HollywoodIdiocy.com

When I first heard they were dusting off the old Matthew Broderick-Ally Sheedy movie WarGames and updating it for 2008, I was skeptical. The old film had been a fun thriller, but what with the mainstreaming of computer technology in the 25 years since the film’s debut, I just wasn’t sure they could carry off the same sort of “bumbling innocent” plot that had worked back when the tops in personal computer technology was either an Apple IIe or a Commodore 64, depending on your preference.

Happily, I was wrong. Not only has the concept been updated, it’s been brought to life by a solid post-September 11 re-conceptualization that makes the story more relevant than ever. War Games: The Dead Code takes place 25 years after the first film and JOSHUA is an historical footnote on diet pills. The hot new government super-computer is a piece of AI run amok known as Ripley (nice Aliens reference), who identifies terrorist cells by luring them with a big cash-for-play internet videogame that supposedly assesses terrorist skills and knowledge.

Basically, if you win at the Ripley war game, you are marked as a “person of interest” in bio-terrorism and the government comes after you, big time, guns blazing. Yikes! Yeah, that’s what Osama bin Laden and his cronies do all day when they’re not flying airplanes into skyscrapers … they’re playing videogames on the Internet. Right.

Despite the rather ridiculous presupposition of terrorist pastimes, the rest of the movie holds together rather well as a thriller; despite a PG-13 rating, however, parents should be warned that the language in this movie is nowhere near as clean-cut as its 1983 predecessor, which is a disappointment. Next thing you know, they’ll remake Short Circuit as a sexbot.

Matt Lanter of HEROES fame plays the lead role, while Amanda Walsh is his chess-club counterpart; neither seem destined to outshine Broderick-Sheedy, but stranger things have happened and both turn in solid performances and both are definitely better actors at this point in their careers than then-newcomers Broderick and Sheedy were at that time.

The extras are pleasant and in the end, War Games: The Dead Code delivers the goods well enough to say that it didn’t embarrass the legacy of its predecessor; however, aside from being a bit dated, the original is still the superior film and contains far less profanity, making it better family viewing than the remake.

Given its G rating, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Disney’s College Road Trip, but I was relatively confident that, at the very least, there’d be nothing offensive language-wise. On that count, I was correct and so the Martin Lawrence-Raven Symone father-daughter comedy was a welcome respite from the “unrated edition” stuff I usually wade through.

Despite being a Disney comedy, the film is not without some quirkiness; the most notable example is Lawrence’s obsession in the first half of the film with his son’s pet pig, which he claims is “eyeballing me.” The subplot shows promise for some genuine weirdness that I won’t spoil in the scope of this review, but then is dropped completely from the second half of the film with no real payoff on the idea.

Of course, the focus of the film is the father-daughter relationship, not the father-pig relationship; and despite the film being littered with promotional products and embedded advertising, the movie is enjoyable – if you’re a member of the younger set.

While a great “whole family” film, the comedy is a bit over the top for older audiences, and even the teen crowd that Symone’s character is part of would have a hard time swallowing the schmaltzy story being told. Still, better a bunch of sloppy sentiments about kids growing up and away from their parents than, saw, delving into the repetitive world of the Saw movie franchise, right? A person can only tolerate so much of that.

The conflict is a rather simple one; dad wants daughter to go to a college close to home and daughter, naturally, wants to go to a “much better school” halfway across the country. The action is livened up by a rare appearance by Donny Osmund, of all people, who submits an enjoyable performance as a Ned Flanders type.

By featuring Symone, who is anything but the typical emaciated Hollywood starlet that Miley Cyrus represents, the film offers an appealing protagonist who won’t make young kids feel quite so inadequate. Still, the bottom line here is that the film is funny in places, but probably in a way that will embarrass older kids, while younger kids will enjoy it quite a bit. As for the adults, well … anything’s better than the 500th viewing of The Parent Trap, right? Either version.

Every rule that Smallville – the successful small-screen adaptation of Clark Kent’s Wonder Years – made in order to become a mainstream hit – sort of like Dawson’s Creek with superpowers – Birds of Prey totally ignored, to its detriment. In fact, the TV series was more of a traditional “comic book” than the actual comic book it was based on, of the same name.

