samseescinema
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Superbad reviewed by Samuel Osborn
Like Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad has the feeling of being absolutely effortless. It's a Judd Apatow requirement maybe that no joke should be choked out by its characters. Honesty and chemistry seem to be the only ingredients to his enormously profitable formula. He sits in the Producer's chair for Superbad, letting Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg use their ten year old script and Greg Mottola direct it. But Apatow has ushered in his own era of comic productions in Hollywood. They're low-brow in their premises but entirely human and wholly sincere in their execution. Superbad is no different, pulling focus on two outcasts trying to wiggle somehow into the exclusive social hierarchy of high school before they scoot off into their separate lives at college. Girls are their only concern and like the boys of American Pie, Seth and Evan are looking only to get laid.
The simplest way to explain Seth and Evan (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) is to say they would have no problem getting along with the stoner Ben from Knocked Up and the sexless Andy from The 40 Year Old Virgin. Molded too awkwardly to exist normally in the social world, these characters are forced into situations far outside their comfort zone. Here Seth, Evan, and their twice nerdy friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are asked to score the alcohol for a party that evening at Jule's house, Seth's big crush. Depending on the fact that Fogell somehow has obtained a phony I.D., they boast that they can buy the girls whatever they want; that they do this thing all the time when, in fact, they've never set foot in a liquor store. It doesn't help that Fogell's I.D. claims that he's a 25 year old Hawaiian named McLovin. And as any teenager knows, finding alcohol is never a simple task.
The boys' shenanigans drive them deep into the night and late to the party, but glorious in their possession of alcohol for their underaged peers. These peers, thankfully, actually look like their peers. By this I mean that the extras and peripheral characters look believably under the age of twenty-one. I'm so tired of muscled, bearded thirty-somethings posing as bodacious high schoolers. The students here are entirely convincing as real live students.
The funny thing about effortlessness is that rarely is it in fact effortless. But the effort involved is so well masked that we accept it as something easy and natural. Like the previous Apatow concoctions, casting and scripting are the main players; minutely calibrated to bubble up a critical mass of on-screen chemistry for the actors to play with. Jonah Hill from previous Apatow films and Michael Cera of "Arrested Development" fame are superb choices as Seth and Evan. Director Greg Mottola handles Mr. Rogen and Mr. Golberg's script adroitly and manages to funkify what could have been a pop-music mood, bringing in music from the Bar-Kays, Rick James, Curtis Mayfield and The Roots. The result is a swell continuation of Apatow and his crew's success.
Samuel Osborn
Like Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad has the feeling of being absolutely effortless. It's a Judd Apatow requirement maybe that no joke should be choked out by its characters. Honesty and chemistry seem to be the only ingredients to his enormously profitable formula. He sits in the Producer's chair for Superbad, letting Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg use their ten year old script and Greg Mottola direct it. But Apatow has ushered in his own era of comic productions in Hollywood. They're low-brow in their premises but entirely human and wholly sincere in their execution. Superbad is no different, pulling focus on two outcasts trying to wiggle somehow into the exclusive social hierarchy of high school before they scoot off into their separate lives at college. Girls are their only concern and like the boys of American Pie, Seth and Evan are looking only to get laid.
The simplest way to explain Seth and Evan (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) is to say they would have no problem getting along with the stoner Ben from Knocked Up and the sexless Andy from The 40 Year Old Virgin. Molded too awkwardly to exist normally in the social world, these characters are forced into situations far outside their comfort zone. Here Seth, Evan, and their twice nerdy friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are asked to score the alcohol for a party that evening at Jule's house, Seth's big crush. Depending on the fact that Fogell somehow has obtained a phony I.D., they boast that they can buy the girls whatever they want; that they do this thing all the time when, in fact, they've never set foot in a liquor store. It doesn't help that Fogell's I.D. claims that he's a 25 year old Hawaiian named McLovin. And as any teenager knows, finding alcohol is never a simple task.
