Review: "Love Happens"

"Love Happens" manages to incorporate all the clichés of the romantic comedy genre, and hits all those for the dramatic weepie, too.

This weird and disappointing movie tries unsuccessfully to tell the story of a truly and deeply depressed man, and dress it up in the clothes of a quirky/funny romcom. So there are scenes of frivolous, spontaneous courting, followed immediately by dour bits where you think the protagonist is going to jump off a building.

There's even -- God help us -- a slow-clap scene. You know the kind I'm talking about: A large group of people responds to an emotional moment with one guy clapping slowly, which is picked up by the rest of the crowd and builds in an enthusiastic crescendo. As a cinematic device, the slow clap became hackneyed in approximately 1987.

Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart) is a self-help guru who goes around the country giving emotional pep talks to people about how to deal with personal loss. He's on the verge of becoming the next Dr. Phil, with a deal for a talk show, DVD distribution, radio program and the whole kabob looming.

Burke seems sincere, despite a money-hungry manager (delightfully played by Dan Fogler). After all, it was the loss of his own wife in a tragic accident three years ago that prompted him to write his best-selling book, "A-Okay!"
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So, surely a run-in with a snarky flower-shop owner named Eloise (Jennifer Aniston) will brighten up his life. Eloise decorates the Seattle hotel where Burke's latest seminar is taking place -- and also surreptitiously scribbles obscure vocab words behind paintings in the hallways.
It's cute, but if someone really felt compelled to share terms like "quidnunc" with the world, why hide it?

By the way, a person who intentionally uses long, obscure words is called a sesquipedalianist, so you just know that one's going to turn up eventually.

Eloise and Burke don't exactly hit it off. In fact, she even pretends to be deaf in order to avoid his initial come-on. This leads to their next meeting, in which Burke gives her the finger. I have to give it to co-writers Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson -- you don't see too many screen couples flipping each other off.

But Camp, who also directed, just can't make sense of all the different and often conflicting things zinging around his movie. You've got Judy Greer as Eloise's slam-poet shop assistant, Martin Sheen as Burke's P.O.'d ex-Marine father-in-law, and Frances Conroy badly misused in a tiny scene as Eloise's mom.

And that's on top of the overriding incongruency of a guy who still hasn't gotten over his dead wife doing meet-cutes and falling-in-love montages to guitar-heavy music cues.

Sometimes pairing unlikely elements or characters together makes for movie magic. And sometimes "Love Happens."

2 stars

Google Fast Flip the wave of the future?

So I'm checking out Google's "shiny new toy," as David Carr of the NYT describes it. Google Fast Flip is beta version of a news hub that allows viewers to flip through images of Web pages in a layout that's very similar to a magazine. Clicking on those pages then takes you to the original content from the Web site it came from.

Viewers can organize the pages by subject, popularity, source, etc. You can check it out for yourself here.

Personally, I don't think Flip is as ground-breaking as people are making it out to be. After all, it's essentially just another version of a news aggregator, but more visually oriented and with more controls for the viewer. Neat, but not exactly reinventing the wheel.

The part about it that I find fascinating is that Google has agreed to share revenue with the content providers based on the advertising Google places around the Flip pages. This is pretty major, since the business model of aggregators like Google has been to link to/rewrite content while keeping ad revenue for themselves.

Perhaps Google has seen all the talk about news organizations banding together to charge for online content or even stop aggregator links. (Mark Cuban has said it can be accomplished with a few lines of code.) I welcome any move toward partnerships between traditional news organizations and those new media upstarts who know how to movie information across the Web, fast.

To take the argument analog, it's as if people were getting a book, making photocopies of it, then selling the copies as if they had published the book themselves. In many cases, aggregators gather more Web traffic (and thus more ad dollars) than the people who actually took the time and expense to produce original content.

In the old days, we would call the copiers "plagiarists" without much hesitation. But we have to recognize that in the information age, old standards and practices may have to go by the wayside.