Birds of Prey is a comic book that features the wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon as Oracle, a computer genius, as well as Black Canary – also known as Dinah Lance. In the comic, both are 30-something heroines who play hero but also address midlife issues and not being “sweet young things” anymore.

So what is the show like? Well… not much like the comic, as it turns out. Oracle is there and well-cast, but Black Canary is transformed into a teenage rookie hero whose biggest concern is finding a solid natural acne treatment and who doesn’t even appear in every episode, and the star of the show quickly becomes Huntress, the alleged offspring of Batman and Catwoman, forcing the show to exist in a weird, post-Batman universe at a time just before Warner Brothers was about to launch … Batman Begins. Huh?

Aside from ignoring the comic book, and changing the character of villain Harley Quinn considerably, each episode was full of in-costume heroes (Smallville’s cardinal rule was no cape, no blue tights and no flying) and was mired in comic book terminology (demi-humans, for example) that left the mainstream audience confused.

Then, of course, there’s the whole issue of Huntress being considered a demi-human when neither Batman nor Catwoman possessed superpowers of any kind. Huh? In fact, “Huh?” is a word that’ll come up a lot while viewing this four-disc, complete series collection of Birds of Prey. Add in the occasional “what were they thinking” and you’ll begin to wonder just how Mark Millar and Alfred Gough struck on the right formula the first time around with Smallville, but were so off-target this time.

Still, Birds of Prey isn’t completely lacking in appeal; there are some nice commentaries, a half-decent collection of special features, and a handful of episodes that indicated the seeds were there for the show to really find itself and become watchable, if given enough time. Unfortunately, Birds of Prey never quite found itself in time and died an early death without the “back nine episodes” ever being approved for airing on The WB.

Birds of Prey isn’t a terrible DVD collection, but it does stand as a testament to just how difficult it is to get a superhero-based show to play well to a mainstream audience. If Smallville is the handbook on “what to do,” then Birds of Prey is the user’s manual on “what not to do.” This was a show that would have benefited quite a bit from the presence of Joss Whedon.

When it comes to westerns, the big screen isn’t a very friendly home anymore, but several high-quality westerns have found a home on television and cable outlets. Such is the case with Broken Trail, which was the first original movie ever produced by American Movie Classics. Directed by veteran Western director Walter Hill and starring Robert Duvall and Thomas Hayden Church, the film won four Emmy Awards back when it was released in 2006.

That lineup of awards includes best miniseries, best lead actor, best supporting actor and best casting. Impressive lineup of gold, and Broken Trail is just about everything that another recent Western released on Blu-Ray, The Professionals, is not: It is a modern film, with modern pacing, featuring actors today’s generation will recognize, and was shot with modern-enough cameras to look sharp on HD. This helps it feel at home on the Blu-Ray format.

The story centers around an aging cowboy (Duvall) who wants to buy his own ranch and settle down, and so agrees to run a herd of horses from Oregon to Wyoming (in an era long before the convenience of Pacsafe, no less!) to sell to the British Army, and thus make the tidy sum he needs to make his dream come true.

Helping him along the way is his nephew (Church), who doesn’t really care for him. There are skeletons in the closet, and of course the journey gives them a chance to begin working out their differences.

Complications are tossed in when the pair come across a gang of ruthless slave-traders, transporting five Chinese women to a mining town where they’ll be forced into a life of prostitution. Our two horse-traders intervene and that drives the conflict of the longish movie.

Clocking in at over three hours, Broken Trail is a beautiful film, but not quite as compelling as the best “long” films, like Titanic or the Lord of the Rings movies. Still, there’s a nice set of special features and about the only drawback, really, is that the running time might seem a bit intimidating for some viewers.

The Professionals is a movie that’s about the same age as I am – and I’m no spring chicken. Made in 1966, the Richard Brooks-directed western starring Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, and a bunch of other folks anyone born during the Reagan presidency or later won’t even recognize, is a kidnap-and-rescue adventure flick, set in 1917, and involving a group of “professionals” whose task it is to sneak into Mexico and rescue the wife of a wealthy Texan from a band of outlaws.

