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The Host movie

It’s a lovely summer Sunday at the riverside park in the capital city : picnics, touch football, pretty girls listening to iPods. Strollers buy snacks from the family-run food truck in the parking lot by the embankment. Something massive and slimy hangs from the underside of a bridge.

Say what?

A crowd gathers to gawk and the thing slowly uncurls from its girder and knifes into the water. It swims with the current, people run along the bank, shouting and pointing. Then someone pelts it with a beer can.

Mistake.

How do you make a monster movie in the 21st century? Or rather, how do you make a monster movie that’s not a joke? Bong Joon-ho’s merrily deranged “The Host” provides an answer: by inviting audiences into the joke, then knocking them continually off-balance. The puckish South Korean filmmaker’s third movie is many things: dysfunctional family comedy, social satire, bureaucratic farce, germ-warfare horror flick. Mostly, though, it’s “Godzilla” with a severe case of Murphy’s Law, and it is never less than bizarrely delightful.

On one side of the ledger we have the monster: a galumphing sea-serpent with stegosaurus legs and a mouth that’s a Freudian nightmare. We learn in a B-movie opening scene that the creature’s probably a result of 200 gallons of formaldehyde poured directly into Seoul’s Han River, but whatever: It’s big and it’s ticked.

On the other side we have the Park family, the clan running that snack van by the river. They’re hardly heroic but they’re all we’ve got: grease-spattered grandpa Hie-bong (Hie-bong Byeon), his useless layabout son Gang-du (Kang-ho Song), and Gang-du’s no-nonsense schoolgirl daughter Hyun-seo (Ah-sung Ko).

Later we’ll meet Hie-bong’s other useless son Nam-il (Hae-il Park), who at least is able to get up in the morning but still can’t find a job, and Nam-il’s fetching sister Nam-joo (Du-na Bae), first seen losing an archery contest on national TV. It helps to have someone handy with a bow and arrow in this kind of movie. It’s supposed to, anyway.

Like a mob fleeing the monster’s approach, “The Host” fans out in a number of directions, most of them unexpectedly funny. The schoolgirl gets carted off by the beastie but is able to check in with Dad before her cell phone batteries run out. The Parks then mount a rescue attempt that is stymied by (a) government troops who insist Gang-du has been infected by a virus carried by the monster and (b) their own spectacular ineptitude.

The United States and the World Health Organization get involved; soon the Parks are on the run with their faces broadcast on TV under the legend “Warning: Infected Family.” At a certain point it becomes unclear what’s the greater horror: the rampaging mutant, the government’s over reaction, or the populace’s bovine acceptance of that over reaction. “This man’s brain may be our only hope!” says one government scientist about Gang-du, and that’s when you know the country’s really in trouble.

South Korea can take a joke, at least, since “The Host” broke box-office records when it opened there last year. It should find find an audience in this country, too. The special effects are both marvelous and richly bogus, and they come courtesy of New Zealand’s Weta Digital and San Francisco’s The Orphanage. The ease with which the monster back-flips along the underpinnings of highway superstructures is as mesmerizing to us as it is to the characters.

Still, it’s Bong’s movie, and he plays with the creature-feature genre like a brat with a fresh toy. His last film was 2003’s much-praised detective story “Memories of Murder”; he’s working on an omnibus project called “Tokyo” next with France’s Lйos Carax and Michel Gondry, both directors with similarly shaggy approaches to filmmaking.

“The Host” reflects either rigorous playfulness or major-league attention deficit disorder; either way, it’s an engaging exercise in entropy. Gallant plans go awry, people fall asleep when you least expect them to, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Bong gives us a rough beast slouching toward Seoul, and the idea that we get the monsters we deserve is enough to give him the giggles.

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Hoot movie

An environmental preservation message movie poorly disguised as a routine family film, “Hoot” has big ideas, but a lousy way to sell them. It’s an amiable enough motion picture with great performances from the three teenage leads, but the adults insist they’re in a cartoon, destroying any chance the movie had to make a bigger point about the decimation of Florida’s landscape.

