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The Women
Not Quite Sex and the City
By Hollie Overton

Move over Sex and the City…hello The Wom-en? Afraid not. The Women wants to be Sex and the City. In fact, if that film hadn't opened to such huge numbers, this movie may have come and gone. It certainly wouldn't have had a multi-million dollar marketing campaign. Unfortunately, the Women doesn't come close to replicating the magic of SATC.

A remake of the 1939 George Cukor classic starring legends Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer, director Diane English of Murphy Brown fame has modernized this film with a list of top Hollywood actresses.

Meg Ryan plays Mary Haines who learns that her husband is having an affair with Crystal Allen, (Eva Mendes) a spritzer girl at Saks and is forced to reevaluate her life. She finds herself facing another betrayal when her best friend, Sylvie Fowler (Annette Bening) dishes to the press about Mary's impending divorce. Debra Messing is the chronically pregnant Edie Cohen and Alex Fisher, the lesbian feminist played by Jada Pinkett Smith round out Mary's group of girlfriends who help her through these ups and downs.

In a film like The Women, it's the characters that hook the audience. And writer/director English did these actresses a great disservice. Every character is shockingly one-dimensional. The characters lack depth, from the career driven, childless, single Sylvie to the hippy dippy baby machine Edie to Alex, the angry lesbian we see the stereotype but nothing behind it.

Even when Bening makes the choice to leave her job, we don't see any big change in her life or personality. In fact, there's never any real conflict in the film. The scene when Mary confronts her husband's mistress, a bland and surprisingly unsexy Mendes, the scene falls flat. If my husband was having an affair and I met the mistress buying lingerie with my husband's credit card, I'd do more than toss some witty banter about.

Ryan's cuteness factor worked when she was in her twenties but it feels shallow and empty now that she's in her forties. As our lead, she just didn't offer any oomph to the screen, seeming content to deliver her lines from behind a mane of extensions.

These women were also so different that I never believed they'd be friends. The same could be said for SATC but we had six seasons to develop that friendship. Two hours isn't enough time for us to believe that these women are friends.

The other noticeable flaw in the movie was the absence of the men. Perhaps it worked in the original and maybe angry feminists would disagree but I think you need men in a movie about women and men. It's a visual thing. It seemed noticeable as our characters walked down Manhattan streets or exercised in New York gyms or dined in restaurants without a single man appearing. I think we needed the men to feel invested in any of these women's romantic lives. What would SATC have been without Mr. Big or Steve or Harry? I wanted to see Mary's husband so I could wonder what the fuss was all about. We could never care about the two of them because we never had a connection to him. It was a gimmick that just didn't pay off.

The Women is not without some great moments. The older generation is still representing and the younger actresses could learn a thing or two from these women. Candace Bergen got the biggest laughs of the film as her portrayal of Mary's mother, Catherine Frazier. She was a classic housewife with regrets but a sense of humor about it. Her two scenes with Mary, one at a restaurant where Mary confesses her husband's affair and the other while her mother is recovering from plastic surgery offer some of the most sincere dramatic moments that lighten the mood with Bergen's impeccable comic timing. Bergen manages to make a character with little depth, spring to life. Cloris Leachman took a thankless role as Maggie, Mary's housekeeper and made it a scene stealer. Bette Midler was also great as Leah Miller, a role that was almost unnecessary but brought some much needed comedic relief to the film.

The film's slick look and great musical score helps elevate it but the flaws are in the writing and development of the characters.

Hollywood studios were shocked when SATC did big business which is why The Women has received such early buzz. Critics will inevitably say it was a fluke and unfortunately for moviegoers who love great stories about smart, funny, and complicated women, this just isn't it.

'MAN ON WIRE'
WALK THE LINE
By Sean Chavel

Afraid of heights? Here's a new documentary that might stop your pulse.

If documentaries have undergone an evaporating popularity in recent years, Man on Wire could be the first one in some time to capture a wide audience. Advance audiences reportedly love this film. This audience, which was brought in by focus groups before it has been released, loved this film. My opinion: Thrills, gasps and peculiarity. It is kind of special, occupied with, uh, high-wire feats you've probably never seen before. No pun intended.

Philippe Petit, the special and unique Frenchman artist at the center of the film, was a tightrope walker at a very young age. Footage dating back to the early 1970's shows him walking tightropes rigged on top of the crossbeams of public bridges overhead traffic. Friends rigged the wires, his girlfriend recorded the action on film, and Petit walked the narrow line. These kind of stunts were acts of adventure, spectacle, avant-garde art.

Petit, whom at 24 looked like the gymnast Olympian version of a young Malcolm McDowell, was only warming up to his ultimate challenge: to crosswalk along a wire rigged between the two towers of the World Trade Center. The film's main concentration is recreating this spectacle that took Petit and accomplices eight months to plan. It wasn't the daring act that Petit was afraid of but instead WTC security.

Directed by James Marsh, the film intersperses actual footage with recreated footage (shot in black & white) of the break-in. The dramatization and pacing makes "Man on Wire" feel like a bank heist flick, with Petit as the mastermind and accomplices as tools men, blueprint artists and efficiency experts. The preparation required the correct infiltration to sneak in heavy cables and rigging equipment to the tower roofs, and the more difficult strategy to pass the wire from one tower to the other.

