The careers of Kim Basinger and Val Kilmer collided in this disastrous bank robbery thriller/comedy/drama/whatever. Basinger plays Karen McCoy a pro bank robber who looks awesome, but got busted because of bad blood with bad guy Jack Schmidt (Terrence Stamp). Kilmer is J.T. Barker, a foppish, wannabee robber.

McCoy has just served 6 years in the joint and wants nothing more to go straight and to get to know her son. Unfortunately, her past catches up with her. It doesn’t help that she can’t find work and that her crooked parole officer is trying to reconnect her with bad guy Schmidt. She doesn’t want to get back to her old ways, but Schmidt does something really bad and she just, like, has to, you know? Sorry, but it’s obvious from miles off.

“The Real McCoy” devolves into a massive heist which attempts to be really clever, but is just not all that entertaining. Sure, we see how difficult it is to get into said vault, but it seems like it takes director Russell Mulcahy half of the film to show us. All in all, a very average heist.

A few other bones to pick. Terrence Stamp with a southern accent? I mean, (in Southern accent) c’mon. Stamp is a good actor, but don’t make the guy fake a southern accent. Also, what a waste of Val Kilmer. He’s reduced to a skin-deep goofball, when we know he could do so much more. On a positive note, Basinger looks great, in spite of stupid looking outfits, but that really is no reason to see a movie.

“Revolutionary Road”, the first post-Titanic reunion of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, is first and foremost a showcase of some pretty amazing acting. Kate and Leo play a married couple with two kids trying to make good on the hopes and ideals they held during their courtship. The story carries a nuclear amount of potency and is certain to make a lot of people look at their own marriages and relationships, but it doesn’t really deliver.

Sam Mendes, Winslet’s real-life husband and director of another suburban hell film, American Beauty, provides a wonderful backdrop for his two stars. The piece plays in the 1950s and everything is spot on. Slow sweeping shots within the house on Revolutionary Road display an impressive attention to detail. Between this obsessive attentiveness and the space given to his actors, the story itself massively suffers. In addition to a couple of holes, (where are their two kids the whole film?), you can pretty much see where things are going. I also anticipate that this is the kind of movie where sides will be taken divided by gender. The guys will side with Leo’s character, the ladies with Winslet’s. The actors definitely put on a good show, but the story fails to give the character’s much depth.

Another point of criticism, (and I sort of hate to go there but have to), is Leo’s uncanny trademark boyish look. Don’t get me wrong, he gives a brilliant performance here, but the guy just does not seem to age. He could literally play a teenager. Here he’s placed in a very grown-up setting and is seen grappling with pretty tough issues. He pulls it off, but his looks work against him. They really do.

I don’t think “Revolutionary Road” is really a film for Titanic fans or for those who want a story into which they can sink their teeth. As an actor’s showcase, however, it does have its merits.

Bamn! It takes a few minutes for Gran Torino to get going, but once it does, fasten your seat belt. Clint Eastwood is at the helm and stars as a jaded old man. Once you see him squint his eyes and mutter a few threats, comparisons to Dirty Harry are inevitable. Instead of San Francisco, we find ourselves in Detroit, Michigan, in a deteriorating neighborhood, where Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) is a tiny island of whiteness in a neighborhood taken over by Hmong immigrants. Walt is outwardly very racist and the machine gun fire pace of racial epithets spewed in this film would likely make Tarantino blush. It’s so over the top, it lends one to believe that these are superficial, as opposed to ingrained beliefs.

We’re introduced to Walt as a recently widowed, retired auto worker of Polish descent. Not to knock Clint Eastwood, but he has such a huge screen presence, that no one’s really buying that. Clint plays Clint, and that’s really ok. He’s pretty much the only recognizable face here, and to his credit, he decided to work with a bunch of newcomers of Hmong descent. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this movie, (and it is damn entertaining), is the interaction between Clint’s character and these kids.

