The Perfect Holiday. “So far so bland, but on the family holiday movie scale, there’s nothing out of the ordinary to justify The Perfect Holiday’s place in the Bottom 100. Except…I haven’t mentioned Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard, have I? Well, they’re in the movie too, although I’m not sure I could tell you why. I guess they’re angels or magical elves or…some sort of shape-shifting Greek chorus, anyway.”

68. Kazaam. “To his credit, Shaq does an admirable job of convincing us that he is, in fact, seven feet tall. Honestly, I would place little of the blame for Kazaam’s failures at the big man’s big feet, even if they are encased in goofy pointy-toed genie shoes for much of the running time.”

67. Nine Lives. “As a blizzard swirls outside, the very, very boring young people drink wine and exchange snooty quips. One of them – it’s either Tim or Tom or Pete or Paul or Andy, I’m not sure – finds a musty old tome telling the tale of the ancient Scot warrior whose name alone evokes the most primal of terrors: it is he who is called…Murray.”

66. Jail Bait. “Wait – the gun is jail bait? Oh, Edward D. Wood, Jr.! I see what you did there! You got me again.”

65. Meet the Browns. “Basically what we have here is another bowl of Tyler Perry’s usual tepid gumbo of sermonizing, self-help platitudes and ham-handed ensemble comedy.”

64. Angels’ Brigade. “Reasonable people can disagree as to the film’s moment of greatness. Some would single out the beach scene in which the gals strip down to their bikinis and seduce a couple of yahoos responsible for bringing a drug shipment ashore, or perhaps the slow-moving rooftop chase in which Palance barely breaks a sweat in his leisure suit. I would point to the white supremacist group led by Jim Backus in a Sgt. Pepper outfit.”

63. Alone in the Dark. “Of the many fine and noble reasons to take on this Unwatchable project (a paycheck, an outlet for repressed hostility, an excuse to put off watching Berlin Alexanderplatz), the chance to familiarize myself with the oeuvre of Uwe Boll certainly ranks…somewhere.”

62. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. “I always associated the Power Rangers with the Teletubbies: Both were programs that, although intended for children, held great appeal for the 420 crowd. Both centered on a group of color-coded characters, one of whom was gay.”

61. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie. “There are episodes of He-Man from 1983 that are more artistically accomplished.”

71-80
81-90
91-100

DVD Digest for February 3, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a whole mess of “classic” movies flood the DVD market, which is good, since the recent releases coming out this week aren't all that impressive.

Heading up the classics crop is the Being There 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray). The good news is that the Blu-Ray disc will contain a number of intriguing special features, including an alternate ending. The bad news is that most of these features aren’t going to be on the standard DVD, so if you don’t have Blu-Ray, you’re sort of stuck. Still, definitely a movie that should be part of any good movie lover’s collection, no matter what form. And speaking of Peter Sellers movies, this week also brings the Peter Sellers 5-Film Collection (Lionsgate), which includes I’m All Right, Jack!, The Smallest Show on Earth, Carlton-Browne of the F.O., Two-Way Stretch, and Heavens Above!. Likewise, there’s a similar box set devoted to the work of Sellers’ mentor Alec Guinness- Alec Guinness 5-Film Collection (Lionsgate)- includes The Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit, The Captain’s Paradise, and The Ladykillers (a rather better selection than the Sellers set, I’d say).

More classics being released this week: Yentl Extended Director’s Edition (MGM), now featuring 30% more Streisand close-ups; the musical phenomenon RENT: Filmed Live on Broadway (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Friday the 13th, Parts 1-3, Uncut Deluxe Editions (Paramount, Part 1 also Blu-Ray), to tie in with the upcoming remake; the animated family film Oliver & Company 20th Anniversary Edition (Disney); John Carpenter’s wicked awesome Assault on Precinct 13 Restored Collector’s Edition (Image, also Blu-Ray); Richard Donner’s Inside Moves (Lionsgate); and the enticingly titled Silverado Single-Disc Version (Sony). Finally, Sony is releasing their second wave of their “Martini Movies” series, with this week’s releases being Getting Straight, Our Man in Havana, Five, Vibes, and Gumshoe.