The boys' shenanigans drive them deep into the night and late to the party, but glorious in their possession of alcohol for their underaged peers. These peers, thankfully, actually look like their peers. By this I mean that the extras and peripheral characters look believably under the age of twenty-one. I'm so tired of muscled, bearded thirty-somethings posing as bodacious high schoolers. The students here are entirely convincing as real live students.
The funny thing about effortlessness is that rarely is it in fact effortless. But the effort involved is so well masked that we accept it as something easy and natural. Like the previous Apatow concoctions, casting and scripting are the main players; minutely calibrated to bubble up a critical mass of on-screen chemistry for the actors to play with. Jonah Hill from previous Apatow films and Michael Cera of "Arrested Development" fame are superb choices as Seth and Evan. Director Greg Mottola handles Mr. Rogen and Mr. Golberg's script adroitly and manages to funkify what could have been a pop-music mood, bringing in music from the Bar-Kays, Rick James, Curtis Mayfield and The Roots. The result is a swell continuation of Apatow and his crew's success.
Samuel Osborn
Rush Hour 3 reviewed by Samuel Osborn
If I'm not mistaken, Rush Hour 3 is the final sequel in a long train of franchise continuations to be released during Summer '07. With Spiderman 3, 28 Weeks Later, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shrek 3, Oceans 13, Live Free or Die Hard, Fantastic Four 2, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hostel 2, Evan Almighty, and The Bourne Ultimatum on its heels, Rush Hour 3 certainly finds itself in a thick, polluted cloud of over-sized expectations and bristling fans. It's been an exhausting Summer. But luckily, unlike Spidey and Jack Sparrow, the buzz around Detective Li and Detective Carter of Rush Hour 3 hasn't risen above a gentle hum. And with the tentpole mentality out of the way (no midnight screenings, juicy on-set rumors, profit-minded blog spoilers), the lack of heady expectation surrounding this sixth trilogy capper of the season makes Rush Hour 3 all the more tolerable.
Let's say it's like a Spring Roll: a flimsy, transparent outer-layer of action that bounds the healthy innards of comedy to make a fine, single entrée of a genre. The formula has aged; in fact, the whole genre has all but died since its advent with the original Rush Hour. But call that a blessing because Rush Hour 3 is a near-exact clone of its predecessors. It wouldn't work if we could remember the films' similarities.
That thin outer-layer of action breading involves the Parisian Triads and their attempted assassination of Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma), assigned charge of Detective Li (Jackie Chan). Driven by honor and pride and whatever else Westerners perceive the Chinese to be motivated by, Detective Li sets off to hunt the Triads to their core. Loud and racially alight, Detective Carter (Chris Tucker) tags along , using Li's investigation as a vacation from his duties as a lowly Los Angeles traffic controller.
As is standard to a buddy cop picture, the unlikely pairing of Jackie Chan to Chris Tucker is the film's lifeblood. Jeff Nathanson's script does well to load Tucker's performance with fantastic one-liners tailored to his shrieking timbre with ample opportunities for Chan to swing about as a one-man circus. This is where the two belong: with Tucker as the mouthpiece and Chan as the dropkick. Watching Jackie Chan trying to maneuver a snappy one liner is like watching him try to swallow cardboard. Not funny in the right way. And though his martial arts are still more dizzying than anything a skinny white boy like myself can imagine, Chan seems to have grown past his prime. Innocent and smiling, dying to entertain, Chan was the modern-day answer to silent-film legends. He flung himself into dastardly stunts for our gosh-wow amazement and did so with a giddy, boyish pride. He still does so here, but it's apparent that he's grown past fifty. I hate to call that a criticism since fifty-three year old stuntmen don't grow on trees, but the effects are sadly noticeable.
For a standard buddy cop picture, Brett Ratner seems the right choice as a standard director. Not especially interesting in any way (except, maybe, for ruining the X-Men franchise), Ratner directs the film rather competently. He leads it along at an efficient pace and never lets creativity stand in the way of the good, expected joke. And for this Rush Hour 3 is fine. It's no better than any other franchise decency released this Summer, but because its been six years since the last Rush Hour was released, this time it feels fresh. Or at least fresh enough.