Those distributing, and profiting, from disseminating other companies' work on the Web have to understand that it's a symbiotic relationship. If newspapers and other media go under, the aggregators won't have anything to link to. Google's step to share revenue is much more relevant than the actual new widget.

DVD review: "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was doomed before they even started filming.

Not because audiences didn't want to see a spin-off about most popular character from the "X-Men" movies. Comic book fans were hungry for a story on the further adventures of the wayward mutant hero with metal claws and a healing ability that makes him unkillable -- preferably one they're already familiar with from the character's long history. (Japan, anyone?)

Instead, director Gavin Hood and his team delve into the character's origin story, which turns out to be one long Cain and Abel saga in which Wolverine and his similarly clawed brother Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) play out their sibling rivalry in a seemingly endless series of stabby tussles.

Face it: Wolverine was more intriguing as a mystery man. The minute they tried to burden him with a past, he diminished as a character.

The DVD comes with a good set of extras, including two separate feature commentaries, one by Hood and the other by producers Brian Winter and Lauren Shuler Donner. Each are entertaining without covering much new ground.

Wolverine's comic book creators, Stan Lee and Len Wein, trade amusing banter in a 16-minute featurette in which Lee reveals that he considered the X-Men the runt of his litter of other comic titles such as "Thor" and "The Fantastic Four."

In "Wolverine Unleashed," a 12-minute making-of doc, star Hugh Jackman says his disturbingly veiny physique -- which he spent months sculpting with a special diet and training regimen -- was intended to make the character appear "freaky." "I wanted it to look animal," he says.

There are also four deleted/alternate scenes, including a variation on a critical scene leading up to the final showdown with Victor, in which Wolverine agrees to have his memories erased.

While straining credulity, this explanation for his memory loss is superior to the laughable moment in the final film, in which Wolverine is shot in the head with bullets made from the same indestructible metal in his skeleton. At least they weren't silver.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "Poltergeist"

For my money, "Poltergeist" is one of the scariest movies of the '80s, and certainly one of the most frightening PG-rated films of all time.

How in the world did this 1982 flick get a PG rating? My understanding is that it originally received an R from the MPAA, but it was changed to a PG during the appeals process, which usually involves editing out some of the more objectionable material. So how did the scene where the guy tears off his own face pass muster?

Whatever. I'm glad it did. Otherwise my parents probably wouldn't have taken me to see it when it came out. This film from director Tobe Hooper ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre") became an instant classic in its depiction of a suburban family whose daughter is sucked into a netherworld of lost spirits.

Everyone remembers the scene where blond-haired pixie Carol Anne puts her tiny hands on the television screen, and creepily intones, "They're heeerrre!!" The forces she refers to as "the TV people" are in fact the spirits of the dead buried beneath their tract housing development in California. Mom (JoBeth Williams) will later get a first-hand encounter with them in the half-dug backyard swimming pool.

For me, the film really gets rolling when the paranormal investigators are called in to check out the home of the Freeling family. I love the scene where one of the science stooges explains to the father (Craig T. Nelson) about the amazing video he once recorded of a toy truck moving from one side of a room to another over the course of seven hours. He's trying to impress Mr. Freeling with what he considers a solid piece of evidence of the existence of ghosts, and Freeling just nods his head nonchalantly. Then he opens the door to his children's bedroom, where toys are flying around the room like a mini-tornado has invaded.

The other scientist is, of course, the guy who later peels the flesh off his face, in one of the movie's most famous scenes. It looks a little dated now -- you can easily spot the moment when they switch over to a special-effects mannequin -- but still horrifying enough to force my wife to look away. Personally, I prefer the bit a moment earlier when a steak crawls across the kitchen counter, then turns itself inside-out. (Although, who keeps an unwrapped steak on a plate inside their fridge?)

The moment that really sends a thrill up my leg is when the dwarf psychic Tangina (memorably played by Zelda Rubinstein) explains to Mr. and Mrs. Freeling exactly what has happened to their daughter. A powerful and nefarious force keeps her trapped in the netherworld between this plane of existence and the next. When Tangina says, "It lies to her," the hairs on my nape always stand on end.

