Film

Recycle

this paper Old tricks

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a film that takes a jab at Las Vegas magicians like David Copperfield and Siegfried & Roy, feels like the last lame guy showing up to a party with a rubber nose, squirting flower and a bottle of cheap schnapps. If this was a subject ripe for satire, the subject should’ve been approached 20 years ago. There’s just nothing funny in seeing Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi dressed like Siegfried & Roy dancing around to Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra.” And it’s downright distasteful to have a magician in a bar with gauze bandages all over his neck because one of his big cats bit him. Get it? Roy Horn had his neck injured by a tiger during a show, so the dude in the bar is a sly reference to that stage tragedy? Bruuu-hahahaha! Really, this movie is douchebag central. It’s a bunch of tired jokes by tired performers on a tired subject. Oh, but David Copperfield does make a cameo. There you go, magic fans! Carell, who I predict will have to return to TV sooner than later, plays Burt Wonderstone, a Vegas magician headlining at Bally’s. His partner, Anton Marvelton (Buscemi) joins him every night for the same tired magician act, running through a sequence of played-out illusions and sexist jokes. Doug Munny (Haha … Munny sounds like money! Get it?), a casino mogul played by James Gandolfini, wants his headliners to modernize their act. He cites psychotic Steve Gray (Jim Carrey) as the modern direction of magic. The Gray character is a hybrid of Criss Angel and David Blaine, hosting a TV show called “Brain Rape” where he does ungodly things to his face and body. His show is called Brain Rape, and Angel had a show called Mindfreak. Get it? Hahahaha!

In one of the film’s few funny gags, Burt and Anton attempt a Blaine-style isolation chamber in the Vegas sun that goes terribly awry. They break up, and Wonderstone’s attempts at a solo career land him at a retirement home doing tricks for aging Vegas show people. One of them is Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin), the magician who had a nameby Bob Grimm sake magic set that Burt played with as a child. Their relationship in the film is neither bgrimm@ touching, nor inspirational, and it certainly newsreview.com isn’t funny. And what of Jim Carrey? He’s taking to 1 supporting roles this year in this travesty and the upcoming Kick-Ass 2. I guess he’s having a hard time landing headliner gigs after the bomb that was Mr. Pooper’s Defecating Fat Aquatic Birds That Look Like They are Wearing Tuxedos, or whatever the hell that movie was called. The best thing in this movie, far and away, is the suit jacket that Olivia Wilde is wearing late in the film. It’s this real cool, jazzy little number where it looks like three different tweed jackets from a thrift store stitched together. I’m not being sarcastic; it really is cool looking, and I want one. I want one made for a man, and not a Hollywood actress. Seriously, somebody get on it and start making those jackets for men. I’ll pay at least $50 for that thing. The movie is directed by Don Scardino—a veteran of many TV shows—and it’s his feature debut. He gets credit for pulling the worst big screen performance out of Steve Carell to date, and those of you who have seen his mopey faced work in Dan in Real Life know that getting something worse than that out of Carell is a major feat. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a movie that never should’ve been made, at least not in this century. It would’ve sucked balls before 2000, too, but at least it would’ve been slightly relevant. As it stands, it’s one of those movies you watch unfold in disbelief, wondering how anybody thought it was a good idea and, if they did think it was a good idea, what form of hallucinogen were they on at the time. Ω

Steve Carell re-imagines the climactic wedding scene from The Graduate.

1

Poor

2

Fair

3

Good

4

Very Good 5

121 and Over Directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the writers of The Hangover, basically serve up yet another strain of that film, this one set in a college town with college kids drinking a lot and getting into all kinds of college trouble. Miles Teller (who was in the similarly stupid Project X) headlines as Miller, friend to one Jeff Chang (Justin Chon). Jeff Chang is turning 21, and Miller takes him out for a night of partying with pal Casey (Skylar Astin) and, guess what, they all get crazy drunk and stuff. Nothing even close to new or original in these scenarios. The only thing keeping this from being totally lousy is that the actors play off each other well, especially Teller and Astin. If you crack up when people eat tampons or get their asses branded, well, this one’s for you. If you get mildly annoyed at racist humor coupled with guys playing drinking games, go ahead and stay far away.

2Dead Man Down Director Niels Arden Opley, maker of the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films, makes his English language feature debut with a familiar face heading up the cast: Noomi Rapace, who played Lisbeth Salander. She plays a woman badly scarred in a car accident, who witnesses a murder and decides to blackmail the murderer (Colin Farrell) into killing the drunken driver who scarred her face. The Farrell character is working a complicated agenda of his own in the service of Alphonse (Terrence Howard), a Manhattan crime lord. The performances are very good here, and the movie looks absolutely great. The problem is Opley’s decision to stuff his movie with so many plotlines twists and turns that you just get exhausted by the halfway point. I think Opley has some good movies in him, and this one isn’t all bad. It’s just something you don’t really need to see.

1A Good Day to Die Hard The Die Hard franchise has been one of the more reliable action movie franchises in cinematic history—until now. Bruce Willis looks tired, beaten down and embarrassed in this useless installment of the adventures of John McClane. The action takes him to Russia this time, which is a mistake. While there, he helps his son with some espionage crap, another storytelling mistake. He goes up against villains who do not distinguish themselves at all, and this would be the film’s biggest mistake. Die Hard needs a big villain. All of the prior installments had good villains, and that includes naked William Sadler in Die Hard 2. I think McClane has got some good stuff left in the tank, but enough with this garbage involving his kids. And stay the heck out of Russia; that place has lost all of its cinematic bad guy appeal. Little in this movie makes sense and it just doesn’t belong in a category with the first four chapters. Reboot, forget this thing, and start fresh the next time out, sort of like how Rocky Balboa forgot the previous two chapters and restored the Italian Stallion’s dignity.