Why The Professionals was set as a priority for the Blu-Ray treatment over so many other, more recent and potentially more profitable films is a bit of a mystery. Sure, if one is a fan of westerns, this is a solid one; but the market for westerns hasn’t been very good for the past thirty years or so, ever since science fiction kind of took its place in 1975 or so, with the release of the original Star Wars.

If you enjoy the western genre and older films, though, The Professionals is one of the better examples of the genre – at least among films that don’t star John Wayne. Still, the film is a product of its time.

While there’s been some restoration work done to the film, the quality of the picture in HD isn’t really up to snuff with more recent films made in the HD era. And as for director Brooks’ style, the pacing and storytelling are slow and ponderous, compared to the adrenaline-charged filmmaking that today’s action audiences expect.

The film has some snappy dialog, which is a highlight. Here’s an example:

Dolworth to Fardan: “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Fardan: “Most of us are.”

Sure, it’s not down to the exact science that Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous and vaulted away in a self storage container, but there’s a bit more substance and context to it, as well. The extras to this DVD are only OK, since nearly everyone involved with the film is “no longer with us.” Still, it’s a solid western for its time, and only because it is so dated will this film likely fail to find a massive audience.

Step Into Liquid is the sort of Blu-Ray DVD that only has two levels of appeal; first, as a niche title appealing to a small but devoted demographic, and second, as a showcase for the wonders of 1080p high-definition format media. Watch the film on standard definition and it’s nowhere nearly as impressive on a visual scale, although the cinematography is quite nice throughout.

Step Into Liquid is a mix of documentary and pro-surfing propaganda, since 90 percent of those interviewed seem on a mission to convert everyone within earshot into a devotee of surfing while somehow, by and large, still maintaining a somewhat elitist tone. That’s a feat.

In the annuls of the Cold War, one of the most honest moments that led to a breakthrough in diplomacy is when pro-military strength Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan sat down opposite Mikhail Gorbachev and said, without blinking, “Here is why we don’t trust you.”

In similar fashion, while at times a great and thrilling testament to the sport of surfing, Step Into Liquid allows those it interviews to go off on elitist rants about the wonders of surfing, how surfers are so misunderstood and how only surfers “get” surfing. As such, Step Into Liquid stands as Exhibit A when this reviewer sits down opposite a surfing devotee and tell them, “Here’s why we think you’re an elitist snob.”

The movie gets a bit surreal as one moment, you have a seemingly down-to-earth guy like X-Files creator Chris Carter talking cogently about how surfers get wrongly portrayed as flakes, followed up by a nameless surfing elitist who then goes on a flakey rant about how maybe if we all just surfed a couple hours a day, there would be no wars. Way to undercut the flakiness charge, there, guys!

Still, there are some high points to the movie, like the five minutes or so spent on the Great Lakes surfing community in Wisconsin – something new I’d never been aware of before. Or how there was a real-life Gidget who the 1950s surfing movies were based on, and who is still an active surfer today, even though she needs more wrinkle creams than ice creams these days.

If someone is big into surfing and doesn’t mind some pro-surfing proselytizing, Step Into Liquid should be of some interest. However, after seeing it once to show off some of the details visible at 1080p that other lower-def screens just can’t achieve, I can’t imagine this being a long-term part of very many people’s Blu-Ray libraries. Unless, of course, as I said before, they are surfers.

No, you’re not in a time warp reading about a Jessica Alba sequel that won’t be made until 2012 (if ever). You see, The Eye may be familiar to US audiences as an Alba vehicle, but over in Korea, hot-shot Asian directors The Pang Brothers have already turned the movie into a somewhat successful series, of which The Eye 3 is only the most recent installment.

While the Pang Brothers’ version of The Eye and its American remake are similar, The Eye 3 may lead some viewers unfamiliar with the Korean original films a bit disoriented. By the third movie, gone is the concept of seeing ghosts because of a corneal transplant (The Eye) or because you attempted suicide while pregnant (The Eye 2), and instead, it is merely the challenge of getting to see the dead that drives the series forward.

