Movie Summary of Man On A Ledge by Michael The Moviegoer.

MAN ON A LEDGE = 1/2*

“Insanity Reaches New Heights”

The preposterous plot of “Man On A Ledge” is so ridiculously insane that the man on the ledge threatening to jump just might be the sanest person in the movie.

Sam Worthington plays that man. He’s a former cop who’s now an ex-con. He was arrested and convicted (with no evidence) for the theft of the world’s largest diamond from a billionaire played by Ed Harris. With the stolen diamond never having been recovered, how could he even have been charged with the crime?

Worthington escapes from prison. One month later he appears suicidal on the ledge of a Manhattan hotel which happens to be owned by billionaire Harris, and is also conveniently located across the street from Harris’ office where the diamond is still hidden deep within his wall safe. Harris framed Worthington with the diamond’s theft so that he could get the insurance money, all the while keeping possession of the diamond itself.

Worthington takes to that ledge in an effort to prove his innocence with an elaborate and convoluted plot involving his brother (Jamie Bell) breaking into Harris office to steal the diamond and prove it still exists. But if Worthington’s plan succeeds and he gets the diamond he was once found guilty of stealing, wouldn’t everyone just assume he had it all along?

Elizabeth Banks plays a police psychologist who looks cover-girl perfect when she wakes up in the morning. A few short moments after a scene in which she has a difficult time waking up, she explains to a fellow officer that she hasn’t been sleeping! Kyra Sedgwick plays a hispanic[!] TV news reporter by the name of Suzie Morales, yet she only speaks with a Spanish accent when she says her name is Suzie Morales!

Trying to follow the plot of “Man On A Ledge” will certainly give you vertigo.

DVD Double Feature:

Matthew Chapman’s little-seen “The Ledge” from last year stars Patrick Wilson, Terrence Howard and Liv Tyler. It has a similarly multi-layered plot formula about a man on the ledge of a building and the people trying to talk him out of jumping.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of The Grey by Michael The Moviegoer.

THE GREY = **1/2

“The Movie That Cries Wolf”

Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey” falls into that grey area between a great movie and a January throwaway. Liam Neeson is very good as a man hired to keep Alaska oil workers safe from wolves. When their plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness, Neeson leads them on a survival adventure where the wolves always seem to be at their door.

Neeson’s performance is better than this movie deserves. His strength in this role is also one of the film’s most awkward attributes. Neeson plays a depressive suicidal widower when only a few years ago Neeson lost his real-life wife Natasha Richardson in a tragic skiing accident.

The plot is nothing deeper than a small group of men stranded in the wilderness trying to survive the wolves that are tracking them. It’s inevitable that there will be many scenes of wolf attacks. It’s unfortunate that every one of these scenes is unwatchable. Not because it’s bloody. But because you simply cannot watch a scene shot by a camera in a tailspin. We see nothing but a grainy blur.

When the camera is not in a slingshot and it’s focused on the characters, it’s too often in extreme close-up. It’s what I like to call the Nostril-Cam. Why Carnahan wants us to see up his actors’ noses is anyone’s guess.

With “The Grey”, the effort is ambitious, but the result is not as satisfying as other wilderness survival movies like Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” and David Mamet’s “The Edge”.

DVD Double Feature:

My favorite wilderness survival movie is 1993’s “Alive” directed by Frank Marshall and starring Ethan Hawke. It’s the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains. It’s also the movie referenced in a conversation between various characters in “The Grey”.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of Detachment by Michael The Moviegoer.

DETACHMENT = **

“High School Low”

“Detachment” is a perfectly descriptive title of the relationship between this film and its audience. Directed by Tony Kaye with an in-your-face abstract artsy approach, the film is a sloppily edited mess despite fine performances from its cast.

Adrien Brody stars as a substitute high school teacher hired by the school’s principal Marcia Gay Harden to sub for one month while a new permanent teacher can be found. Through his eyes we meet his troubled students, the school administrators, and various other characters. Brody’s character is an odd mix of Rambo and “Star Trek’s” Spock as he is determined to save every troubled soul he encounters.

But the film really shows us troubled teens through Kaye’s eyes where high school is as dark and vicious as it can get. Kaye approaches this subject with borderline contempt for teens and an education system that is broken and seems beyond repair.

