In Inception, we have a movie that uses the Cartesian dilemma as a chance to examine ideas, rather than as a plot point. True, the half of me that’s saying this is the half of me that is majoring in philosophy, but Inception is good enough (and pretty enough) that it should satisfy anyone who is willing to examine their cogito for 2 and half hours, which, in truth, may not be that many people. However Inception is received by audiences at large, there’s no denying that it’s indubitably the strangest $200 million film ever made. Hell, it’s probably the strangest $100 million film ever made. Most of the film’s action takes place in dreams, and some of it takes place within dreams within dreams within dreams. Thankfully, Christopher Nolan, the auteur behind The Dark Knight, knows how to create a trailer-friendly money shot, or he never would have had this chance, regardless of his last film’s success.

Nolan again borrows an emotional coldness and penchant for urban gunfights from Michael Mann, but he attaches it to a story that’s  more complex and more intellectually stimulating. He’ll probably never match the technical efficiency of the armored truck robbery from Heat, but he can keep trying, because Mann will probably never have the imagination to fold Paris over on itself for the sake of an idea. The protagonist’s dramatic arc is also something that one would find in a Mann film, he is a professional spy that must finish one last job so he can return home to his children. The “one last job” is fairly unimportant, but what Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has to spy on is people’s dreams. Cobb enters the subconscious of other people’s dreams and steals confidential information, often while under fire from projections of the subject’s subconscious, which often take the form of men with guns. Cobb’s team is made up of Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a researcher, Eames (Tom Hardy), a thief who can easily take the shape of other people within a dream, and Ariadne (Ellen Page), an “architect” who creates the universe of the dream, Penrose stairs and all.

But what’s great about Inception isn’t the tireless exposition required to make the world make sense, rather it’s the way Nolan attacks these ideas with the precision of a surgeon rather than an open-minded acceptance of the power of our imagination. Even the objective truth of waking life is questioned, no easy answers are given, and the safety of the real world is never assured. Like DiCaprio’s last film, Shutter Island, reality is uncertain, but this film deals with logical consequences of such a scenario, rather than using it as a contrived plot point or a supposedly shocking third act twist. In the end, Nolan grasps what Descartes could not (granted, he was aided with hundreds of years of philosophical development), that even if we can determine whether our material existence is a dream or not, it doesn’t make our psychological experiences any less meaningful.

- Alan Jones

The American Western has fallen in stature considerably since its days as a staple of the Hollywood studio system. The last time a major studio decided to count on a Western as a blockbuster, we got the awful Wild Wild West, a sci-fi influenced Western that stands out as a large blemish on the otherwise impressive career of Will Smith. It appears that Hollywood has learned nothing since then in developing big-budget Westerns, as Jonah Hex, which opens today, is another sci-fi influenced Western which offers nothing to the discerning viewer but blandly photographed explosions and an eccentric, but misused cast.

Of course, unlike Wild Wild West, this film is an adaptation of a graphic novel and was geenlit after a number of other graphic novels. Originally, however, Jonah Hex was meant to be written and directed by the inconsistent and possibly insane but never boring team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who are best known for their hyperstylized low budget work on the Crank franchise. Considering what those two did with Corey Haim in Crank: High Voltage, one wonders if Will Arnett would have seemed so completely miscast with them in charge. But due to “creative differences”, Jimmy Hayward, whose only experience as a director came from the animated Horton Hears a Who, replaced these two as director. As a result, Jonah Hex is a shell of its possible self, with sometimes (slightly) interesting writing compromised by hopelessly incompetent filmmaking.

The film tells the story of Jonah Hex, a former confederate soldier searching for vengeance in the post-Civil War West after a confederate general (John Malkovitch) killed his family and made one side of his face look like a slice of cold pizza with a branding iron. Interestingly, John Malkovitch’s general, a confederate holdout, is more interested in destroying the American government than replacing it with his own. He also employs terrorist tactics that often result dead civilians, at one point utilizing suicide bombers on a train instead of robbing it. Yup, General Turnbull is an allegorical stand-in for radical Islamist terrorists, he even tries to build a weapon of mass destruction (this is where the sci-fi influence pokes its head out).

