Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights is inspired by, loosely based on or whatever you want to call it, the life of porn star John Holmes (at times, it even directly lifts dialogue from interviews with Holmes that appeared in a later documentary in which featured Anderson) . While the two are similar, it is more so a fictitious depiction of the lives of some folks in the porn industry during the 70s and 80s. It does have some true elements to it, such as the movement to get porn to convert from film to videotape. Ultimately, it is an examination of several people’s lives as they move in and out of the adult film world.

The main story of this film revolves around Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), a 17 year old who works at a car wash by day and a nightclub at…well, night. Eddie believes that everyone has one special thing that they are blessed with. His special thing happens to be a penis that hangs around 13 inches or so. The particular nightclub that he works for, happens to be frequented by a porn director, Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). Jack convinces Eddie to come to his home and ultimately audition for him by having sex with Rollergirl (Heather Graham). He changes his name to Dirk Diggler and as he becomes a star in the adult film world, much like a rock star, the more money he makes, the more ego, drugs and recklessness consume him. We witness an engrossing journey of a young man as he tries to handle the pressure of  fame and people’s fascination with large appendages.

In addition to this main story, the film is comprised of many vignettes that focus on the lives of other characters (porn actors/crew). Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) is a magician, Buck Swope (Don Cheadle)  wants to open an electronics store and struggles to find his identity, Little Bill (William H. Macy) is constantly walking in on his wife fucking someone else, and many other stories. While vignettes are naturally isolated, P.T.A. does quite an excellent job of wandering between the straightforward narrative in to a vignette and then back.

Every single person in this film is excellent. Everyone has a very natural, and at times almost improvisational delivery of their dialogue that is quite pleasing. John C. Reilly gives his best performance in this film. At his first appearance he does his “ham and cheese” routine but as the film progresses, he demonstrates that he is actually quite gifted beyond being a staple in an Adam McKay  project (although I am fine with that). In particular, there is a scene in which Dirk, Reed and their fellow drug addict Todd (Thomas Jane)  attempt to rob a drug dealer. All three of them are quite brilliant in this scene as they react to multiple nerve wracking occurrences.  There is a moment in which Wahlberg is staring off and the camera lingers on him for what seems like an eternity and there is absolutely no indication of what he is thinking about (although you can infer many things). It is just as hypnotic for the viewer as it seems to be for Diggler.

Anderson’s direction is very satisfying. He goes for the handheld camera and it works quite well, especially as we follow people from behind as they walk. His script is also filled with delightful subtleties that couples with the camera work, make it seem like a documentary rather than a scripted film.

I can’t really say a negative thing about this film. Puck would delight in that Julianne Moore is also in it, and her performance is just as great as everyone else’s. A truly brilliant film indeed.

I am an Adam McKay fan. Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers? I enjoy all of those. The Other Guys, however; was an utter disappointment.

Detectives Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Danson (Dwayne Johnson) are your typical action movie cops. Hanging on to the roof of bad guys’ cars as they are being chased by the rest of the police. Jumping from moving vehicles. Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are desk jockeys, Gamble having been transferred from Forensic Accounting and Hoitz having accidentally shot Derek Jeter. Gamble and Hoitz are desk mates, and thus “partners” and are made fun of quite a bit. Gamble actually enjoys his desk work, while Hoitz is a “peacock that needs to fly.” Hoitz and Gamble (Gamble by force) seize an opportunity to become the kind of detectives that Highsmith and Danson are by trying to take on an exciting case, but largely screw up. However, by slowly focusing on what seems like a routine, boring non-movie case, they keep uncovering suspicious activity until they are involved in a half blown action film.

Quite simply, the reason why this movie sucks, is because the comedy isn’t funny, and the cop story is uninteresting. McKay films are typically full of humor, starting right away, and then consistent throughout. This was not only unfunny, but completely boring. It’s actually quite weird. It is not funny for one second. I would never had known it was a McKay film, had I not known that prior to viewing.

