The Cutting Edge 3: Chasing the Dream
By Staff Writer

Fifteen years after the classic, 1990s original, "The Cutting Edge" films are still skating strong. The third installment of the family drama titled "The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream" was released on DVD in early April. The telefilm follows the ice skating careers of the world's most popular figure skater (and eligible celebrity bachelor) Zach Conroy, played by Matt Lanter, and his partner, newcomer Alexandra Delgado, actress Francia Raisa.

The plot of the third "The Cutting Edge" film follows the same storyline of the first two films, however, throws some twists along the way. Sweet and romantic, with a dash of action, the film starts out with figure skater Zach and his partner, who is also his ex-girlfriend, on the way to a major competition in Miami, Florida. He accidentally injures her, and must find a new partner before the World Championships in Paris. In comes Alexandra Delgado, known as "Alex" in the film. Alex is a beautiful, tough tomboy who grew up as a hockey player, with big dreams around figure skating. The great twist in this film is that the male lead is no longer the typical tough hockey player, but rather, the figure skater, and female lead is the hockey player, and not the figure skater in need of a partner. The plot may catch past "The Cutting Edge" fans off guard, yet it is a great change of pace after the first two installments of these films. People enjoy familiarity, but no one wants something excessively predictable.

From the very beginning of the film, the chemistry between Lanter and Francia Raisa is undisputable. Once Alex and Zach pair up, the sparks start to fly, and the two become an unstoppable duo. Despite the potential between the skaters, Zach's figure skating coach wants nothing to do with the newly-formed team. Zach and Alex seek out the help of Jackie Dorsey, played by actress Christy Carlson Romano, daughter of the original "The Cutting Edge" duo. This witty tie-in is a nice touch and reference back to the original film. Another nice touch is that every character in the film was given a decent back storyline, and an opportunity to expand and develop their characters more so than any of the other "The Cutting Edge" films to date.

Teen star Francia Raisa gave a memorable performance in this film, putting her on the map as one of the most up and coming actresses in the entertainment industry. Viewers never had to question her character's actions, and she truly embodied the character of Alexandra Delgado. Francia Raisa gave just enough attitude and spunk, paired with an undeniable femininity and expression of inner beauty, which can be tough to do when playing a tomboy hockey player. Not only does she skate like a champion, she believingly captures the heart of her partner Zach, and teaches him about life and love.

Besides the twists and turns in the plot, "The Cutting Edge: Chasing The Dream" stays fantastically hip and fresh, which can be tough to accomplish with the third installment of any film. The filmmakers deliberately try to keep this film current, (they even add hip-hop tracks and current music to complete the vibe) and it definitely adds to the overall appeal.

Overall, although a trilogy can be a risky move, "The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream" soared above the second film, and delightfully pays homage to the classic original, "The Cutting Edge." Ice skating fans, romantic comedy lovers and teens are bound to fall in love with this film, which has the perfect blend of action, romance and drama.

The Take
By Giulian Jones

There are many movies that you will be bombarded with advertisements this year, proclaiming that they are the must see movie or this year's best or Oscar worthy and none of them are anything like what they advertised. Much like getting drunk for the first time, it really never lives up to its promise.

One thing you will never have from Mr. John Leguizamo, is false praise. In one of what will surely be missed by most critics and movie goers is the very unflashy, alien free, non-end of the world film "The Take". This wonderful movie stars the multitalented John Leguizamo and Rosie Perez. Neither of these two is used to their potential, but "The Take" uses them like nobodies business and you will be amazed what real actors can do with a great story.

"The Take" finds Felix De La Pena (John) living the simple life as a security guard with his wife and small family working and living paycheck to paycheck like most Americans do, yet still managing to find happiness within each other in the little things like his wife still finding him sexy or the latest Dodger victory. They are what you could best describe as Los Angeles natives, proud and poor and Latino. They are ingrained in the community.

Felix is on his usual drive with his longtime partner when they grab dinner at the same spot they normally do on Friday, when suddenly a man steps into the passenger seat of the armored truck with a gun pointed at Felix's face. The gunman, played by a very menacing looking Tyrese Gibson , tells Felix that he must do his normal routine or his family, which he has a picture of, will all be murdered. A very nervous Felix makes his nightly rounds watching as the gunman and his thugs rob him and eventually kill all his co-workers only to face the loaded end of a gun being placed against his temple and fired.

After being shot and left for dead, he manages to wake up and call for help. His family, obviously distraught after receiving the news, arrives at the hospital tearful and pissed that this could happen to good people and so are we are viewers. Rosie Perez gives the literal performance of her career as the good wife with the great big heart that keeps on giving and you just watch her and want something good to happen. I felt like grabbing a big stick and smacking anyone that looked at me funny in the theater.

The problem is they always look funny at me. No stick today. Felix survives the ordeal, but with a few nasty side effects like yelling at the TV. My father must have been shot in the head too, because he also yelled at the TV. Felix struggles to deal with the fact, like most victims, that he is helpless in this state. He decides to take vengeance to the streets when he is actually accused of being part of the heist himself by the police officers assigned to investigate the crime.

