Superman Returns

A movie for people who like their heroes to be truly heroic.
DMR gives it an A-.

While watching Superman Returns lines from William Ernest Henley’s heroic poem ‘Invictus,’ kept running through my head. That is when I wasn’t seeing Norman Rockwell’s ‘Homecoming Soldier,’ or hearing Bette Midler sing ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’ Superman Returns is the most heroic film I’ve seen in recent years.

Remarkably, in this cynical age, the filmmakers play it absolutely straight and without apologies, and I applaud them for it. It’s as refreshing as homemade lemonade. This is a Superman who knows what he’s about and goes about doing it with will and discipline, even when confronted by deadly Kryptonite. More astonishing still, Superman pulls it off without becoming a one-dimensional cardboard cutout. He has depth and complexity because he knows himself, not because he is morally conflicted.

That said, if you prefer your heroes with a twist of irony or a chaser of existential angst, you may not find Superman Returns as refreshing as I did.

The setup is that astronomers on earth had identified Superman’s planet and as the movie opens he is returning from Krypton having found only himself during his five year absence. Back in Metropolis, Lois Lane is living with a stand-up guy, and they are raising a young son together. Lex Luthor is out of prison because Superman didn’t show up for his parole hearing.

And Earth? Well, as ever it needs a savior. Past versions of Superman have been jingoistic, but in this version Superman is resident of Metropolis but a full citizen of the world, saving people and stopping crime everywhere. The villain, of course, is Lex Luthor, played with polish by a chrome-domey Kevin Spacey.

The plot is familiar; a retread of the 1978 Superman movie. Lex uses Krypton technology to destructively create a new continent, all of it tainted by radioactive Kryptonite. Of course Lex and Superman tangle. The pleasant surprise is that there’s no silly spinning of the planet in reverse, no deus ex machina to save the world again. afterwards, in a wonderfully-touching scene reminiscent of Spiderman 2, the people of Metropolis demonstrate what Superman means to them. It honestly gave me a lump in my throat.

The movie is loaded with dramatic rescues and some beautiful flying sequences. There’s also a romantic pas de deux between Lois and Superman, but it’s left unresolved. Lois is loathe to leave a good man and Superman is too much of a gentleman to force the issue. Imagine a movie advocate moral choices like those in 2006!

Brandon Routh spends more screentime as Superman than Clark Kent. When he’s Clark he seems to be channeling Christopher Reeve, but he’s his own Superman. Comparing him to Reeve probably isn’t fair, but it seemed to me that Routh had less charisma.

Spacey has reached the point as an actor where I’d darn near pay money just to watch him read the phone book. Kate Bosworth was strong as Lois Lane, but as Jimmy Olson, Sam Huntington tried too hard.

I have only one small quibble. There is a scene where Superman, weakened by Kryptonite, is beaten pretty badly by Luthor and his men. It’s almost certainly too intense for the many young children who will see the movie. The MPAA gave Superman Returns a PG-13 rating “for some intense action violence.” I grade it as an A-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Superman Returns was graded straight up.

The Devil Wears Prada

A smart fashion comedy even for people who shouldn’t dress themselves.

DMR gives it a B.

I showed up at the local dollar movie theatre for The Devil Wears Prada in a pair of discount chinos, a black Carhartt belt, New Balance 853s and a green poly/rayon shirt from The North Face; I’m not exactly fashion forward. Still, I enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada, a movie set at a chi-chi fashion magazine.

The Devil Wears Prada is a fish-out-of-water story featuring Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, a serious… and fashion-challenged… journalist fresh from college. Unable to get work as a reporter, she happens into a job as the second assistant to the editor at "Runway," a fashion magazine. Everyone tells her that a million girls would kill for the job, something she finds incredible. The job is high on perks and prestige but low on money and deadly to one’s self-worth, since her boss is the barracuda editor Miranda Priestly, played with icy fierceness by Meryl Streep.

Actually that’s not right. Streep doesn’t so much play Priestly as she wears her skin, skin which is always wrapped in dresses, shoes and accessories from fancy-pants designers.

At first Andy struggles to keep up with Miranda and she maintains a mocking detachment from the world of fashion that seems about as deep to her as one of the gossamer gowns featured in the pages of "Runway." Eventually she drops her detachment and her inner fashionista appears; the little fish finds she can breathe the rare air just fine.

