Crowne Me

Has anybody seen Larry Crowne with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts?  Like most of the movie going public I avoided it like the plague when it was in the theaters.  Caught it on DirecTV and I found it quite engaging (and not just for the awesomely fetching Gugu Mbatha-Raw).  The movie prominently features Pam Grier (still fetching), Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson and a slyly wicked turn by George Takei as Dr. Matsutani. In addition to Mr. Takei, there is a nice bit where one of Hank's speech classmates gives a two-minute dissertation on why Deep Space Nine is the best of the Star Trek series while dressed in full star fleet uniform.  This movie even makes me like Wilmer Valderrama and I HATE Wilmer Valderrama.

~rave!

Program of Interest

Person of Interest is a mashup of The Bourne Identity and Minority Report brought to you by the co-writer of The Dark Knight. I am not a Jim Caviezel fan but it appears he was born to play two roles: "The Christ" in The Passion of... and ex-CIA hitman, John Reese. Whereas the erstwhile Jason Bourne can't remember anything, poor John Reese knows what he was; what he did; and only wants to forget about it.

When we are introduced to Mr. Reese, he is a bearded bum about to be accosted by a gang of obnoxious prep school boys (is that an oxymoron?). Tit leads to tat and Mr. Reese is taken into custody after dispatching the Breakfast Club with extreme prejudice.

Watching the surveillance video from the subway car, Detective Carter (Taraji P. Henson) suspects there is more to the bearded bum than meets the eye. Using the old fingerprints on the glass trick, she runs his prints but before she can get a hit, Reese has been sprung by the enigmatic Fitch (Michael Emerson).

Mr. Fitch is a billionaire inventor who has created the perfect all-invasive, all-knowing, all-seeing, post 9-11, super-surveillance network - except, after selling it to the government, he only has "backdoor" access to it, and to conceal his backdoor access, he can only extract social security numbers - or something. Anyhoo, he is able to determine that a crime is about to occur only not when or (apparently) to whom. All Fitch is able to do is determine a "person of interest." He needs someone to connect the dots and slowly convinces Mr. Reese to become his highly skilled blunt instrument.

The set-up set, Person of Interest moves jauntily along with periodic bursts of brutal, well choreographed action, competently sold by the loose-limbed Caviezel, mixed with a healthy dose of social paranoia.

If the notion of Big Brother constantly watching everything you do doesn't chill you to your bones, Person of Interest may be the show for you.

~rave!

Mama Madea

Ghetto auteur Tyler Perry is about to unleash his latest man-in-
drag epic, Madea Goes To Jail, on what will probably be a very
receptive world.

The most charitable thing you can say about the best of Tyler's
oeuvre (Why Did We Get Married? for instance) is that is was
better than his worse (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Daddy's
Girls). Typically, he violates every rule of well constructed
narrative or accomplished film making. His best work (Married?)
is merely competent. Yet, Perry has legions of devoted fans and
is steadily approaching Oprahville in lifetime earnings.

I do salute Perry for giving work to worthy and woefully under-
employed black actresses - Alfre Woodard, Sanaa Lathan, Academy
Award nominee Taraji P. Henson and Robin Givens to just name
those in his last movie (The Family that Preys).

Lastly, I have come to the conclusion that the audience is never
wrong. It is always the artists' fault when they fail to connect with
an audience. So I watch all of Tyler Perry's movies (I own The
Family That Preys but haven't watched it yet) trying to discern what
his audience is connecting with - and, attempting to learn something,
seeing if I can apply those lessons effectively without debasing my
own work.

There are simple verities in this world and sometimes we, as artists,
willfully ignore them.

Brad Pitt is cute as "Button"

I went to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and, on the whole, I enjoyed it. It is a much more melancholy movie than "Forrest Gump," a movie that it is often compared to and, at nearly three hours, it is long - but not overly so. It is as long as it needs to be. And "Button" is often like that - all it needs to be - but seldomly more. It doesn't soar as "Gump" did and it feels derivative: Gump's braces are Button's old man wheelchair and double canes; "Lieutenant Dan" meet "Cap'n Mike"; Cate Blanchett's Daisy is Button's Jenny. That said, "Button" is an oddly affecting movie that stays with you long after the theater lights have come back on. (By the by, I would like to give a special shout out to Taraji P. Henson's performance as Button's "mother." This is a small jewel of a performance by an actress who is proving herself to be an artist with many colors on her palette. From "Baby Boy" to "Button" is quite a journey).