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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 11 April 2005

It’s an odd title but it’ll make more sense when you realise this film is based on the 1967 classic Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn.  In this 2005 remake, the premise has been reversed.  Instead of a white girl bringing home a black man to meet the folks, it’s the black girl bringing home the white man.

It’s going to be an eventful weekend for the Jones family.  Percy (Mac) and Marilyn (Scott) are celebrating their 25^th wedding anniversary and have planned a lavish back-yard ceremony where they can renew their vows.  Percy’s not really a romantic – he’s a tough-nut loan manager who expects the best from everyone.  Writing fresh vows and learning the tango is something he’s looking to avoid.

These problems will take a back seat when his eldest daughter, Theresa (Saldana), arrives home with her new boyfriend, Simon (Kutcher).  Simon may be a successful stockbroker but Percy notices only one quality – he’s white.  For Percy, this cannot stand and he intends to find every flaw he can in Simon to show Theresa that he’s not worthy of her.

Such stories of culture clashes aren’t new.  I remember seeing Bride & Prejudice just a month ago.  What I liked about Guess Who was the simple dialogue and the interaction between the characters.  There are some dynamite scenes between Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher as they each try to out-do each other.  Kutcher is a little over-the-top but Mac is spot on in the delivery of his lines.  It’s the best role I’ve seen him in.

The romantic element is also enjoyable.  The light-hearted scenes shared by Kutcher and Zoe Saldana were great.  They laugh, they don’t argue and they speak without using long-winded romantic metaphors.  It reminded me of the spontaneity in Kutcher’s last romantic comedy, Just Married with Brittany Murphy.  In fact, I’ve liked the last 3 films in which Kutcher has starred if you include The Butterfly Effect.  I guess he (or his agent) know how to pick a good script.  With the exception of… Dude, Where’s My Car?

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 04 April 2005

17-year-old Maria Alvarez (Moreno) is looking for independence.  In her native Colombia, she works in a flower factory.  For minimum wage, she stands at a desk, removes the leaves off long flower stalks, bundles them together, and tries to meet her daily quota.  Further frustrating Maria is her family.  Most of her pay has to go her mother and her unemployed, unmarried sister who has a young baby to take care of.

At a party, she meets a young guy who offers a better employment opportunity – as a drug “mule”.  The lure of big dollars is just too attractive and Maria accepts.  Before starting her first assignment, Maria gets the run-down from her new boss.  She will need to starve herself for 24 hours then swallow roughly 80 rubber capsules filled with heroine.  Maria will then be ready to board a flight to New York, slip through customs undetected and then extricate the drugs from her stomach in a hotel room.  In her innocent eyes, it’s worth the risk.

Maria Full Of Grace is as informative as it is engaging.  I’m aware of the drug trafficking problems in Central America (having seen Traffic amongst other films) but never before have I seen a film go so intimately behind the scenes.  The capsules that Maria is forced to swallow are about 4.2cm long and 1.4cm wide.  Can you imagine forcing 80 of those down your throat and having them sit in your stomach for over 24 hours?  The only thing stopping them from coming apart is a thin rubber coating.  If one should open up inside your stomach, you’ll surely die.

As perilous as it is, people are still willing to put their lives on the line.  The drug lords con naïve, poverty-stricken youngsters and stick a big, juicy carrot in front of their nose.  It’s an opportunity they can’t afford to turn down and the drug lords know it.  As the film’s poster promotes, this film is based not on one but on thousands of other similar stories.

The star of the film is Catalina Sandino Moreno in her very first movie role.  You can’t ask for a better start to one’s career and Moreno was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination for best actress in a leading role.  The fact that she has been recognised is the ultimate tribute to her performance.  It’s not easy being recognised when you star in a low-budget foreign language picture.  She lost out to Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby) but the nomination alone should see a few extra screenplays arrive at her front doorstep.

There are a few more elements to this story which are both fascinating and shocking.  I won’t spoil these plot developments as you need to enjoy this film without expectations.  It’s one reason why I love unheralded independent films – the fact that they are unknown and independent makes them a lot more difficult to predict.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 07 April 2005

Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn should buy a lottery ticket after this adventure.  They should have died at least 100 times.  They were shot at by virtually every citizen of Mali with a range of ammunition and yet they still live… to make more crap movies.

Dirk (McConaughey) and Al (Zahn) are two explorers looking to find the remains of an American boat which disappeared in the mid 19^th Century.  The clues lead them to the African country of Mali.  By sheer chance, they meet Eva (Cruz), a doctor who is investigating the apparent outbreak of a disease in Nigeria.  Dirk and Al agree to give Eva a lift into Mali so that she can continue her research.

Our two lucky explorers soon give up their quest when they release there are government officials who want Eva killed.  She has stumbled upon a secret with threatens to expose a major health crisis.  Dirk, Al and Eva now find themselves working as a team – struggling to avoid the enemy and looking for any ally they can find on this unknown continent.

