Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

He’s Just Not That Into You (2009) -vs- Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994)

EDITOR'S NOTE:  "He's Just Not That Into You" is now on DVD after making $94-million at the box-office since coming out in February 2009. Smack ref Sherry Coben reviewed it then and, if you're looking for a romantic comedy to balance out what's in the current summer box office, Movie Smackdown offers a reprise of her Valentine's review...

The Smackdown. Valentine’s Day is in the air; the stores are filled to the rafters with cards and red hearts -- and even giant chocolate bunnies as merchants rush the holidays and compress our year alarmingly.  So. You buy a card, perhaps some chocolate, some roses, some lingerie. Good for you. How about dinner and a movie? That’s the ticket. Ah, but which movie? What do women want? They want movies about women and love. They’d prefer good movies about women and love, but even mediocre to bad ones will do in a pinch. They like their chickflicks like they like their men. There. But in a perfect movie-watching universe such as ours, with a multiplex in every town and classic films readily available, for the perfect romantic date night, which movie to watch?

The Challenger. "He’s Just Not That Into You" (2009) A wise, if snarky, friend once explained his secret of a happy love life, claiming that once he accepted the basic premise that all men are (pardon his French) assholes and all women are insane, there remained precious little left to argue about. Director Ken Kwapis, screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, bestselling authors of the source material Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo  all apparently got the same memo. Movieworld “Baltimore” is a bucolic urban shire mostly peopled with hobbit-sized beautiful crazy (read: needy) women looking for marriage and the commitment-phobic assholes who refuse to love them enough. Everyone is diminutive except for the biggest asshole of all, Bradley Cooper’s Ben, a blue-eyed satyr who lopes through the film in unblinking disbelief that both superhotties Scarlett Johansson and Jennifer Connelly want him. Ben Affleck plays the saintly Neil who woos and wins sad-eyed Jennifer Aniston’s Beth and gets to keep his pants in the bargain.

Gran Torino (2008) -vs- The Shootist (1976)

EDITOR'S NOTE:  June 7 is the release date for the "Gran Torino" DVD -- after making $150-million domestic box-office since it came out in January of this year. Director Clint Eastwood shot it for a budget of $33-million proving to the powers-that-be that investing in his pictures is good business.  But is it the end of an era, too?  Here's our Movie Smackdown review based on an early screening in December 2008.

 Does Who You've Killed Make You Who You Are? 

The Smackdown. Rumor has it that "Gran Torino" will be the last film that Clint Eastwood acts in. In it, he basically plays a version of his tough-guy screen characters (think Harry Callahan) who, at the end of his life, has to deal with the fact that so much of who he is derives from who he's killed.  Thirty-two years ago, another tough guy -- John Wayne -- acted in his last film, "The Shootist," where he also played a character who, at the end of his life, had to deal with the violence that had surrounded his days on Earth. Both of these legendary tough-guys are portrayed as being brought down by disease, having cheated the bloody ravages they've inflicted on others, as they close out their screen personas in projects that say as much about their full careers as the actual films of the moment. Lending weight to the efforts is that added fact that both of these films parallel the goodbye to these iconic characters by playing them out against times that are changing: Detroit for Eastwood and the Wild West for Wayne. 

The Challenger. In what may be his swan song to acting, Clint Eastwood directs himself in "Gran Torino." He plays Walt Kowalski, a tormented Korean War vet and a character with a lot of relevance today, given that he's also a retired auto plant worker, still living in Detroit and wondering where and when it was that the whole thing fell apart. After his wife dies, it's just Walt, the family he really doesn't connect with, and the next door neighbors who are all Hmong immigrants. The story was written, not by some A-lister, but by Nick Schenk, a Minnesota wannabe who wrote the whole thing with pen and paper sitting in a bar, and then had Eastwood pretty much shoot every damn word of it. Part of what attracted Eastwood, no doubt, is how beautifully it allows him to give us a reprise of the Dirty Harry character, but wrap it in a bloody bow of human redemption at the same time. The narrative has Walt at his peevish best, hurling insults at the neighbors and his family, only to find himself in an odd-friendship with the Hmong kid next door who he catches trying to steal his prized Gran Torino, a car he himself had a hand in making back in the day when Detroit ruled the world. Yet violence and gangs prevent the film from being just a sweet or comic story of friendship: this is Clint's farewell to a character-type and he needs to go out in a way that pays off how he got in this world in the first place. I'll say no more on that score...