Things get going, when a kid tries to steal Walt’s prized Gran Torino out of his garage. He can’t identify the kid, but he seems ready to go postal on the whole neighborhood to get to the bottom of things. The next night, a fight breaks out on his neighbor’s lawn. It spreads to his lawn where, among other things, a few garden gnomes are destroyed. For heaven’s sake, do not mess with man’s garden gnomes. This you do not do. Out comes the rifle he used in the Korean war and out comes an angry old man with whom you do not want to mess. He succeeds in getting them off his lawn and, as it turns out, has also thwarted a local gang from recruiting the shy teenager living next door. Walt becomes a hero among his Hmong neighbors though he’ll have nothing of it. The shower him with gifts and won’t leave him alone. This gets on his nerves to no end. Once he lets his guard a tiny bit down, however, they literally invade his heart. Watching him warm up is a joy.

That’s not to say this is a feel good movie. Gran Torino combines aspects of the deterioration of the American family, turf warfare, assimilation difficulties, and, perhaps the most disturbing, the power of a gun. Clint certainly does come across as a menacing, tough old man, but until he whips out his piece, his threat is not fully accepted. NRA members are sure to love this, but this is very troubling indeed. I didn’t mention racism as one of the troubling aspects of this film, because I really do feel that this is a case of actions speaking louder than words. And the “Oh sh*t!” knee-jerk reaction to much of the language is part of what makes the movie so entertaining. The film literally floats on a sea of racial epithets. The amazing part is that we are able to look past this language and gaze in awe at the film’s glowing, warm heart.

Nice work, Clint. You are the man.

Part “Waiting for Guffman”, part “Stand & Deliver”, part “Rushmore”, “Hamlet 2″ gives Steve Coogan a lot of room to run free; a very good thing if you like his brand of humor.

Coogan plays failed actor Dana Marschz. (Yes, his last name is meant to be unpronounceable.) He lives in Tuscon, Arizona, a place writers Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming hint is where “dreams go to die”. Marschz is in charge of Drama at a high school and has a whopping two students. His plays are lame, reproductions of Hollywood fare and he gets deservedly reamed (or “raped in the face” as Marschz puts it) by the school paper drama critic, played well by sharp newcomer Shea Pepe.

Asbestos in the portable classrooms and the axing of almost all electives suddenly gives Marschz a room full of indifferent students. At the same time, the school principal gives Marschz a pink slip, telling him the money is just not there for Drama. Standing in front of a wall of sports trophies, the principal pronounces that all the arts are “on the chopping block”. If you, however, think this movie has an undercurrent serious agenda, you’re in for a disappointment.

At the urging of the school paper drama critic, who Marschz sees as some sort of a mentor/father figure, Marschz decides to create his own play; a play which will serve to save the school’s Drama department. “Hamlet 2” is born. Marschz uses the play to work out his issues with his father and to rip off a number of famous songs. Marschz, as your stereotypical dramatist, is quite the eccentric and his inspired opus’ themes touch a nerve in Tuscon. The principal tries to cancel the show, Christians are offended by his portrayal of Jesus Christ, most people with decent taste are outraged, threats are received; all this without anyone actually having seen the play.

The grand finale is, of course, the play itself, and though it begins somewhat clunkily, it does manage to find some sort of salvation towards its end. It’s so over the top with elaborate staging, wired action sequences, and a number of very adult themes, that the audience (both of them) are manipulated into a state of bewildered amazement.

“Hamlet 2″ does have a number of laughs, almost all of which are thanks to Coogan. Personally, I think he is excellent. Much to his credit, he rivals Christopher Guest’s “Corky St. Clair” of “Waiting for Guffman” fame. Coogan, thankfully, has the humility and ability to riff off of teenagers, cats, inanimate objects, you name it. He is the film’s saving grace because most of the side players are poorly written, poorly acted, or both. We know Catherine Keener can act, but she’s not doing much of it here. David Arquette, on the other hand, even fails at a bit part playing a dumbass. Amy Poehler is wasted, forced to recycle the same joke over and over again. One bright spot is Melanie Diaz, who was good in “Be Kind Rewind” and continues to show a level of depth which rises above the superficial pithy mostly seen here.