When his family moves from Montana to a small Florida community, Roy (Logan Lerman) has trouble adjusting to his new surroundings. Fascinated by a barefoot runner he spies from his school bus, Roy heads into the woods and meets Mullet Fingers (Cody Linley), a runaway who spends his days trying to thwart a pancake restaurant corporation (fronted by the always shrill Clark Gregg) from building their 100th restaurant on a plot inhabited by burrowing owls. With help from the rebellious Beatrice (Brie Larson) and the dimwitted cop Delinko (Luke Wilson), Roy finds his purpose in these owls, hoping to stop the demolition before it’s too late.

“Hoot” is a flavorless family film with lot on its mind, but no real insightful ideas on how to convey it. Based on the novel by noted Floridian conservationist Carl Hiaasen, “Hoot” is a clear-cut tale of animal welfare, coated lightly with themes of friendship and combating injustice. Compared to the average family film experience, it’s wonderful to see a story that at least has something positive to give kids weaned on fart jokes and crotch-based comedy.

In the hands of writer/director Wil Shriner, “Hoot” stays frustratingly earthbound. A longtime vet of television, both in front of and behind the camera, Shriner keeps the ambition of his script very small, and paces it with the same lethargic movement that accompanies a blazingly humid Florida afternoon. “Hoot” has all the technique and emphasis of the average Disney Channel cable film, and Shriner can’t seem to get the picture out of first gear. His efforts to spice up the action with slapstick backfire because he’s hired Luke Wilson to be the comedian here, and the actor is no Jerry Lewis. He’s not even Juliette Lewis, who I would’ve taken rather than watch Wilson try to sell zany absurdity with his increasingly irritating puppy dog face and three-margarita vocal speed.

Shriner is more assured with his young cast, who carry the film with more skill than any of the adults. The performances by Lerman, Larson, and Linley (they would make a great law firm) are unexpectedly sharp, partially because they’re drawn as real kids, not cookie cutter iPod-n-skateboard punks, and also because the plot asks them to care about something real. Lerman especially impresses with his acting, believably emoting a real sense of passion with his owl protection mission and confidence in his entanglements with the local bully.

Also frustrating is Shriner’s directorial scope, which does almost nothing with the endless beauty of Florida. The filmmaker sticks to his indoor and woodsy locations tightly, rarely opening up the film to let the sunshine in. Shriner leaves the soundtrack by Jimmy Buffet (who also co-stars) to do most of the heavy lifting in setting the Florida feeling, eventually coming down to a personal taste issue over Buffet’s music. Personally, I think the singer’s cover of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” should be classified as a biohazard, but that’s me.

In the final act, “Hoot” starts to act more as it was intended: as a stern lesson on the overdevelopment of Florida. Like a kissing cousin to the John Sayles film, “Sunshine State,” “Hoot” has something to say about big business stomping in, looking to steal grandeur away in the pursuit of a buck. Still, it’s hard to take “Hoot” that seriously, even when its heart is in the right place. Shriner just doesn’t have the skills yet to turn lightweight scuffle into heavyweight preaching without bringing down the whole production.

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Hook movie

Playing a seven-inch Tinkerbell with pixie wings and pointy ears, Julia Roberts reminds the grown Peter Pan (Robin Williams) that the trick to flying is thinking happy thoughts. You get the feeling that the high-priced talents involved in Hook, including Dustin Hoffman in the villainous title role, are thinking profit participation. In updating Peter Pan for the Nineties, Steven Spielberg front-loads this $80 million epic with big stars, big sets and really big special effects (even Captain Hook’s croc nemesis is humongous). The film has been engineered for merchandising potential and the widest possible appeal — note the conspicuously multiethnic Lost Boys. What’s missing is the one thing that really counts: charm.

Spielberg triumphed with E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind because he gave the characters in those classic fantasies room to insinuate themselves. In Hook he takes an insistent tone more appropriate to an Indiana Jones adventure than to the J.M. Barrie fable about the fear of growing up. You leave Hook feeling mauled, which may be dandy for those who see movies as the next best thing to theme parks. Though the film occasionally hints that the story is a Freudian hallucination, those moments merely suggest the witty spectacle that might have been if Spielberg had guarded his vision as diligently as his investment.

