Luis Guzman Page 2

Remember that TV show Heroes, where something happens maybe every 15 episodes to advance the storyline? Cleaner is kind of like that but condensed into a movie. The movie beats around the bush for about half an hour before it actually introduces a conflict; the rest of the 90 minutes is filled with Samuel L. Jackson yelling at various people until we finally encounter a twist at the very end. The "surprise" ending is so contrived and underwhelming you'll want to take a nap after sitting through this film to recover your soul from horrendous boredom by dreaming up something more interesting.

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Witness Out of Sight, with criminal and cop falling into an unlikely romance. Witness Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which broke the indie film scene wide open. Witness Schizopolis - you know, all of it.

Continue reading: The Limey Review

Confidence has triple the pizzazz of any caper movie released in the past several years. To say that it keeps you guessing would be misleading; the film has so many twists, turns, and reveals them in such an order that you don't even know where to start guessing. You'll need a scorecard to keep everything in order. Yet, remarkably, in the end, everything adds up without any apparent plot holes. It's astonishing.

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Normally, a movie that takes place largely in a Vegas strip joint would a shoo-in for five stars. Unfortunately, the ludicrous tale told in Luckytown doesn't merit the time spent in its nudie joints.

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The latest big screen adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" has such a conspicuously clean Hollywood ending that, even though I've never read the book, I was suspicious and went online to bone up a little before writing this review.

Sure enough, even the central act of revenge that motivates this classic tale of obstinate, meticulous reprisal has been unduly rewritten to make for a cinematic and action-packed climax. The hero has been acquitted of his less honorable acts, the fates of characters have been drastically altered (those that haven't been dropped completely, that is), and comic relief has been shoehorned into the story so crudely you can almost see the impatient studio suit tapping his foot on the set and saying, "Can't this be funnier?"

Yet even with these gross departures, this "Count" has such a flavorful, popcorn-literature air about it that at its worst it still recalls the best of Golden Era swashbuckler flicks.

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"Traffic" is a socially and politically grandstanding soap opera about the narcotics trade and the futility of the "war on drugs." It's a film about how that war is propagated by bureaucratic demagogues in the United States government, not because they think they can stem the flow of illegal substances but because they think saying they want to is a way to win elections.

OK. Point taken.

"Traffic" is also gritty and realistic feat of cinematic logistics, following no less than 15 major characters (and more than 50 speaking parts) through several complex, well-acted storylines about all sides of the drug trade -- from kingpins to cops to policy wonks to addicts. So my hat is off to the picture's ever-brilliant director, Steven Soderbergh ("Erin Brockovich"), who certainly does a fine juggling act, involving the audience in every story on a personal level.

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There is a key to good'n'stupid lowbrow comedy that few lowbrow moviemakers understand, and it is this: If you have a thin but serviceable premise upon which to build cheap, vulgar, tasteless, but side-splitting dumb gags, don't slap together some insipid story clogged with clichés to prop it up -- just run with what you've got.

Don't turn your movie into Adam Sandler or Rob Schneider fodder, full of insulting attempts to make audiences genuinely feel for your imbecile heroes and wishy-washy life lessons for your stock characters to learn in the last act. Don't be an "American Pie" and backpedal on your vulgarity at the last minute with a hypocritical-apology "happy" ending.

Instead, be proudly, shamelessly, flippantly stupid, like "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," in which two recent-grad, odd-couple roommates don't discover anything about themselves, they never see any "bigger picture," and they don't grow up at all. They just get stoned out of their gourds on a Friday night, develop the munchies for those famous square hamburgers from the titular eastern-U.S. fast food joint, and spend the rest of the picture having preposterous misadventures while driving all over New Jersey hunting for the nearest franchise location.

Continue reading: Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle Review