On the recent releases, this week brings Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Genius Products, also Blu-Ray); Michael Cera in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah in The Secret Life of Bees (Fox, also Blu-Ray); the wine-centric comedy Bottle Shock (Fox); and Everybody Wants to Be Italian (Lionsgate), the movie that tries to prove that, uh, everybody wants to be Italian. Also, this week brings the long awaited release of Private Valentine: Blonde and Dangerous (Sony), yet another failed attempt at movie stardom by Jessica Simpson. After all, if you want to be a big-screen star, it helps if your movies actually get released in theatres.

This week’s TV on DVD releases include Bewitched Season 7 (Sony), Colombo Mystery Movie Collection: 1990 (Universal), and The Partridge Family Season 4 (Sony).

Finally, Fox is unloading four comedy favorites on Blu-Ray this week: Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space, and Sideways.

Jailhouse Rock: The Greatest Prison Films of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:45:00 GMT

CHICAGO (2002)

Hot chicks behind bars? Check. A large, in-charge corrupt female warden? Check. Mean girl sparring between the new fish and the reigning cell block queen? Check. Nude lesbian shower orgies and bloody riot scenes? Sorry...Rob Marshall’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the toe-tappingly cynical 1975 Kander/Webb/Fosse musical adaptation of crime reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins’ 1926 play about celebrity criminals ain’t that kind of Women-In-Prison film. Helping to restore America’s faith in the potential entertainment value of movie musicals a year after Baz Luhrmann did his level best to destroy the genre with the Excedrin-headache known as Moulin Rouge, Chicago served up catchy tunes and light satire grounded by (relatively) gritty scenes of the “real-world” Murderess Row underpinning the fantasized production numbers. For all the literal and figurative song-and-dance surrounding the press and public’s fascination with lethal jazz babies Velma (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Roxie (Reneé Zellweger), there’s also the other side of the coin: the grim fate of a Hungarian inmate who, unlike her media-savvy cellmates, is probably innocent but gets the noose rather than justice because she can’t speak English and doesn’t know how to game the system for her own benefit. But that’s about as serious as things get: those who prefer more harrowing musical depictions of doomed immigrant ladies destroyed by American xenophobia are welcome to seek out Dancer In The Dark, the entertainment equivalent of a swift hard kick in the crotch you’re not entirely sure you deserved. The rest of Chicago, meanwhile, is a feel-good romp about getting away with murder featuring Zeta-Jones at the top of her game, an unusually tolerable performances by Zellweger (in a role Divine would have really knocked out of the park) and a surprisingly unembarrassing performance by Richard Gere (although as fellow Screengrabber Scott Von Doviak correctly noted at the time, Christopher Walken in the razzle-dazzle role would have been godhead).

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)

Look, we’re not going lie to you: a lot of what’s awesome about John Carpenter’s Escape from New York is Snake Plissken. Kurt Russell’s one-eyed bank-robber antihero is badass enough to have earned the guy a generation of goodwill despite a subsequent decade filled with Captain Rons and Tango & Cashes. A lot more of what’s awesome about it is the dynamite supporting cast, which includes Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, a tasty Adrienne Barbeau, Donald Pleasance as a Fightin’ President, Screengrab fave/That Guy! emeritus Tom Atkins, and Isaac Hayes in a role so tough he almost out-bad-dudes Snake Plissken. But leaving all that aside, Escape from New York twists conventions all over the place: the bad boy reprobate is trying to break into prison, not get out of it, and New York, rather than being the destination everyone’s trying to reach and the place people only leave because they’re about to hit 40 and they can’t stand living with a roommate in Crown Heights anymore, is a maximum security prison where futuristic America dumps its biggest scumbags. (Insert predictable ‘Oh, the wacky world of science fiction, where New York is filled with criminal scum! Ha ha!’ joke here). Much as he did in Escape from Precinct 13, Carpenter takes genre conventions and flips them on their ears, with highly entertaining results.

