Suggested Viewing (Fall 2011)

John Singleton, the guy who directed Four Brothers, which is still quite possibly one of our favorite Mark Wahlberg movies, created his newest film, Abduction, with the hopes of recreating Taylor Lautner into someone our brothers and boyfriends might like too. The action-packed thriller, which also stars Lily Collins, Jason Isaacs, Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver and Maria Bello, is about Nathan’s (Lautner) quest for truth after he sees his baby picture on a missing person’s website. Whether or not the boys in your life enjoy it, I’m sure you’ll find Lautner’s exceptional physicality entertaining. (Sept. 23) 

“So, you really think that the girls gonna go for me just ‘cause I have cancer?” asks Adam, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in 50/50.  “For the millionth time, YES!” replies Seth Rogen’s Kyle in the comedy written by the actor’s real-life best friend Will Reiser. When Reiser was 25, he was diagnosed with spinal cancer, and although Rogen attempted writing a script about his friend’s battle with cancer, we’re sure it’s benefited from Reiser’s first-person knowledge of it. I’m excited to see this film, aren’t you? (Sept. 30) 

Opposites attract and long distance is hard. These are the ideas behind Drake Doremus’ Like Crazy. So why do we care? How about the fact that it stars Anton Yelchin, the dramatic wunderkind of Alpha Dog and Star Trek fame, and London stage actress Felicia Day, and their on-screen chemistry has critics blown away? That’s enough to make us want to preorder tickets. (Oct. 28) 

Funny. Hilarious. Hysterical. Wait – where is my thesaurus? I can totally imagine needing more synonyms for the word funny to describe Tower Heist to those who haven’t yet seen it. True, I haven’t yet, but the Brett Ratner-directed film is sure to be highly entertaining with a double-whammy of comedians Ben Stiller and Edie Murphy. About a group of employees who want to rip-off and impossible-to-rip-off Bernie Madoff-type character, the film also stars Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Tea Leoni and Gabourey Sidibe. (Nov. 4) 

Adam Sandler plays himself and a woman in Dennis Dugan’s Jack and Jill. Excited yet? No? If not, I can’t imagine any other way to make you want to see this movie. Unless you’re a fan of Katie Holmes, who plays Jack’s wife, or Al Pacino. The film is about when Jack’s sister Jill comes to visit for Thanksgiving and doesn’t go home. Sounds good, doesn’t it? (Nov. 11) 

---

This piece appeared in the second issue of M.L.T.S. Magazine, a publication I started. This appeared in the Most Entertaining section.

Film Review: Steve Antin's Burlesque

What you might expect from a film about show business starring two musical icons as the leads: a dippy romp with a spectacular soundtrack. A cross between Moulin Rouge -- which featured a song by Burlesque star Christina Aguilera -- and Chicago with hints of The Devil Wears Prada, director Steve Antin's film offers up plenty of beauty shots of stars Cher and Aguilera and somehow manages to skip over most of the cohesive drama of those instant classics without totally losing the film's momentum.

The film concerns a naïve girl from Iowa named Ali (Aguilera), who travels to Hollywood with grandiose dreams but quickly finds herself in a seedy motel with no job prospects. After a long day of job searching, she stumbles upon a burlesque club owned by Tess (Cher) and is mesmerized. Ali gets a job as a waitress at the club, which is in danger of slipping through Tess' cash-strapped hands, and after auditioning and imploring the hardened Tess, eventually gets a job in the kick line. When an angered fellow performer cuts the music during one of Ali's first shows, Ali belts out a song that blows everyone away. Suddenly, Tess is congratulating her and planning a whole new show that will revolve around her. The music in the film will certainly inspire fans of Aguilera. Cher, whose lip synching is pretty obvious, also gets to belt out a couple of numbers to somewhat lesser effect. Despite the presence of the pros, the most convincing lip-synch belongs to the petite Kristin Bell, who dons a black wig to play the role of Ali's arch enemy Nikki.