Samuel Osborn
If I'm not mistaken, Rush Hour 3 is the final sequel in a long train of franchise continuations to be released during Summer '07. With Spiderman 3, 28 Weeks Later, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shrek 3, Oceans 13, Live Free or Die Hard, Fantastic Four 2, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hostel 2, Evan Almighty, and The Bourne Ultimatum on its heels, Rush Hour 3 certainly finds itself in a thick, polluted cloud of over-sized expectations and bristling fans. It's been an exhausting Summer. But luckily, unlike Spidey and Jack Sparrow, the buzz around Detective Li and Detective Carter of Rush Hour 3 hasn't risen above a gentle hum. And with the tentpole mentality out of the way (no midnight screenings, juicy on-set rumors, profit-minded blog spoilers), the lack of heady expectation surrounding this sixth trilogy capper of the season makes Rush Hour 3 all the more tolerable.
Let's say it's like a Spring Roll: a flimsy, transparent outer-layer of action that bounds the healthy innards of comedy to make a fine, single entrée of a genre. The formula has aged; in fact, the whole genre has all but died since its advent with the original Rush Hour. But call that a blessing because Rush Hour 3 is a near-exact clone of its predecessors. It wouldn't work if we could remember the films' similarities.
That thin outer-layer of action breading involves the Parisian Triads and their attempted assassination of Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma), assigned charge of Detective Li (Jackie Chan). Driven by honor and pride and whatever else Westerners perceive the Chinese to be motivated by, Detective Li sets off to hunt the Triads to their core. Loud and racially alight, Detective Carter (Chris Tucker) tags along , using Li's investigation as a vacation from his duties as a lowly Los Angeles traffic controller.
As is standard to a buddy cop picture, the unlikely pairing of Jackie Chan to Chris Tucker is the film's lifeblood. Jeff Nathanson's script does well to load Tucker's performance with fantastic one-liners tailored to his shrieking timbre with ample opportunities for Chan to swing about as a one-man circus. This is where the two belong: with Tucker as the mouthpiece and Chan as the dropkick. Watching Jackie Chan trying to maneuver a snappy one liner is like watching him try to swallow cardboard. Not funny in the right way. And though his martial arts are still more dizzying than anything a skinny white boy like myself can imagine, Chan seems to have grown past his prime. Innocent and smiling, dying to entertain, Chan was the modern-day answer to silent-film legends. He flung himself into dastardly stunts for our gosh-wow amazement and did so with a giddy, boyish pride. He still does so here, but it's apparent that he's grown past fifty. I hate to call that a criticism since fifty-three year old stuntmen don't grow on trees, but the effects are sadly noticeable.
For a standard buddy cop picture, Brett Ratner seems the right choice as a standard director. Not especially interesting in any way (except, maybe, for ruining the X-Men franchise), Ratner directs the film rather competently. He leads it along at an efficient pace and never lets creativity stand in the way of the good, expected joke. And for this Rush Hour 3 is fine. It's no better than any other franchise decency released this Summer, but because its been six years since the last Rush Hour was released, this time it feels fresh. Or at least fresh enough.
Samuel Osborn
The Bourne Ultimatum reviewed by Samuel Osborn
The auditorium in which I screened The Bourne Ultimatum was filled to capacity and humming comfortably with the floating refreshment of air conditioning when I took my seat. By the film's end, the theatre was still full to capacity but the room's temperature had risen several uncomfortable degrees. The air conditioning was furiously rattling, expelling refrigerated air as efficiently as possible, but it couldn't keep up with the perspiration-inducing intensity that the film had caused our heart-rates to rise to. The film had indirectly made the room hotter. Talk about global warming.
