My Review: Trespass (2/10)

¨Run, Avery, run¨

That is the same recommendation I`m making to the audience: Run away from this movie as fast as you can, because it is really terrible, one of the worst heist films I`ve seen in years, with the dumbest thieves in film history. The further the movie continues to go with its revelations, the worse it gets. It gave me a really bad headache because there is so much screaming and crying going on. At first I thought this would be an interesting movie considering it starred Nicolas Cage (although he can`t be too reliable lately) and Nicole Kidman, but I couldn`t understand how I had never heard about this movie or seen it screen in theaters. Then after the movie was over, I kind of figured it out; and later I read that the movie was only in theaters for 10 days breaking the record for being the fastest ever to go directly from theaters to home video. It was available in DVD 18 days after the film had been released in theaters. Why? Because it is really that bad. Trespass cost an estimated 35 million dollars to be made, and it grossed less than 25 thousand dollars. This is probably something that director Joel Schumacher won’t be proud of. I think the last film that he directed which I actually enjoyed was Phone Booth way back in 2002. He seems to be in a bad streak recently. Karl Gajdusek was the man responsible for the terrible script, and the story is probably the worst part of the entire film.

Kyle Miller (Nicolas Cage) seems to be a successful diamond salesman. He lives in a big and highly secured house, drives a fancy sports car, and has a beautiful wife, Sarah (Nicole Kidman), and a teenage daughter, Avery (Liana Liberato), who is going through her typical rebellious state. Things seem a little shaky at home since Kyle has to travel so much and Sarah spends a lot of time on her own, and she doesn`t like the fact that her daughter Avery is spending so much time with Kendra, who she considers a bad influence. Avery wants to go to a party with her, and her parents say no but she escapes anyway. That night a group of officers show up at the house asking if everyone is at home because a series a kidnappings have been reported. Kyle and Sarah are convinced Avery is with them so assume nothing is wrong, but when they go to speak to the officers they invade their home and begin searching the home for diamonds. The thieves are played by Cam Gigandet, Jordana Spiro, Ben Mendelsohn, and Dash Mihok. They are extremely aggressive and heavily armed, but Kyle isn`t willing to open the safe so things begin to get out of hand. There is a lot of threatening and screaming going on, but that is about it. The thieves also seem to have some secret agendas of their own, but I don`t want to spoil the movie with all its revelations and ¨twists, ¨ so that is about all I`m going to reveal about the plot.

Trespass had an interesting beginning, but once the home invasion takes place and the thieves begin to threaten and keep on threatening without getting anything out of it the movie begins to go downhill from there. There inside the house with the family held hostage and they can`t manage to get anything done. All they do is yell, threaten, and scream, but make one stupid decision after another. Nicolas Cage`s character was also very unlikeable, and after everything that was going on I could really care less is his family survived or not. This was probably one of the worst home invasion thrillers I`ve seen, and that is too bad considering there were some talented actors involved in the project. Halfway through the movie a series of revelations are made about the family and the thieves, one worse than the next. Trespass seems to go downhill from that point on, and all you want to do thirty minutes into the film is run away from the chaotic script. It`s a shame because Nicolas Cage used to be one of my favorite action heroes, especially during the 90`s with Face/Off being the highlight of his career in my opinion, but recently in the last decade he has made a lot of poor choices and it will be a pity if people remember him for these roles instead of his other greater films.

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My Review: Priest (2/10)

¨You would have made a good priest.¨

Cam Gigandet may have made a good priest, but Paul Bettany definitely didn’t. This was the wrong movie for him, the wrong story, and the wrong script. He should have learned his lesson after working with Scott Charles Stewart in Legion. After that fiasco, somehow both of them decided to team up again for Priest and they managed to make an even worse movie. Stewart`s career as a director seems to be going nowhere and he should stick with working in the visual arts department where he has had greater success. First time screenplay writer, Cory Goodman, wasn’t able to adapt a decent story from Min-Woo Hyung`s graphic novel of the same name. The dialogue in this film is just pathetic, and there are really few positive things I can say about this movie. Paul Bettany isn’t the type of guy you should cast as a leading actor for an action film. He is great in the supporting role or as a villain, but he isn’t the hero type. The post apocalyptic world created is really dark and has worked in the past with other similar movies, but it just didn’t feel real in Priest. From the very opening animation scene one could tell that Priest was heading into disaster territory. The visuals were ok, but the main problem was in the story itself. Fortunately Priest is less than 90 minutes long, thanks to the fact that the simple plot moves rather quickly. I don’t think I could have taken much more if it were longer.