Peter Banning (Williams) is a workaholic with a trendily dysfunctional family. His wife, Moira (Caroline Goodall), and children — eleven-year-old Jack (Charlie Korsmo) and seven-year-old Maggie (Amber Scott) — take a back seat to his real-estate deals. Peter would rather cuddle his phone than his kids. Resentful Jack draws a plane crashing, providing parachutes for everyone but his father.

“Peter, you’ve become a pirate,” says Granny Wendy (Maggie Smith, luminous even behind layers of old-age makeup) when Peter and family visit her in London. The past is a blank for Peter; he has forgotten that when he was twelve, he decided to stay with Wendy, who then placed him with American parents. He doesn’t know that he’s the Pan whom Barrie had immortalized and Wendy had loved. Wendy tells him the truth after Hook kidnaps Jack and Maggie from Wendy’s house. With Tink sprinkling the pixie dust, Peter flies to Neverland to find his kids, defeat Hook and recover the child within himself.

Williams is a hoot — though out of character — when he leers at Tink (”You’re a teeny thing, lovely legs though”) and disses the Lost Boys (”What’s this, a Lord of the Flies preschool?”). But Spielberg keeps crowding him into sentimental corners. He’s another selfish yuppie who learns to care. You could have titled his story Regarding Peter.

Hoffman dodges the weepie trap, but then he has his own writer (it’s the latest in star perks). Not content with the James V. Hart script, he brought in Malia Scotch Marmo (Once Around) to develop the Hook character. Sporting a British accent and a Bill Buckley hauteur, Hoffman’s Hook plots the “ultimate revenge” — making Peter’s kids love him as a father. Aided by his first mate, Smee (Bob Hoskins), Hook organizes baseball games and other activities for Jack. Little Maggie, like all the women in the film, is introduced only to be ignored. Though Roberts does her best playing a flickering special effect, she’s given so little to do that she could be accused of loitering.

Meanwhile, Williams dons Mary Martin drag and flies around Neverland trying to recapture his lost youth. It’s a lovely sequence, expertly shot by Dean Cundey (Who Framed Roger Rabbit). Showing the allure of Neverland to stressed-out adults should be a natural for Spielberg. Instead, he buries the conflict between freedom and responsibility in the clutter of food fights and clanking duels. Maybe Spielberg thought he had to justify the expense of the Neverland set and Hook’s warship. With John Williams’s score as relentless backup, Spielberg delivers action but no momentum. What’s exciting at first grows numbing with repetition.

At the climax, Spielberg tries to regain his footing with tear-jerking tactics, especially the gratuitous murder of a child. When Tink tells Peter he’ll always be in her heart, “in that place between asleep and awake,” it’s Spielberg’s wishful thinking. No matter how much cash Hook earns, it will take more than pixie dust to fly this overstuffed package into our dreams.

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Hoodwinked movie

Someone’s stealing cookies from the cookie jar, or at least the recipes for them. As a result, snack shacks and goody shops are being forced out of business all over the woods at an alarming rate. With the populace is in an uproar, Chief Grizzly (voice by Xzibit) and his deputy (voice of Anthony Anderson) are anxious to catch the thief.

They think they might have found the culprit when an incident at Granny Puckett’s cottage leaves them with four suspicious characters: The Wolf (voice by Patrick Warburton), Red (voice by Anne Hathaway), The Woodsman (voice by James Belushi) and Granny (voice by Glenn Close) herself. After a brief investigation, the chief is ready to book them all and throw them in the slammer. But Nicky Flippers (voice by David Ogden Stiers) isn’t sure they have the whole story yet. Questioning each of them separately, the detective gets a quadruple serving of perspectives as each one of the characters relate their activities over the past 24 hours. With the new information on his plate, Nicky tries to deuce the real story and uncover the Goody Bandit.

Considering the success of the Shrek franchise, it is not surprising fairytales are becoming popular material for movie scripts. Like Shrek, this screenplay runs on two levels, mixing jokes aimed at adults with childhood humor. However, it manages to do so without sinking to the use of sexual innuendo or potty jokes. In fact, the only real concern is the violence that occurs when the Goody Bandit finally gets cornered. He (or she as the case may be) straps a character to a cable car full of dynamite and engages the help of some thugs when the law starts to move in. Other incidents of peril turn out to be little more than a logical misunderstanding once the facts come out.

