Review: "Valentine's Day"

"Valentine's Day" is more a marketing push than a movie. I have no doubt its genesis occurred in a cynical producer's office with dreams of opening weekend box office tallies -- not the den of a writer with a burning story to tell.

It's a manufactured film about a made-up holiday.

The movie boasts a huge roster of stars in one of those ensemble-casts-with-intersecting-storylines dealies. The boyfriend who proposes to his girlfriend is best friends with the woman who's a teacher with a boy in her class who buys roses from the first guy's flower shop, and so on.

Every time a new character arrives, we wonder where they will fit into this ever-expanding puzzle.

It's like "Crash," but everyone's moony.

I guess it's nice seeing so many cute young couples (and one older one, but still pretty cute) making big declarations of love and encountering romantic surprises. Some of the couplings are more interesting than others, and some of the characters you wish would go away.

The Meet Cute between Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts is one of the better ones. They're on a long plane flight, she falls asleep on his shoulder and they get to talking. She's an Army captain making a 28-hour round trip so she can spend a single day with someone special. He plays it coy but is impressed by her dedication.

Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace are a couple who've only been dating a couple of weeks when they have to face the daunting holiday that commands romance. She's got a rather kinky side job that might just send him for a loop.

"I'm from Muncie, Indiana," he explains. "The wildest thing I ever did was ... leave Muncie, Indiana."

Less intriguing is the sports newscaster (Jamie Foxx) forced to do man-on-the-street pap for Valentine's Day, when he wants to pursue the story of the NFL quarterback who has something big to announce. The quarterback's agent (Queen Latifah) is the boss of Hathaway's character, while his publicist (Jessica Biel) holds an anti-Valentine's Day party every year.

The movie starts with flower guy (Ashton Kutcher, who apparently actually has a career beyond Tweeting). He proposes to his sweetie (Jessica Alba), and he wants to tell the whole world about their engagement, while she advises keeping it quiet, which sorta hints where things are heading.

And so on. New love is found, old love is shaken, what was thought to be true love is shown to be not.

"Valentine's Day" is directed by feel-good king Garry Marshall ("Pretty Woman," "The Runaway Bride") from a screenplay by Katherine Fugate. It's smarmy but not cynical. What it mostly is is unnecessary -- sort of like a holiday reminding people to be nice to the one they love.

2 stars

Video review: "Good Hair"

Chris Rock got the idea for "Good Hair" when his young daughter came up to him one day and asked, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?"

That simple question led to this documentary about black women's relationship to their hair that is heartbreaking and illuminating, and often raucously funny.

Rock roams into Harlem hairdresser shops, an Atlanta stylist convention, factories filled with vats of chemical relaxers, and even remote Indian temples to answer his daughter's question.

What he discovers is a multiple-billion-dollar industry built around the idea of convincing African-Americans their hair needs to be tortured and teased in order to look "natural."

Some of the funniest scenes are in Rock's interviews with beautiful black celebrities like Nia Long, Eve and Raven-Symoné, who talk frankly about the expensive weaves they braid into their own coiffures.

Rock travels to India, visiting back-alley sweatshops where human hair is processed in a primitive fashion to be shipped to Beverly Hills boutiques. He even observes the religious practice of tonsure, the wellspring of this river of hair.

But the movie's real heart lies in Rock's revealing chats with everyday folks in barber shops, in scenes that are both funny and confessional.

Other than a copy of the theatrical trailer, DVD extras are limited to a single item. But it's a doozy: A feature-length commentary track with Rock and producer Nelson George.

The commentary is nearly as much fun as the movie itself, and also offers a few special insights. For example, Rock met one of the film's principal subjects, a hair product magnate, while attending a fundraiser for Barack Obama at Oprah's house.

I also liked their running commentary about their trip to India, including a surprising find by Rock in the local airport, and George's decision to throw away his luggage upon returning home.

The lack of other features is grating, though. What's especially odd is that during their commentary, Rock and George repeatedly refer to things that will be in the DVD extras.

