Tower Heist (4/5 Stars)

Beautifully orchestrated if not especially funny

What is most impressive about “Tower Heist” is the obvious superlative aspects of its production. The story takes place mainly in the Central Park West Trump Tower, herein referred only as the “Tower.” It is a beautiful building in a beautiful part of New York City and the cinematographer, not to mention, the location scouts, have milked the opportunities for all its worth. We see really gorgeous vistas of the Manhattan skyline, we witness the opulence of the tower itself and especially its spectacular penthouse apartment, and in a rather convenient move, the title “heist” takes place during the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade when all those gigantic floats of Snoopy and Kermit the Frog are making their way down the skyscraper-laden avenue. The professionalism shown by Ben Stiller and company is perhaps the tops of any comedy production team around. Notice how they have put in special care to develop the vast array of characters, from the building manager Josh Kovacs played by Ben Stiller himself, the concierge Charlie played by Casey Affleck, the doorman Lester played by Stephen Henderson, the new elevator operator enrique played by Michael Pena, the maid Odessa played by Gabourney Sidibe, etc. etc. The story sets up that this is a well-oiled team of superior service professionals and then actually puts in the effort to prove it by throwing in the requisite vocabulary, routines, and details needed to establish such a claim. The team of writers, Ted Griffin, Jeff Nathanson, Adam Cooper, and Bill Collage seem to know what they are talking about. But above all else, notice how clean and clear the editing, directing, and score is in moving the story along. Ben Stiller’s last movie “Tropic Thunder,” was especially impressive to me in the exact same way. It did something very hard in that it kept up a breakneck pace that never confused the storyline. To help accomplish this, they seamlessly edited hardcore rap into many of the scenes. In "Tower Heist," the story's action is perfectly complemented by a brilliant "heist" score composed by Cristophe Beck. I was humming the main tune as I left the theater. Beck deserves an Oscar nomination. And I would, if I felt I had more technical expertise, also claim that the editors, sound editors, and director, Brett Ratner, also should deserve some recognition. Having said that, there is something missing here that “Tropic Thunder,” one of the best movies of 2009, had that “Tower Heist” does not: consistent laughs. “Tower Heist,” is a well-made beautifully orchestrated movie but it is not especially funny.

One of the main reasons for this has to do with the actual storyline. Whereas “Tropic Thunder” dealt with ridiculous characters making a serious Vietnam movie for the purpose of baiting the Oscars, something that is far more pretentious than actually important, the heroes of this movie are hardworking honest working men who have been defrauded of all of their pension and retirement money by the penthouse billionaire Arthur Shaw, played with just the right amount of sociopathic tendencies by Alan Alda. One of the workers, Lester the doorman was just about to retire and travel the world with the 73K he had responsibly saved up during the last three decades he had been opening doors for people. It is shown that Arthur Shaw knew his ponzi scheme was going to go up in smoke in a few months when he took all of Lester's money in order to “invest” it. When the fraud is found out and the doorman learns the fate of his life savings, he attempts suicide. This is not funny. It’s more enraging than anything else, especially because of all the real world parallels involved. Such a story line is definitely effective. We love the heroes who are trying to steal their money back. We dislike with special venom the dishonest and disrespectful billionaire. We care about the outcome of this story, but we aren’t laughing all that much during it. The fate of the doorman’s pension is not a joke.

“Tropic Thunder,” had the almost uncanny ability to get laughs from every single character in the movie. Even the straight man, Jay Baruchel, was funny. Here only a few characters can be described as comic. Gabourney Sidibe, Michael Pena, and Matthew Broderick tend to say funny things from time to time. Eddie Murphy is the funniest although his part is hardly large enough to make the movie a full blown comedy especially when the two main characters, Ben Stiller and Alan Alda, don't get any laughs at all. What they are involved in is a dramatic game of life chess with rather big stakes attached to the outcome. Like I said, it is effective, but it isn’t all that funny.

Of course in the end, a heist movie, whether it is comedic or not, will always be judged by how well done the heist is. In other words, would it have worked in real life? That’s a good question here. There are a few moments when I was like, well that shouldn’t have worked that way, but overall there were enough intelligent parts of the heist (like for instance how they got Arthur Shaw out of the apartment, how they snuck into the tower, how they cased the place, how they knew where the safe was) that the few moments that are a bit ridiculous could be swept under the movie rug we call the “suspension of disbelief.” At times the direction of the movie was so clear that I was vaguely reminded of how it felt to watch "Die Hard," the landmark movie that all skyscraper thrillers should be judged by. "Tower Heist," does not rise to the heights of "Die Hard," but I will say this; I hope you are not afraid of heights. There are some moments in this movie where you will definitely be feeling the vertigo. It was sort of unrealistic how Matthew Broderick didn’t die but hey, I can forgive the movie for not killing him.

New York, I Love You (1/5 Stars) November 20, 2009

A vision of a boring New York inhabited only by artists and sex fiends. How insulting.

“New York, I Love You,” is no doubt a great idea for a movie. It originated from a French movie called “Paris, je-taime,” which obviously is French for ‘Paris, I love you.’ It was a series of short films with different writers and directors all with one thing in common: every story took place in Paris. This movie transfers that idea to New York, that most able of cities. There is perhaps nothing worse in cinema than a great idea that gets treated like shit. Shit ideas treated like shit are, no doubt, also shit but at least you don’t get that tremendous feeling of being ripped off. You knew it was shit, it was shit, you got what you should have thought you would get when you paid the ticket. What’s especially terrible about this movie is that it squanders the chance to transform the great idea into a great movie. It’s a waste, and since the title ‘New York, I Love You,” is now taken and used up and tossed aside who knows when someone else will try the idea again. 