Everyone is fine in this film. Ferrell and Wahlberg (the actor, not the alter ego, Puck!) do their best given the material they have to work with, but even they cannot save it. It is just uninteresting and unfunny.

I do not recommend this. Waste of time.

It doesn’t take long to think of a sports movie, usually based on a true story, with a scrappy underdog mounting a triumphant comeback to reclaim the respect of his love, his family, or himself. It is a tried and true formula with a feel good ending after some points of hardship for the main character. Since its release in December, The Fighter has received much acclaim from critics and associations declaring it to be one of the best pictures of the year. But the question I had going into this movie: does the world really need another one of these movies?

Director David O. Russell weaves the tale of Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) as his ascension in the world of professional boxing is fraught with obstacles. The greatest is Micky’s hero and older half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), previously an accomplished fighter who now is Micky’s trainer when he is not too high off crack to remember. Micky’s family is supportive to an extent but only as his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) sees fit when she is not too busy chastising him for his life choices or chasing down Dicky. If a modicum of anything is true in this movie, it is a miracle that Ward amounted to much with the level of dysfunction in his family.

Now, there is very little story wise in this movie that will shock or surprise you. Even though it is based (probably loosely given these types of films) on true events, the sequence of events are the template that feel-good sports-based movies are made from. What differentiates The Fighter though are the little scenes and lines of dialogue that pop up in between the tragic set-back or the miraculous victory.

Unlike a standard Hollywood production, most everything in this picture feels genuine. Wahlberg aside, there are no actors here that look plucked out of a fashion catalog or ABC Family TV show. Bale, in another drastic physical transformation, is miles away from Bruce Wayne with his pale face and sunken eyes. Amy Adams as the love interest Charlene is cute but not in an artificially or distracting way. I was even convinced that Olympia Dukakis was playing Alice; Leo is buried underneath the tall hair and heavy makeup.

During The Fighter, I thought of a previous Russel film, Three Kings, as both are able to change scenes and tone on a dime between the underlying dramatic story to quirky comedic scenes such as Alice and her gaggle of daughters going to confront Charlene for turning Micky against them. One consistent thing that has been said is of the performances of damn near everyone in the film. Wahlberg has long shed his laughable boy-band image from two decades ago but he is still able to bring out serious acting chops that are surprising against his co-stars.

Bale’s performance as Dicky is a tricky proposition as it ranges from drug-induced craziness to emotional reflection on his misdeeds. He pulls it off nicely as if only to make us purge that Terminator movie from recent memory. Everyone else from Adams to Leo to Conan’s sister played their roles with earnestness that is easily lost in the glut of typical rom-coms or mindless action flicks.

While ultimately the story is primarily centered around Ward and his dogged desire to accomplish something, his character was a bit too passive as his path in life seems to be mostly shaped by the determination of anyone else around him. The picture loses a bit of punch for the duration of time that Dicky is imprisoned as he, whether as high as the clouds or sober, leads to a lot of the heavier drama as he represents the rift between Micky, his family, and Charlene. I would have liked more from Dicky but given that the real Dicky was the subject of an HBO documentary featured in the movie, it is probably more fair to focus on Ward.

It is notable though that Russell is able to create fight scenes that practically transport you in the middle of the boxing ring in between two sweaty guys. Most of the movie it seems was shot with handheld cameras that sell the realism and bring you more into the tale which would otherwise not be possible with a slick and polished film. So, to answer my question from before, yes this movie is certainly necessary, not for the been-there, done-that story, but for the rich characters and performances in it.

The Other Guys

This appears to be the type of movie that Cop Out failed to be. We have two badass police officers, Nick Fury and Riddick, who bust crime like they score women … easily. But for some reason (and I’m better there is a tragic accident or suspension involved), Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are tasked to take on heavy-hitting police work with no regard to their apparent lack of either experience or intellect.

I will say this movie holds a great amount of promise to it. From previous experience, Will Ferrell can’t do much wrong with Adam McKay in the director’s seat (I haven’t seen Step Brothers though). Wahlberg is also pretty decent in a comedic role (see 1998′s The Big Hit) and it even has Michael Keaton as the captain! How could this not be hilarious?

