Short Take: Three Horror Movies.

The scariest thing about the Paranormal Activity movies is still how popular they are. How this brand of cheaply done and cheaply looking films can manage to outgross much better projects is a sad reminder that today's audiences are victim of cattle thinking. Once they get used to a "series", they don't care how many times they are told the same story. These movies prove that audiences enjoy the act of not thinking. The third installment in the series, goes back to the very beginning and explores why numbers 1 and 2 happened. To say the reasons are preposterous would be nothing compared to the way in which the filmmakers rely on facile trickery and obvious techniques to try and scare us. The effects have been getting consistently better, something which can't be said about the acting and plot devices. This one, set in the 80s, has us wondering how did these progressive people guess that everything should've been filmed in case a movie was made about them decades later. The film doesn't rely try to adjust itself to the settings and to the spirit of the era, it goes straight for the established process that's worked for them in the past, the only thing they've changed is the medium by which we see the demonic activities. One must wonder, by the time they get to Paranormal Activity 45 will the stories be displayed using cave paintings? Grade *

The only good thing that came out of Dream House must've been Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz getting married. The rest is an outrageously bad attempt at mating Shutter Island, Memento and any Stephen King novel involving snow and houses. If you've seen the trailer, you don't need to bother with the rest of the movie. What remains mysterious is why people like Sheridan, Watts and pretty much everyone else involved in the production (the underrated Elias Koteas for example) saw in the lazy screenplay and the redundant characters.  Grade *

The Change-Up tries to invent the wheel by taking Freaky Friday and adding curse words, boobs and poop jokes. Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds play bets buds who go through a body exchange situation after peeing in a magical fountain. One's a control freak lawyer, the other's a slacker. You don't need to try hard to guess which one plays which; one of the many reasons why you wonder why was this movie even made. Everything about it has been done before and in much better ways. Props to Leslie Mann for always adding a very human layer to her characters. Grade *

Horrible Bosses ***

Director: Seth Gordon

Cast: Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day

Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, Jennifer Aniston

Julie Bowen, Jamie Foxx

Since time immemorial, humans have rebelled against authority figures or despotic members of their hierarchy. From entire countries and cruel monarchs, the arrival of seemingly uniform democracy made it tougher for those in power to abuse their subjects, which is why this model is now mostly used in two places: school and work.

These are the two instances when not even being right gives you any benefit, how can you argue first, with a system that will give you and education and provide a job, and then with the very workplace you were trained to excel at?

Insurrection in either of these two means you either become an outcast or starve to death, what to do then when the situations get simply out of control?

Horrible Bosses is not the answer to the complicated ethical conundrum exposed in the previous paragraphs but as an accurate portrayal of men-children caught in a cycle of senseless torture, it might be one of the cleverest movies to come out of the harsh economic times the world has been through.

Essentially the film shows us the ghastly work situations of three men whose bosses specialty is creating living hell on Earth.

There's Nick Hendricks (Bateman), an executive whose boss, Dave Harken (Spacey), tortures him with the promise of a promotion that never materializes, while chiding him for being two minutes late, making him work inhuman hours and tricking him into drinking booze early in the morning.

Kurt Buckman (Sudeikis) is a pleasing accountant who has to deal with his exemplary boss' (Donald Sutherland) son, Bobby Pellitt (Farrell), after the elder Pellitt dies of a heart attack. Bobby not only loathes Kurt, he's also a cocaine addict who en joys the company of Asian escorts.

Last, there's dental assistant Dale Arbus (Day) whose perfect life with his fiancee (Lindsay Sloane) is only threatened by the insatiable libido of his boss Julia Harris (Aniston) who tries to coerce him into having sex with her.

The three poor chums, who also happen to be life long friends, decide that the only way to make this stop is to eliminate the very source of their trouble: they must kill their bosses. They hire the shady looking Motherfucker Jones (Foxx) to be their "murder consultant" and then set out, a la Hitchcock, to kill each other's bosses. This of course leads to a large amount of hilarity and truly ridiculous situations.

It's funny to think about it but the very premise of this movie would've had a different genre connotation a couple of decades ago. The very notion that an everyman is set to kill his boss just screams noir and sends images of Bob Mitchum in a trench coat and a cackling Dick Widmark pushing ladies down a staircase.

How and when murder became hilarious instead of horrifying? That is the question. Then again, not really because what Horrible Bosses aims at goes beyond "let's make fun of these goofballs' failed murder plans", it actually makes us wonder how deep in crap we are that we have begun to think of lives as commodities we can bargain and deal with.

In a way then, this film is just as horrifying as anything that might've sprung from the WWII-bruised minds of the greatest film noir masters. The film explores the notions of survival in a very immature way (it's either murder or $20 handjobs for these guys...) but perhaps unintentionally it taps into a very primal conundrum which director Gordon (if you haven't seen his Donkey Kong documentary, what are you waiting for?) handles with dexterity and much needed grace.

Despite its rooting in the Judd Apatow school of immature adult men coming to terms with existence, Gordon seems to find a voice of his own and delivers the hilarity with politically incorrect, almost passive aggressive darkness; the very name of Motherfucker Jones calls for a whole essay on the blaxploitaition movement, and as much as Gordon tries to pretend he's just another comedy director, his movie references and twisted homages tell us that he's a filmmaker to watch. You don't see Hitchcock, Danny de Vito and Kiss Me Deadly thrown in together into a single reference so frequently, do ya?