STALAG 17 (1953)

Billy Wilder’s films are so essential and influential and beloved that it’s hard to pull back and talk about how weird and unsettling and even unpleasant they are. But they are indeed weird, unsettling, and often unpleasant. For one thing, there’s so much fakery that it’s up for grabs what Wilder was trying to elicit from his audience. In Billy Wilder’s eyes, life is about deception. Many -- if not most -- of his main characters are phonies. The cynics are all romantics. The romantics are all cynics. Sometimes they’re deluding themselves, sometimes the rest of the world. His movies also lather on a thick corn hash. That’s not too unusual for a Hollywood director of his era. John Ford and Howard Hawks were both certainly guilty of overcooking the corn. In Wilder’s movies, sometimes the corn is funny and sometimes it seems pointless. It’s all part of the artifice of his movies, the occasionally clumsy sleight-of-hand that he works with to try to distract you from the horror and mess his characters are making of their lives with all their deception. This artifice is occasionally too much for Wilder’s movies, and a few stories that should work (like Ace In The Hole, for instance, or The Apartment) try to hang too much suffering on a premise too phony and characters too empty. However, Stalag 17 goes the other way. It's a good Wilder movie. It did, however, open the door for Hogan’s Heroes, a bad tv show (don’t try to justify your nostalgia to me; it may be iconic but that doesn’t mean it’s good). It also laid the groundwork for the Roberto Benigni atrocity Life Is Beautiful, and a handful of other movies leaping to your mind about the goofy fun time people had in Nazi prison camps. Not that movies about Nazi prisons have to be grim, but c’mon, those flicks have no goddamn perspective. Anyway, the comic relief is far too broad for the movie, the story is pitched somewhere between too cynical and too maudlin, the characters are a little slow on the uptake, and damn if I know how it all works, but Stalag 17 somehow makes sense.

A MAN ESCAPED (1957)

The title suggests a conclusion foregone, but Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped is unconcerned with the conclusion. What’s important is the suffocating tight focus on Lt. Fontaine, our captured protagonist, his wide eyes full of twitchy wildness like cornered game, as he goes about the nuts-and-bolts of dismantling the prison about him. The movie opens with a close-up on his hand, testing a car door lever. In a minute, he will leap from the car and be immediately recaptured. But for the first couple of minutes, Bresson’s camera watches him as he holds his breath, waiting for just the right moment. Some men may give up when caught, but this one was built for escape. You will learn soon enough that he is a member of the French Resistance who is headed for detainment in a Nazi jail. He tells his story mostly in short, clipped voiceovers, as few people speak to him or give him a reason to speak during his confinement. But speech is unimportant. His mind is constantly at work planning his escape. Bresson’s taut and economical film lays bare the mechanics of a prison break, provided, of course, that the prison is built and staffed exactly like the one in the movie.

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN (1994)

The only prison in Roman Polanski’s film of Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden is in the past. Sigourney Weaver plays Paulina, a former political prisoner scarred by her rape and torture while imprisoned. Her husband Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) owes her everything. One night -- the only night in this movie, really -- his car breaks down and he catches a ride from Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley), who leaves and later returns when he realizes that he accidentally kept Gerardo’s spare tire. The two men have a drink. Meanwhile, Paulina has apparently flipped. She steals Miranda’s car and destroys it, then returns home and begins to torture the man, claiming he did terrible things to her in the past. Her husband is understandably confused. Miranda seemed okay to him. And he knows that Paulina never saw her tormenter while in prison. How can she be sure? Three characters, one night, and a lifetime of human suffering.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs

DVD Digest for December 30, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This week, the big studios drop a ton of new DVDs and Blu-Rays into the market to compete for your newly-acquired Christmas cash.