No Reservations (2007) -vs- Mostly Martha (2002)

 Food for Thought 

The Smackdown. I've been thinking about food a lot (like this is news?) because I'm developing a TV series for my friend Mark Dacascos who plays "The Chairman" on Iron Chef America.   His current show turns gourmet cooking into a gladiator sport and that reminds me of a couple films dedicated to the behind-the-scenes clashes in the kitchens of high-end restaurants.  "No Reservations" is an almost scene-by-scene American re-make of the German film, "Mostly Martha."  Both tell the story of a woman chef at a top restaurant who has life plans rocked by the arrival of a child in her home after the death of a sister, complicated by the simultaneous hiring of a male chef at work who, at first, she sees as a challenge to her authority and later as a lover and a friend.

The Challenger. Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) runs her kitchen with rapid precision, intimidating her co-workers, and necessitating therapy to keep it together. When her sister is killed in a car accident, she becomes the guardian of her nine-year old daughter Zoe (Abigail Breslin) and, suddenly, life does not revolve around the kitchen anymore, no matter how much she wishes it did. Nick (Aaron Eckhart) joins the cooking staff as a rising star who could be the head chef of another restaurant, but wants to work under Kate. They are competitive, but ultimately they realize they need each other. Love blooms, and a new family is born. People differ on whether Zeta-Jones and Eckhart have any magic together but one thing is certain: Abigail Breslin is great again, stealing this movie the way she did "Little Miss Sunshine." She provides the true, authentic heart of this version and everybody else feels like support to her lead.

Moola (2008) -vs- The Amateurs (2007)

 Big Dreamers in Small Towns 

NOTE:  "Moola" begins airing on Showtime May 5, 2009

The Smackdown. Not every film gets exhibited in a movie theater.  And not every film that misses out on that opportunity is bad.  Sometimes they can be good, or funny, or just plain awesome, and still not get into theaters because the economic model for film marketing seems to be risk aversion.  Period.   This means that, sometimes, a DVD of a film you've never heard of but see on a store shelf, whether it be Wal-Mart or Blockbuster, can be a diversion for the night.  It might not suck at all and, because you haven't seen a dozen trailers and been attacked by viral marketing, you might even find it unexpected and surprising.  Enter "Moola" and "The Amateurs" -- two films worth renting you probably haven't heard of -- both about a group of loveable losers who get caught up in unorthodox schemes to make it big and populated by actors you probably actually know. 

The Challenger. Yep, that's the creepy "Other" Ethan above on the pink bike in Don Most's "Moola" where actor William Mapother plays Steve, a guy who's about to see a string of hard luck turned around.  He and his loser business partner Harry (Daniel Baldwin) are about to lose their chemical light sticks business to bankruptcy, their marriages are headed south, and then it happens.  "It" is a call from a farmer explaining that he wants to order more Omniglow light sticks because it turns out to be of real practical value in getting cows to get down with bulls.  At least that's what I think the deal is, but it really doesn't matter because the movie is not about bovine sex as much as it is about the deal that must be structured to procure this magic wand.  Before it's over, people have acted like they've got money they don't have, greedy people have cheated and lied, and the whole bit has gotten seriously out of hand.  

X-Men (2000) -vs- X2: X-Men United (2003) -vs- X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

 X Marks the Spot 

The Smackdown.  What happens when you take a merry band of hot people with gifts that get them lynched, a bitter geriatric villain born from the Holocaust, and a Star Trek captain confined to a wheelchair but still in charge with his faintly-odd-I-can't-place-that-but-it's-North-Atlantic accent?  You get the X-Men trilogy, started by Bryan Singer in 2000.  Leave it to the X-Men, a comic book franchise that re-defined comics, to make comic book films cool again following the fall of the Batman franchise.  With X-Men Origins: Wolverine's release and Fox's not-too-subtle Blu-ray release of the X-Men series, X-Men, X2, and X-Men: The Last Stand face up to find out which film is more evolved, and which determines the fate of mankind's war against their genetic superiors?

In One Corner.  Bryan Singer's X-Men took a little bit of Matrix and a whole lot of Marvel and jam-packed it all into an intense 90-minute film that was surprisingly more thriller than action film.  This isn't a surprise since Singer has always seemed most comfortable in thrillers, The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil being the merits that earned him X-Men's directorial helm.  In X-Men, Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine, an amnesiac mutant with indestructible claws, is found by the X-Men, a group of highly-trained mutants who moonlight as teachers at a school for young mutants.  The school's headmaster, Charles Xavier, dreams of creating a world where human and mutants co-exist.  Opposing Xavier and his X-Men is Magneto, Xavier's former best friend and militant leader of the anti-human Brotherhood of Mutants.  This is a movie made by its casting since the plot is rather slim and predictable.  Watching Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan wax philisophical as comic book versions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X makes for a riveting thriller.