The plot is surprisingly very simple for a post apocalyptic sci-fi futuristic film. Men and vampires have been in war for years and therefore Earth has been almost completely destroyed. Vampires began winning the war, but humans found hope in a secret weapon: priests. These priests were trained specifically to kill vampires, and they became experts in doing so. Priests singlehandedly won the war and the few surviving vampires were sent to outposts and were secluded. Once the war was over, the Church had no more need for priests so they made them live as ordinary citizens among the walled-in cities which were ruled by the Church. There are also some people who question the Church`s authority and they live in small towns outside the walled city. Paul Bettany plays a Priest who still has nightmares about the War with vampires and can`t seem to adapt to life inside the city wall. When he hears that his niece Lucy (Lily Collins), who lived with her parents outside the walled city, has been abducted by vampires he asks for the Church`s permission to hunt the vampires. Monsignor Orelas (Christopher Plummer) tells Priest that it is impossible that the vampires have escaped their prisons and therefore doesn’t give him authority to leave the city walls. Priest goes against those orders and is set to find Lucy along with the town Sheriff Hicks (Cam Gigandet) who was in love with her. Together they discover that the vampires have escaped their cells and are planning on attacking the city walls under the leadership of Black Hat (Karl Urban), an ex-priest who has become a vampire. Along the way they find an ally in Priestess (Maggie O) and together they try to put an end to the new vampire threat and save Lucy`s life before it is too late.

I am not familiar with the graphic novel so I can`t say how faithful this movie is to it, but what I can say is that the story is really weak and the dialogue in this film is terrible. The action scenes are ok, but we`ve seen them before. There is nothing fresh about this new apocalyptic world that Stewart is trying to create. The Book of Eli was a much better post apocalyptic film. It also helps to have someone like Denzel Washington as a lead actor. Paul Bettany isn`t the kind of actor you want to star in your action film. The rest of the cast was alright. Maggie O is good as a supporting character and so was Cam Gigandet. Karl Urban also delivers in his few scenes as the villain. The main problem wasn`t the acting, but the material these actors had to work with. Priest simply fails to deliver in so many ways and I guarantee this movie will end up in my list of worst movies of the year. This is a movie you will want to skip. There are plenty of other hunting vampire films that are much better than this one.

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My Review: Easy A (8/10)

¨The rumors of my promiscuity have been greatly exaggerated.¨

I wasn’t surprised as to how much I actually enjoyed this teen comedy because I had seen Emma Stone`s work in the past. She was only a supporting character in Zombieland and Superbad, but she was great in both those films and her career looked promising. Easy A is her first lead role and she proved she can carry a film all on her own. Emma Stone has the right look for a movie star and at the same time has a natural wit that very few young actresses have. Her performance reminded me a little of Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls (I just hope her career doesn`t follow a similar fate). Stone is a much better actress and seems a lot smarter as well, but let’s not forget that Lohan also started off with a promising career. Easy A is directed by Will Gluck, who actually had only directed one other relatively unknown movie before this (Fired Up). The screenplay was also written by another unknown writer in the film industry: Bert V. Royal (who had worked for TV in the Dave Chappell Show). I really enjoyed the script however, and felt it was written by someone with the comedic genius as Tina Fey for example. Easy A had everything good going for it: Emma Stone and a really funny and smart script. That`s all you need for a comedy to work these days. Will Gluck pulled it off and delivered one of the best comedies of 2010 (even though there weren`t very many good comedies this year).

Olive (Emma Stone) narrates via a video blog how she told her best friend a little white lie about losing her virginity, and how that small lie spread thanks to the High School rumors. The story is told by her and we see what she is saying through flashbacks. It all began when Olive told her best friend, Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) that she had a date with a college guy so she had an excuse not to go camping with her strange family. After not doing anything all weekend, Olive meets Rhiannon back at school and she asks how the date went. Rhi suspects that Olive had sex with this mysterious guy and insists so much that Olive simply lies so she won’t bother her anymore. Marianne (Amanda Bynes), the religious freak in school, hears the conversation in the bathroom and begins spreading the rumor. All of a sudden Olive begins to be noticed by everyone at school and she kind of likes being the center of attention. That same day Olive is sent to detention and spends the afternoon with Brandon (Dan Byrd) who`s also been detained. Brandon is constantly bullied on by his classmates due to the fact that he`s gay. When Brandon learns from Olive that the rumor is a lie he comes up with the idea to lie about having sex with her in order for the students at school to stop believing he`s gay. All of a sudden Olive`s reputation as a skank begins to grow and she ends up finding herself lying about having relations with several of the students in order to help them out. Olive finds a parallel between herself and the character from The Scarlett Letter (Hester Prynne), the book they are studying in school with professor Griffith (Thomas Haden Church). Everyone seems to judge Olive based on the rumors, except Todd (Penn Badgley), the guy who she`s always had a crush for.