Jonah Hex is to Westerns what last year’s Sherlock Holmes is to Victorian-era mysteries: sexed-up (by way of a comely prostitute played by Megan Fox) and with more explosions. But while I wasn’t a fan of that movie, at least it could rely on the chemistry between Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law along with some ambitious action scenes; this film has nothing. Any allegorical message it may have started out with is lost in the overblown, underwritten and poorly conceived finale, which is only the worst part of film which appears to have been cut down to only its barest plot points and loudest of action scenes.

-Alan Jones

Located at Queen and Spadina, The Toronto Underground Cinema is the city’s newest operating movie house. With 700 seats it is the second largest single screen theatre in town. Run by and for film fans the Toronto Underground Cinema will be the premiere event cinema venue. We will be screening cult classics, seldom seen treasures and popular favourites.

The first two movies shown at the new cinema will be the film adaptation of Clue and, fittingly considering the new theatre’s location, John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. Both of these films will be shown for FREE this Friday, May 14th. I encourage you all to go and have a good time.

You can find the Facebook Event page for Clue and Big Trouble here, and the Facebook group for Toronto Underground here.

Walking into the new Platinum Dunes horror remake is a bit like walking into a cheap brothel; you don’t know what you’re gonna get, but it’s probably gonna suck. But that’s not to say there won’t be any little pleasures. Take, for example, last year’s reboot of the Friday the 13^th franchise. The majority of the movie consisted of a bunch of boring teenage characters getting killed by Jason Voorhees in various not-all-that-thrilling manners. But it was buoyed by a 25-minute opening sequence that acted like a typical horror movie, but without all the boring, unnecessary scenes. It cut out all the pointless exposition, all the poorly written attempts at character development, and gave us 5 inventive murder scenes in succession. The rest of the film had nowhere near the efficiency, and even the kill scenes lacked invention, but it was aided by a generous dose of gratuitous nudity and weird Judd Apatow-inspired humour (especially when dealing the token minority characters).

I’m sad to say that this new incarnation of Nightmare on Elm Street is a step down. It’s competently shot and edited, but most of the movie is exposition about bland characters in bland houses talking about their bland feelings. The small pleasures come in the performance of the extra creepy Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger, who is given precious little screen time in the first hour of the film. Haley delivers his one-liners with aplomb, making the lamest jokes sound creepy as all hell. He’s not the wisecracking Freddy Krueger that Robert Englund (who played Krueger in eight previous films) created, but he’s a worthy alternative. He even gets a chance to act without the make-up in a series of flashbacks.

But other than that, there is nothing new to offer in this film. Even two of the kill scenes are stolen wholesale from the original film. The actors are poor, even by slasher film standards, with the exception of Kyle Gallner, who is merely sufficient. Even all the goodwill brought about by a relatively thrilling final act is ruined by one of the most ill conceived Pulp Fiction homages ever put to film. I’m not really sure what else to say about the film, other than that it’s probably exactly how you expect it to be, but with less nudity and a decent villain. The idea of a serial killer haunting one’s dreams is really quite intriguing, but this film doesn’t utilize the premise’s inherent potential. One could argue that Craven’s film didn’t either, but it’s more acceptable when the film in question works. But in this film, the nature of the nightmares doesn’t even adhere to the logic of the movie, which is always a bad move.

- Alan Jones

It’s kind of hard not to like <i>The Losers</i>, despite the forced humour, mediocre special effects, and poorly edited action sequences, it’s got an infectious energy that’s hard to dismiss. Part of that energy is probably due to the insanely likable cast, and the other part is probably due to the bright comic-inspired colour scheme that permeates the entire movie. It’s not a deep movie by any standards, but its aided by an awareness of its limitations.  I can’t bring myself  to recommend the movie, but there are far worse ways to spend the first weekend of the summer.

The movie (which hops all over the world before it finishes) begins in Bolivia, where our team of military experts saves the lives of 25 children from an American air strike ordered by the mysterious “Max”. When the helicopter taking the children to safety is destroyed by another aircraft, the team of “losers” throw their dog tags into the wreckage, realizing that it was meant for them. And thus, they plan their revenge on Max, who is portrayed as one the most hyperbolically evil megalomaniacs to hit movie screens by Jason Patric. Does it make sense that the team (correctly) assume Max is a CIA agent? Probably not, but don’t think about it too deeply. It’s probably more drawn out in the graphic novels the film was based on.