I kept hunting through the disc's menus to find these phantom extras.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 2.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "The Strange One"

Although not remembered as one of the classics of its era, 1957's "The Strange One" is notable for a number of reasons that urge its consideration as a seminal film.

The first is that it was essentially an experiment by producer Sam Spiegel, in which the entire cast and crew came from the famed Actors Studio of New York, the wellspring of Method acting that influenced generations of performers. It would be like a modern Hollywood bigshot recruiting a graduate NYU film class and giving them a few million bucks with which to make a movie.

Ben Gazzara, George Peppard and Pat Hingle all made their film debuts in "The Strange One." All would go on to long and respectable careers in film and television.

It also launched the career of writer Calder Willingham, who wrote the screenplay based on his first novel (also a play). Stanley Kubrick noticed his work and picked him to do the screenplay for "Paths of Glory," perhaps the most overlooked movie of the great director's body of work. Willingham also had screenwriting credits on a number of important films: "The Graduate," "One-Eyed Jacks," "Rambling Rose" and "Little Big Man" -- probably my favorite Arthur Penn flick.

A number of other people associated with the film did not enjoy a similar level of future success. Rookie director Jack Garfein made only one other film. And actor Paul E. Richards, who had perhaps the boldest role of a homosexual cadet at a fictionalized version of The Citadel, saw his first and only screen credit of any kind.

Cadet Perrin McKee, or "Cockroach" as everyone calls him, starts out seeming a foolish and bumbling character, borderline moron in fact. But he later reveals himself as a schemer on par with any one of his classmates.

This was a time, don't forget, when Hollywood's production code forbade any overt depiction of homosexuality. Also notable is the character of Cadet Simmons, memorably played by Arthur Storch, a severely sexually repressed figure who is petrified when another cadet sets him up on a date with a woman.

The star, though, is Cadet Jocko DeParis, played by Gazzara. DeParis is a despicable upperclassmen who takes delight in manipulating and torturing those under his command. Even worse, he does this not out of any apparent sense of malice, but simply for the Machiavellian delight of it.

Willingham's novel and stage play were titled "End As a Man," but it was changed to "The Strange One" to emphasize the creepy charisma of Gazzara's performance. Neither is particularly great title.

Hingle plays Cadet Harry Koble, DeParis' right-hand man who experiences a case of the jitters when one of DeParis' jokes goes too far. While hazing Simmons and another freshman, Cadet Marquales (Peppard), in order to win poker money from another upperclassman, DeParis ends up framing a Cadet Avery for drunkenness. DeParis and his stooges beat up Avery and force whiskey down his throat to get him kicked out of school.

Avery's father, a major at the military college, confronts DeParis about his actions in an attempt to get him to fess up, but the cagey cadet brilliantly controls the conversation to gain the upper hand, in the film's most powerful scene.

It's a good movie, and would seem to be one in the long line of movies about the depravity beneath the shining surface of an elite prep school or military institution ("The Lords of Discipline," "School Ties") -- except for the fact that "The Strange One" was one of the first forays down this path.

For a movie that started a lot of careers, "The Strange One" also kicked off a worthwhile cinematic genre.

3 stars

Coming this week

I'll have reviews of "The Wolfman" and "Valentine's Day."

The video review will be "Good Hair."

I'll have classic film columns on "The Strange One" and "Le Mans."

Reeling Backward: "Roxanne"

Because he got his start doing doofy stand-up and comedies like "The Jerk," most people don't have an appreciation for what a cerebral guy Steve Martin really is.

This is a fellow who wrote a novel about Picasso arguing with Einstein, and penned numerous screenplays, including clever little movies most people didn't see like "Shopgirl" (he also wrote the novella). He also came up with the story for "Traitor," a terrific 2008 Don Cheadle movie that's worth catching.

