Vincent D'onofrio Page 3

It's clear from the very start that this movie has little to do with the 1977-1983 beloved hit TV series. Firstly, the film ignores the capitalisation that would make sense of the title. And the main characters, while they have familiar names, are completely different people. So fans of the show will be justifiably angry that it has been merely referenced to make a half-hearted mash-up of The Hangover and Fast & Furious. Which might not be a bad idea if the gross-out comedy was funny and the action was even remotely thrilling.

In this version, Poncharello is the undercover name assigned to a Miami FBI agent (Michael Pena) who is sent to Los Angeles to investigate a string of armoured car robberies that might involve dirty cops. He is partnered with officer Jon Baker (Dax Shepard) riding motorcycles with the California Highway Patrol (they're CHiPs, not Chips). Jon is a former hotshot off-road motorbike champ who has broken every bone in his body and has only joined the police to try to win back his estranged, monstrous wife (Kristen Bell). But he's such a high-energy idiot that he's starting the job on probation. As their case develops, it's instantly clear that the mastermind is the villainous officer Kurtz (Vincent D'Onofrio). And their investigation is complicated by the arrival of Ponch's FBI boss (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and partner (Adam Brody).

The lazy script never tries to crank up any real mystery or tension in the plot. Instead, the film is just a series of smutty jokes and incoherent stunt sequences, plus running gags that never reach a punchline. All of this is infused with relentless sexism, as the camera leers shamelessly at every woman. And the laddish misogyny is accompanied by constant homophobia, which is addressed in the dialogue in a feeble attempt to undercut the baldfaced bigotry. This makes all of the characters resolutely unlikeable. Ponch and Jon are such self-absorbed jerks that it's inconceivable that they would ever be allowed to be policemen.

Continue reading: Chips Review

Director Antoine Fuqua brings his usual fascination with violence to this remake of the iconic 1960 Western, itself a remake of the masterful 1954 Japanese original Seven Samurai. Reteaming with his Training Day stars Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, Fuqua injects some very manly grit into the tale of a ragtag gang of mercenaries who find themselves trying to save a town in peril. It's a great story, and Fuqua delivers plenty of punch in the action set-pieces. But the characters and situations never quite rise beyond the usual Wild West cliches, and toning everything down for the required PG-13 rating creates an oddly celebratory tone, as if the brutality isn't that bad, really.

In a peaceful village in the middle of nowhere, greedy corporate baron Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) has discovered gold, so he decides to buy up everyone's land. When the homesteaders resist, Bogue turns vicious, and the newly widowed Emma (Haley Bennett) refuses to go quietly. Instead, she hires notorious gunslinger Chisolm (Washington), who in turn rustles up six more desperados: hard-drinking sharpshooter Faraday (Chris Pratt), fading legend Goodnight (Hawke), burly bear-man Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio), blade expert Billy (Byung-hun Lee), Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and Native American warrior Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier). Not only do they need to become a team, but they need to teach these timid farmers how to fight against Bogue's approaching army.

Screenwriters Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk have reduced the plot to the bare basics: scrappy good guys versus a slick, well-organised villain. There's never a compelling reason why Bogue wants the farmland (is there gold under the cornfields?), but he's clearly willing to kill everyone and level the entire town to get it. In this sense, Sarsgaard has the least subtle role in the film, but he has a great time snarling and shouting and generally being the devil incarnate. But then all of the roles are fairly simplified, with each of the seven teammates having a basic trait to combine with their general heroism: cool, cheeky, weary, quirky, flashy, rambunctious and lethal, respectively.

Continue reading: The Magnificent Seven Review

There's a nasty edge to this horror film that makes it much creepier than most, which gives Hawke the chance to give an unnervingly haunted performance. As the script reveals its hideous secrets, the filmmakers really make our skin crawl. Although it's not easy to figure out what the point is, since the whole film seems to be merely an exercise in scaring the audience.

It's all based in true crime, as author Ellison (Hawke) drags his wife Tracy (Rylance) and kids to a new town so he can investigate another unsolved murder. What he hasn't told Tracy is that they're living in the crime scene, an unusually dark house that has a box of home movies in the attic that reveal a much more gruesome horror than Ellison was expecting. The killings at hand turn out to be part of a string of hideous murders that seem to have a supernatural twist.

Indeed, this film takes a very bleak trip into the darkest recesses of the imagination: the deaths on these home movies are so hideous that we can barely watch them. But then, this also means that the film is more unnerving than nine out of 10 horror movies. And Hawke is a solid central character we can identify with, as he's unable to stop digging into the story, looking further into these murders and watching every last home movie even though he knows he should really stop. He gives Ellison an earthy honesty that carries us along with him, even when some standard movie characters pop up, including an angry sheriff (Thompson), his dopey deputy (Ransone) and an expert professor (D'Onofrio).

Continue reading: Sinister Review

A self-proclaimed thriller "in the tradition of The Spanish Prisoner and Reservoir Dogs," Spanish Judges is more akin to Death Wish 3 than either of the aforementioned films.

Continue reading: Spanish Judges Review

Supernova is the story about a rescue vessel sent into deep space to pick someone up from a rogue moon. To make a short story shorter, they find both the person (who is, of course, accompanied with creepy music) and an alien artifact capable of creating new matter. Every person who touches the stuff becomes endowed with superhuman strength.

Continue reading: Supernova Review

Ethan Hawke (Training Day) courageously attempts to capture the essence of what makes this landmark so addictive in his directorial debut, Chelsea Walls. A collage of character plotlines that only barely intersect, Chelsea is a unique and respectable experiment in its focus on an inanimate object as its central character. Backed by a score that appropriately feels as if it were written while observing the production, Hawke creates an environment easily accessible to both New Yorkers and the non-initiated.

Continue reading: Chelsea Walls Review

Impostor is Hollywood's latest cloning experiment. Based on a short story by futurist Philip K. Dick, Impostor takes place in a future far away, when man is at war with an alien race. Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise) is on the front lines of weapons development to combat man's alien threat. But one day, things go horribly wrong and Spencer finds himself accused by the military of being an alien replicant, with an assassin's bomb implanted in his chest. Unable to believe he is anyone other than himself, Spencer escapes to search for the truth.

Continue reading: Impostor Review

Recovering co-dependent Ruby Weaver has such bad luck with men that she and her girlfriends keep a shoebox of photos called "The Ex Files."

In the beginning of "Happy Accidents," writer-director Brad Anderson ("Next Stop Wonderland," "Session 9") shows us a comical montage of progressively eccentric examples: The Bad Actor, the Artist, the Fetishist, the Frenchman, the Junkie and the Abductee, who thought he'd been kidnapped by aliens.

Ruby (Marisa Tomei in an amusingly harried performance) hopes she's seen the worst of this trend and is, with the help of her intrusive therapist (the wonderfully wry Holland Taylor), beginning to curb her pathological urge to try to fix men that are beyond repair.

Continue reading: Happy Accidents Review