On a side note, many people remember the tragic death of Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne, at the age of 12 from complications related to Crohn's Disease. But they forget that her screen sister, Dominique Dunne, also suffered a terrible fate, being strangled to death by an ex-boyfriend a few months after "Poltergeist" came out. She was 22. He brother is actor Griffin Dunne.

She apparently had long been a victim of domestic violence; she made a guest appearance on "Hill Street Blues" as an abuse victim, and didn't have to wear bruise make-up because she really had been beaten up by her boyfriend the day before. Horrible.

Perhaps inevitably, "Poltergeist" went on to have two sequels, both of which were pale reflections of the original. JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson wisely bowed out after the second film, leaving it to O'Rourke -- by then typecast as "the Poltergeist girl" -- to go visit her aunt and uncle for her newest haunting.

The other notable thing about the movie is the controversy over whether Tobe Hooper really directed the film. Steven Spielberg, who produced and co-wrote the screenplay, was reportedly on set most of the time and may have felt Hooper was not up to the task. Nelson and Williams have both claimed that Spielberg was the one who said "action" and "cut" during most of filming, and even coached the cast on their performances, until veteran actress Beatrice Straight (who plays the head of the paranormal scientists) objected.

Whether directed by Hooper or Spielberg or some bastard combination thereof, "Poltergeist" is one of the all-time great horror films.

4 stars

New this week

I'll have reviews of "The Informant!" starring Matt Damon and "Love Happens" with Jennifer Aniston.

No review of "Jennifer's Body," unfortunately -- the studio scheduled one, but then later rescinded it. Never a good indication.

The DVD review will be "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

And I'll have Reeling Backward columns on "Poltergeist" and "Clash of the Titans." I've been on a bit of a late 1970s/early '80s kick lately, which will continue through next week.

Reeling Backward: "The Asphalt Jungle"

Was there ever a film noir as dour and cynical as "The Asphalt Jungle"? Was there ever an anti-hero as hard-boiled as Sterling Hayden's Dix Handley?

I think the answer to both questions is a resounding "no."

Director John Huston's 1950 masterpiece is a vision of grime and human depravity. The main character is a hooligan who kills quickly and without remorse, and seems indifferent to the girl who is clearly in love with him. And yet, he's the closest thing to a redeemable character in the picture.

What's most striking about the film is how criminals are portrayed as professionals with a job to do, not necessarily evil people who enjoy inflicting hurt. Made during a time when the Production Code decreed that criminals always had to be shown getting their comeuppance, Huston's depiction of cops and crooks caught in the same shadowy underworld ot temptation was practically an open rebellion.

No one in "Jungle" is shown as being purely evil. Sure, Dix is a Kentucky farmboy-turned street muscle, but his dream is to buy back the family horse farm they had to give up in the Depression. "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider (Same Jaffe, in an Oscar-nominated performance) is the criminal mastermind who goes about his work with utter professionalism and respect for his peers. Doc is a jewel thief with the demeanor of a lab scientist.

His scheme for a big jewel heist is funded by a respectable lawyer, Lon Emmerich (Louis Calhern). Except for one problem -- Emmerich is broke himself, the price of leading a double life with a high-cost girlfriend who must be kept in gin and furs. She's played by Marilyn Monroe in one of her first substantial screen roles, already displaying the legendary sex appeal that would propel her to fame, and limit her career.

Marc Lawrence has an effective turn as Cobby, the small-time bookie who'd like to break into the big time, and acts as go-between for Emmerich. The attorney's plan is to use Cobby's dough to finance the heist, then make off with the goods himself, with the help of a lowlife private investigator played by Brad Dexter.

Rounding out the cast are James Whitmore as Gus, Dix's hunchback friend and an occasional wheel man, when he's not running the local greasy spoon diner. And Jean Hagen plays the dame, whose name is literally Doll. (At first, I thought that was just what Dix was calling her, but no, that's her actual name.) Doll's had some hard luck herself, and is crashing at Dix's place when he gets the call to join Doc's crew.