Although the movie makes some references to other tales, this spoof on Red Riding Hood is built on the retelling of the same incident four times. Luckily, the directors do an excellent job of making all the puzzle pieces fit and tying up all the ends. They also break common stereotypes, give fresh life to well-established characters and introduce some new animals to the story including a yodeling goat (voice of Benjy Gaither) who is under an evil spell.

A snitching sheep and some mild insinuations of trafficking behavior (muffins instead of drugs) will likely going over the heads of youngsters making Hoodwinked fresh take on an enchanted folk story that is apt to engage older children and their parents alike.

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Hood of Horror movie

“Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror” is cheap, ugly, and written in crayon. But, for about 15 minutes, it’s pretty damn hilarious. It’s shame that once the first story in this anthology horror film wraps up, the rest of the film falls directly into the toilet.

“Hood of Horror” is “Tales from the Crypt” for urban audiences, presenting rapper Snoop Dogg as “The Cribkeeper,” our host for this unwieldy horror anthology film. Made for what looks like a crisp $20 and a dumpster filled with called-in favors, “Hood” is a movie that squanders its great potential in the hunt for cheap laughs and lazy screenwriting.

“Hood,” against all rational thought, actually starts off with promise. The first tale, focusing on a frustrated young woman (Daniella Alonso) who makes a deal with the devil (Danny Trejo) to exact true street justice on the local gangbangers, kicks off the film with a bang. This chapter finds the right tone and snappy pace, briskly detailing savage revenge flecked with urban comedy that’s silly, but fits the mold that “Hood” is setting for itself. By the time we reach the moment when a gangsta slips on a spill of malt liquor and falls face first onto his own 40oz bottle, pushing it right through his brain, “Hood” proves itself as a chipper satire of urban culture and a sensible member of the gore club.

Soon though, it all turns to garbage. After the strong start, director Stacy Title starts losing her sense of adventure, along with the film’s pacing and consistency. The second tale, featuring actors Anson Mount and Brande Roderick as two white opportunists looking to evict a group of African-American Vietnam vets (including Ernie Hudson) from their recently inherited building, seems to drag on for an eternity, void of wit or inventive special effects. Making Mount’s character a seething, racist southern twit is the first hint that the initial clever attitude is gone, and urban pandering seeps into the film for good.

The situation grows even more dire for the final story, encompassing a wannabe rapper’s request to God for fame, but finding only horror when it arrives. Here “Hood” gets dangerously close to minstrel show mentality that Spike Lee has always warned us about. Parading around ludicrous hip-hop lifestyle clichés with only the faintest hint of a wink, and production quality that borders on amateur porn, “Hood” finally reaches the point of utter contemptibility in this dreadful final movement.

As our host, Snoop Dogg sleepwalks through the whole enterprise, taking important time away from his blunts and dog shootings to remind us of the lessons we should be taking away from the script, and to create a…wait for it…music video! Our Cribkeeper (with some brave cast members) lays down a phat track in the finale, essentially retelling the whole damn film, just in case you happen to be 80 minutes late for your showtime. It’s pretty much the height of silliness in a supremely silly production; sadly, its spirit of goofiness never translates to actual fun.

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Honey movie

  • Author: admin
  • Filed under: Drama, Romance
  • Date: Feb 27,2008

Oooh boy, whoever greenlit this baby is going to have some explaining to do. Despite reports, “Honey” is far from being a horrible film or one of the worst of the year, that’s giving it far too much credit. In actuality, “Honey” is a simple “Save the Last Dance” clone TV movie which for some reason ended up on the big screen (and admittedly Jessica Alba is hotter than Julia Stiles).

Ever cliche you could think of is here - hot girl dreaming of more, found by young producer who wants girls that are hot but eventually must put out, a best friend who forgives at a drop of a hat and delivers the right encouragement speech at the right time, etc. Throw in famous rapper cameos, music video sets to make things look expensive, and a ‘benefit’ concert to help the young neighbourhood kids trying to go straight. Its so sadly predictable it plays purely like a comedy and the run of the mill editing and production don’t help (although some of the sets are admittedly cool).