James Caan and Luci Liu have strong supporting roles, but newcomer Sami Gayle as a teenage street hooker is the most impressive. With all the actors hitting their marks in front of the camera, it’s disappointing that Kaye would waste these good performances in post-production by giving the film a fractured and emotionally disconnected treatment.

DVD Double Feature:

I’ve always hated when studios take control of a film out of the hands of its director. I prefer to see the director’s version of their own work. For years I had hoped that Tony Kaye’s original director’s cut of “American History X” would be released. Kaye infamously disowned the commercially released version of his film, even trying to have his name removed from the credits, after star Edward Norton and film editor Jerry Greenberg took control and re-edited the film. After seeing “Detachment” I am now quite sure that Norton rescued “American History X” by making it watchable. Maybe Adrien Brody should have done the same.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of Haywire by Michael The Moviegoer.

HAYWIRE = *1/2

“The Girl With No Tattoo”

Studios traditionally release their best films in November and December as awards bait. That’s why January ends up being the dumping ground for releasing films with no awards prospects at all. Rarely do those films come from major big-name directors with the clout, and ego, to force a year-end awards campaign for their work. January 2011 saw the release of Ron Howard’s biggest misfire “The Dilemma”. This year, that unlikely and unfortunate misfire comes from Steven Soderbergh. In a career spanning more than two decades, I don’t think I’ve ever truly disliked any of Soderbergh’s films, until “Haywire”.

The chameleon-like Soderbergh has given us so many great films over the years including “Traffic”, “Erin Brockovich”, “The Informant” and last year’s “Contagion”. I even admire his experimental phases such as “Full Frontal” and “Bubble”. But that Soderbergh seems to be entirely absent from “Haywire”.

This is a collage of better films by other directors who are probably all Soderbergh admirers. Most notably, “Haywire” plays like a B-picture exploitation mash-up of “The Bourne Identity”, “Kill Bill” and “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”. All much better films.

In “Haywire”, real-life female martial arts champion Gina Carano stars as Mallory Kane. If you’re looking for a summary of this film’s plot, you should probably try searching elsewhere. I’m not even sure if the actors themselves understand the plot.

“Haywire” is one long globe-hopping international chase-to-the-death in which, one can assume, Carano is doing her own stunts. The gender-flipped concept of female combatants isn’t even fresh here, and to see it done best you should see Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”.

Although this is a showcase for Carano, there are many famous-face cameos such as Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor and Michael Fassbender. And none of them seem to understand the plot, so they’re just phoning in their performances.

DVD Double Feature:

Steven Soderbergh rarely works in the genre of the action/crime/thriller. But back in 1998 he did get it right once. In “Out Of Sight” George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez play a fugitive and a U.S. Marshall in love and on the run. This may be a great time to revisit this exciting film.

Michael The Moviegoer

Michael The Moviegoer’s list of the Ten Best Films of 2011 :

Good movies are making a comeback despite the increased difficulty in financing them. But if we all support the good films at the box office, more will be made. 2011 has shown us a lot of promising new talent both in front of and behind the camera.

Of course, there are always those misfires that sank to the very bottom like “The Beaver,” “The Dilemma,” “Dream House” and “New Year’s Eve.” Those were so awful they should be avoided even as video rentals.

Here now is the list of my ten favorite films of 2011 starting with a few runner-ups…

15) THE WAY – Emilio Estevez directs his real-life father Martin Sheen as a man carrying his son’s ashes on a 400-mile sacred pilgrimage across the mountains of northern Spain. Sheen more than deserves his first-ever Oscar nomination for this rare leading role.

14) LAST NIGHT – Keira Knightley deserves to win the Razzie award for her ridiculously over-the-top performance in “A Dangerous Method”. But earlier this year Knightley shined in this fascinating relationship drama as a wife trying to resist the temptation of a returned ex-lover.

13) HANNA – Saoirse Ronan gives one of the year’s strongest performances by a leading actress as a world-class teenage assassin who gets chased all over the world by CIA agent Cate Blanchett. Ronan is reunited with her “Atonement” director Joe Wright for which she received an Oscar nomination.