This film certainly takes the cake for worst title of 2007. No guy would be caught dead buying tickets to see or renting a movie called P.S. I Love You. It is, however, clearly your typical chick flick. You’ve got an American girl Holly (Hillary Swank) who meets an Irish guy Gerry (Gerard Butler). Gerry’s got a cool accent, sings in a pub, drinks Guinness. In other words, in chick flick land, he’s Irish. Holly is fidgety, awkward, and just oh so cute and American. As the film opens they seem to be experiencing a bad case of the 7-year-itch. They get in a big fight about their future and then he charms her and they make up. If you’re able to stomach the initial few minutes, then you might actually like this movie.

The film then skips ahead a bit to where Gerry has just died due to a brain tumor. Holly understandably feels sad and being the jolly Irish man that he is, Gerry has concocted a way of keeping in touch with her after his death via letters in girly handwriting. Hence, P.S. I Love You. Get it, he’s dead, but he still loves her. Amazing stuff indeed.

If you look closely at the actor’s faces during the course of the film, you can see that they know this movie stinks. Hillary Swank is horribly miscast. She’s trying to re-live her 90210 days and was perhaps afraid of being typecast after movies like Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby.

Harry Connick Jr., apparently out of his singing gig because of Michael Buble, tries to play a quirky bartender, but it just ain’t happening. Holly’s ridiculously annoying friends are played by Gina Gershon and Lisa Kudrow. Kudrow plays a gold digger who justifies her gold digging based on some kind of warped feminist shenanigans.

Even as chick flicks go, I would urge everyone to avoid P.S. I Love You.

P.S. This movie is awful.

I tend to enjoy movies about midlife crises. You can build a wonderful story around a character whose well-established life is falling apart. You can keep the audience on their toes because in the midst of a crisis, it’s not always clear in which direction a character will go. “Meet Bill” falls under the midlife crisis category and, based on preliminary information about the film, I thought it would be a decent film. Bill is played by Aaron Eckhart, whose performance in “Thank You For Smoking” was stellar. Throw in a bit of eye candy in the form of Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Alba and we got us a movie, right? Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

“Meet Bill” tries to follow in the footsteps of “American Beauty” and “The Weatherman”, but has no real story to support its sagging dead weight. From the get go we’re supposed to sympathize with Bill because he’s got a gut, messy hair, and compulsively eats Snickers bars. We quickly find out that his wife Jess (Elizabeth Banks) is shacking up with a local TV news reporter Chip (Timothy Olyphant). The in-laws think Bill is a lame push-over and he works as a phony executive at his father in law’s bank. He dreams of independence, and thus wishes to take part in donut shop franchise.

The final part of the puzzle is “the Kid”, a prep school student played by young Logan Lerman. His job is to shake things up further, providing Bill with the youthful spirit he needs to shake off his middle age slumber.

Meet Bill provides actor Eckhart with plenty of chances to embarrass himself, but none of them are particularly funny. In fact, the movie is rarely funny. There is a good comedic turn by a firecracker salesman (Paul Goetz) with his “Get excited” commentary. SNL’s Kristen Wig is also funny as the donut franchise maestro.

The movie loses steam very quickly. Elizabeth Banks seems to be about as human as the doll in “Lars and the Real Girl” and the movie is slapped carelessly together. I’m not one to notice continuity errors, especially when I’m just trying to stay awake during bombs like “Meet Bill”. And yet, I couldn’t help but notice one of the worst continuity errors I’ve ever seen. Bill is eating a donut and is about one bite from finishing her off, and in the next cut the donut has only one bite in it. Stuff like that just throws me right out of the film. Later. after an accident, one character doesn’t if mention the accident or what happened to the injured character. I’m assuming they cut out scenes that didn’t work, because I can’t believe they didn’t write those scenes into the screenplay.

Jessica Alba as a lingerie shop employee is mildly passable, and Logan Lerman plays a good kid, but his character is poorly written. Even worse is the TV reporter Chip, a complete waste of Olyphant, who was good in movies such as “Go” and “Die Hard 4″.

In conclusion, by all means, do not “Meet Bill”.

Scientists working for technology giant Sony found a way of packing way more information onto a DVD-sized disc using a higher frequency violet colored laser. Hence the name Blu-ray. Just recently, competing format HD DVD from Toshiba was dueling it out with Blu-ray. In January, 2008 this format war was effectively ended when film production studio Warner Bros announced that it would cease releasing its high definition DVDs in both formats and instead soley release Blu-ray DVDs. Who knows what went on behind the scenes to solidify this move, but if effectively ended the short life of HD DVD.