Surely, some viewers will be thrown off by the cheesy resolution of the plot's various conflicts – love, debt, the realization of dreams – but everything else about the film is absolutely stunning. The film is visually ravishing in every way, from set design to costumes to lighting, which, in this critic's mind, more than makes up for its lack of narrative originality. You're not going to this movie for subtle shadings of suggestion or nuance of character, you're going for the sass, soundtrack and supreme swagger of its leads. As long as you're good with that, you should have a fine time.

This film review was originally published on two.one.five magazine's website here.

Film Review: Ondi Timoner's Cool It

 
With this doc, based on the book of the same name by Danish environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg, director Ondi Timoner provides a refreshing sequel of sorts for Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth. While avoiding the scare tactics used in the famed 2006 documentary which served to bring global warming and the Earth’s welfare to the forefront of our collective consciousness, Cool It delves into long-term solutions and some temporary stop-gap measures that would cost much less and do much more good than proposed short-term measures to cut carbon dioxide emissions on this planet.

Problematically, Timoner’s film is a bit disjointed. The first 20 minutes are spent on Lomborg’s personal and professional history before moving on to interviews with professors around the world about global warming and possible solutions. Naturally, it also hits on Lomborg’s proposal for spending $250 million on decreasing global warming and addressing the world’s other problems (like lack of health care, lack of education systems and poverty). Perhaps the 20 minutes spent telling Lomborg’s story is meant to mirror the interspersion of Gore’s personal story in Truth, but here, it's more of a distraction, as if interjecting this man's personal story somehow adds a necessarily element of basic individual humanity.

Ultimately, the bulk of the film addresses the world’s future and the solutions that scientists have been studying for years and are ready to implement. In that, it is fascinating stuff to watch, leaving the viewer hopeful rather than glumly preparing for an imminent apocalypse. One can only hope that policy makers are sitting up and taking notes.

This film review was originally published on two.one.five magazine's website.

PictureShow feature on two.one.five

The two reviews below were part of two.one.five magazine's feature on Philadelphia Film Festival 2010.

11/04/08
Dir. Jeff Deutchman
Score: 3.4
Jeff Deutchman, Acquisitions Manager for IFC Films, got the idea for this documentary two weeks before the last presidential election: Why not mass Facebook blast everyone who might have access to a video camera and an interest in recording the events of and reactions to the day that many figured would become an important moment in American history? This listless documentary is the half-baked result. Deutchman's team captured people the world over talking about the change they felt would surely come with Obama's election. Admittedly a great concept, the film fails to capture the excitement and siginficance of that recent moment in U.S. history where liberals, democrats and humanitarians felt a glimmer of hope for their country. Self-professed curator Deutchman pieces together video bits but fails to make them feel cohesive -- the map-jumping seems to have little rhyme or reason. The pacing, too, makes little sense and the climax of the piece -- Obama's winning -- falls more than a tad flat. Instead of elation, the film leaves you feeling sad; for all the supposed change that people thought was on the way, the film's very nature mimics the lack of change in our political system since November 4, 2008.

OC87
Dir. Bud Clayman
Score: 6.9
Filmmaker Bud Clayman has suffered from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Major Depression, and Asperger's almost all of his life. As he was nearing college graduation, he also neared a breakdown that would prevent him from making movies for the next thirty years. With OC87, he reclaims a bit of his dream and in the process, creates, with the help of others, a documentary about his journey for recovery from these mental disorders. From coast to coast, the viewer follows Bud and his team as he retraces the steps in his life. Combining interviews with family members and doctors with old film clips and picture slideshows, Clayman creates an unique and touching story. Characteristic of someone with Asperger's, Clayman doesn't become outwardly emotional but he does seem to change throughout the course of the film, making it wholly captivating and touching. 