But while the rewards are great, being at the beck and call of Miranda comes at a fearsome price. Her friends tell her she’s changed and she suspects they’re right. As her phones rings with yet another call from Miranda, Andy’s boyfriend says, “the person whose call you always take, that’s the relationship you’re in.”

Streep could certainly get another best actor nomination for this movie, which would be number 14, but surprisingly it’s not her movie. The movie actually belongs to Anne Hathaway, who still seems like the fresh-faced newcomer even though she’s been in a dozen movies now. Hathaway’s unguarded freshness is letter perfect.

Also good is Stanley Tucci, who plays Nigel the art director. Tucci could have played him the way Jeremy Piven played the flamboyantly gay Versace salesman in Rush Hour 2. Piven stole that scene, but had Tucci played it that way it would have been too broad for The Devil Wears Prada. Tucci strikes just the right note as Andy’s friend and confidant.

The Devil Wears Prada is “rated PG-13 for some sensuality.” There are several scenes with Andy in bed with her boyfriend and another bedroom scene with a second love interest. The swearing is relatively mild. Because of the quality of the performances, the story and relatively mild language, I grade it as a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. The Devil Wears Prada was graded straight up.

Click

Click is a crusty movie with a soft, gooey center.
DMR gives it a C.

I’ve come to expect certain things from an Adam Sandler movie. There will be some salty language, often including the “R-word.” There will be a strong female lead, although her part won’t always be well-drawn. There will be a number of coarse moments and jokes that go nowhere. The co-stars will often include likeable but unexpected actors from a bygone era, sorta like the average Love Boat episode. There will be several angry, confrontational scenes. Rob Schneider will make a ridiculous appearance. And no matter how crusty the movie tries to be on the outside, there will be a soft, gooey center.

Click, roughly a retelling of “A Christmas Carol,” has all those Adam Sandler movie earmarks. It stars Sandler as overworked New York architect Michael Newman, who’s being pulled in so many directions that he feels like he’s disappointing everyone including his long-suffering wife (Kate Beckinsale) and kids, his boss (David Hasselhoff), and his under-appreciated parents (Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner).

One stressful night Michael makes his way to Bed, Bath and Beyond for a universal remote. Behind a subtly-marked sign that says ‘Beyond,’ he finds Morty, played with devilish glee by Christopher Walken. Morty has a deal for Michael, a free ‘universal remote’ that controls more than Michael knows.

The script is by Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe, who also penned the similar Bruce Almighty. As they demonstrated I think better in that movie, you have to be careful about what you wish for. Power, fame, success, money, ambition, all those things that seem so seductive in the wee small hours, might just be a devil’s bargain. With the universal remote close at hand, Michael finds himself fast-forwarding through his life, unable, once he finally slows down, to remember the small pleasures and everyday events that make life truly rich.

Before he knows it he’s come to an early end of his life, materially successful, but bloated, and unhappily divorced. In a last desperate measure he tries to stop his son from fast-forwarding through his life, too.

Like I said, Click is a movie with a soft, gooey center. It’s a good movie that wants to be bad. So the question is, can you get past the crusty exterior? That’s no small trick. I can’t ever remember, for instance, a movie that showed a dog humping something so often. I pity the poor PA that had to audition the dogs for the role.

In terms of the performances, Sandler seems unable to bring the depth of emotion to Click that Jim Carrey brought to Bruce Almighty. Beckinsale is slumming as Newman’s wife Donna, and Hasselhoff is quite funny as Newman’s boss Ammer. Sean Astin, who appears onscreen several times in a red Speedo, is used mainly as a punchline. And Winkler and Kavner are solid as Newman’s mensch-like parents. A special shout-out goes to Jennifer Coolidge, a supporting actress who gets a lot of work and delivers again in Click.

Click is rated PG-13 for for "language, crude and sex-related humor, and some drug references." Believe me, it's a legitimate PG-13.

I give Click a grade of C.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Click was downgraded a full grade. Without the swearing, and all the course stuff, especially with the dog, I would have given Click a B.

The Lake House

The Lake House brings romance back to time travel movies.
DMR and Beloved Wife (BW) give it an A-.

Woman, research shows, use more of their brains than men, they feel emotions with greater intensity and acuity, and they can articulate their emotions more clearly.