Stoic, solemn, and robotic, Jason Bourne returns for his trilogy capper, The Bourne Ultimatum. Less of a continuation and more of an upgrade from The Bourne Supremacy, this third installment, working off of Robert Ludlum's source material again, invents new memories for the amnesiac hero to remember. What used to be Operation Treadstone has now been upgraded to Operation Blackbriar and Mr. Bourne was (of course) involved with it in some corner of his blurry past.
As Ultimatum picks up almost immediately after Supremacy left off, Jason Bourne is still on the run, hurdling cops like leapfrog and outrunning the CIA like they were a pack of blind, one-legged cats. Falling in beside the defensive, calculating Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) as the CIA's resident Bourne expert is Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). Vosen heads up the Blackbriar gang and has hooked a reporter, Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), whose exposure stories on Bourne have uncovered confidential information. Because the information concerns Bourne's past and because it's a matter of national security, Ms. Landy, Mr. Vosen, and Mr. Bourne are all on his trail.
Director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, United 93) wastes zero time in mining the action from this storyline. As a filmmaker, his edit points are quick, his camera shaky, and his close-ups constant. He wants realism and he wants his action to appear in real-time. The pseudo-documentary style he's becoming known for is at its best here, muting the spectacle of his stunts to make room for believability in the play-pretend realism. And since it appears many of his stunts were actually coordinated on setand not in front of a computer monitorthe realism is certainly accepted as, well, real.
For this reason, The Bourne Ultimatum sprints as a missile for the moon. It's fast and sometimes infuriatingly so, as it rounds plot corners at double-time, leaving us confused and choking on its dust. But all is forgiven when a clever foot-chase is launched, when Bourne kicks down the clutch of a motorcycle, as he hijacks an NYPD squad car, as he leaps from a roof, etc, etc. Luckily his stunts are as loud as they are intelligent. And since Bourne stays generally low-tech with his tricks, he becomes a sort of spy-version of MacGyver.
Though I'm not positive as to how essential this installment is to the Bourne legacy. CIA Director Ezra Kramer is discussing the Bourne subject with Ms. Landy early on in the story. Both are unsure of Bourne's importance to the agency, weighing out the possibility of giving up the search altogether. Landy mentions that maybe he's not involved with this particular quarrel at all; that this isn't Bourne's fight. Kramer shrugs, frowns, and says, "Well, let's keep looking." It seems even the fictional players are stretching their connection to Bourne to keep this story chugging. And it's true; the Bourne legacy doesn't require this story to be told. This becomes apparent when the same good joke from the second film is repeated twice more in the third; and also when the action set-pieces are nearly the same, if not extended to a more satisfying length. Like I said, this is more of an upgrade than a sequel.
But don't think I'm complaining. The intelligence of the screenplay is a damned marvel. To craft the delicate logic of such a complex CIA tale deserves a merit on its own. And so what if it's a formula their running through the Hollywood factory for another go-round? The last film was the best spy film in ages. Just imagine how good this upgraded version is. And technically The Bourne Ultimatum does have its own (very valid) storyline that jet-sets Jason from Morocco to Paris to London to Madrid and finally to good ole' Manhattan. And though what character building that's continued here may not be required viewing for any Bourne enthusiast, the power that David Strathairn most certainly is. Skeletal and sever, Strathairn's Noah Vosen is a formidable needle of a villain. He's human, as all CIA leaders claim to be, but that trait is buried beneath a permafrost mounted by his overwhelming coldness. Strathairn drives this storyline into a realm of quasi-originality, making The Bourne Ultimatum relevant enough for us to enjoy it unabashedly. Because of him we swallow again the tired conceit of Bourne's lost memory and his lingering guilt. We admit that, yeah, this truly is a magnificent flick.
Samuel Osborn
The auditorium in which I screened The Bourne Ultimatum was filled to capacity and humming comfortably with the floating refreshment of air conditioning when I took my seat. By the film's end, the theatre was still full to capacity but the room's temperature had risen several uncomfortable degrees. The air conditioning was furiously rattling, expelling refrigerated air as efficiently as possible, but it couldn't keep up with the perspiration-inducing intensity that the film had caused our heart-rates to rise to. The film had indirectly made the room hotter. Talk about global warming.