In recent releases, DVD shopping begins early this week, with three new Paramount titles: Shia Labeouf and Michelle Monaghan in Eagle Eye (also Blu-Ray); Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town (also Blu-Ray); and Keira Knightley in The Duchess (also Blu-Ray). Today brings us Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha (Image Entertainment), as well as a “head to head” match up (sorry) between Alan Ball’s Towelhead (Warner) and the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead (Sony).

In TV on DVD, today’s new releases include The Tudors Season 2 (Paramount) and Nip/Tuck Season 5 Part 1 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s bumper crop of new Blu-Ray-only releases includes: Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (Paramount); the Shining-in-space thriller Event Horizon (Paramount); Demi Moore and the Swayz in Ghost (Paramount); Queen Latifah in Last Holiday (Paramount); Jim Carrey in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Paramount); Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers (Warner); and finally, the Browncoats’ favorite, Joss Whedon’s Serenity (Universal).

Unwatchable #69: “The Perfect Holiday”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Folks, I’m taking the rest of 2008 off the Bottom 100 beat. I need a break and there’s no time like the holidays, am I right? Your regularly scheduled Unwatchable series will resume in the new year, and there can be no doubt 2009 will be one for the history books as we count down the 57 worst movies of all time. But before I call it a year, we have a bit of catching up to do. As you may dimly recall, I had to skip #69 on the list because it was not yet available for home viewing at the time. That excuse has expired, so it’s time for a very special Christmas edition of Unwatchable: The Perfect Holiday.

For the most part, this is your basic, run-of-the-mill holiday warmedy tailored for African-American audiences. Beautiful, well-to-do Nancy (Gabrielle Union) is raising three kids on her own since divorcing hip-hop star J-Jizzy (Charlie Murphy), and all she wants for Christmas is a man under the tree. OK, not literally under the tree. Really, she’d settle for a compliment from a nice fella with no shady ulterior motives. Her daughter informs a department store Santa of this wish, little realizing that under the snowy white beard is a suitable nice fella, songwriter Benjamin (Morris Chestnut).

For reasons that eluded me, Benjamin passes himself off as an office supply salesman as he first compliments, then woos Nancy, much to the chagrin of eldest son John-John (Malik Hammond), who holds out hope of his parents getting back together. We know there’s not much chance of that happening, as J-Jizzy is a self-absorbed, womanizing jackass who can barely be bothered to cobble together a quickie Christmas album. His producer Delicious (Katt Williams) doesn’t smell a hit single until he accidentally plays a demo tape submitted by Benjamin. The tape contains a treacly holiday ballad that would make Lionel Ritchie weep hundred dollar bills, so J-Jizzy rings up Benjamin and offers him a recording deal. Benjamin is excited until he realizes he’s talking to Nancy’s ex-husband and sitcom-ish complications are about to ensue.

So far so bland, but on the family holiday movie scale, there’s nothing out of the ordinary to justify The Perfect Holiday’s place in the Bottom 100. Except…I haven’t mentioned Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard, have I? Well, they’re in the movie too, although I’m not sure I could tell you why. I guess they’re angels or magical elves or…some sort of shape-shifting Greek chorus, anyway. They keep appearing in different guises – security guards, hot dog vendors and such – and Latifah even introduces a little magical realism into the proceedings late in the game. She’s one of the movie’s producers, so I can’t stop her.

Still, that’s hardly enough to warrant a spot as one of the 100 all-time worst, particularly with an appealing and funny supporting cast (notably Murphy, Williams, and Faizon Love) to distract from the ongoing sappiness. The past couple of years alone have seen far worse Christmas movies, including The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and the deadly Vince Vaughn duo of Fred Claus and Four Christmases. While channel-surfing the other night I came across that atrocity with Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini’s big scary beard. Surely that would have been a very special holiday Unwatchable for us all to enjoy. Ah well, fear not – cinematic sewage galore awaits us in the new year.