Knowing that, my focused male brain tells me that I have no business reviewing The Lake House, the romantic time-bending movie with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. But time travel, that’s pretty cool, and Keanu was in the Matrix trilogy and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Plus, there are plenty of memorable time travel movies and Sandra Bullock’s certainly likeable. How bad could it be?

Still, to be fair, this review will feature in part the perspective and voice of my Beloved Wife (BW) of the last nine years. No, she hasn’t seen it yet, but nine years is long enough to know how she would react to most things. Except, of course, when I’m wrong.

BW: The movie starts a little slow and the premise takes a little while to build, but Keanu and Sandra have real chemistry. You can really tell that they get along on and off screen.

Dollar Movie Review (DMR): That chemistry is vital to The Lake House, because they spend very little of the movie physically together. Sandra stars as a newly-minted doctor fresh from several years in a stunning modernist house built over a lake in Wisconsin before moving to Chicago for her residency. As it turns out, the home was built by Keanu’s dad, a famous architect played by Christopher Plummer, whose reputation was established after building the eye-catching home. Keanu grew up there and moved back in 2004. When he gets there he finds a letter in the mailbox from the previous tenant, Sandra, who asks that he forward any mail. But there’s a curiosity; he’s living there in 2004 and her letter dates from 2006.

BW: Boring! When are we going to talk about their relationship?

DMR: Go ahead.

BW: Both Keanu and Sandra are hurting and try to bury the hurt in their work. They both have lost beloved parents, and Keanu’s relationship with his father is strained. That’s because Keanu has sold himself short by becoming a developer of cheesy suburban townhomes. And in moving to Chicago for her residency, Sandra is leaving behind a relationship with a lawyer who loves her but isn’t right for her. I had a girlfriend like that who married her second choice and it was pretty loveless. That’s why I always… Oops, words count here, don’t they?

DMR: Once they get past their initial skepticism, they devise little tests like sending a scarf back in time through the magic mailbox just in time for a late season snowstorm. In so doing Keanu figures out that he can meet her in the past, which he does.

BW: But that isn’t where it goes. It’s not like Back to the Future where Marty is in the car with his mother before the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

DMR: That’s true, Marty kisses his mother and it’s nasty. Whereas when Sandra and Keanu kiss in his timeframe they both feel great longing.

BW: That’s really one of the cutest moments in the movie, the two of them dancing to Paul McCartney’s “This Never Happened Before.” We should get that.

DMR: It is nice. Of course their relationship has to end. Sandra realizes that she can’t keep living for the future. So she takes up with her old lawyer boyfriend Morgan who has moved to Chicago…

BW: He was nothing special…

DMR: … and leaves unanswered a stack of letters from Keanu. But circumstance make her realize that Keanu had tried to catch up to her and in so doing had died in her arms.

BW: …but she didn’t realize who he was at the time.

DMR: After two years of go-slow romance, it becomes a race against time to see if she can save him.

BW: It’s a sweet movie. I liked it a lot.

DMR: But is it too sweet? Were there enough tears?

BW: I cried enough. What did you think?

DMR: I wish there was a DeLorean in it, or a Flux Capacitor.

The Lake House is rated PG for "some language and a disturbing image."

The Dollar Movie Reviewer and beloved wife give it an A-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. The Lake House, which is almost free of offensive language and has only implied sex, was graded straight up.

Lady in the Water

Shyamalan needs to spend more time watching Hitchcock.
DMR gives it B.

Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest effort is a fable brought to film. I figured that much out. But after watching the movie and thinking about it, I have no idea what the lesson might be.

It could be about the power of one person to redeem others, like Christian teachings about Jesus. It might be about the need for greater community in an increasingly pluralistic and crowded world. It might just be about a grudge Shyamalan obviously has with movie critics. (In the interest of full disclosure, I liked his movies The Sixth Sense and Signs a lot and I admired The Village and Unbreakable.)

It’s a fable because the plot elements are so incredible and yet the characters take them at face value, like in a movie musical when the characters break into song and no one seems surprised when there’s a full symphony backing them up.

OK, so it’s a fable. “Should I see it,” you’re asking? Well, the movie is scrupulously clean: there’s no swear words, no sex, and while violence is implied, it’s not depicted. The Lady in the Water comes to dry land naked, but she’s always shown with a shirt or towel on. Your average Wal-Mart circular is more titillating. The Lady in the Water rated PG-13 for “some frightening sequences.” But frankly it could easily be rated PG.