12) DRIVE – By day Ryan Gosling is a stunt driver for the movies. At night he drives getaway cars for bank heists and pawn shop robberies. This is a smart, intelligent thrill ride from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. It includes one of the year’s best supporting actor performances from Albert Brooks as a bad guy!

11) THE IDES OF MARCH – George Clooney stars in and directs this timely political thriller about a Democratic presidential primary race in the all-important state of Ohio. The cast includes Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti. But surprisingly the strongest supporting performance here belongs to Evan Rachel Wood as the center of an illicit romantic triangle that threatens to bring down the entire campaign.

…And my top 10 favorite films of 2011 are:

10. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN – Here’s a psychological drama of a seriously troubled and potentially dangerous young boy. It’s more frightening than any horror film you’re likely to see. Kevin is a real bad seed with no demonic or supernatural subtext. Tilda Swinton delivers a brave and shocking performance as Kevin’s disconnected mom. Directed by Lynne Ramsay with a lucid dreamlike non-linear narrative, as the puzzle pieces begin to take shape a horrifically violent conclusion comes into view and, like Kevin’s victims, you’re locked in its grip with nowhere to run.

9. THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU – There’s an old saying that goes “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” In “The Adjustment Bureau” Matt Damon tries to alter his destiny when he falls in love with Emily Blunt against God’s plan. That’s the basis for this film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story. It’s a fantasy/romance/thriller and possibly the first movie ever in which God is the bad guy! Damon and Blunt meet, fall in love, and, like Cinderella, are kept apart by the cosmic circles they run in that were never supposed to intersect.

8. 50/50 – This has become known as “that cancer comedy.” Joseph Gordon-Levitt is diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his spinal chord. His life-threatening illness is little more than an inconvenience to his unfaithful girlfriend played by Bryce Dallas Howard. His best friend, a foul-mouthed Seth Rogan, uses it as an opportunity to pick up girls. His mother (Anjelica Huston) becomes smothering and over-emotional. But it’s his relationship with his psychologist that is this movie’s sweet surprise. Anna Kendrick plays the therapist-in-training and Gordon-Levitt is only her third patient. Their scenes together are priceless.

7. TRUST – There’s a Friend behind the camera for this dark tale of statutory rape via the internet. David Schwimmer directs the year’s greatest breakout performance by Liana Liberato as a 14-year old girl who falls for a boy she meets in an online chat room for teens. When they finally hook-up in person she discovers he is actually a 35-year old man. Once the FBI gets involved the girl becomes further victimized in a way that sort of makes the original crime seem less important than the aftermath. Clive Owen and Catherine Keener turn in powerful performances as the girl’s parents. Those MPAA idiots gave the film an ‘R’ rating restricting it to teens under 17, the very people who should be required to view it.

6. ANOTHER EARTH – Starring and co-written by newcomer Brit Marling, this is a thought-provoking deeply human drama laced with elements of science fiction. Marling plays a girl consumed with guilt over a tragic car accident that destroys an innocent man’s family. When she gets out of prison she poses as a maid from a cleaning agency to help take care of the man who’s wife and young son she killed. At the same time, a second Earth appears in the sky. Possibly from a parallel universe, this mirror-like image of our planet crafts a theory that if Marling can travel there she might be able to re-live the day of the accident thereby altering the outcome. It’s a strange fantasy created to deal with grief over loss, but director Mike Cahill has turned it into a fascinating and very special film.

5. MY WEEK WITH MARILYN – Anyone who doesn’t believe Michelle Williams will be among the Oscar nominees this year hasn’t seen “My Week With Marilyn.” Williams plays Marilyn Monroe during the week she traveled to London to film “The Prince And The Showgirl” with Laurence Olivier. Colin Clark (played by Eddie Redmayne) works for Olivier and is put in charge of taking care of Marilyn. This film is adapted from Clark’s memoirs. Kenneth Branagh plays Olivier in another awards-worthy performance. The contrast between these two personalities is endlessly entertaining. Their film project was born out of their respective egos. Olivier, the serious actor who wants to be a movie star, and Monroe, the movie star trying to become a serious actress.