1Identity Thief Cashing in on her Oscar-nominated turn in Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy gets a headlining role alongside Jason Bateman in Identity Thief. While both performers are talented and make the best of the crap heap of a script they are handed, it’s not enough to make this anything more than a desperate misfire. From the director of Horrible Bosses, this is just another riff on Planes, Trains & Automobiles minus much of the fun. Bateman plays a sorry sap who has his identity stolen by a free shopping weirdo (McCarthy). He gets into some legal troubles, and vows to capture the thief and bring her back to his hometown. So it’s another odd couple road movie, and pretty exploitive when it comes to McCarthy. She’s a talented woman, and she deserves much better than this.

2Jack the Giant Slayer Director Bryan Singer’s big budget take on the classic fairytale was delayed from last summer, and they should’ve left it in the vault. He’s put together a movie that lacks any real magic because the special effects are bad, and the performances are mostly flat. Nicholas Hoult, so good in Warm Bodies, plays the title character, a farm boy who gets some magic beans, lets them get wet and … ah, you know. Stanley Tucci and Ewan McGregor have supporting roles in what amounts to a whole lot of nothing that cost lots of money. The budget is something in the neighborhood of $200 million, and that budget must’ve gone to Moon Pies for everybody, because it doesn’t show on the screen. Too bad, because I was just telling somebody a couple of months ago how the world could really use a good movie about giants getting hit with stuff. Actually, that’s not true. I’m totally lying.

2Oz the Great and Powerful James Franco is in over his head for Sam Raimi’s mostly lame prequel to The Wizard of Oz. The title character calls for somebody with that old school Hollywood charm like Robert Downey, Jr., or Johnny Depp. Franco looks like a kid playing dress up here, and he’s not even the worst thing about the movie. That would be Mila Kunis looking completely lost as the witch who will become that witch we all know from the original Oz. I’m sorry—that witch isn’t supposed to be all corseted and hot. As for Rachel Weisz, she fares best as yet another witch, while Michelle Williams is just serviceable as Glinda the Good Witch. Raimi relies heavily on CGI effects—big surprise—and they look pretty crappy for the most part. This is an underwhelming movie in much the same way his Spider-Man 3 missed the mark. It’s overblown, misguided and odd.

4Silver Linings Playbook Bradley Cooper is on fire as Pat, a troubled man recently out of a mental institution and obsessed with his ex-wife. He’s so obsessed hat he can’t see the value in Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a recently widowed neighbor trying to befriend him. Directed by David O. Russell, the movie is a funny, slick treatment of people with real problems that works because Russell and his performers find the right balance. Robert De Niro does his best work in years as Pat’s obsessive father, and Chris Tucker gets big laughs as Pat’s former mental institution buddy. Cooper and Lawrence make for one of the year’s most interesting screen couples. They are certainly unique. Russell is establishing himself as one of the industry’s most reliable and innovative directors.

3Snitch Dwayne Johnson—ACTOR! He has dropped his alias, “The Rock,” from his screen name, and now stars in a movie where he doesn’t even fire a machine gun or show off his glorious tattoos. Johnson plays the father of a young man who gets into trouble after a friend mails him a whole lot of drugs. Unless the son turns in somebody for distributing drugs and “snitches,” he will face a long jail sentence. Johnson’s character decides to take matters into his own hands, find some drug dealers, and turn them in so his misunderstood son can walk free. This one was a lot better than I was expecting because Johnson really steps up and makes the whole thing work. It’s predictable, yet well paced, a good-looking and wellacted action thriller. Johnson will be coming to a theater near you firing many guns and showing off his ink in the near future (quite often in 2013). For now, it’s kind of cool to see him do something a little different, and doing it effectively.

5Zero Dark Thirty Director Kathryn Bigelow getting snubbed by Oscar for this taut, scary, intelligent movie about the war on terror and hunt for Bin Laden is a travesty. Well, it’s a travesty when it comes to movies and stuff, not so much in the grand scheme of things. Still, Bigelow deserves praise for putting together a movie that is both exciting political thriller and terrific action movie. Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain is deserving of the accolades as Maya, a composite character of CIA agents who managed to find Bin Laden in Pakistan and end his life. The film contains scenes of torture, but it doesn’t feel “protorture” by any means. It’s a great movie that will only get greater with time, and yet another reason to call Bigelow one of the best in the business.

Gift certificates make great gifts! Visit www.newsreview.com

DISCOVER THE NIGHT ON A WHOLE NEW LEVEL

H A R R A H ’ S L A K E T A H O E

N I G H T C L U B

WE’RE BLOWING THE LID OFF THE NIGHT

IT’S THE ULTIMATE IN TRENDSETTING ENTERTAINMENT.

FRIDAY – SATURDAY DOORS OPEN 10:30PM

CALL NOW FOR BOOTH AND BOTTLE SERVICE

CELEBRITY SATURDAYS APRIL 6

#PeekTahoe

Must be 21 to enter. Management reserves the right to change or discontinue this offer without notice. Restrictions apply. Must be 21 or older to gamble. Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-522-4700. ©2013, Caesars License Company, LLC. T1600-13-31