Sahara is nonsense.  Every five minutes, there’s a ridiculous plot development.  I know action films aren’t supposed to be realistic but this film takes things way too far.  How do they take a dilapidated airplane and “sail” it across the desert?  How do they blow up their own boat with precise timing by simply using a cigar?  How does a 150-year-old cannon still work?  How do they jump off the back of truck and escape on foot whilst handcuffed to a giant grate?  They deserved to die but of course, that isn’t going to happen.

McConaughey plays the smart hero with Zahn as the goofy sidekick.  Is it just me or does Zahn have the same personality in every film?  With a good screenplay and some good jokes, Zahn is in his element.  He received no such help on the set of Sahara.  I sense that even Zahn knew that the jokes were lame – he delivers them with very little enthusiasm.

At the end of the film’s trailer, the voice-over guy proclaims “directed by Breck Eisner”.  I remember thinking at the time – who is Breck Eisner?  I thought he must be some big action director and that they’ve thrown in his name to lure the audience.  Well here’s a stunner for you – Eisner hasn’t directed anything of note.  He has no reputation whatsoever.

Don’t believe anything you hear about Sahara unless it’s a negative comment.  It cost a ridiculous $130m and if studios are going to continue with such lacklustre, unadventurous material, they deserve to lose a mint.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 03 April 2005

It’s New Year’s Eve and the final night for the staff of police Precinct 13.  Funding cuts have forced the office to close.  For Officer Jack Roenick (Hawke), it marks the end of an uneventful eight month posting.  He was once a leading undercover detective but lost two of his valued comrades in a botched raid.  Jack subsequently lost his nerve and has hidden himself away in this run-down precinct office.

The action is set to begin.  A police bus is en route from the city to the jailhouse and has on board, amongst others, the city’s most wanted man – Marion Bishop (Fishburne).  In a wild snowstorm making driving almost impossible, the bus has been diverted to Precinct 13 where the prisoners will have to spend the night in their old jail cells.

Officer Jack Roenick and his small crew are not prepared for what is to follow.  Just after the stroke of midnight, truckloads of men turn up at their doorstep with a tonne of artillery.  They want Marion Bishop at any cost.  As Jack soon learns though, they don’t want to break him out.  The men outside are crooked cops – determined to make sure Marion never gets the chance to testify against them in court.

Jack can avoid any trouble by simply handing Marion over.  This though, will not be an option.  As bad a man as Marion Bishop is, Jack won’t see justice circumvented by having him released to the waiting assassins.  It’s going to be a shoot-out to see who’s the last left standing…

Assault On Precinct 13 is a standard good versus evil story.  Standard is the best adjective I can offer.  The characters are horribly one dimensional and the dialogue uttered is almost a tribute to you bad action film.  Don’t ask me why but I still found myself enjoying the story as it unfolded.  You know there’s at least one character who’s going to switch sides but you’re never quite sure who.  Also, a few key characters meet a demise which I didn’t expect.

I guarantee there’s something you’ll remember about this film – its violence.  Some of the scenes are very graphic and from the opening introduction, you’ll sense that director Jean-Francois Richet is prepared to show just about anything.  With the film set entirely at night, you might also notice that the tones are very dark.  There isn’t much colour and with the limited lighting, it must have been a challenge for the filmmakers to create clear visuals.

This isn’t a film for any DVD collection but with a couple of twists along the way, it’s worth a look just once.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 05 April 2005

There’s been a noticeable resurgence in the supernatural horror genre over the past six months.  We’ve seen The Ring 2, The Amityville Horror, Exorcist: The Beginning, The Grudge and The Forgotten.  The filmmakers understand what they need to do and that is to scare the audience.  The problem is that they are all using the same techniques.  How many times have you seen someone open a glass cabinet and then when they close it, there’s something in the background?  Other similarities include the use of rain/lightening, false alarms (particularly early in the film) and sharp, abrupt noises.

When you break it down, the premise of White Noise is pretty flimsy.  Architect Jonathan Rivers (Keaton) has just lost his wife Anna (West).  After being missing for five weeks, her body washed up on a river bank.  Not long after, a stranger (McNeice) visits Jonathan and says that his wife has been communicating him from “the other side”.  He identifies himself as Raymond Price and leaves a business card in case Jonathan should ever change his mind.

Six months later, Jonathan is knocking on Raymond’s door and is introduced to the world of electronic voice phenomena or EVP for short.  When you’re trying to tune your TV or radio station, you often get a crackly noise.  Well, if you pick up on just the right frequency and happen to be looking at just the right time, you can pick something up.  There are stories of tape recorders left in empty rooms only to be played back and have voices revealed.

Raymond has both heard and seen Anna on his television screen and Jonathan soon realises this is no hoax.  The question then becomes one of why Anna is doing this and what is it she has to say?

You’d be easily forgiven if you confused this film with an advertisement for EVP.  It’s got to be a big boost for those people who believe in it.  I haven’t done any research but I’ll admit to being a huge sceptic.  Despite my negativity, the narrative of this film makes me interested and wanting to believe it.  By the end, I was dying with curiosity to see how it would end.

To get back to my opening argument, it’s this different subject material which gives White Noise an edge over other recent supernatural flicks.  There’s a lingering doubt as to how the film will end.  After a nice opening box-office in the United States, this may not be the last time we see the world of EVP on the big screen.