4. MARGIN CALL – A fascinating opportunity to be a fly on the wall of a Wall Street boardroom on the eve of the 2008 economic collapse, “Margin Call” is a perfectly-timed financial thriller which arrived in cinemas just as the Occupy Wall Street movement began. The terrific ensemble cast showcases Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons giving them their juciest roles in years. Demi Moore, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci are also among the cast members playing greedy executives at an unnamed investment banking firm which could easily be Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs. Watching these characters, who I like to call “investment prophets”, plot and scheme the financial crisis that will bring the U.S. economy to its knees, is as entertaining as it is frustrating.

3. THE ARTIST – No doubt you’ve already heard about this black-&-white silent movie that’s getting all the awards buzz this season. French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius has crafted an authentic re-creation of 1920s Hollywood in both period and presentation. Lead actors Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo give two of the year’s most joyful performances. Even the dog, a Jack Russell Terrier, is being mentioned for awards recognition. John Goodman, James Cromwell and Malcolm McDowell also figure prominently in this marvelous film that will leave you with a great big smile on your face and a nostalgic feeling in your heart. Only quibble is that the film was actually shot in color and then computerized into black-&-white.

2. THE SKIN I LIVE IN – After it’s over, it will take you a while to process what you’ve just seen. Pedro Almodovar’s elaborate Frankenstein-like revenge fantasy stars Antonio Banderas as a brilliant yet mad plastic surgeon out to avenge the rape of his daughter. To avoid spoilers, I won’t get into any other details here. The beautiful Elena Anaya plays the subject of his experiments. The cinematography is awesome, making every frame look like a work of art. Almodovar pushes the envelope even further than any of his earlier films could have prepared us for. This is dangerous, naughty, sinful entertainment of the best kind. Prepare to be astonished!

… and the best movie of 2011 is…

1. MONEYBALL – This is an absolute homerun for star Brad Pitt who has finally delivered a performance that should win him an Oscar. Pitt plays Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team, with passion, dedication and sensitivity. Living his life in defiance of opportunity, Beane is a character driven to win for his soul, not money. He was a real game-changer in the world of baseball when he implemented research and analysis into the process of selecting a winning team, opposing the old-school method of “gut instinct”. The smart script by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian keeps everyone on their ‘A’-game especially cast members Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonah Hill. This true story sort of feels like a real-life “Bad News Bears”. It’s director Bennett Miller’s long-awaited follow-up to 2005’s “Capote” in which he directed Philip Seymour Hoffman to an Oscar. With Pitt on deck to win this year, Miller could be facing the prospect of having directed back-to-back Oscar-winning performances.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of Albert Nobbs by Michael The Moviegoer.

ALBERT NOBBS = ***

“The Remains Of The Dames”

The idea of Glenn Close playing incognito as a male butler in Victorian-era Ireland is impossible to resist. As the title character in “Albert Nobbs”, Close’s close-ups amaze us with how the make-up and costume departments have pulled off this magical feat. After a slow-ish start, “Albert Nobbs” finally begins to take shape once we accept the idea that the other characters on screen can’t possibly see Glenn Close under her costume.

Directed by Rodrigo Garcia who gave us “Mother And Child” (one of last year’s best films), “Albert Nobbs” is the story of a woman who made a desperate choice to make her way as a man in a man’s world. He/She works as a service butler in a hotel. Exposure is threatened with the arrival of Hubert Page, a man who is forced to share Nobbs’ bed. But this only exposes the fact that Page, too, is a woman disguised as a man. Played by a totally unrecognizable Janet McTeer, the two women instantly become fascinated by each other’s secret lives.

Nobbs is taken with the fact that Page, masquerading as a man, is married to a woman. She dreams of making a similar life for herself and begins courting the young Helen wonderfully played by fresh-faced Mia Wasikowska who plays hard-to-get with Nobbs.

“Albert Nobbs” is a movie that actually grows on you as it goes along, gaining quite a bit of steam in its third act. It’s a luscious period portrait with sumptuous cinematography and strong performances that showcase the considerable talents of its cast.

