I Love You Man

I Love You Man is a love story, well sort of. Peter (Paul Rudd) a real estate salesman and Sydney (Jason Segel) a savvy investor, are in love. The problem is they are both straight men and Peter is on the verge of getting married to his fiancee Zooey (Rashida Jones).

While preparing for their wedding it becomes very apparent to Zooey that Peter isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity when it comes to the friend department. Peter feels that she might be disappointed by the lack on his side of the wedding party and with advice from his homosexual brother Robbie (Andy Samberg) and his mother (Jane Curtin), Peter begins a series of “man dates”.

After failing to find any meaningful connections Peter is ready to give up hope until he meets the eccentric Sydney at a showing for the home of Lou Ferrigno. Peter and Sydney hit it off immediately and start frequenting bars and spending a great deal of time in Sydney’s “man cave” rocking out to Rush and talking about their respective sex lives.

As Zooey starts to feel left out, Peter is forced to reconsider his relationship with Sydney and decides that Sydney refuses to grow up and if he wishes to move on with his life with Zooey he needs to refrain from the childish behavior that Sydney involved him in.

Not unlike most of the comedies that star actors whose careers were created by Judd Apatow, the arc of this story is quite similar. SPOILER ALERT: Cheesy guys doing cheesy guy things, conflict with women, everything ends happy. This one however has a much more interesting story and conflict and many of the plot twists defy what has become cannon in modern day comedies.

Rudd and Segel work extremely well together and although the comedy isn’t always laugh out loud hysterical, it is plenty to keep you entertained and wanting more over the roughly two hours the film runs. Overall 3 stars out of 4

Knowing

The end of the world is coming and John Koestler (Nicholas Cage) knows when it’s going to happen he just doesn’t know what to do about it.

50 years ago an elementary school class buried a time capsule filled with pictures of what they thought the world would look like in 2009. Most of the children drew pictures of spaceships and flying cars, however one little girl who has a seemingly Nostradamus-like ability wrote a sequence of numbers.

When the time capsule was dug up Koestler and his son became privy to the information written by the little girl and become obsessed with the numbers and their sequences.

It isn’t long before Koestler cracks the code and finds that the numbers coincide with the dates, number of deaths, and geographic location of all the major tragedies in the world from 1959 up until a date believed to be the end of life as we know it.

John’s obsession turns into his futile attempts at stopping future disasters and finding a way to prevent the end of the world. As he researches the life of the young elementary school girl he begins a relationship with her daughter and granddaughter.

Like John’s son the granddaughter can hear the whispers of a group of secretive entities asking them to join them. Without spoiling anything the movie takes a handful of twists and turns before culminating in a sensory overdrive experience.

For a modern day Sci-Fi flick, this one doesn’t disappoint. Nicholas Cage is boring and monotone as always and his character is a mirror image to the one he plays in the National Treasure movies and well everything else he has ever been in, but as a geeky astronomy professor in this one it is fitting.

Director and writer Alex Proyas has a clear religious agenda he is pushing in this one but it was an interesting spin on the end of the world stories that have been made hundreds of times before.

In the end Knowing is a well constructed film, with a familiar yet unfamiliar plot line proving to create one of the better science fiction films in recent memory. Overall 3 stars out of 4

The Watchmen

With the world on the verge of nuclear holocaust and Richard Nixon still at the helm of the United States, a group of vigilante heroes is left with the decision of whether or not humanity is worth saving.

It is with this that director Zack Snyder (“300″) brings one of the most beloved graphic novels of all time to life in his film adaptation of “Watchmen.” The film had been talked about for a couple of decades — the graphic novel from writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbsons was released in the 1980s — and many believed it to be “unmakeable” as several previous attempts faltered.

The setting is the 1980s. Richard Nixon is in the White House after being elected to his fifth term in office. The U.S. had a big victory in Vietnam thanks mainly to a super being known as Dr. Manhattan and now the Russians are threatening nuclear annihilation.

The world is looking for a hero to save them but the heroes of Vietnam are beginning to realize that no matter what they do, humankind is destined to destroy itself and every time they intervene it is just delaying the inevitable.
The members of the misfit group called The Watchmen are divided between their feeling of duty to help those in need and their resentment for the treatment they receive for being different. They know they are the only ones who could change the outcome but feel it would simply be a bandaid that would suffice until it fell off or was removed. It turns into the age old argument of, why help those who refuse to help themselves?