The idea to have several short films is supposedly to promote cinematic scope within a movie. For a movie about New York this is somewhat imperative since it is so diverse, multicultural, and enormous. You would never know that by watching this movie. I don’t recall more than a couple of the short films being upbeat at all. Never has New York moved so slow in a movie. The slowest story involves a retired opera singer that checks into an abandoned motel that has a crippled Shia Lebouf as a doorman/butler/whatever. They chitchat about the room, and flowers, and what not in strained accents for about ten minutes. Then Shia inexplicably commits suicide and an old dude walks in and reveals that the entire thing was dream…or not, I couldn’t really tell what was happening. There was a lot of whispering and mumbling. Anyway this story really sucked. What’s ironic is that the late Anthony Mingella, the Oscar winner that this film was also dedicated too, wrote it. Minghella, I have looked up, is not a native New Yorker. He’s not even American. He’s a Brit. And the story he wrote has absolutely nothing to do with New York (no an aside about unseen NYC noise outside the window does not count if no scene in the story takes place outside.) It makes absolutely no sense to dedicate a movie about NYC to a person who is not a New Yorker and wrote the most anti-New York story in the movie. All I can think is that he must have supplied a huge amount of the budget (not that anything in this movie suggests any budget at all.)

There are 8 million people in New York City. The professions of these people differ to an incredible degree. Where else do you have millionaires next to beggars, stock brokers next to park rangers, fashion designers next to construction crews, etc. etc. You would never know that watching this movie. The only people in this NYC, as far as this film is concerned, are struggling artists of some kind. In every single plot save one at least one character is a writer, a painter, a dancer, a composer, a videographer, an actress or something like that. I really cannot stress this enough: struggling artists are not interesting people. There has never been a more overdone idea in the history of cinema than a story about artist’s block. A story about artist’s block inevitably develops out of the narcissism of a writer with no real ideas. They can’t think of interesting to say so they write a story about how they have nothing interesting to say (banal justification of existence included). Blah blah blah, no that’s not original. Use some elbow grease, lazy. The huge shame about these kinds of stories is that the writers couldn’t look outside their little worlds to see that there are interesting people that are outside walking the streets. These interesting people do interesting things with their lives that don’t have anything to do with the entertainment business. Give me a story about politicians, or lawyers, or doctors, or scientists. Yeah I know, a writer would probably have to do some research to make a good movie about those people because what they do is far more complex and important than entertaining. In the end it would require actual work, an idea that most struggling artists abhor. Just take a look at what’s in the MOMA. 

If the characters aren’t struggling artists then they are deviants of some kind. The first story is about a pickpocket and a professor who is cheating on his wife with a student. Another is about a guy’s (Ethan Hawke) creative attempt to seduce a woman who turns out to be a prostitute (This story is actually pretty good, doesn’t save the movie though.) Then there are about three other stories where random sex with strangers occurs. Now I know I shouldn’t knock something till I’ve tried it, but I feel there should have been at least one story that tried to be romantic. None of these relationship shorts even matched the average ‘sex and the city’ episode, which I would suggest you watch instead of this movie any day. And what was with everybody in this picture smoking. New York City is not a smoking friendly city. There are probably more laws banning it here than anywhere else. And yet in this movie it is treated as the quintessential New York way to meet people. Well, at least people you can have random sex with. Maybe my non-smoking habit is why I’ve never had that chance. 

New York City has so much great stuff in it: Parades every other week, pedestrians taking back the streets from cars, the wind tunnels in Winter, the panoramic Hudson in Spring and Summer, landmarks that sneak up on you, locations you recognize immediately from your favorite movies, a depth of history, a landscape of cityscapes shaped by great people, sports, charity organizations, international intrigue, 2am pizza, theater, culture, nightlife, business, incredible penthouses, and the most polite homeless people in the world. None of that is shown in this movie. I usually never give 1-star review to any movie I’ve seen because I save such notorious designations for movies that are more than just inferior. It is for movies that I know I could have made better myself. In this case, once I get enough money to buy a camera, microphones, and film editing equipment, I will.

X-Men: The Last Stand 05/27/06

This movie, the third installment of the X-Men series, literally killed the franchise. I mean seriously, everyone's dead. LIke most characters in today's blockbusters, they are the victims of great special effects. This movie has some of the best visuals one will ever see, but I don't know about you, I seriously couldn't give a shit about landscapes. That's why I didn't paticularly like Brokeback Mountain and that's why I can't give this one a passing grade either.
They call it X-Men but what they should call it is a freak show. This movie suffered like I thought it would in the absence of Bryan Singer, the director of the first two movies. I don't know who directed this one but he didn't much care about the characters. (Rogue has about 3 scenes, Cyclops dies in the first ten minutes, Pyro is incredibly one dimensional) Any identification with any of them comes predominantly from the first two movies in the series, in fact if I hadn't seen the first two already I don't think I would have the slightest idea what was going on in this one. This movie is a roll call for special effects. Since the effects are mutants, the characters basically show up on screen, give us a show, and then leave. Just like the circus. 
It also is a bad sign when the most effective line in the movie is a ripoff of Shakespeare and the funniest line is an expletive. This movie suffers from the disease called no-more-than-two-syllables-in-a-conversation syndrome. Talk about dumb downed for mass appeal.
Another thing I'll say before I stop complaining. Remember how I said alot of people died. Well most of them are shredded into many many pieces. Kids should definetely not see this movie, and it really should have been rated R. 
Two years ago after seeing the horrible Men in Black II, I promised myself, no more sequels. Why oh why do I betray myself so readily