'Gamer' is a furturistic action thriller
Published Friday September 4th, 2009
Opening this week: All About Steve, Extract and Gamer.
€¢ All About Steve - Kim Barker came up with the script in which Sandra Bullock's character, a crossword puzzle writer named Mary Horowitz, is singularly annoying from the first moment we meet her. It's almost misogynistic, the lack of humanity Barker's script gives this woman. Mary is a goofy, clingy, hyperactive chatterbox who bores people everywhere she goes with her arcane bits of trivia and long-winded anecdotes. She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don't get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man. The film affords her no sympathy for any of these traits. When Mary finally meets handsome cable-news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper, all blue eyes and blinding teeth), she immediately throws herself at him. Then she misinterprets a comment he makes in the frenzy of scurrying away from her as an invitation to join him on the road covering breaking news, and ends up stalking him across the country. H out of four. Rated PG.
€¢ District 9 - This is one intense, intelligent, well-crafted action movie - one that dazzles the eye with seamless special effects but also makes you think without preaching. District 9 has the esthetic trappings of science fiction but it's really more of a character drama, an examination of how a man responds when he's forced to confront his identity. Aliens who arrived in their spaceship more than 20 years ago have now been quarantined in cramped and dangerous slums; the nerdy bureaucrat charged with moving them to new quarters (the tremendous Sharlto Copley) is transformed in the process. HHH½ out of four. Rated 14A.
€¢ Extract - Mike Judge is back to the daily grind with Extract, but this time the writer-director tells his wacky working tales from the boss' point of view: that of Jason Bateman's Joel Reynold, owner of a flavour extract factory. The characters are so one-note and their misadventures so ridiculous that it's hard to get attached to them or care about how they turn out. Bateman functions in his patented exasperated everyman mode, similar to his Michael Bluth character on Arrested Development, only without the smart, surreal dialogue. His best friend Dean (Ben Affleck), a suave bartender at a generic hotel sports grill, suggests Joel hire a gigolo (Dustin Milligan) to sleep with Suzie, thereby giving him licence to cheat on her with Cindy. HH out of four. Rated 14A.
€¢ G-Force - Highly trained guinea pigs working in covert operations and armed with the latest high-tech spy equipment discover that the fate of the world is in their paws. With the voices of Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, Steve Buscemi, Will Arnett, Jon Favreau, Sam Rockwell and Tracy Morgan. Written by the Wibberleys, Tim Firth, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. H out of four. Rated PG.
€¢ G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - The G.I. Joe team uses the latest in spy and military equipment to fight the corrupt arms dealer Destro. With Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Byung Hun Lee, Sienna Miller, Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans and Dennis Quaid. Screenplay by Stuart Beattie, David Elliot and Paul Lovett. Story by Michael B. Gordon, Beattie and Stephen Sommers. Directed by Sommers. Rated 14A. H out of four. Rated 14A.
€¢ Gamer - A high-concept chiller set in a dystopian future where players can control other humans in an elaborate online competition. With Gerard Butler, Michael C. Hall, Zoe Bell, Kyra Sedgwick. Written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. Rated 18A.
€¢ H2: Halloween 2 - The aftermath of Michael Myers' murderous rampage through the eyes of heroine Laurie Strode. With Scout Taylor-Compton, Brea Grant, Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie and Brad Dourif. With characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Written and directed by Rob Zombie. Rated 18A.
€¢ Inglourious Basterds - If only Quentin Tarantino the director weren't so completely in love with Quentin Tarantino the writer, this might have been a great movie rather than a good movie with moments of greatness. Certain scenes of his wildly revisionist Second World War saga have a palpable tension, but then he undermines them by allowing them to go on way too long. As for the plot... well, it might be in there somewhere amid the many meandering threads. HH½ out of four. Rated 14A.
€¢ Julie & Julia - Writer-director Nora Ephron has woven together the real-life stories of two women separated by decades and a body of water but connected by a love of food and a quest for identity. One is Julia Child (Meryl Streep), the larger-than-life TV cook and author who inspired untold numbers of ambitious gourmands to embrace French cuisine the way she had. The other is Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a New York cubicle dweller who spent a year making all 524 recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it. But the more time we spend with Julia, the less we want to spend with Julie. HH out of four. Rated PG
€¢ Post Grad - Alexis Bledel maintains a steady level of wide-eyed pluckiness as Ryden Malby, who just got out of school with an English degree and dreams of working at a prestigious Los Angeles publishing house. When she doesn't get the job she applied for, she ends up back home in the San Fernando Valley with the kind of eccentric family you only find in the movies. H out of four. Rated PG.
€¢ The Final Destination - Crash survivors must figure out how to cheat death before reaching their final destination. With Shantel VanSanten, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella, Richard T. Jones and Mykelti Williamson. Written by Eric Bress. Directed by David R. Ellis. Rated 18A.
€¢ The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard - The large ensemble cast features Jeremy Piven, David Koechner, Ving Rhames, Ed Helms, Tony Hale and Ken Jeong. Except for a couple of amusing lines here and there, the results just feel flat and generally unpleasant. H out of four. Rated 14A.
€¢ The Time Traveler's Wife - Eric Bana plays a guy named Henry who can travel through time, only he can't control where or when he goes. He also can't control how he gets back, except for when he tries certain tricks to place himself in a state of mind to time travel. Even then there's no way to guarantee which version of Henry will show up: the same one who left or a younger or older version of himself. The only constant seems to be that when he shows up at his destination, he's always naked. Hunky as he is, he'd be a frustrating guy to fall in love with, or even date. But Rachel McAdams' character, Clare, must be made of stronger stuff than the rest of us, because not only does she tolerate Henry's pesky inconsistency, she believes he's her destiny, and that he has been since the first time she saw him as a precocious 6-year-old girl. HH out of four. Rated 14A
€¢ The Ugly Truth - At the end of this drearily formulaic romantic comedy, Katherine Heigl's character asks Gerard Butler's why he's in love with her. Basically, he says he has no idea, only he phrases it with a word we can't reprint here. The Ugly Truth strains to distinguish itself with graphically sexual and profane dialogue; rather than being offensive or amusing, the approach feels like a transparent and desperate attempt at being edgy. H½ out of four. Rated 14A.
- with files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press
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