At the same time, these heroes are looking to find out what happened to one of their own: the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a right-wing military mercenary has been thrown out the window of his high-rise aparatment.

Dr. Manhattan (a very blue and often nude Billy Crudup), the only Watchmen who really has superpowers, is the most interesting and significant of all the characters. He has become devoid of human emotion and wants nothing to do with any kind of intervention. He is almost God-like in the fact that he can be anywhere and everywhere all at once and that he leaves the world up to the humans to either live or destroy.

The film itself runs close to three hours, however, very little feels unnecessary.

A few scenes may drag a little too long and others seem to be left unexplained. Still, there is little to be disappointed about. Overall 3 and 1/2 stars out of 4.

Waltz With Bashir

The Oscar-nominated animated documentary Waltz With Bashir puts a new spin on the typical conventions that we have come to know and believe about war especially involving the Israel and its Middle East counterparts.

Director and writer Ari Folman is suddenly struck with memories from his time in the Israeli-Lebanese conflict of the early-1980s when a friend of his describes an upsetting — and recurring — nightmare. The friend relates that he is being chased by 26 vicious dogs. The two men conclude the dream is a connection to their Israeli Army mission from the first Lebanon War.

After this meeting, Ari starts to have nightmares of his own. He starts remembering things he had previously suppressed and forgotten. Ari then makes it his goal to find out exactly what happened during his service in battle, and find out what his role in the conflict was.

Ari follows up this conversation with a journey in an attempt to collect the pieces of the puzzle to re-establish old memories. As Ari meets fellow soldiers, war correspondents and others with knowledge on the subject, he starts to better understand and remember his role and the role of the people around him. As the film progresses the memories he recreates as he collects more pieces, become more vivid than the ones that preceded them.

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Ari starts to view the conflict not with the view of an Israeli soldier, but with the view of a human being looking back at horrific events and almost feeling ashamed and guilty for being involved in them.

The film becomes less of a commentary on war, and more of a commentary on how war affects the human psyche, and what the lasting effects are on all that were previously involved.

The film culminates in a visceral experience of images and sounds that hit you in the stomach and brings you to the same realization that Ari has come to: There is no such thing as good war, and that it has long lasting affects on all involved.

What is most interesting about the film is not only that it is a documentary but that it is an animated documentary. Folman uses animation in the way that many other films use dream sequences. The film becomes more vivid and detailed as it progresses by using the animation to add more detail to each segment that follows. In a way the audience goes on the journey with Ari because as he gets a better picture in his own head we get a better picture of the war itself.

As we see images of an animated war, in which two sides we have come to view as natural enemies, we think little of it as it builds on the sentiments we already hold. But as the vividness of the film increases it helps to create a foundation to help breakdown our conventions and convictions and humanize the conflict as something between people, not between military machines. Overall 3 1/2 stars out of 4.

Last House on the Left

It is simple, if you smoke pot, you will get beaten, raped, and have your home invaded. This sounds like the synopsis of a bad anti-drug speech you would get in high school, however it is also the plot of Last House on the Left.

Last House on the Left originated as an exploitation film of the 70’s created by the master of modern horror Wes Craven. In the updated version directed by Dennis Iliadis, the plot for the most part stays the same, however the style gets a face lift.

Mari and her parents head to their summer home in the hopes of a fun and relaxing vacation however they have no idea what they are in store for when Mari leaves the care of her parents to visit her childhood friend Paige.

Paige the ever curious teenage rebel chases after some marijuana from a strange boy who is passing through town. As it turns out the boy and his family are on the run from the police after a string of murders and they are none too happy that he has brought these girls back for a little party.

Mari and Paige are dragged through the woods where they are raped and tortured and left for dead. Unlucky for the killers they didn’t finish the job.

Although there are many homages to the exploitation genre that spawned the original, this film however is in many ways toned down made to fit more with today’s Hollywood.

That doesn’t mean that the film is easy to watch. The rape scene is brutal and disgusting and nearly unwatchable, luckily most of the act takes place off screen and much of the violence would probably be considered tame in the Saw and Hostel infested world we live in, however as someone who hasn’t become completely desensatized to violence, many of the scenes are cringe worthy.

This film attempts to blend exploitation genre with the look and feel of foreign films with similar plot construction. The result is a semi-tasteful horror film that makes you feel disgusting for thinking the film itself looks refined when the plot is glorified blood bath. Overall 2 and 1/2 stars out of 4.