The performances are fine. Bryce Dallas Howard has a one-note part as the title character. Most of the heavy lifting in the acting department comes from Paul Giamatti, who’s very good. His performance reminded me a great deal of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Shyamalan, who appears in his movies ala Alfred Hitchcock, takes his largest role to date. He, too, does fine.

But for me the movie was missing something. It certainly didn’t have Shyamalan’s trademark 'gotcha' surprise. Lady in the Water has atmospherics, but I never found it scary or even eerie. Considering how confused I am by the film, it could certainly have been more approachable.

The movie all takes place in one apartment building, much like Hitchcock’s masterful Rear Window. Shyamalan copies a couple of Hitchcock’s establishing shots, but he isn’t able to duplicate the tension of Rear Window. Much to my chagrin, there’s no one like Grace Kelly in Lady in the Water, either.

I think Shyamalon strives to be like Alfred Hitchcock and I’ll happily cheer him on. Who made better scary, non-gory, more accessible movies than Hitchcock? But before we can mention them in the same breath, Shyamalan needs to head back to screening room to watch some more Hitch.

Lady in the Water is rated PG-13.

I give it a grade of B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Lady in the Water received that bonus in my review. Without it, I would have rated it as a C+.

Cars

The best Dollar Movie of the summer.

DMR grades it an A.

Cars is a feast for the eyes that is by turns heartwarming and tender. It’s the best movie to show up on a dollar screen this summer and nearly as good as Pixar’s Finding Nemo.

Some critics have suggested the storyline of Cars isn’t as strong as other Pixar movies like Monsters Inc or The Incredibles. I agree. But that’s like saying Reggie Jackson wasn’t as good a hitter as Willie Mays. True enough. But if I was picking players for my baseball team I’d have a place for Mr. October.

Cars is about a charismatic hotshot young racecar named Lightning McQueen in the NASCAR-like Piston Cup in a world where all sentient life is a vehicle of some kind.

McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, finishes the final race of the season tied with two other cars, The King, an old-school racer (Richard Petty), and Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton), the perennial second-runner itching to replace The King. To settle the tie, McQueen, The King and Hicks meet in a grudge match race a week later across the country in California.

McQueen heads west in his reliable car hauler Mack (John Ratzenberger). But in a middle of the night mishap, McQueen rolls out of his trailer and creates automotive havoc in the fast-fading and forgotten desert town of Radiator Springs, miles off the Interstate but squarely on Route 66 in ‘Carburetor County.’

As punishment, McQueen is sentenced to community service to repave the strip of the 'Mother Road' that he ruined, and which runs smack through the middle of the Radiator Springs. He tries to finish his sentencing ASAP in a slipshod way, but the town won’t accept it. In getting it right, McQueen is drawn into the lives of the ‘towncars’ with whom he finds friendship, inner peace and even enlightenment.

The towncars include: Paul Newman as 'Doc Hudson,' the senior member of the town with a carefully shaded past; Tony Shalhoub as 'Luigi,' the Ferrari-worshipping tire dealer; Larry the Cable Guy as 'Mater,' the rust-bucket tow truck; Cheech Marin as Ramone, the lowrider paint shop owner; Bonnie Hunt as 'Sally Carrera,' the proprietor of the Cozy Cone Motel; and George Carlin as 'Fillmore' as the local hippie drop-out and brewer of ‘organic’ fuel.

The cast also includes broadcasters Bob Costas, and National Public Radio’s Tom and Ray Magliozzi, racers Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Mario Andretti, along with Jay Leno and Jeremy Piven. It’s a deep and talented cast and only Owen Wilson disappoints. His laid-back style, so funny in other movies, doesn't generate much traction in Cars.

From the first frame… set on a monster Southern racetrack, to the desert locales in and around Radiator Springs… the movie is astonishing to look at. The race sequences are so true to life that only the eyes in the windshield give it away. The desert scenes, by contrast, are better than real. They mix “eco-porn” shots of the red rock country of Utah, with the iconic saguaro cactuses of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The resulting visuals are a striking, if unlikely, mixture of Randy Owens race care lithos and a Nature Conservancy donor’s premium!

Cars is rated G for general audiences.

I give Cars an A.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. If the story and Owen Wilson had been better, I would have given it an A+.