If there is one thing the film fails at is establishing why these guys need to be friends in the same place, something noir-ish would've been more benefited from the pros of anonymity, heck the very name of Strangers on a Train says it! So why do we need to know they are members of this boy club? Do they allow other members? it would've been interesting to see how Gordon developed his characters under the stress of unfamiliarity.

Other than that, the film shines for its excellent portrayal of hard economic times, the refusal to grow up and you haven't lived until you see, the usually too-good-to-be-true, Jennifer Aniston spraying Charlie Day's crotch trying to figure out whether he's cut or not. She gives the comedic performance of the year!

State of Play **1/2

Director: Kevin Macdonald
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck
Rachel McAdams, Jeff Daniels, Robin Wright Penn, Helen Mirren
Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Michael Berresse

A research assistant working for congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck) dies mysteriously. A man and a pizza deliverer are shot by an unidentified gunman.
Before you can say Clark Kent, Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) has found links between both incidents as well as a corporate conspiracy involving senators, sex scandals and hitmen.
Based on Paul Abbott's magnificent miniseries for the BBC, director Macdonald finds himself trying to deliver six hours worth of material in two streamlined hours; with results that often thrill, but never fulfill.
The succession of events is rapid and keeps you interested in the action, especially because new evidence/leads arrive by the minute and for this the film essentially achieves its mission of being one of the only adult thrillers delivered so far this year.
The cast is phenomenal, even if they don't really push their craft too much. Crowe is always fascinating to watch, he inhabits McAffrey in such a way that you never doubt he's been a reporter for almost two decades.
McAdams as ingenue blogger Della Frye brings a sense of girl scout perkiness that flies well with Crowe's more established macho ways (romance between them is never hinted, but there is sexual tension all the time).
Mirren plays editor Cameron Lynne and the role is a walk through the park for her, it requires her just being commanding and elegantly offensive. Wright Penn, who really needs to get herself a leading role, brings a moving sense of despair playing Stephen's cheated wife.
Daniels is wonderful in a limited role, as is the always fascinating Davis (she gets one miserable scene here!). The only inadequate piece is Affleck, who thinks playing a congressman requires him to frown and overuse his squared jaw.
The screenplay remains taut and the changes that have been made from the miniseries actually work (for the most part), there are still some lose ends and some rather Hollywood-esque plot twists (a deranged hitman goes all Terminator on Crowe in the final, unnecessary, showdown).
But mostly the film suffers because it fails to follow one of the guiding rules of journalism; it doesn't choose an angle.
It wants to be about everything, about current politics, about Iraq war profits, about the decease of printed media (which should've been the angle to pick!), plus each of the characters represents a particular point of view.
Cal is all about respect for the the story, Della believes in morality and "the right thing", Cameron thinks about money and company losses and there is just so much going on that the whole movie feels as a work in progress.
Those who can, should stick to the miniseries, those who have not seen it will probably enjoy this movie with all and its typos.

Hancock *1/2

Director: Peter Berg

Cast: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman

Apparently it's Will Smith's world and we're just living in it.

Or so seems to be the fuel behind "Hancock"; a summer movie that should've been hamrless, explosive fun, but becomes so condescending to the audience that at one point you start wondering why did you even buy the ticket to see it.

With the idea that everyone on Earth loves Smith (G-d forbid if you don't), the story has him playing John Hancock, an immortal, invincible man who has the physical traits of a superhero, but acts like a junkie.

He spends his days sleeping and drinking. Whenever a crime occurs he comes to save the day, but detroys trains, cars and infrastructure in the process.

Villains and victims hate him and people calling him an "asshole" becomes a sort of motif in the movie.

This gets to the point where the city of Los Angeles demands he is incarcerated for damages.

Enter Ray Embrey (Bateman) an idealistic publicist who sees in Hancock what nobody else does: a chance for redemption.

In the best Hollywood way he reforms the, not so heroic, hero and turns him into what comic books tell us he should be like, all to the dismay of his wife Mary (Theron) who thinks Hancock can only bring danger to her family.

But there is a dark past to Hancock, one that holds the key to the past he doesn't remember and that sinks the film into dramatic territory it can't pull off.

"Hancock" begins with promise as it explores the side effects of being a superhero. Who hasn't wondered how the cities recover so fast after final battles?

But as you watch the film you also begin to realize that the whole hero thing becomes a lazy metaphor for what it's like to be a celebrity nowadays.

Hancock isn't liked and he often does more wrong than good, but the media pays so much attention to him that he becomes an easy target for martyrdom.

Watching him struggle with issues that "normal" people deal with in private, you will remember all those starlets who plague the press every day with their scandals.

Like them, Hancock wallows in the mysery that comes with being "different", as if that is justification for his irreverence.

Shot with what can be described as reality show aesthetics, the cinematographer loves doing awkward reaction shots, particularly with Theron that announce plot twists ages before they come (and don't really help the actors look good, except for Bateman who owns the film).

The sad part is that the film as a whole could've exploited this and become a parody of sorts, it only works when it's being silly fun, but it takes itself too importantly and deals with the sort of double morality that is inherent from its very casting.

You know when it starts that while you may dislike Smith at the beginning, there's no way the feeling will remain the same by film's end.

But director Berg couldn't care less about the audience and knowing that the film would make a profit regardless of how incoherent it turns, he inserts subplots that drag and feel like lazy backup plans.

The themes "Hancock" deals with have been explored in much better films (like "The Incredibles" for one) and while its attempts at emotional depth come off as good intentions, sometimes all we really want from our heroes is that they save us.