The story is retold in narration by the aged Petit and accomplices recall who narrate by speaking directly to the camera. The zigzagging between the interviews and the black & white guerrilla old footage makes the film feel like a crossbreed style of Errol Morris and Oliver Stone. Peppered with lots of humor. Petit still has a childlike joy in his remembrances, and his accomplices were also in it for the mischief.

By the time we're convinced that Petit has the balance and metaphysical autonomy to walk the tightrope, we're nervous about the WTC crosswalk because of a more strenuous challenge. The heights of the towers are so high that it fosters a wind velocity that separates it from Petit's earlier challenges. Petit hardly cared and refused to be defeated by this hindrance. The show must goes on, and "Man on Wire" gives us quite a show.

Momma's Man
By Theodore Ott, Jr.

This is an extremely rare breed of movie. This is truly film as an art form. Shooting in black and white, director/writer Azazel Jacobs presents the story of a man approaching early middle age who suddenly feels totally out of place in his world and discovers a previously unexpected longing for the safety and security of his childhood.

Matt Boren's Mikey is a native New Yorker who has lost most of his accent, and finds himself living in that total antithesis of everything New York, Los Angeles. During a business trip back to his natal city previously, unsuspected insecurities suddenly surface and take root. He simply can't face leaving all he ever knew as a child and moving away, again.

His parents are older now, and living happily without him. That comes as a shock and intensifies his need to hunker down and refuse to budge. Dana Varon, Mikey's young wife and their toddler are right where he left them in L.A., but Mikey's need for the security of his own childhood becomes his paralyzing reality.

The film begins with Mikey's departure from his folks' apartment as he starts off to Kennedy to return to his own young family and independent existence. But, he is unable to complete the journey, returning to the womb-like security of the parental apartment where he'd grown up. He covers his tracks by lying to his parents, wife, and co-worker.

Then he spends days, which roll over into enough weeks to encompass a complete seasonal change in his childhood loft bedroom re-reading his old comic books. Deeper and deeper he falls backward in a regression towards the familiar and comfortable, the unchallenging and safe. Meanwhile everybody associated with him wonders and worries. His confused, frightened wife leaves numerous telephone messages because he refuses to answer the phone when her number shows up on it. With time, her messages begin to thin out before finally simply stopping.

His parents attempt a halfhearted intervention and are told that the Varon has left him for another man. They swallow this lie whole and inexplicably make no effort to contact their daughter-in-law, at least to inquire after their grandchild. These parents could be the poster people for "Enabling."

Mikey hears that an old pal Dante, Piero Arcilesi, is back in the neighborhood and goes over to his parents' apartment visit him. Arcilesi has been in prison and has come out "changed." Even Mikey perceives it and is left uncomfortable for the first time since his decision to remain in the City. He flees back to his safe loft and comic books.

Eventually his parents stop asking when he intends to return and he stops setting and missing departure dates. The snow on the ground disappears and Mikey is still in his loft. Varon suddenly finds herself being hit on by a family friend, played with slimy virtuosity by Richard Edson, who has noticed that Mikey isn't around anymore. At first, she adamantly refuses his proffered help, with its unstated subtext of an expected payback.

But, with the passage of time, her refusals become softer and softer, until it begins to seem more and more likely that the lonely, abandoned, and attractive young wife will surrender if only because of her very human need to have her desirability re-affirmed.

This movie is almost 1950s French in its willingness to stroke and stroke and stroke again the same issues like water wearing down a stone. This slow unhurried, deliberate pace is measured and highly effective, just like the water with the stone. Yet, it may be the only thing with which an audience can find fault. Are we too inured to the faster paced films and even life today to be able to sit in the dark and allow a director the freedom to flog his points past our need for comprehension?

Have microwave meals and 'I want it yesterday' so changed us that this kind of leisurely progression by another can actually become annoying? The answer, I fear is 'Yes'. Several times I wanted Mikey's mother to reach out and slap him silly, tell him to 'cowboy it up' and grow up. But, she never does that, opting instead for concatenanenious offers of "coffee, tea, some soup maybe" repeated until they too reminded the viewer of the dripping water on a stone.

As I stated in the beginning, this movie is certainly a piece of filmic art, but perhaps a form of the art, which would profit from a bit of modernization?

The House Bunny
By Rita Cook

Not every film can be about saving the world, "The House Bunny" isn't either, but it will make you smile and hey, that's worth something isn't it? Sure, some critics won't like it. I actually thought it was quite funny. And really, isn't that what some movies are all about - just there to make you laugh. Indeed, a lot more worth the money than most of the choices out there these days.

Anna Faris (from the "Scary Movie" series) is Playboy funny girl Shelley Darlington who gets booted out of the mansion by a secret foe while Hef is away. With nowhere to go, she runs into a group of very uncool girls from a sorority called Zeta Alpha Zeta and moves into their sorority house to be their housemother. A group of misfits about to lose their house to the scheming girls of Phi lota Mu, it's the same story as many we have seen, different characters, and different tweaks. But what I really like is the script is straight-up - what you see is what you get and you aren't left scratching your head. And don't ask about why they don't ever actually go to class or why they aren't working, that's off screen time and doesn't make or break the story either way.