So in that light perhaps it's not surprising that "Roxanne," which wears the clothes of a quirky romantic comedy, is actually based on the play "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Edmond Rostand. The story of a poet/swordsman with a comically huge nose has been turned into numerous movies -- most notably the 1950 film version that won Jose Ferrer an Oscar. But Martin, who wrote the script and stars, took the tragedy and took a left turn with it, both modernizing the setting and emphasizing the romantic and comedic elements.

He plays Charlie "C.D." Banes, the fire chief of a small ski resort town, who falls for the title character, an astronomer who's rented out a house for the summer to study a new comet. Of course, since his schnoz has its own zip code, she kind of dismisses him as a romantic partner. Instead, she falls for Chris (Rick Rossovich), the handsome but dim new firefighter at C.D.'s station.

Directed by the Australian talent Fred Schepisi (who also helmed "Barbarosa," featured in this space not long ago), "Roxanne" is a light, funny movie with a lot of deep undercurrents. It's a challenging look at the nature of love and attraction, and how people often fall for the outside package, deluding themselves into thinking the object of their lust must also have wonderful inner qualities, too.

The fact that it's about male rather than female beauty makes it all the more interesting. The movie's depiction dovetails with my own observation that handsome men tend to be pricks, and that women are much more willing to ascribe positive personality traits to a man just because she thinks he's dreamy-looking. Men learn very early on that just because a woman is beautiful, it doesn't mean she's a wonderful person, too. I think it has to do with the whole "Prince Charming" myth, that a perfect guy will arrive to rescue them. As a result, good-looking guys have a lot of women throw themselves at them, which leads to swelled ego, and hence the aforementioned prickdom.

In the movie's case, Chris is actually not a jerk, and is in fact painfully shy around women. That's why he enlists C.D.'s aid in wooing her with romantic, poetic letters. Of course, eventually he and Roxanne have to have a real date, which the boys nearly destroy with a cockamamie scheme to rig a transmitter in Chris' hunting hat so C.D. can feed him lines. When the radio goes on the fritz, Chris reveals an unfortunate glimpse of his real self, praising Roxanne's "knockers."

Of course, it all builds to Roxanne discovering that it is C.D. who really loves her, and that he is the one she fell in love with through his words.

The film is a real charmer, from start to finish. There's a lot of lovely throwaway jokes -- I love the one where C.D. buys a newspaper from a machine, looks at the headline and screams, and fetches another coin from his pocket so he can throw the offending paper back into the box.

There's also a lot of actors in nice supporting performances, such as Fred Willard, Shelly Duvall, Damon Wayans, John Kapelos and Michael J. Pollard.

This gem from Steve Martin, Fred Schepisi and company has both beauty, and brains.

4 stars

Review: "From Paris with Love"

"From Paris with Love" is a dumb, violent movie, but it knows it. It doesn't take itself seriously, and features John Travolta in a performance of such impish glee, he's obviously enjoying chewing on the scenery so much he should have paid the filmmakers for the privilege, rather than the other way around.

It's such an adrenaline-filled, kooky kick that we don't mind that the plot makes hardly a lick of sense. Sometimes, boys just want to have fun.

Travolta plays Charlie Wax, an American spy sent to Paris do some clean-up work. And to someone like Charlie, getting things clean is a very messy process.

With a shaved head, goatee, gawdy earring and omnipresent keffiyeh and leather jacket, Travolta strikes quite an outlandish figure. The only thing more over-the-top is his behavior. Charlie's M.O. is shoot first, shoot second, and keep on shooting until your problems go away.

In one scene, Charlie goes into a Chinese restaurant looking for cocaine. He takes out his gun and starts blowing away waiters, and finally shoots holes in the ceiling, where streams of powdered narcotics start cascading down.

Who keeps cocaine stored in their ceiling? How did Charlie know it was there? If you're the sort of person who can't help but wonder these things, then this movie is not for you.

Charlie's reluctant partner is James Reece (John Rhys-Meyers), a young up-and-comer sick of his cushy duties acting as the American ambassador's secretary. He can't believe the way Charlie operates, and would rather be spending time with his cute French girlfriend Caroline. (She's French, so it's pronounced "karo-LEAN.")