Alba is an interesting find and does a decent acting job which is more than can be said for the rest of the cast. Only one person leaves this mess with their credibility intact and that’s Missy ‘Misdemeanor’ Elliott who has two fun cameo scenes in the film’s last act. Critics could spend hours coming up with ways to creatively bash this turkey but honestly its not worth the effort. “Honey” is designed to appeal to pre-teen girls and for that crowd it works beautifully - however there’s no crossover appeal whatsoever except for the masochists out there.

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A Home at the End of the World movie

Michael Mayer’s “A Home at the End of the World,” based on the novel by Michael Cunningham (who also penned the screenplay), is the story of two men who, after meeting as teenagers and becoming brothers of a sort, forge a relationship that takes them well into adulthood. Along the way, they enter an odd love triangle with an older woman and learn (one assumes) valuable lessons on love and the nature of family. The novel, unfortunately, is a largely internal exercise. Most of the action in the book takes place in the characters’ heads, which makes a full-length film based on it a problematic exercise at best. The end result is a slow (occasionally glacially) paced movie that relies more on soulful facial expressions than dialogue that honestly represents what the characters are feeling.

The story begins in 1967-era Cleveland, a hotbed of countercultural activism if ever there was one. 9-year old Bobby Powell (Andrew Chalmers) is receiving an education from his big brother Carlton on the nature of women and how best to enjoy half a tab of windowpane. Things go swimmingly for our young protagonist until Carlton crashes his mother’s party, literally, and dies. Moving forward six years, and adolescent Bobby (Erik Smith) lives with his father (mom apparently died a few years earlier) and befriends an introverted and dentally challenged Jonathan Glover. Bobby’s open attitude towards narcotics (he begins supplying Jonathan’s mom, played by Sissy Spacek, with weed) and sexual experimentation with Jonathan seem perfectly natural to him, and all is well. Then Bobby’s dad dies, and he moves in with the Glovers as their second son.

The next time we check in on Bobby (now a shaggy Colin Farrell), it’s 1982. He’s working in a bakery, while Jonathan (Dallas Roberts) has moved to New York City. When the Glovers decide to retire to Arizona, Bobby leaves Cleveland for NYC and moves in with out and proud Jon and Jon’s fag hag friend Clare (Robin Wright Penn). He eventually wows Clare with his doe eyes and complete lack of visible personality, and the two become an item. Jon is irritated at Bobby once again horning in on his life, while Clare has apparently had the hots for Jon the whole time. Bobby, for his part, seems content to stare at everyone in a perplexed fashion and look like Colin Farrell.

For a two hour movie, surprisingly little happens in “A Home at the End of the World.” First time director Mayer’s languid style is no doubt meant to give us a sense of the inner dialogues going on to which we can’t be privy, but more likely than not audiences will be sneaking glances at their watches. The film also leaves no gay cinema cliché unturned, from Bobby and Jonathan’s sexual awakening to Clare’s resentment at her third wheel status to Jonathan’s ultimate fate (he’s a gay man in early ‘80s New York City who enjoys random sexual encounters…figure it out).

It’s not that the theme – love and family are possible in the strangest of places – is hard to pick up on, it’s just that we get the message 45 minutes into the film. The rest, padded with long reaction shots and the obligatory period soundtrack (albeit one nicely spiced up with Laura Nyro and Leonard Cohen), is competently shot and pretty to look at, but ultimately redundant. There are some fine performances, especially Robin Wright Penn and Sissy Spacek (who, admittedly, brings a great deal of “In the Bedroom’s” Ruth Fowler to the role), others not so much. Newcomer Dallas Roberts doesn’t catch much of a break, since the character of Jonathan – as written here – has the emotional complexity of a Mack Bolan novel. And while it’s apparent that Farrell is trying to project Bobby’s deep sense of melancholy and fear at being left alone, he mostly comes across as a well-meaning lummox.

There are parts of “A Home at the End of the World” that stand out, but they come early on in the film and fade from memory as the tired romantic angle takes hold. Far from being groundbreaking independent cinema, “A Home” feels like just another prefab production.

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