Stoic, solemn, and robotic, Jason Bourne returns for his trilogy capper, The Bourne Ultimatum. Less of a continuation and more of an upgrade from The Bourne Supremacy, this third installment, working off of Robert Ludlum's source material again, invents new memories for the amnesiac hero to remember. What used to be Operation Treadstone has now been upgraded to Operation Blackbriar and Mr. Bourne was (of course) involved with it in some corner of his blurry past.
As Ultimatum picks up almost immediately after Supremacy left off, Jason Bourne is still on the run, hurdling cops like leapfrog and outrunning the CIA like they were a pack of blind, one-legged cats. Falling in beside the defensive, calculating Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) as the CIA's resident Bourne expert is Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). Vosen heads up the Blackbriar gang and has hooked a reporter, Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), whose exposure stories on Bourne have uncovered confidential information. Because the information concerns Bourne's past and because it's a matter of national security, Ms. Landy, Mr. Vosen, and Mr. Bourne are all on his trail.
Director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, United 93) wastes zero time in mining the action from this storyline. As a filmmaker, his edit points are quick, his camera shaky, and his close-ups constant. He wants realism and he wants his action to appear in real-time. The pseudo-documentary style he's becoming known for is at its best here, muting the spectacle of his stunts to make room for believability in the play-pretend realism. And since it appears many of his stunts were actually coordinated on setand not in front of a computer monitorthe realism is certainly accepted as, well, real.
For this reason, The Bourne Ultimatum sprints as a missile for the moon. It's fast and sometimes infuriatingly so, as it rounds plot corners at double-time, leaving us confused and choking on its dust. But all is forgiven when a clever foot-chase is launched, when Bourne kicks down the clutch of a motorcycle, as he hijacks an NYPD squad car, as he leaps from a roof, etc, etc. Luckily his stunts are as loud as they are intelligent. And since Bourne stays generally low-tech with his tricks, he becomes a sort of spy-version of MacGyver.
Though I'm not positive as to how essential this installment is to the Bourne legacy. CIA Director Ezra Kramer is discussing the Bourne subject with Ms. Landy early on in the story. Both are unsure of Bourne's importance to the agency, weighing out the possibility of giving up the search altogether. Landy mentions that maybe he's not involved with this particular quarrel at all; that this isn't Bourne's fight. Kramer shrugs, frowns, and says, "Well, let's keep looking." It seems even the fictional players are stretching their connection to Bourne to keep this story chugging. And it's true; the Bourne legacy doesn't require this story to be told. This becomes apparent when the same good joke from the second film is repeated twice more in the third; and also when the action set-pieces are nearly the same, if not extended to a more satisfying length. Like I said, this is more of an upgrade than a sequel.
But don't think I'm complaining. The intelligence of the screenplay is a damned marvel. To craft the delicate logic of such a complex CIA tale deserves a merit on its own. And so what if it's a formula their running through the Hollywood factory for another go-round? The last film was the best spy film in ages. Just imagine how good this upgraded version is. And technically The Bourne Ultimatum does have its own (very valid) storyline that jet-sets Jason from Morocco to Paris to London to Madrid and finally to good ole' Manhattan. And though what character building that's continued here may not be required viewing for any Bourne enthusiast, the power that David Strathairn most certainly is. Skeletal and sever, Strathairn's Noah Vosen is a formidable needle of a villain. He's human, as all CIA leaders claim to be, but that trait is buried beneath a permafrost mounted by his overwhelming coldness. Strathairn drives this storyline into a realm of quasi-originality, making The Bourne Ultimatum relevant enough for us to enjoy it unabashedly. Because of him we swallow again the tired conceit of Bourne's lost memory and his lingering guilt. We admit that, yeah, this truly is a magnificent flick.
Samuel Osborn