Film Review: Josh Appignanesi's The Infidel

Essentially, the film is about a man who must reconcile who he thought he was and where he really comes from with the idea he's created of himself, in order to become the man he eventually will be. In the midst of an identity crisis, which follows from learning he is Jewish by birth and not “really” Muslim, Mahmud Nasir (Omid Djalili) lies to his loved ones and endangers everything good in his life. Despite several opportunities to come clean to his beautiful wife Saamiya (Archie Panjabi) and their two children, Mahmud continues to hide his discovery and the fact that he’s taking Jewish lessons with American cabbie Lenny (Richard Schiff) in order to gain access, currently barred by a fanatical Rabbi, to his observant-Jew birth father.

Should he admit to being Jewish, Mahmud would ruin the engagement of his son, Rashid (Amit Shah), to Uzma (Soraya Radford), whose mother has recently married Muslim extremist Arshad Al-Masri. Al-Masri (Igal Naor) who won’t let his new stepdaughter marry a nonbeliever. In other words, the pressure is on for Mahmud to prove he’s a good Muslim. Mahmud attempts to do this by burning a yarmulke at a Justice for Palestine rally where Al-Masri will speak. This act is caught on video and posted online. When Mahmud returns home from a failed attempt to meet his father, Al-Masri is there. He gives the Rashid-Uzma union his blessing and then cops show up to arrest Mahmud for inciting religious hatred. Mahmud must decide if he will risk his son’s happiness and save himself by admitting he is Jewish or accept his arrest.

Despite its heavy subject matter, the film is billed as a comedy, and it improbably succeeds. The juxtaposition of Muslims and Jews provides excellent fodder for comedy. More than that, the movie conveys the message that these warring factions are not so different without being preachy. Just as Mahmud found peace with two conflicting parts of himself, so can the world’s Muslims and Jews – and we can all learn to laugh about our differences.

This film review was originally published on two.one.five magazine's website.

Sex manual comes up short on advice

"Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk” falls short on humor and helpful sexual information.

There are certain things people should not do in public, and reading the Association for the Betterment of Sex’s book “Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk” is one of those things. Places you may not want to read the book include your daily commute on SEPTA, your work-study job and your parents’ living room.

Then again, you might not want to read it anywhere unless you are one of the Neanderthals in the 2007 movie “Knocked Up” – who, in the film, say a woman can’t get pregnant if she’s on top – as this book was clearly intended for them. On us upright-walking people, the joke is lost.

Here’s a little about the ABS: It’s a self-professed think tank based in Washington, D.C., comprised of five former and current writers for “The Daily Show,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” Vanity Fair and the Onion. They are Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Jason Roeder, Michael Sacks and Ted Travelstead.

Proposed to give the reader a “radical new understanding of sex and intimacy,” the book fails to actually inform the reader of anything sex-related. The handful of tips that aren’t a health risk or a bad joke are things you learned in health class. The whole book reads like a monologue from a misinformed health teacher with a tragic need to be liked by his or her students.

Although ABS’s book was supposedly “exhaustively researched,” it is filled with tidbits quite clearly figments of the imagination. There are some that almost sound truthful, such as “a scant 18 percent of men successfully roll a condom onto their penis in the first try,” until you read, “A man who ejaculates forcefully enough can impregnate the cosmos.”


Read the rest of this 660-word book review for The Temple News here.

Professors’ guide unlocks the secrets to earning A’s

Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman’s “The Secrets of College Success”contains more than 600 tips to improve your college performance.

Dr. Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman, creators of the Professors’ Guide series, set out to write “the instruction manual for college.” The result: “The Secrets of College Success,” which was published this past summer.

Their second book is filled with tips for picking classes and professors, improving academic performance and, ultimately, getting more bang out of college for a student’s buck.

“You’re paying a lot of money for this college thing, and if you know what to do, you’ll get your money’s worth,” Hyman said.

Students will get their money’s worth out of the book, too.

Read the rest of this 460-word book review for The Temple News here.