Felix finds out that his longtime partner is part of the heist team when he walks into his apartment and finds his partners body filled with bullets. Felix takes to the streets as the lone man seeking revenge much like Charles Bronson did years before and we watch the main thug (Gibson) kill off all his partners in crime in a cold blooded display that would make the most sterile of viewers cringe.

This movie is honest and violent and you are hopeful that the bad guy will not get away and leave the good guy in his dust to survive. The good news is sometimes the good guys do win and John Leguizamo is definitely a good guy and an even greater threat on the screen where he and Rosie Perez belong more frequently.


LEATHERHEADS
PIGSKINS AND LUNKHEADS
By Sean Chavel

When George Clooney gets away from all the high-minded serious stuff, he likes resurrecting the "old-fashioned" kind of movie, and Leatherheads is the most old-fashioned type of movie he's made. Despite the film portraying 1920's pro football (college football in those times was a bigger deal), the sensibilities are a throwback to a much-forgotten era. This film is foremost a star vehicle for Clooney who gets to imitate, perhaps embody, the classic suave appeal of Cary Grant.

The film is only a half success, but what's good is an undeniable treat. George Clooney and Renée Zellweger play screwball banter off each other like "His Girl Friday's" Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The zippy wordplay is classic 1930's and 40's movie era smart, bursting with spitfire potshots and comebacks while the ever-knowing that Clooney's football captain Dodge Connol

ly and Zellweger's snappy girl reporter Lexie Littleton will inevitably fall for each other.
Love is of course disrupted, and so is the football action, with the arrival of a new suitor. Dodge's romantic competition is Carter Rutherford (TV's "The Office" John Krasinski, who has found his first good movie role), a college football superstar whom Dodge recruits to his pro team. C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce) is a greedy money-man and sports promoter that makes sure most of the proceeds will go to him and Carter. The league of course really needs a superstar to resurrect the floundering league that is in danger of bankruptcy and going under. Carter, a pronounced World War I hero and pin-up idol, is the right kind of kind to put the fans in the bleachers.

In a 2008 roster year of derivative movies, "Leatherheads" contains the best production values of the year - the 1920's comes alive with terrific art direction and high fashion clothing wear. If this was really the 1920's we lived in, "Leatherheads" would feel very en vogue. On the field, the football action is very sloppy with some of the worst tackling in any sports movie you've seen (that's a comic strategy). Dodge's teammates and opponents lack grace; they're lunkheads behind the times. The big-time stars of the movie are ahead of the game.

As witty as the banter is though, Clooney connects more adversary fireworks with Krasinski than he does with Zellweger the romantic interest. A fistfight between Clooney and Krasinski for the sake of honor at the railroad tracks at night, in particular, is a wicked hoot. The exchanges between Clooney and Zellweger work too, but only in an audio fashion. Clooney and Zellweger's personalities don't mesh as well as you'd like them too, and the idea that they're romantic components isn't believable. Clooney is smooth during verbal banter, while Zellweger is spiky and standoffish.

As the validity of Carter's wartime heroism is questioned, and demystified by Lexie Littleton, the film becomes so self-important with its message of the media fabricating heroes (the core theme of Clint Eastwood's "Flag of our Fathers") the film forgets to put the action back on the field. By the time the film finally returns to a football showdown (Carter is traded and acquired by another team) the film becomes a mud-match between hardheads Dodge and Carter with both their dignity on the line. The final big-game moment is one of the most clever sports plays ever in to be featured in a pigskin movie, arriving just in time to put the overly grudging "message" to rest.

When "Leatherheads" falters (or pun, fumbles) you have nevertheless a great-looking movie with the leading man appeal of George Clooney. He embodies Cary Grant, all right, sometimes with too much of a wink-wink homage to the yesteryear Hollywood legend. But Clooney is becoming a legend in his own right, a movie star with the versatile combination of talented actor and matinee idol. Clooney is perhaps just as good as Cary Grant.


The Ruins
By Giulian Jones

The first dead teenager movie of the year has arrived in the form on The Ruins. Described as "a leisurely holiday that takes a turn for the worse." Let me tell you folks, I remember many leisurely vacations with my family that took plenty of turns for the worse and nobody ended up dead or attacked by blood drinking ivy in Mexico. Sure, we've all heard the horror stories about friends going down to Mexico and getting stopped at the border or being ripped off by the locals, how about being quarantined on an ancient pyramid that is surrounded by flesh eating plants? I'd like to see the travel agent please.

This story starts simple enough with a group of young, attractive kids drinking on the beach in some resort community down south. The kids meet a friendly stranger, big mistake in the horror film genre, and get invited to look for their friend who was on a quest to find an ancient dig and hasn't returned in a timely manner. The warning signs are all over the place in this movie too and nobody seems to notice.
The kids manage to get a taxi to drive them out to some remote part of the jungle where they find the abandoned car that belonged to the newly disappeared friend of a friend. This surprisingly doesn't cause them any alarm and they manage to trek further into the unknown jungle of a known third world country wearing such forward thinking jungle clothes likes flip flops and bikini tops.