As I mentioned before, one of the main charms of the movie is the cast. The team is made up of Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Roque (Idris Elba), Jensen (Chris Evans), Cougar (Oscar Jaenada), and Pooch (Columbus Short). Morgan does well as the charismatic leader of the group, and despite being in his mid-40′s, could go on to become a movie star anyways. Elba does well as his main opposition in the group. Evans makes a lot of the comedic material work, wven though it really shouldn’t, as the annoying motormouth tech nerd, Columbus Short is suitably charismatic for the least characterized member of the ensemble (or “the guy with a pregnant wife at home”). Jaenada is the only weak spot, but he has very few lines, so it doesn’t really matter all that much. They are joined in Bolivia by Aisha (Zoe Saldana), who introduces herself to Clay in a violent meet-cute that, again, makes little story sense, but is kind of fun to watch, and offers them the information they need to find Max. I should also note that Patric is great as Max, whether he’s explaining to his henchman the difference between a “break this guy’s fingers” nod of the head and a “throw this guy off the building” nod of the head, or bathing in a hot springs with a number of exotically clad women, which, again, has nothing to do with the story.

But the game actors can’t make up for the script by James Vanderbilt and Peter Berg (the team behind The Rundown), which unwisely attempts to force the chemistry out of the characters. This method unfortunately results in a lot of hit-or-miss jokes and one-liners, and a feeling that the movie is trying way to hard to get you to like it. It’s a shame, screenwriters should have relied on the cast to create appealing character moments, rather than on forced moments of “cleverness”. Director Sylvain White (You Got Served) shows promise. The goofy colour-scheme of the movie is endearing, and the more the film plays with comic book conventions, the better. But his weakness is in the action scenes, which adopt the unfortunate approach of using handheld cameras and editing way too quickly. Granted, unlike a lot of contemporary action films, you can actually tell what’s going on in this one, but it’s still disappointing to see a movie as visually interesting as The Losers go for the crappiest method of shooting an action scene.

As for the story itself, it’s nothing impressive. You can see the inevitable twist from a mile away, and the usual twists and turns of plot are used. In fact, the quality of the story is a bit like the quality of the movie itself, it’s decent if your expectations are suitably low. In other words, it ain’t much, but for what it is, it ain’t terrible.

-Alan Jones

The 1981 version of Clash of the Titans is actually a pretty good movie. Granted, the film’s effects, sets and dialogue are cheesy, but everyone from the actors, director, production people on that project seemed to have embraced these qualities and it gave that film a charming presence that you do not see in the average bad movie; and like great cheese, it just gets better over time. This is the charm that director Louis Leterrier’s remake does not have and turns what could have been a great time at the movies into a forgettable experience.

Perseus (Sam Worthington), is the mortal son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), who goes on a mission to prevent Hades’ (Ralph Finnes) from unleashing the Kraken on mankind and saving the princess Andromeda from being the beast’s sacrifice. Our hero learns that the only way to achieve this is by taking Medusa’s head and forcing the Kraken to look at it, turning the beast into stone. Joining him on this quest includes Perseus’ guardian Io (Gemma Aterton) and a group of soldiers lead by Draco (Mads Mikkelsen). Leaving Perseus with the choice whether or not to take his place with the gods or continue living life among normal men.

Trivia question: What was the last film Finnes and Neeson did together? Schindler’s List! (However you choose to interpret that is your personal call.)  In all seriousness, this is an amazing cast, but it has absolutely nothing to work with. Its not that anyone in the cast is particularly bad, but the character’s are so one-note and the dialogue lacks any humor or personality, that all they really do is say their lines with either a stoic or sinister tone and just be there. I do not blame the cast for this, as the script makes Transformers look like Being John Malkovich. Instead of creating an emotional investment with the characters, the writers just gave us filler and throwaway lines between fights with badass mythical Greek characters. The one actor I found suffered the most though is Worthington, the man has a great star quality and look but his characters between Clash of the Titans and his last two films are very interchangeable and I personally want to see more dramatic depth in his acting. (Yes I know what movie I was seeing but that does not mean I’m wrong.)