Much like The Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows, the action of The Eye 3 focuses on a group of college students who, one somewhat inebriated night, decide they want to see ghosts. One of them has a list of methods, which includes corneal transplants and the suicide-while-pregnant thing, as a bow and a nod to the first two films, but then start listing odder methods that are less drastic, like banging chopsticks on noodle bowls to get the “hungry ghosts” to come out and play.

Of course, there are risks in seeking out the undead, and it goes well beyond the one drunken night, as these foolish kids soon learn. You can guess at how the plot unfolds from there, because spoilers end now on this one.

To be honest, the third movie is already beginning to stretch the core concept to the point of no return and personally, I felt The Eye 3 jumped the shark a bit; what’s next, being able to see ghosts via the use of a Canon Powershot? Wait, no… that’s Fatal Frame. Kinda.

Played for more comedy than the previous installments, The Eye 3 his some fun, mind-bending moments, but is scarce on the genuine chills. Although it delivers a PG-13-level thriller as the previous two installments did, this one just falls flat, and the special features are minimal, although there are English subtitles, thankfully, to help those of us who don’t speak Korean.

Jessica Alba is the main reason most people will give The Eye a try, but the big secret of the movie is that it’s actually not that bad as a suspense-horror-thriller, either. An American remake of the 2002 original by the Pang Brothers, The Eye casts Alba as a blind violinist who has a chance to see again by undergoing a double corneal transplant.

The operation is an apparent success as Sydney (Alba) slowly learns to see again, her vision initially fuzzy and untrustworthy. She begins to see some things she thinks should not be there, although she is reassured by everyone that it’s all normal and part of her adjustment. But is it normal to see the spirits that reap souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead? Or is Sydney just paranoid and confusing dreams with reality.

It’s an intriguing premise that’s not unlike a handful of other horror stories where a transplant recipient of one sort or another have trouble when they find out the organ they received came from a criminal or a crime victim or some such thing. The core concept dates back at least as far as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with The Eye simply being the latest variation on that general theme.

One of The Eye’s cinematic forebears is Blink, which starred Madeline Stowe as a very similar character in a similar plot; however, that movie went off in a different direction, so you won’t confuse the two by the time it’s all done. Fans of the Pang Brothers will be pleased to note that American directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud maintain some of the style of the original Asian film, including a cameo by the “report card boy,” who has appeared in all three installments of The Eye directed by the Pang Brothers.

With virtually identical special features on Blu-Ray and standard DVD, The Eye is a rare commodity in today’s world of “unrated special editions.” It is a genuine PG-13 thriller that maintains a sense of suspense and horror without resorting to “director’s cut” excesses that amount to nothing more than a couple seconds more nudity, a few more cuss words and other needless toys; fortunately, The Eye delivers its spookiness without relying on offensive excesses.

Ever since his debut in the well-received Napoleon Dynamite, comic actor Jon Heder has been stuck in a series of low-budget comedies playing, essentially, the same slacker-loser-nerd character. Mama’s Boy isn’t the movie that is going to change Heder’s typecast career, but it is a movie with a bit more heart to it than some of the pale imitators that followed in the wake of Napoleon Dynamite.

This time out, Heder plays Jeffrey Mannus, a slacker-loser-nerd who, at 29, still lives with his mother and window-shops men’s jewelry. Heder knows his set up is sweet, but when his mother meets a motivational speaker who starts courting his mother, Jeffrey feels his set-up is threatened and begins to engage in the movie-world-typical war of undermining his mom’s suitor in ways that just never happen in real life. And of course, motivational speaker Mert responds in kind.

At this point there were two ways the movie could go; it could really ramp up the undermining hijinks of Jeffrey and Mert, pulling the movie in a Farrelly Brothers direction, and leaving any sense of real humanity behind for the rest of the film, or it could show some character growth. Unexpectedly, Mama’s Boy chooses the road less traveled: character growth.

This growth is, in part, sparked by the relationship Jeffrey suddenly finds himself forming with Nora, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter whose work is a bit over the top and ridiculous; yet the script ignores this and takes her career aspirations seriously in another atypical move for a Hollywood movie.