In the process of Shelley teaching the awkward girls about boys, she learns a thing or two about boys herself. Sure, she makes the girls look totally awesome by the time the film is over, but she too makes herself look totally awesome - on the inside. Perhaps this movie is a good reminder about something that people too often forget and just maybe this funny little movie will be a good reminder - it's what is on the inside.

Faris does an excellent job of playing the lead role in this one and she is hilarious in several scenes (a few Marilyn Monroe-ish on purpose and not on purpose) with good comic timing as well. She also developed and co-produced the film so it was meant to be her leading role debut, and it's not a bad one at all.
Hugh Hefner also makes a few appearances adding an extra umph to the film.

Of course, as you watch "Revenge of the Nerds" and "Legally Blonde" (the writers of "The House Bunny" also penned the latter) you realize that this plot does indeed come all too close to those.

Rumer Willis has a part in the film as a sorority girl wearing a body brace - nothing new here really, but she will get notice because of her famous parents, we know the name.

Emma Stone, you might remember her from "Superbad" and "The Rocker" nearly steals the movie, in fact. A super-nerdy brainiac who seems to be the head of the house, she does indeed offer perfect comic timing and just the right stops, hesitations and vitality in her delivery of the lines.

Remember, the film is not going to change the world so don't expect it to, but do expect it will be a good time while you're there. And sometimes that's really all you need on a Saturday afternoon.



'DEATH RACE'
PRISONERS OF THE DAMNED
By Sean Chavel

Death Race is more futuristic nastiness with Jason Statham as the reluctant driver of a mortality-high derby race. The movie is fixated with gladiatorial excess. Vehicles are employed with rapid fire machine guns, smoke screens, napalm explosives and other surprise devices. We meet scumbag contenders with degenerate personalities and hope they fall to agonizing deaths. We root for Statham to blow them all away.

Who would volunteer to enter such a race? Life sentence inmates of penal colonies, of course, who race for the incentive that five tournament victories will win them their freedom. It's the year 2012 and the United States economy has collapsed, which in sci-fi terms means that brutality and death sports have become the new entertainment of choice. Death Race is broadcast on pay-per-view television and remains the number one rated program in the country.

Statham is a humbled working class father who is framed for his wife's murder. His child is sent off to a foster home. The prison's warden and director of the games is played by Joan Allen (yes that Joan Allen of "The Upside of Anger," "Nixon") and she makes an offer to Statham to fill in the shoes of Frankenstein, a fan-favorite driver with four tournament victories who departed following failed post-surgery. Frankenstein's identity has been concealed behind a mask which leaves Statham the opportunity to take over his place. One more tournament victory, the warden promises, and Statham will earn his release papers.

Eight competitors enter the contest divided into three stages spread over a three-day tournament. The idea is to kill off as many of your competitors, demolition-derby style, and then win the third race beating the surviving opponents to the finish line. The problem with the movie, I think, is that each of the game stages takes place on the exact same course which inhibits any new surprises once the audience has learned the contours of the track. Isn't it doubtful that any automobile contest would prevail as the country's number one television program that fails to reinvent any new tracks or locales?

The movie is less a remake and more of a take-off from the 1975 flick "Death Race 2000" produced by Roger Corman, a very sick and twisted black-comedy where the racers earned points by mowing down pedestrians on a cross-country marathon. The participants weren't prisoners, they were television icons. That movie had a take-me-anywhere-anything-can-happen zeal. Once you put the competitors on a closed and non-altered track, as what happens with this update, prospects are limited. Stage two - the most cunningly crafted of the three race stages in the movie - does spring a surprise on us: a gasoline tanker behemoth sent in to annihilate all with extreme prejudice. We come to see that these races are rigged in one way or another to insure certain contestants won't win.

There's more carnage splatter than subject satire going on in this shameless exploitation guts and gore display. Nothing is really said about the new America's hunger for blood sports on television beyond the initial statement. When the ratings hit record numbers, its information passed along from a high rank guard to the warden. All we really see behind the making of the show is a brief promo. Not much is said about the camera rigs filming the action. Oddly, each male driver gets a "hot" female convict to ride passenger with him, as an extra set of eyes and ears, but her looks are ultimately unimportant because there's no cameras inside the vehicle. Never mind, you can spend hours applying question marks to the plot holes for this movie.

The action visuals are too frenetic, the editing is over-cranked, the satire is slim, and it's full of bad one-liners and yet… this movie has a certain trash appeal. It's bad boy excess glamorized. The primeval male id wants the scumbags to succumb to fiery deaths and wants Statham to conquer all because he's bad but also smooth and likeable and has a refined machismo. Statham is a bad-ass with a semblance of a human soul, and that makes him worthier than anybody else on screen. If nothing all, the movie zips along without hitting hardly any dull bumps. Natalie Martinez is the hot superbabe that rides shotgun to Statham. Ian McShane plays the hard-bittened head mechanic of the pit crew.

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