Though this must have been a major setback for Toshiba, it has been a major boon to consumers. Now device manufacturers can settle on the Blu-ray format and employ economies of scale in production, thus reducing costs. Currently, the best-selling Blu-ray disc player on Amazon, the Samsung BD-P1400 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player goes for around $370. Another possibility for those also into gaming is to pick up the Playstation 3 40GB. You can play Blu-ray discs on it and you can be rest assured that you’re getting a good deal since Sony heavily subsidized it to promote Blu-Ray.

Also, now that all studios have hopped on to Blu-Ray, you’ll see all new movie releases and your old favorites on Blu-Ray discs. Prices of Blu-Ray discs are also dropping. For example, my favorite film of 2007, No Country for Old Men [Blu-ray], is selling on Amazon for only 20 bucks.

Here at Film Kvetch, we will make a concerted effort to point at Blu-ray availability on films we review. After all, why buy the standard DVD when the superior Blu-ray disc is available? Blu-Ray is the only way to go for you and your home theater.

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of the blockbuster. By definition, it’s designed to reach the biggest movie-going audience possible, compromising any artistic credibility. It has to be violent without being too violent, sexy without being too sexy, serious, yet funny, non-offensive, and so on. Most importantly, a blockbuster has to be big, intimidating, larger than life.

Transformers is as formulaic as they come. It feels almost like a study in blockbusterism. First off, you have your paint by numbers launch: Out in the middle of nowhere (desert setting of course) something really weird and bad happens. Luckily, before the proverbial bad stuff hits the fan, we get a chance to meet a few chatty soldier dudes. We hear what they miss from back home, one of them even video conferences with his wife and their baby, who he’s not yet met in person. Even though an evil helicopter robot thing obliterates their entire base, our new friends somehow manage to be in the right place at the right time and escape.

Then we shift to a high school classroom where somehwat-geeky outsider Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is making a presentation about this great grandfather. Being the typical teenager, Sam’s biggest priority is buying a pair of wheels and getting the attention of fellow student Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox).

As luck would have it, Sam’s first car is actually a robot, but not one of those bad ones that did bad stuff in the desert. Even better, the car does get him the girl. I mean, brilliant. Life in a blockbuster is unfortunately not so easy. The bad robots are looking for a certain cube and the good robots want to stop them. The location of said cube leads them to Sam. I don’t want to give away any “exciting” details, but I’ll give you a hint: It all ties together.

What follows are a lot of loud action sequences and badness beating goodness, but goodness coming back, and so on and so forth. The robots look great, not doubt. Their infused hip personalities are what ruined it for me. I’ll take robots, no problem, but tone down the attitude. The music by Steve Jablonsky also proved immensely irritating. After literally every minute we are submitted to another sweeping, momentous theme that forces us to realize how important and earth shattering the sequence is. As in all blockbusters, we are also provided with moments of comic relief (painkiller-addicted dog named Mojo, president with cowboy accent wearing red socks, asking a stewardess for a Ding Dong). The music is there to hammer homoe that things are getting heavy again. I’ve never felt so manipulated. Director Michael Bay could really take a lesson from the Coen Brothers and their meisterwerk, No Country For Old Men. There is practically no music in the whole film. I love music, but watching that film was so incredibly refreshing. Watch it and bathe in the silence.

Once Transformers was over, after being pounded with over two hours of the blockbuster experience, I realized several things. One, I had a headache. Two, Shia LaBeouf, who I really liked in A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints, was able to pull off a decent performance in a Michael Bay film; a worthy feat. Three, I’m looking forward to watching LaBeouf in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, or just Indiana Jones 4, for those who favor brevity. Four, Megan Fox looks like a young Jennifer Connelly after a bath in self-tanning lotion and a serious bout of teeth whitening. (Unfortunately, she doesn’t have Connelly’s acting chops.) And five, blockbusters just ain’t my cup of tea. I’ll watch them, but, afterwards, I almost always feel like I was taken for a ride. Indeed, Transformers was no exception.