As Dix, Hayden is a pastiche of icy glares and jawboned dialogue that tumbles out of his mouth like he has contempt for every word. Hayden was an interesting Hollywood iconoclast: He began his life as a sailor, and fell into acting because he thought it was easy, and paid well. He made little attempt to conceal his contempt for the acting craft, which cost him jobs later on in his career. I read somewhere that Hayden was supposed to play the role of Captain Quint in "Jaws," but Robert Shaw took over because of Hayden's tax trouble.

The robbery goes well at first, but an increasing number of complications keep cropping up. After Emmerich's double-cross fails, Doc and Dix are on the run with a bag full of jewels and no fence to pay them.

Doc's capture by the police is one of the all-time great scenes in crime movies. Doc has a weakness for girls, and had planned to use the money to retire to Mexico in luxury. He makes it out of the city -- the film is set in an unnamed Midwest metropolis, possibly Cincinnati, where it was partially shot -- and seems to have gotten away. While resting in a roadside diner, he spies a teen girl who's upset that the two boys she's with have run out of nickels for the jukebox. He offers her a couple dollars worth so he can sit awhile and watch her provocative dancing. Meanwhile, some cops spy him through the window and arrest him when he comes out.

Doc's questioning of one of the police men about how long they had been waiting for him is poignant, since it's clear that if he hadn't delayed to satisfy his lust, he could have gotten away.

Every man has a weakness, the message of the film seems to be, and the jungle of the modern city acts as a pressure cooker to bring out their worst instincts. Dix says he can't wait to get back to Kentucky so he can wash the dirt of the city off of him.

Huston wrote the script with Ben Maddow, based on the book by W.R. Burnett. There's a great line of dialogue where Emmerich is talking about how people treat criminals as a lower form of humanity than "respectable" people like himself. "They're not so different. After all, crime is merely a left-handed form of human endeavor."

The irony that the lowly professional criminals hold up their end of the bargain, and the eminent lawyer is the one who louses things up with his dirty scheming, is tasty indeed.

4 stars

Bonus DVD review: "Deadgirl"

Just when you think horror films have violated every taboo known to mankind, along comes "Deadgirl" to shatter one we (hopefully) hadn't even considered: Zombie rape.

Yes, really.

The tagline for this stylish low-budget indie says it all: "You never forget your first time."

Here's the set-up: Two slacker teens ditch class to go drink some beers at the local abandoned insane asylum. Deep in the bowels of the musty building, they come across the body of a dead girl, chained up and covered in plastic, hidden in a room behind a door that rusted shut years ago. How did she get there?

Their questions will have to wait, because it turns out the girl is still breathing! She won't talk and behaves like a feral animal, snapping at them with her teeth.

Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez, a dead ringer for a young Joaquin Phoenix) wants to set her free, but his best friend J.T. (Noah Segan) has a more sinister thought: What if they just kept her? After all, it's doubtful anyone even knows she's here. They could use her as their sex slave.

Rickie is horrified, and they fight and argue, until J.T. discovers a terrible secret: The girl (Jenny Spain, who spends the entire movie naked) seems impervious to injury. J.T. "kills" her three times, but she keeps moving and twitching, even after being shot three times.

Rickie, who's got a thing for a rich girl at school (Candice Accola), determines to sneak in and free the girl, but discovers that J.T. has brought in their friend Wheeler (Eric Podnar) to take part in the debauchery.

Things really get hairy when a couple of jock bullies invade the zombie sex sanctum, and one of them takes up a dare to have the girl perform fellatio on him. Living dead+genitals=not good.

Despite its premise, "Deadgirl" really isn't a schlocky spoof, but a well-made and superbly acted (for a horror flick) film from directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, and screenwriter Treng Haaga.

Still, there are plenty of gross-out moments, including a severed limb, an upper lip that's bitten off, and a memorable scene in the school bathroom with some exploding guts splatting against the tile. The unrated DVD, which hits stores Sept. 15, includes some sections that are worth watching in slo-mo for the bloody special effects aficionado.

3.5 stars