The kids trek into the jungle still oblivious to their surroundings when they run into a stream and decide to rest, it is at this point they notice two very young children starring at them in the distance. This doesn't seem to bother them, except for the fact that when they yell at the children they do not answer. Oh well, it must be that whole language barrier thing. The next thing we see is the very large and discovered pyramid that was supposed to be top secret and undiscovered. All of these things seem to happen very matter of factly, and it's one of the many disturbing things about dead teenager movies that I used to love to hate when I was younger and didn't know any better. The problem I am having with this movie is we should have learned something over the many years of bad film making that would prevent movies like this from happening. You can actually hear audience member's duality of screaming at the movie screen and laughing at it the next moment. The poor kids in this movie have been literally thrown to the wolves, which might have been a safer bet considering the pyramid they have now been quarantined upon by the bow and arrow and vintage pistol wielding non-Spanish speaking locals.

There is plenty of actual drama for all involved, and the violence is actually quite graphic and real looking at times especially when the alpha male of the group is forced to break the legs of the friendly tourist and cut them off with a rusty hunting knife. There is the obliquitory nudity scene too, so don't worry about this movie breaking any dead teenager horror film rules. The reason this movie will open and close over the same weekend is just that, it doesn't' break any rules. It's a small twist on an overly used genre that needs the likes of Quentin Tarantino and a bottle of cheap whiskey to shake things up. The movie finds itself winding down at the end with the same ending we've seen a thousand times over with the audience members wishing they had bought something more substantial with their thirteen dollars.

My advice is don't ruin your weekend by seeing The Ruins; this movie will leave you wanting more of something else.


THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES
TWO GIRLS ONE CHOICE
By Sean Chavel
It feels like an inevitable dramatization to get a movie, headlined by big stars, that opens with the tragedy of a school shooting. Looking at the core of Diana, played by Evan Rachel Wood as a teen and Uma Thurman as an adult, The Life Before Her Eyes wants to deconstruct the tragedy on how surviving the ordeal can affect and damage an entire life. Questioning how the guilt of surviving is nearly as difficult as accepting death is the movie's proposed theme.

Consider the central choice of the movie. Diana and her best friend Maureen (Eva Amurri) are cornered in the bathroom when the bloodbath begins. Terrified screams are heard from beyond the door followed by the roar of gunshots. The shooter enters the bathroom to find the two trapped girls. A cruel proposition is made: one girl must die and the other one will get to live. But it's up to the girls to decide which one will take the bullet.

Uma Thurman is the big star here, and the adult Diana is married with one child and possesses a fulfilling job as an art professor. Character achievements noted, Thurman infuses skillful fragility into a woman whose life is picture perfect but is hardly emotionally secure underneath. Distant from her husband and overprotective of her daughter, Thurman is a tremulous case of self-scorning because she's never gotten over the school tragedy of her youth. What has made her deserving of having this Pottery Barn style life when Maureen could have earned a life of something similar?

As usual with her range of talent, Thurman triumphs through the challenge of her role making a woman of shattered psyche believable - one only wonders why her character doesn't seek psychotherapy. With the expectation that Thurman will dominate the movie (it's fair enough to assume that Evan Rachel Wood as young Diana will disappear from the story), it's a surprise that young Diana permeates regularly in flashbacks. Get it? It's a young Diana and adult Diana psychological profile.

Slipping through the early years, the bond of Diana and Maureen is a teen story of tenderness, trust and loyalty. No secrets split the girls, and their friendship is perhaps stronger than either girl's connection to their parents. There are varying degrees of prominent jealousy between them from time to time - or in movie terms - episode to episode. Maureen is a well-groomed daddy's little girl, a virgin pure in more ways than one. The worst thing you can say about Maureen is that she's not as confident around boys as compared to her peers. Diana's promiscuity on the other hand is legend, with gossip so vociferous that she's labeled a slut at school. This is a sharp contrast to the centered and regimented life of Diana as an adult, a life seemingly virtuous and unadulterated aside from the hidden guilt that holds her in a tight grasp. But untreated guilt leads to crumbling damage in adult life, as portrayed by Thurman.

You could say that this is the latest "School Shooting Movie," a feeling that reverberates every time the movie jumps back to reveal snippets at a time of the fatal incident, but it turns out to be something different from that. The school shooting is really window dressing that undercuts the real themes at hand. The central gunman scene reveals how the girls choose, and debate, which one has the better life worth living. It's as if one of them, both devoted to each other as if they were sisters, needs to sacrifice her life so the other more valuable one can live. It is a terrible nerve quaking dilemma to watch but also poignant at the same time.

With this in mind, "The Life Before Her Eyes" is really a story of girls' self-esteem issues, what makes one girl feel that she is less important than her friend's life. That makes you wonder for the answer why Diana prevails considering how rebelliousness and promiscuity has stigmatized her teen life. Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood, both astonishing in their ability to share and inhabit Diana, allow us to see the ins' and outs', the rights and wrongs, of an existence torn in promise and disgrace. This is an uncommon movie with more on its mind than most of the year's other theatrical releases. The film's director is Vadim Perelman who previously made the gripping "House of Sand and Fog" and the source material is based on the Laura Kasischke novel.