Now I am a genuine fan of director Louis Leterrier, as the director of the first two Transporter films and The Incredible Hulk, he knows how to make a fun action movie. Sadly this time around Leterrier goes for a darker, more serious look with monsters that are clearly influenced by Guillermo del Toro. Which, while visually impressive, do not fit the tone needed for this movie. I am not saying that the film needs to be exactly like the original, but a great remake needs to maintain the spirit of the source while the filmmaker puts his personal signature on it. Sadly, for whatever reason, the personality and energy that he usually brings is not in this movie. Its not a bad directing job as Leterrier still creates engaging action scenes, but the flaws you usually find in his work are more noticeable this time around because of one certain quality… the 3-D!

I am not a particular defender of either James Cameron or Avatar, but no one can say that the man does not invest his blood, sweat and tears into making a visually beautiful experience with the use and expansion of 3-D technology. In comparison it is clear that there was no other purpose then to take advantage of the trend and paying consumers. The 3-D comes off as completely flat in some scenes or is overdone by annoying monsters flying directly into the screen. The problem is that the film was shot with no idea that it would be converted (The decision was made about three months before release, it takes about six months for a proper conversion.) and it is unfair to the director, the film and the audience for a studio to force the conversion onto the final product knowing this. Hopefully as directors know what to expect they can prepare for this change or studios will just invest in 3-D cameras. Not to say that the studio ruined the film but mediocre 3-D does not help.

Overall, if you want a fun movie to watch after exams… rented the 1981 Clash of the Titans. If you want to experience a truly amazing 3-D experience… see How to Train Your Dragon. If you want something in the middle, Leterrier’s remake is not a terrible option… just do not expect cult status thirty years from now.

-John DeBono

The most difficult movies to write about are the movies that are good… but you wanted them to be great. When you either love or hate a film, the words naturally flow. When a film is disappointing, even its strengths become a painful reminder of how much better it could have been. This is where Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland belongs, an enjoyable film but the talent behind it had the potential to provide much more substance.

Taking elements of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now nineteen years old and is about to get engaged… when she spots a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and pocket watch. Alice follows the rabbit down its hole where she falls down into Underland. (Commonly referred to as “Wonderland” by its inhabitants) With the help of the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and his friends, Alice learns that she is destined to defeat Red Queen’s (Helena Bonham Carter) Jabberwocky (voice of Christopher Lee) and return the throne to the White Queen (Anne Hathaway).

The film’s strongest point is its style; say what you will about Burton, but the man undoubtedly has a colorful gothic sensibility that fits the the story perfectly. Underworld looks magnificently imaginative and even though some major changes in the overall plot are made, you still get a sense of Carroll’s vision leaking through.

Unfortunately, Burton seems to focus so much on the CGI and 3-D technology that someone forgot about all those old-school techniques like plot and characters. It is not that these elements of the film are terrible, just by the numbers. There are so many compelling and complex themes within Carroll’s work about growing-up and death that fit so well into his thematic narrative style, that you could make a compelling picture with a faithful adaptation. It makes seeing Carroll’s work turned into a Disneyfied, clichéd “Girl Power/Fantasy Action” movie all the more disheartening. As for 3-D, I am not against the idea of technology, as it does add to the theatre-going experience but I need something more compelling within the story to keep my interest. Otherwise what stops films from being amusement park rides instead of works of art?

Though it is not fair to say that the overly simple plot and characters are the technology’s fault. As a die-hard fan of Burton, I will admit that his blockbusters commonly suffer. (Batman, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) While they are fun and still have his visual signature, they lack the personal human touch he brings to his masterpieces. (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood) Despite what seems to be an obvious pairing, the film would have been better suited to Burton’s storytelling abilities had it stayed closer to the source material.

I realize that this review is starting to sound negative, so I want to state that I can never truly hate a film where Christopher Lee voices a dragon. Alice in Wonderland is a visually beautiful film, the 3-D technology while slightly distracting is still a lot of fun. The performances are uniformly terrific, particularly Depp and up and comer Wasikowska. As Alice, Wasikowska brings a great deal of charm to the role and gives us an likeable character that keeps the story grounded and focused on the lead, despite all the craziness surrounding her, the craziest thing being the Mad Hatter. Depp knows how to create a fun character that is distinctive and the right amount of zaniness. The two have a great brother sister chemistry that helps to overcome some of the weak characterization and plot.

So there certainly is a lot to like, just nothing that’s particularly amazing. I guess the best way to get across my feelings for “Alice is Wonderland” is that it is like expecting a pony but only getting a puppy. No one is going to complain about a puppy… but you really wanted that damn pony.

- John Debono