DVD Double Feature:

Despite the best attempts, if you, yourself, have trouble seeing Glenn Close as a man, it might help to understand that the other characters in the movie are easily fooled by Nobbs’ appearance because they inhabit a world where trans-gender cross-dressing is kept deep in the closet if it exists at all. It was equally difficult for audiences to accept Barbra Streisand playing a man in 1983’s “Yentl.” But considering the period the story is set in, it should be easy to believe that the characters do see her as a man. Streisand tackles this role as both star and director and she gives the concept an epic feel and then musicalizes it. Makes me wonder if “Albert Nobbs” might one day be adapted into a Broadway musical.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close by Michael The Moviegoer.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE = ***

“A Silent Performance Shines In ‘Extremely Loud’”

A decade after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, I still hear people asking if it’s too soon to make movies about that day. But if you’re waiting for the wounds to heal, that’s likely never going to happen. Filmmaking is an art form. Filmmakers are artists. Art is personal expression. In a free society art should never be suppressed just because some people might not want to look at it.

World War II ended in 1945. But as early as 1942 there were already dozens of commercial films on the subject. It was only a few years after the end of the Vietnam War when Hollywood made films like “Coming Home,” “The Deer Hunter” and “Apocalypse Now”.

But the events of 9/11 were so thoroughly photographed that re-creating them for dramatic purposes just feels strange. Many eyewitness accounts of the actual events have claimed that the real thing “looked like a movie”.

For those seeking escapist entertainment, revisiting the events of 9/11 might not be on their agenda. But how can anyone explain why 2006’s “United 93” was mostly dismissed by moviegoers who then flocked to see “Snakes On A Plane” (a film about terrorists unleashing deadly reptiles on a passenger jet in flight) released only four months later?

Over 2000 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Each one of them and their families have stories to tell. But none have been honored with a film about how 9/11 changed their lives. Instead we get “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close” which is a film adaptation of a fiction novel about a fictitious man who dies in the World Trade Center and how is wife and young son must live through that loss.

Perhaps the question that should be asked is if it’s too soon to create fiction out of that horrible reality. It was 60 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor when Michael Bay made a film about it with a fictional story filled with fictional characters. That didn’t seem to disturb anybody. But with the 9/11 wounds still fresh, is now a good time to fictionalize the effects of that day? Personally I would rather learn of the true stories of heroism and loss. But everyone around the world was affected by the 9/11 tragedy, and all forms of expression should be welcome and encouraged by anyone wishing to help the world heal. Therefore, after having said all that, it’s time to stop hating the idea of films about 9/11 and embrace a movie like “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close”.

Thomas Horn (who won Teen Jeopardy) stars as the young boy Oskar Schell who loses his father (Tom Hanks) in the 9/11 attacks. The movie is a psychological character study of this traumatized little boy who struggles with agonizing regret over how he reacted to the events on “the worst day” and his paranoia of living without his father in a post-9/11 world. His mother is played by Sandra Bullock in one of her strongest dramatic performances ever. A scene in which she and the boy argue over why they buried an empty coffin delivers the emotional explosion you expect from this film, but it’s short-lived.

The fictional story of how the boy runs all over New York looking for the owner of a mysterious key found among his father’s things is a bit cloying at times, and overly simplistic in its execution. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s fluffy family film “Hugo”.

The movie’s greatest moments belong to veteran character actor Max von Sydow who plays a man unable to speak. He communicates by writing on a notepad. With half-a-century of classic film roles on his resume, including 1973’s “The Exorcist”, Max von Sydow might finally find himself with an Oscar for a role in which he doesn’t utter a single word. That’s just how good he is in this movie.

DVD Double Feature:

Oliver Stone’s 2006 film “World Trade Center” combined fictional stories and characters with real people and real events to mixed results. Nicolas Cage plays a firefighter trapped in a collapsed World Trade Center tower. If the 9/11 wounds ever heal, this movie might work as a thrilling piece of escapist entertainment.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of Shame by Michael The Moviegoer.

SHAME = **

“Barely There”

“Shame” is a movie in search of a purpose. It’s the second feature from a director who dares to work under the name Steve McQueen. It stars the currently hot Michael Fassbender in a role that allows him to bare all by going fully frontal and earning the film an NC-17 rating from the overly conservative MPAA.

Fassbender plays a sex addict in McQueen’s film which is an in-depth character study of a man who “suffers” from sex addiction. He seems to be addicted to the mechanics of sex but not the pleasures of it. “Shame” makes sex look cold and unfeeling, and never clearly defines the sex addict as a character. There have been many clinical studies that claim all men have a sexual thought every seven seconds. If that’s true, how can you identify a sex addict, or are we all to be labeled as one?