Buy Transformers from Amazon.

On the one hand, I had to see this movie to check out Jon Heder’s Napoleon Dynamite follow-up. |’m also a huge fan of Mark Ruffalo’s work in You Can Count on Me. Just Like Heaven’s premise, however, a leap of faith romantic comedy, and a Reese Witherspoon lead were major drawbacks.

Witherspoon plays overworked, no life doctor Elizabeth Masterson. Things are looking up though, as she’s just been given a promotion and becayse her sister has set her up on a promising blind date. But then, well, she gets hit by a truck and ends up in a coma. Bummer.

Enter Ruffalo’s David, a gloomy young guy who seems to have a lot of money but still likes to drink beer out of a can. When he’s not moping about, he ends up being confronted by a ghost version of Elizabeth. It turns out, he ended up in Elizabeth’s apartment. She hasn’t quite realized that in reality she’s bed-ridden in comaland, and she’s peeved by this mega bachelor in her her apartment.

David and Elizabeth hit it off in an oddball way and the movie develops into a romance of sorts, which probably looked mighty fine on paper. It does wear thin through the course of the film and towards the end the cheese factor becomes quite large. I could almost see Ruffalo cringing in certain scenes.

Ruffalo and Witherspoon are an odd pairing, sort of like the high school cheerleader and the drama club wallflower. To their credit, they manage to remain watchable and more or less pull it off. Hader play the comic sidekick in a small role. Napoleon Dynamite fans won’t find much to enjoy here, but Hader is nevertheless pretty good.

Fans of romantic dramedies won’t be disappointed with Just Like Heaven and it even has some appeal to guys. All in all, Just Like Heaven is just like David’s cheap beer — it goes down easy and is quickly forgotten.

Buy Just Like Heaven (Widescreen Edition) from Amazon.

Yikes. Everyone already knows this movie is ridiculously awful. I thought Jim Carrey was pretty good in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and am willing to give him a chance when it comes to a non-comedy genre. This movie starts with Carrey’s character, Walter Sparrow, an animal control officer, trying to catch a dog. Displaying great ineptitude, Sparrow is sidetracked by the the name on the dog’s collar. The dog bites him and gets away, which is a shame, because had it not, the resulting baffling chain of events would have never taken place.

Sparrow’s wife Agatha, played by Virginia Madsen, gives him a crappy-looking used book by an unknown author for his birthday. It is called The Number 23. Ta da! All of a sudden, Sparrow starts seeing the number 23 everywhere, kind of like how boys start seeing boobies everywhere when they start puberty. (Speaking of which, Virginia Madsen does provide some nice cleav action in the film.)

Sparrow starts seeing all kinds of parallels to his life while reading the book. Strangely enough, though he finds the book completely engrossing, he takes frickin’ forever to finish it. This gives filmmaker Joel Schumacher plenty of time to show us stylish shots of Carrey playing the role of the book’s main character, Detective Fingerling. While he’s not stumbling into strangely lit rooms wearing tons of eyeliner, Fingerling is having copious amounts of sex with clothed females. It’s really strange and creepy watching Carrey pump into some lady friend of his. This is clearly a case of miscasting.

At some point in these noir-ish scenes, Fingerling picks up a saxophone and that’s sort of when this movie became a comedy for me. It just can longer be taken seriously. I couldn’t help but be reminded of another universally panned film, The Salton Sea with Val Kilmer. Kilmer actually looked cool in that movie and his narration was dead-on. His instrument to express his pain was the trumpet, and he looked ridiculous fake-playing it, but at least the other elements were there. Carrey’s narration stinks. His voice gets annoying very fast, and again, the movie star Carrey with all his silly antics gets in the way.

It is perhaps worth noting that Sparrow has a kid, played by Logan Lerman, sporting what looks like a toupee. Lerman, 15 when this movie came out (1+5=6+15=21 damn!), is actually quite good and went on to play another solid role in a much better movie, 3:10 to Yuma. (3+10=13+10=23!) The Number 23 is really one of the worst I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of awful movies.

Buy The Number 23 (Unrated Infinifilm Edition) from Amazon.