Previously on Unwatchable:
58. Ed
59. Don’t Go in the Woods…Alone!
60. Carry On Columbus
61. Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
62. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie

DVD Digest for May 13, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: two new Criterion DVDs, the comeback effort of a master filmmaker, and the Chairman of the Board all compete for your DVD dollar. Who will win? Why, DVD buyers, of course!

DVD of the Week: For sheer comprehensiveness, nothing can touch Warner’s 22-film, 5-box-set tribute to the one and only Frank Sinatra. For all of Sinatra’s success as a recording artist, he was also a talented actor, given the right role, and this week sees the release of a number of his finest films. Among these are his Oscar-nominated performance in Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm and Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running, both of which are included in the Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years box set. But if you prefer Sinatra the fresh-faced young crooner, check out Frank Sinatra: The Early Years, which includes such early-career titles as Step Lively, It Happened in Brooklyn, and The Kissing Bandit. Or see Sinatra match his pipes with Gene Kelly’s nimble feet in The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection, comprised of the classic musicals On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and Anchors Aweigh. And if special features are your thing, there’s always The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which finds the Chairman at his least inspired vehicles but leaves plenty of room for gawking at swingin’ celebrities of yore. Heck, Warner is even releasing 1993’s miniseries Sinatra on DVD this week, in case you want your Sinatra without all that Sinatra. All that’s missing is Sinatra’s two most acclaimed films, The Manchurian Candidate and From Here to Eternity. But I’m guessing you already own those, right?

As previously mentioned, this week also brings the release of two brand-spankin' new Criterions, Louis Malle’s The Lovers and The Fire Within. Also of note in classics on DVD: The Big Trail: Fox Grandeur Special Edition; the Godard double-feature of La Chinoise (Kino) and Le Gai Savoir; a new edition of Anthony Mann’s Man of the West (Fox); Saturday Night Live: The Complete Third Season (Universal); and the Fox Western Classics Collection, which includes the new-to-DVD titles Garden of Evil, Rawhide, and The Gunfighter. And in shameless cash-in news, this week brings new DVDs of all three Indiana Jones films, with a few added extra features so that buyers won’t feel completely ripped off.

In more recent films, today brings the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (Sony, also Blu-Ray), his first official directorial effort in a decade. The film was generally regarded as a critical and popular disaster, but I found it fascinating- flawed to be sure, but intriguingly so- and I believe it’ll finally be appreciated for what it is on DVD. Also this week: Diane Lane in Untraceable (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah in Mad Money (Anchor Bay); and the French horror film Frontier(s) (Lionsgate). The other major new release this week is the DVD debut of The Animation Show 3 (Paramount), last year’s touring program of animated shorts presented by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. The DVD includes Hertzfeldt’s latest masterpiece Everything will be OK, as well as sixteen other shorts, some of which have been added especially for the DVD release.

This week’s Blu-Ray only releases are: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Fox); Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Fox); Mrs. Doubtfire (Fox); and just in time for this weekend’s new blockbuster, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Which brings me to this week’s Huddleston corner, in which we sigh over the lonely release of Warner’s One Missed Call on HD-DVD. I mean really, guys- you’re just kidding around now, right?

Morning Deal Report: Tell Me Bruce Campbell's In It

Peter Smith — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:30:00 GMT

Sam Raimi returns to his roots, with a movie called Drag Me to Hell, cowritten with his brother Ivan. Now that is awesome. Key quote: "The appeal to Sam. . . was returning to what he had once done and loved doing, which was entertaining a very specific group of fans and providing a roller coaster ride for them." I think I hear a very specific group of fans salivating already.

Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah and Sophie Okonedo have joined Fox Searchlight's adaptation of the bestseller The Secret Life of Bees. Improbably, it's about "an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters," not a quirky regional spelling competition. Dakota Fanning may also be involved.

Here come the big guns: now the Vatican itself has spoken out against The Golden Compass, instead of just letting William Donahue sputter about it on Fox News. Guys, chill — it's not even that good.