Kathy Bates Page 4

The 2003 comedy Bad Santa is a holiday classic that skilfully mixes gross-out humour with resolutely unsentimental emotion. So it's very disappointing that this 13-years-later sequel reassembles the cast then merely coasts on the vulgarity, never bothering to develop the characters or plot. It's just as rude, and it provides some solid laughs along the way, but the story never engages the audience, which leaves the movie feeling naughty but never nice.

Over these years, Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) has continued his slacker lifestyle into his early 60s. He still lives in Phoenix, and has continued to try to ignore the attentions of the sweetly naive Thurman (Brett Kelly), who has just turned 21. Then Willie's treacherous ex-cohort Marcus (Tony Cox) gets out of prison and approaches him with a big heist. Against his better judgement, Willie accompanies him to Chicago, where two nasty surprises await: the plan is to steal millions from a children's charity, and Willie's estranged mother Sunny (Kathy Bates) is organising the robbery. Annoyed, Willie instantly falls for the sexy Diane (Christina Hendricks), who is married to the charity's shifty boss (Ryan Hansen). Meanwhile, Marcus tries to seduce a security guard (Jenny Zigrino). And Thurman turns up unannounced.

It's depressing that, after years of talk about a sequel, this haphazard plot is the best the writers could come up with. Every element of the narrative is deeply contrived to merely string together a series of filthy jokes, rude insults, noisy sex and criminal slapstick. All of this would have been welcome if the comedy sprang from the messy relationships or personalities. But everything is so static and pointless that there's nothing to hold the audience's attention, aside from a number of witty gags that pop up out of nowhere. So at least there are a few solid laughs.

Continue reading: Bad Santa 2 Review

Melissa McCarthy brings another of her improvisational alter-egos to the big screen with this energetic comedy. The first cause for pause comes because this is a reteaming with her filmmaker husband Ben Falcone, with whom she made the bizarrely unfunny Tammy, as opposed to the filmmaker Paul Feig who directed her to box office triumph with Spy and The Heat and an Oscar nomination in Bridesmaids. Yes, there's a significance difference.

This time she plays hugely popular financial guru Michelle Darnell, whose stardom ends abruptly when she is sent to prison for four months for insider trading. When she's released, everyone she stepped on as she rose to the top turns their back on her, and her nemesis/ex Renault (Peter Dinklage) is still determined to get revenge. The only person who will talk to her is former assistant Claire (Kristen Bell), so Michelle moves in with her family. Unable to restart her business, she also takes over the Dandelion Scout troup of Claire's daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson), pushing the girls to take aggressive measures to sell their cookies.

As always, McCarthy throws herself into the role, creating a vivid character who indulges in a lot of outrageously silly slapstick. As with Tammy, the humour centres more on abusive interaction and humiliation than actual wit. McCarthy and Falcone strain to get laughs from physical wackiness rather than anything based on the character, so the movie only ever feels mildly amusing thanks to its high energy. But there's nothing engaging about Michelle, and it's only in a few cute-warm scenes with the terrific Bell that the film springs to anything resembling life. Thankfully, her scenes with the likeable Tyler Labine (as a potential boyfriend) have a loose humour to them. And Dinklage is surprisingly amusing as the sputtering cartoonish villain, while Kathy Bates generates a few sparks as Michelle's sassy mentor.

Continue reading: The Boss Review

This documentary is precisely what it's title purports to be, an in-depth and instructive look at movie editing that literally spans 100 years of film history, from The Great Train Robbery to Cold Mountain. Through interviews with a copious number of directors and editors, The Cutting Edge covers everything from basic editing techniques like the matching of cuts to modern editing theory as inspired by MTV and The Matrix. The film goes into extreme detail in parts, like when we get to see James Cameron's trick of removing one frame per second out of Terminator 2 to give it more momentum and realism. It's all a little bit insidery and self-congratulatory, but the movie works far more often than not. Any film buff will find it hard not to like.

Continue reading: The Cutting Edge: The Magic Of Movie Editing Review

As the opening credits roll, we meet Stacy (Brittany Murphy), a young college grad heading out into the exciting world of low-budget television production. She dreams of one day working with her childhood idol, Diane Sawyer. And her mother loves Carly Simon. I don't know why the part about Carly Simon is important, but it's a recurring theme throughout the film. If her mother ever actually got any screen time, perhaps the Carly Simon thing would become at least marginally relevant to the story. But no dice. Even so, we're treated to several inexplicable Carly Simon moments that have nothing to do with anything, really, and don't add anything of substance to the film.

Continue reading: Little Black Book Review

After a generation on hiatus, the crazy, ensemble-cast chase comedy is back with an MTV vengeance in "Rat Race," a cornball marathon between a dozen second-tier stars vying for a $2 million booty.

The gimmick: To entertain his high-rolling clientele, a Las Vegas hotelier -- played by John Cleese with a slightly insane, toothy-dentured grin -- recruits an oddball assortment of zealous casino tourists to dash across the desert to New Mexico in search of a bus station locker where the loot has been stashed. The runners think it's all a zany promotion for Cleese's resort, but in the penthouse billionaires from all over the world are placing high-stakes bets on who will get there first, just for rich-guy kicks.

The players: Jon Lovitz is an chintzy, unemployed soccer dad who red-lines his minivan while dragging his family along, on the pretense of a job offer so he doesn't get chewed out for ruining their vacation. He catches hell anyway when the car breaks down outside a "white power" roadside attraction and they steal Hitler's limo to complete the pilgrimage.

Continue reading: Rat Race Review

Jules Verne might have a hard time recognizing his source material in the Jackie Chan action-comedy adaptation of "Around the World in 80 Days," but for non-purists, it's easy to forgive the many liberties taken in this funny, fleet-footed summer-matinee romp.

Although the ostensible main character is still screwball Victorian inventor Phileas Fogg (lanky Steve Coogan) -- who wagers against the stuffed shirts of the English scientific establishment that he can circumnavigate the globe in the titular time period -- this version of the story more literally revolves around Passepartout (Chan), Fogg's valet who has his own reasons for traipsing across continents.

Passepartout has stolen a jade Buddha from a Bank of London vault in order to return it to its rightful place: his native village in China. Fogg is his ticket to safe passage -- or so he thinks.

Continue reading: Around The World In 80 Days Review