Time: not on my side.
Now Playing: Recent viewings of newish stuff
So I'm about four days behind or so in my reviewing, so I'll be testing out a new (for me) reviewing template to get these done in a reasonable amount of time. Seriously, writing about nearly all the movies I see can get tedious after a while, particularly since I have to make time to do it between working, watching movies, and doing all the small but essential things that parents neglect to tell their children are the true backbone of adult life (does that make sense? Sorry, it's late). Anyway, this doesn't mean I'll be giving up the reviews quite yet, but honestly I think I may need a hiatus before too long. Unless someone wants to start paying me to write reviews- then I'll actually put some effort into them.

In no particular order:

HOSTAGE (2005, Florent Siri)
The (rough) formula: DIE HARD meets PANIC ROOM.
The pitch: Former hostage negotiator Bruce Willis becomes a small town cop after disastrous standoff, but when three punk kids hold a crooked accountant and his kids hostage in their home, all hell breaks loose. The accountant's partners in crime kidnap Bruce's family so that he'll help them retrieve an encrypted DVD in the house, one of the punks turns out to be a psychopath, and one of the kids manages to escape his captors and call Bruce on a cellphone from his hiding place in the house. Only John McClane, er, Sheriff Talley, can save the day.
Pros: Director Florent Siri knows how to make a slick, professional-looking thriller, and his tendency toward sun-Fincheresque darting camera movements cools off a bit after the opening reel. Bruce solid in reluctant-hero mode, tormented by demons but doing it for his family and, eventually, the kids in the house as well.
Cons: Pretty grim stuff- violent and gory (as befits the R rating) but not much fun as a thriller. Action pyrotechnics of the final reel tend to clash with film's nature as a suspense film in which the hero has to puzzle out a solution against heavy odds. Not quite as smart, or as gleefully dumb, as it ought to be.
Ideal viewing situation: Weekend DVD rental or discount theatre.
Rating: **.

THE WORK AND THE GLORY (2004, Russell Holt)
The formula: LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, but with Mormons.
The pitch: The early days of the Mormon faith, seen through the eyes of an everyday family who got in on the action early. A family moves to rural New York and meets Joseph Smith, while a local girl comes between the two brothers, one of whom becomes a criminal, the other a follower of Smith.
Pros: If the name Joseph Smith and his story hold any meaning for you, then I suppose this could be a worthwhile (though still terribly quaint) film.
Cons: If you aren't a Mormon, then there really isn't much here for you. There must be a way to tell an early-1800s rural story interestingly, but director Russell Holt hasn't figured it out. Film draws clear moral lines between enlightened characters (nearly all of whom are believers or are converted sometime during the film) and unshaven rabble who drink, gamble, and use improper English. Most of the people have gleaming white teeth in spite of the setting, except for one whose teeth have obviously been yellowed for the film, since they look fine otherwise. The film sets up a confrontation between the two brothers over the girl, but never really delivers on it. Barn raisings and such aren't really my thing, I suppose.
Ideal viewing situation: Do Mormon kids have Sunday School? Because that's where I see this finding an audience.
Rating: *.

MAN OF THE HOUSE (2005, Stephen Herek)
The formula: THE FUGITIVE meets BRING IT ON, minus the former's excitement and much of the latter's wit.
The pitch: After five Texas cheerleaders witness the murder of a federal witness, it's up to Ranger Tommy Lee Jones to protect them until they can testify at the trial. Jones moves into their house on campus, where his crusty man's-man ways don't mesh with their hyper-feminine lifestyle. Much wackiness ensues.
Pros: Jones' deadpan drawl is put to surprisingly good use here, probably the best since the first MEN IN BLACK, even in textbook scenes where he puzzles over a grocery aisle full of feminine hygiene products ("with wings," he intones, as though he's looking at a UFO). Kelli Garner (last seen as Faith Domergue in THE AVIATOR) gets a lot of mileage as the dumb-blonde of the cheerleaders, and her scenes with Jones are the closest the film comes to registering a modicum of recognizable human feeling (her crush on him is largely unspoken, but palpable, and she manifests it in small but nonetheless noticeable touches). Pretty much the archetypal February release- aims low, but mostly succeeds after its own fashion, which makes it pretty harmless entertainment...
Cons: ...but doesn't exactly make it worth seeing either. The crime plot, which supposedly drives the story, is a yawner, and the story takes the path of least resistance, with creativity elided in favor of cliche. Aside from Garner and rebellious good-ol'-girl Vanessa Ferlito, none of the cheerleaders have any character depth. Anne Archer, as Jones' age-appropriate love interest, has nothing to do, and the less said about Cedric the Entertainer, the better.
Ideal viewing situation: Late-night cable, where you can watch the film as I did, in bits and pieces.
Rating: *1/2.