Emma Stone proved she can have a lead role in Hollywood and does it well, but she also had a great cast to back her up. Stanley Tucci played her father and he`s always funny in every scene he`s in. He`s just such a great actor that always makes any movie so much funnier when he`s on screen. Patricia Clarkson is also hilarious in her role as Olive`s mother. These are two of the most unconventional parents I`ve seen in a movie this year. They were great on screen together. Amanda Bynes was also good in her role as a religious freak who was constantly judging Olive. Thomas Haden Church is always funny in every movie that he appears in so Emma Stone had a great cast to work along with. She also counted with a great script (I loved the narration about the 80`s movies and how she wished her life would be directed by John Hughes). The video blog journal also added to the comedy as we got to hear Olive`s witty side notes about what was going on. I really didn`t care too much for Cam Gigandet and Lisa Kudrow`s characters. Their performances were off par with the rest of the cast. Neither of them get much screen time so they don`t affect the movie at all. Easy A is easily one of the best comedies of the year. I really enjoyed it and thought Emma Stone was great in it along with the rest of the supporting cast. I wish they made more comedies like this one.

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My Review: Burlesque (5/10)

¨I`ll be back, back on my feet. This is far from over. You haven`t seen the last of me.¨

Burlesque is not actually as bad as I expected it to be, but it still has a long way to go if it wanted to revive a dying genre: musicals. Moulin Rouge and Chicago were actually great films and it seemed as if the musical genre was finally going to have a comeback at the beginning of the decade, but in recent years these films have disappointed (with Nine almost burying the genre altogether). We have a long way to go if we want to get back to the glory days of musicals from the 50s and 70s. My favorite musical all time is Oliver! and I just happened to watch that movie a few months ago, so it`s a little unfair for me to judge Burlesque under those terms. The problem I have with musicals today is that most of the time the music is not part of the story, they are just there to entertain us and the story is told through acting, while on the other hand before each musical was used to tell the story and served a purpose. In Burlesque there are some good musical performances and fans of Christina Aguilera will probably be satisfied because she has several musical numbers and she is the main protagonist. This is her first acting job and she is not great, but her voice makes up for it and she does a lot of powerful singing. Fans of Cher might not be too excited because she has very little screen time and has only two musical performances (although ¨You Haven´t Seen the Last of Me¨ is probably the best one of the movie and should receive an Oscar nomination for Best Song). Burlesque is Steve Antin`s first feature film as a director and he also wrote the script for this movie. As a writer he hasn`t had a very promising career (Chasing Papi and Glory anyone?), but this is perhaps his best work to date (not much of a compliment however).

We are first introduced to Ali (Christina Aguilera), a waitress from a small town in Iowa who has big dreams and aspirations so she decides to move to Los Angeles. Once in LA she discovers a Burlesque club and immediately falls in love with it. The Burlesque Lounge is run by Tess (Cher) who owns half of the club- the other half belonging to her ex husband Vince (Peter Gallagher). Not everything is working out well for them as they are having great financial troubles and if they don`t come up with the money they will have to sell the club. Marcus (Eric Dane) is a very successful businessman (and ladies man for that matter) who wants to buy the lounge for personal reasons, but Tess is not ready to give up on her dream. Ali finds a job in Burlesque as a waitress and befriends Jack (Cam Gigandet), the bartender with whom she moves in with. Ali is waiting for her shot to become one of the Burlesque girls and when the door opens she will stop at nothing to make the best of it. When Tess hears her voice she realizes that the show must revolve around her, but is it enough to save the club?

The characters are one dimensional, but I`m guessing most people that go see Burlesque aren`t expecting three dimensional characters, they just want to hear these girls sing. In my opinion the burlesque lounge began as one and somehow along the way it got lost and became a Christina Aguilera concert (even the stage seemed to get bigger). The film also seems to resolve itself rather easily by the end. The highlight of the film for me was Stanley Tucci`s performance as Sean, the gay Stage Manager. Tucci is such a great actor and we have seen him give some terrific secondary performances before (The Devil Wears Prada) and he does so once again. The funniest moments of the film are thanks to him and he steals absolutely every scene he`s in. Burlesque was worth it just for his performance alone, but then I am not a Christina Aguilera nor Cher fan so it did grow tiresome and long at times for me. Cher doesn`t seem to have aged at all, she looks the same as she does ever since I can remember. Time seems to pass for everyone except for her. Her song ¨You haven`t seen the last of me¨ was my favorite performance from the movie. The movie is about two hours long and after a while you begin to feel the length of the film. I wouldn`t recommend this film unless you are a Christina Aguilera fan and in that case you will most probably enjoy her performance.

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