Charlie clearly enjoys getting a rise out of James, so he does all sorts of crazy things to put them in danger, just so he can save their bacon. In one scene, he takes out an entire gang of drug dealers, then turns to James and thunders, "Tell me that wasn't some impressive shit!"

Based on a story by Luc Besson (who also produced) by screenwriter Adi Hasak, "Paris" was directed by Pierre Morel, who impressed with last year's "Taken." The characters played by Liam Neeson and Travolta couldn't be more different, nor the movies in which they are showcased. Whereas Neeson's ex-spy was a lesson in controlled lethality, Charlie is a giggly killer who really, really likes what he does.

At some point, the story turns from one about drugs to terrorism -- and it occurs just that abruptly. Charlie yells something like, "This isn't about cocaine, it's about terrorists!" And then they start chasing Middle Eastern-looking guys who are plotting to blow up something important.

One moment I have to comment on: At one point a character reveals themselves to be wearing a suicide bomb. In close-ups of the plastic explosives and wiring, you can clearly see a triangular sign in yellow-orange that says, "CAUTION." Now, what kind of terrorists put warning labels on their suicide vests? "Hey, we better let them know, since we don't want anything bad to happen."

I admit I went into "From Paris from Love" thinking it was going to be a supremely stupid movie. I was right, but didn't imagine how much fun idiocy could be.

3 stars

Review: "Dear John"

Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum make for a cute couple in "Dear John," a romantic drama about a soldier separated by war from the girl he loves. But I never quite bought them as a real, passionate pair of star-crossed lovers as in "The Notebook," which like this movie was adapted from a novel by Nicholas Sparks.

OK, let's be frank here: Ryan Gosling of "Notebook" is one of the finest actors of his generation, with an Oscar nomination for "Half Nelson" and edgy performances in movies like "Lars and the Real Girl." Tatum starred in the dancing movie "Step Up" and its sequel, the street boxing movie "Fighting" and that execrable "G.I. Joe" flick.

So although we may believe Tatum as a big, tough Army Special Forces warrior, he's less convincing when he's making goo-goo eyes at Seyfried.

He plays John Tyree, who catches the eye of Savannah Curtis when he dives off a beach pier to rescue her fallen handbag. She invites him back to her place for a party, and pretty much overnight they're an item.

There are hurdles. Savannah's preppy friends don't care for the working-class soldier, and there's some indication that John's past is marred by troubles with his temper. Also, John's father (Richard Jenkins) is a virtual recluse who spends all day puttering around with his coin collection, barely speaking to his son or anyone else.

Savannah thinks John's dad has a mild form of autism, with which she is familiar because her next-door neighbor (Henry Thomas) has a young son with it. Her attempt to break through dad's shell creates friction between the young couple.

Being a soldier, John soon hears the call of duty that takes him far away. I don't think I'm treading into spoiler territory by revealing that she eventually dumps him via a letter. The movie's title, after all, is synonymous with such wartime separations.

Since this happens a little more than halfway through, it obviously isn't the end of their story together. But more than that, you'll have to discover for yourself.

Director Lasse Hallström ("Chocolat") and screenwriter Jamie Linden avoid the worst pitfalls of the romantic genre, with a story about a group of people that feels untidy but authentic. The romance between John and Savannah is the center of this little world, of course, but it's hardly the only thing going on.

Unfortunately, the stuff in the background is more interesting than the main action. Seyfried has a nice, slightly goofy charm. Tatum is certainly movie-star handsome, but doesn't project much of an emotional center.

(A quibble: I found it odd that the movie is explicitly set in Charleston, but only one character is ever heard with a Southern twang. Carolina accents are not exactly easy to miss.)

I just didn't have any strong reaction to "Dear John." I give it points for avoiding predictability. But it's never a good sign when the best way to describe how you feel about a movie is indifference.

2 stars