MEET THE FOCKERS (2004, Jay Roach)
The formula:- everything you loved about MEET THE PARENTS, only without those pesky laughs!
The pitch: It's the eve of Greg (Ben Stiller) and Pam's (Teri Polo) wedding, and Jack (Robert DeNiro) hasn't met Greg's parents yet. Still pathologically curious about his nervous future in-law, he's wonders what kind of person could have given birth to him, so Greg the Byrnes family- Pam, Jack, wife Dena (Blythe Danner), and their little nephew L.J.- drive a giant RV down to Florida so they can... MEET THE FOCKERS.
Pro: Though some would say otherwise (scroll down for review), I found Dustin Hoffman's turn as Greg's old-school lefty dad to be the film's one saving grace. Yes, the character is a tad annoying, but Hoffman throws himself into the role with aplomb.
Cons: Hoffman's the exception here, with everyone else pretty much phoning it in. DeNiro is especially terrible, taking a pretty good comic character in the first one and refusing to humanize him this time around. Jack has become, for all intensive purposes, a monster, unwilling to open himself up to the points of view of others, untrusting of anyone around him (they all keep secrets from him out of fear that he'll think the worst)- which makes his 180-degree turnaround feel all the more phony. The Greg-embarrassment scenes have become painfully contrived, as though certain scenes were reverse-engineering exercises, starting with a desired "wacky" outcome (for example, L.J. sitting in front of the TV with his hand glued to a bottle of booze, watching SCARFACE) and working backwards, rather than sprouting naturally from the plot. And it must be said that Jay Roach has possibly the least interesting visual sense of anyone making big-ticket movies in Hollywood, with the ugly-ass lighting in the scene where Greg (injected with truth serum by Jack) confesses his misdeeds to a restaurant full of family and friends being only the most obvious example.
Ideal viewing situation: Administered as part of the Ludivico treatment to a patient who wants to wean himself off movies.
Rating: *.

DOLLS (2002, Takeshi Kitano)
The formula: Japanese puppet theatre meets Kitano in non-badass mode.
The pitch: Three stories of tragic love- a man who blows off his wedding to literally bind himself to the ex-fiancee he drove to attempt suicide (they become "the bound beggars"), a fiftysomething woman who waits every Saturday for the boy who promised to meet her decades ago, and a pop star who is blinded in an accident and the fan who blinds himself to get close to her- taken from traditional Japanese puppet theatre, but told here with real actors.
Pros: The film looks great, with gorgeous natural settings for many of the stories, and colorful costumes. Kitano emphasizes the artificiality of these stories, particularly in the "bound beggars" tale, to my mind the film's most compelling. Much is made of the fact that these two lovers are tied to each other with a length of rope, symbolizing not only his commitment to her but also his guilt at having left her in the first place. My favorite image in this episode comes when the two of them have to cross a narrow bridge, and the man goes ahead while the woman waits, and the rope is exactly as long as the bridge (my description doesn't do the shot justice).
Cons: The other stories are good, but less theatrical in style, which for me made them less interesting. The pop star's song is catchy in that J-pop way, meaning the lyrics are pretty insipid but the repetitive melody got stuck in my head instantaneously (much to my chagrin). As tends to be the case with most Kitano films, this goes on a bit long.
Ideal viewing situation: On the big screen, though if like me you don't have that opportunity, then a big television with sharp colors.
Rating: **1/2.