“Shame” distastefully flirts with crossing the line into incest in the way that Fassbender’s character interacts with his sister played by Carey Mulligan. Their relationship is central to the movie’s climax (no pun intended), yet the sexual undercurrent between them is just gross. In their first scene together we’re not even sure they’re brother and sister. He walks in on her taking a shower in his apartment and they stand there having a rather long conversation with Mulligan fully frontally nude in front of him.

McQueen’s style is to shoot long unedited scenes in static shots. But what happens in those scenes is nothing more than small-talk chit-chat between characters. In a restaurant, an extra playing a waiter reading the specials and taking a dinner order has nearly as much dialogue as the principal actors in the scene. And that scene is about as interesting as watching two strangers in a restaurant order dinner, yet it goes on for nearly ten minutes.

Another bizarre scene is Carey Mulligan as a lounge singer in a nightclub performing a slow-jazz rendition of “New York, New York”, mostly in close-up, and the song drags on for what seems like an eternity.

“Shame” is an interesting piece of work, but ultimately unsatisfying, much like all the sexual encounters in this movie. For an NC-17 movie that’s supposed to be sexually edgy, “Shame” is shamefully dull.

DVD Double Feature:

For the fast-growing legion of Michael Fassbender fans, here’s one you probably missed and should see immediately. It’s 2009’s “Fish Tank” by British director Andrea Arnold. In this stunningly impressive indie urban drama Fassbender plays a man who has an affair with the daughter of his girlfriend with disastrous results.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of New Year’s Eve by Michael The Moviegoer.

NEW YEAR’S EVE = zero stars

“Dropping The Ball”

Two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank has spent most of her post-Oscar-winning life wishing she could delete her starring role in 1994’s “The Next Karate Kid” from her resume, and from existence. That makes her willingness to appear in “New Year’s Eve” a true headscratcher. In Garry Marshall’s 2-hour montage of aborted movie ideas Swank plays the girl responsible for making sure the Times Square ball will drop at midnight without a hitch. Naturally, it has a power failure.

The only reason I can imagine that Swank agreed to take part in this mess is a 20-second scene she plays with a dying Robert DeNiro. It’s the only 20 seconds of “New Year’s Eve” worth watching. But it doesn’t explain DeNiro’s appearance in this movie. That’s another mystery.

In fact, “New Year’s Eve” is filled with more movie stars than a Hollywood rehab. Get out your scorecards and follow along. In addition to Swank and DeNiro, star-spotting includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, James Belushi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Abigail Breslin, Josh Duhamel, Penny Marshall, Matthew Broderick and Ludacris (that’s not a mis-spelled comment, it’s the rapper named Ludacris!). Probably most embarrassing is Ryan Seacrest because he’s playing himself.

All these characters have separate-yet-sometimes interconnecting stories. Two people are stuck in an elevator; Two pregnant couples are in a race to see who will be the first to deliver their baby in the new year for a huge cash prize, yet no cash prize is large enough to make one of the women eat an anchovy! The world’s top pop singer (played by Jon Bon Jovi, not as himself but as somebody simply named Jensen) is booked to perform at a function for which his ex-girlfriend is the pastry chef; DeNiro plays a dying cancer patient who’s last wish is to be wheeled out onto the roof of the hospital to watch the ball drop; And then there’s that damn ball, stuck frozen on its pole due to a short circuit.

The tiniest moment of real laughter comes from Marshall regular Hector Elizondo as the only electrician in the city of New York who knows how to fix the ball in time for midnight.

Otherwise there are absolutely no laughs in this film, which to call it a bad movie would be an insult to bad movies. It’s just an endless parade of jawdropping implausible scenarios that make you wonder why this large respectable cast didn’t collectively intervene to have Garry Marshall committed to an insane asylum.

In Garry Marshall’s world, a large camper can easily find street parking in New York on New Year’s Eve. In Garry Marshall’s world, the escape hatch on the roof of a stuck elevator has a padlock on it. Is someone afraid the elevator might get stolen? In Garry Marshall’s world, the music business in 2011 is still thriving enough to have the fictitious record label Ahern throw a massive party on new year’s eve, though a company executive (played by John Lithgow) has only Animotion and other 80s albums hanging in his office. In Garry Marshall’s world, Radio City Music Hall is open on New Year’s Eve only so that Michelle Pfeiffer, trying to fulfill a wish-list, can fly across the stage in some bizarre effects harness. In Garry Marshall’s world, Times Square holds a confetti-dropping rehearsal hours before midnight in which Hilary Swank shouts at her staff to not simply dump the confetti, but to “float it”.