Step Up 3D

You know, it really doesn’t baffle me how this movie was made. The original Step Up made approximately four times its budget in theaters if I can calculate correctly (that is fuzzy math at best). But the second film did not do as well and cost as much money. Here we are on the cusp of a 3D overload as shit is being rammed down our throats in another dimension so I cannot fault the logic to release a fucking movie about DANCING in 3D.

Okay, yes I can. There is no saving grace here. There is no silver lining. It has been called one of the worst fucking movies ever by a fan of the original. Notice how in the trailer the director is touted as if he had made something other than Step Up 2: The Streets (ha, clever) and other never-heard-of music-based movies? Why can we not have a Piranha 3D vs. Step Up 3D mashup? Those fish would win in a fucking heartbeat. And I would cheer them on.

Peter Jackson’s directorial career has been one strange roller-coaster ride. I became aware of his work in the late 1990′s when I and several of my friends discovered his early gore-fest movie Dead Alive (also titled Braindead) and became instant fans. My classmates in high school were always yelling lines like “He’s got, THE BITE!” in between classes. It was like the first drop on a rickety old wooden monster of a coaster; rough, and a little nauseating, but a hell of a lot of fun. After that I road the shaky turns of Bad Taste and The Frighteners still enjoying every minute. Then, in 2001, I sped into the smooth, polished, metal loops of a whole different monster with The Fellowship of the Ring. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a great ride, just a different kind of ride. After that trilogy concluded, the coaster started to slow down with Jackson’s somewhat underwhelming remake of King Kong and then the coaster sunk into a dark tunnel with his most recent feature, The Lovely Bones.

I wanted to like this movie. I really wanted to like this movie. It should be good, shouldn’t it? It’s Peter Jackson adapting and directing a supernatural tale with unique, quirky characters played by talented actors with visuals produced by the effects artists at Weta-freakin-Workshop. It should be glorious! The story starts of with a young girl named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) living a typical suburban existence with a somewhat typical suburban family, until she is brutally murdered by her less than typical psychotic neighbor George Harvey. (Stanley Tucci) After that is where the film starts to fall apart. Basically, the narrative forks into following Susie’s soul hanging out in some strange waiting-room dimension between here and heaven, and the rest of the Salmon family as they try to come to terms with Susie’s disappearance. The father, Jack, (Mark Wahlberg) obsesses over finding Susie’s killer. The mother, Abigail, (Rachel Weisz) can’t deal with her husband’s obsession and abandons the rest of the family to become a migrant worker somewhere. The Grandmother, Lynn, (Susan Sarandon) tries to hold the rest of the family together by moving in and… smoking a lot of cigarettes, I guess. In the midst of all this family trouble, mean old Mr. Harvey is trying to cover his tracks from the murder investigation and throw off Jack’s suspicions.

The problem with this whole set-up is that the audience sees all of this unfolding through spirit Susie’s eyes. She is able to observe her family and Mr. Harvey in the world of the living, but cannot really communicate with or affect anything in that world, so she feels like a passive player in most of the film. Near the end, she does cross back over and temporarily possesses the body of another young girl to have a creepy make-out scene with her would-be boyfriend, but the less said about that, the better.  When Susie isn’t spying on the living, she spends her time frolicking around in her postmortem wonderland, filled with whimsical sleigh rides and other such cheery crap. The cuts between these fantastical scenes and the harsh reality of her family’s turmoil were so frequent and jarring that I almost got whiplash watching this flick. Sure, all the scenes and post-production visuals are beautifully shot and rendered, but the tone throughout the movie changes so drastically from scene to scene that it seems like two different movies are fighting for the same screen time. I feel like the pieces of a good movie are all present and accounted for, but it’s just not put together properly. The whole thing feels rushed, so maybe if the editor would have had more time, I might have had fewer problems. I am also not familiar with the structure or pacing of the original novel by Alice Sebold, but the movie should be able to stand on it’s own. Unfortunately, The Lovely Bones, as it stands now, just falls apart.