It’s as though Mama’s Boy is the result of a collaboration between two completely different writers; one, a Farrally Brothers wannabe and the other striving to be the next William Goldman. The result is a watchable movie that, although enjoyable, seems to be suffering from a greater identity crisis than its main character.

Does Mama’s Boy want to be a rolling-in-the-aisles gross-out comedy? Then its script is far too humane and takes its characters too seriously. Does Mama’s Boy want to be more of a thoughtful comedy-slash-social commentary? Then why have Anna Farris perform songs that wouldn’t even be good enough to get her in to be ridiculed by Simon, Randy and Paula?

The movie is pleasant enough in a quiet kind of way, but lacks the punch to be either one type of movie or another. The end result’s middle-of-the-road approach leaves the viewer feeling like it’s a cinematic experience that never fully realized its potential.

Al Pacino and Colin Farrell star in this Blu-Ray release of The Recruit, a spy-in-training suspense film that is supposed to be about mind games. Farrell comports himself quite well in the role, managing to come off as more innocent and naïve than he has in most of his films. He plays a CIA recruit who is singled out by Al Pacino’s character for induction into the Agency.

The film makes good use of the talents of its two-star cast and gives them more screen time with each other than with anyone else. Unfortunately, the film is held back from being as shocking as it might otherwise be by two important elements.

The first element is that the script is a fairly by-the-numbers suspense flick that telegraphs its punches and never really keeps you guessing. Predictability is one of the seven deadly sins, right? Eh, maybe not, but it ought to be, at least in Hollywood.

The other element holding the film back is the filmic legacy of Pacino; when the time comes for various plot twists involving his character, it’s hard to be too shocked because of the acting legacy Pacino brings to any film he appears in, especially a film using him to “play to type,” rather than countering his established image.

The film is not without its merits; Bridget Moynahan appears and is effective in her role as a fellow recruit, but her character Layla is flat and uninspired despite the on-screen chemistry she pulls off with Farrell. While the film takes us through its mind-game paces, creative uses for shower faucets are among the many forms of mind-breaking that James Clayton (Farrell) faces. But I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot.

Although its pedestrian script holds the film back from being truly watchable, it’s also not unwatchable. In other words, the film is worth seeing once, but perhaps not quite worth owning; a better example of the genre is the film currently in theatres, Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. The Recruit is OK, but it’s not one you’ll want to go out of your way to see, unless you’re a devoted fan of either Farrell or Pacino.

There is a solid audience for Oprah Winfrey-produced films, and I realize Mitch Albom has a following thanks to his early works like The Five People You Meet In Heaven and Tuesdays With Morrie. However, even among folks who normally like this sort of thing, including my wife, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day is both annoying and snooze-inducing. In fact, I dozed lightly a couple times watching it and my wife almost needed GPS tracking to lure me back to the land of the wide awake.

The story revolves around a washed up baseball player who has screwed up his life and his relationship with his family so badly, he’s at the verge of committing suicide; but just as he is about to pull the trigger, he sees his mother, nine years dead, looking on from the other side of a Little League diamond.

As the title predicts, he gets to spend “one more day” with his mom, who takes him on a sort of “Ghost of Christmas Past” journey of his life, ala “A Christmas Carol,” to see what an utter piece of doo-doo he’d been to his mom throughout his life, because he was so eager to please his emotionally distant dad.

The cast offers little to speak of in the way of allure. Ellyn Burstyn is the biggest name in the cast, although 1980s starlet Samantha Mathis, made mildly famous in the movie Dream A Little Dream, suddenly re-emerges from obscurity to play a younger, early-40s version of this guy’s mom.

While Albom has mixed sentimentality well in the past, and the book may be more effective, the movie is plodding and ponderous and about as riveting as watching paint dry. Also, I just don’t follow the logic of the movie; his mom’s ghost is there to convince him not to kill himself, and does this by … showing him what an ass he’s been all these years? Way to motivate a fellow that life’s worth living, huh?

The DVD is short on extras, but it’s not the sort of film most folks will want to spend extra time with. If you’re an Albom fan, I’d say pick up his novels and start reading, or if you must see Albom’s work on film, rent Tuesdays With Morrie instead. For One More Day is, for this reviewer, one day too many.