The closing credits offer outtakes and bloopers even though this entire movie should have been one long deleted scene. So, as if someone discovered they needed something funny to happen in this movie, we’re treated to the actors’ flubs. Some of those moments even feel written and staged in a desperate attempt to leave us laughing. But just when you think the movie can’t possibly sink any lower, Jessica Biel in labor gives birth to twins. Out of her vagina pops the Blue Ray and DVD discs for Garry Marshall’s last movie “Valentine’s Day”. You’ve been sufficiently warned.

DVD Double Feature:

“New Year’s Eve” might possibly be one of the 10 worst movies I have ever seen. That gives Michelle Pfeiffer her second film on that basement list. Perhaps the worst film of all time is “Grease 2” which starred Pfeiffer singing about how she wants to fall in love with a cool motorcycle rider. The song lyrics are jawdroppingly awful like a bowling team singing about how they want to “score tonight” or a sex education class singing about “reproduction”.

Michael The Moviegoer

Movie Summary of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Michael The Moviegoer.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY = **1/2

“Cold Warriors”

John le Carre is perhaps the most celebrated British novelist of espionage thrillers of the last century. He’s seen a number of his novels get adapted for the screen going back to 1965’s “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, but with mixed results. This new version of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is the second adaptation of this novel following a successful 1979 mini-series for TV. It’s a handsome-looking production with a quality cast giving top-notch performances. With Gary Oldman as George Smiley, John Hurt as Control and Colin Firth as Bill Haydon, John le Carre’s fans will find much to love here. Those unfamiliar with the material, beware!

Directed to bleak and gloomy perfection by Tomas Alfredson as his follow-up to the cult-fave Swedish vampire hit “Let The Right One In”, this “Tinker Tailor” is so confusing it almost feels like it’s made out of spy code. Although it seems to carry John le Carre’s stamp of approval by his own cameo appearance in a Christmas party scene.

The problem is in the script by Peter Straughan who wrote 2009’s awful “The Men Who Stare At Goats”. He’s adapted “Tinker Tailor” only for those already familiar with the story and its characters. I am not among the members of that elite group, so for me there were far too many scenes that left me feeling as if I were staring at goats.

For fans of the novel and the novelist, this could be the definitive screen version of a John le Carre work. Maybe I will grow to appreciate it more in time. But my initial reaction was as cold and bleak as the cinematography.

The plot involves high-ranking members of British intelligence, among them Gary Oldman’s George Smiley. After a mission in Budapest goes horribly wrong, Smiley becomes consumed with discovering who among them is a mole, a double agent spying for the Russians.

John le Carre actually worked for British intelligence before he became a novelist. That’s perhaps why his spy stories feel so authentic. He knows a lot more about the realities of espionage than Ian Fleming’s flamboyant 007. But it’s the James Bond movies that make young children (myself included) daydream about becoming a secret agent. The success of those movies paved the way for countless copycat franchises from the serious (“Mission Impossible”) to the funny (“Austin Powers”).

The agents in John le Carre’s world are real human beings, vulnerable and paranoid at every turn. While it’s fun to think that James Bond will always live to die another day, I don’t believe that any of the spies in John le Carre’s stories will ever die of old age.

DVD Double Feature:

My favorite movie of a John le Carre novel is “The Russia House”. Perhaps the least known and least successful, yet famous for being the first Hollywood movie to be filmed in Moscow following the fall of communism. It stars Sean Connery as a washed up book publisher who comes across a secret manuscript from a Russian girl played by Michelle Pfeiffer with a spot-on Russian accent. The manuscript was written by a top Soviet scientist and details the truth about the Soviet capability to wage nuclear war. It soon falls into the hands of British intelligence and the CIA, and the cat-&-mouse chess game is on. “The Russia House” also contains a rare acting performance by the famous late director Ken Russell.

Michael The Moviegoer