The Hangover (2009) movie

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Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Jeffrey Tambor
Director: Todd Phillips
Genres: Farce, Absurd Comedy, Buddy Film, Comedy

Two days before his wedding, Doug and three friends drive to Las Vegas for a wild and memorable stag party. In fact, when the three groomsmen wake up the next morning, they can't remember a thing; nor can they find Doug. With little time to spare , the three hazy pals try to re-trace their steps and find Doug so they can get him back to Los Angeles in time to walk down the aisle.

The Hangover Critic Reviews:
Amid all the debris of The Hangover, and it is considerable -- the tooth, the Taser, the tiger, the puke, the police, the stripper, the shots and so very much more -- there is a sort of perverse brilliance or brilliant perverseness to be found in this story of a bachelor party gone terribly wrong.

The basic conceit is nothing new: Guys go to Vegas to give groom one last night of debauched fun. But in The Hangover, director Todd Phillips and the screenwriting team of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have created a heart-of-darkness comedy running naked and wild through the streets. Hysterically and embarrassingly black, The Hangover nevertheless is filled with moments as softhearted as they are crude, as forgiving as unforgivable. And it all begins when they lose Doug.

Doug is the groom played by Justin Bartha. He and BFFs Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) and brother-in-law-to-be Alan (Zach Galifianakis) make up this wolf pack, as the slightly cracked Alan puts it during a rooftop toast over shots of Jägermeister. At one point, Phil nods in Alan's direction and asks Doug, "Should we be worried about him?" The correct answer would be "Yes," if for no other reason than Galifianakis steals the show.

There is far more than 300 miles of desert separating the two worlds of The Hangover.The sumptuous perfection of wedding cakes, lush flowers and an even more luscious bride back in L.A. is the one the pack is running from. The neon glitz of the Las Vegas Strip with its "we won't tell" promise is the dream they're heading toward, that and a $4,000-a-night suite in Caesars Palace where Alan can wear a man purse while chanting "Who Let The Dogs Out" and seem almost normal.

Doug, the straight arrow in a designer suit with the rich fiancée on his arm, is the one who drew the success card years ago. Since he's lost for much of the film, we really don't get to know him; just as well since he's basically just a nice guy in a bad spot.

Stu, a dentist, is the nerd of the group and hasn't colored outside the lines since the first grade. That he's got a controlling girlfriend is no surprise, though Rachael Harris' Melissa creates a whole new level of acerbic, as in scar-you-for-life acerbic. She's just one of the women that this movie doesn't like. In fact, except for Heather Graham's stripper, Jade, and I would remind you she is a stripper, you get the feeling the filmmakers don't like women at all. That might be more of an issue if they were anything more than window dressing, particularly the bride, Tracy (Sasha Barrese), whose main job is to look great while doing her nails and occasionally frown and pout during phone calls. I think "Where is Doug?" and "Where the hell is Doug?" might be her only lines of dialogue.

Phil, a married schoolteacher with a kid, is the cool guy conflicted by how conventional his life has become. He's supposed to be the leader of the pack, Mr. Confident, we're adults, we can figure this out. His arrogance is hard to take at times, but he does get things going after the guys wake up to a morning-after of what utter mayhem must look like. Their luxury suite is awash with bodily fluids and floating blow-up dolls; clothing, food and empty bottles are strewn everywhere; there's an unidentified baby in a closet, an unidentified tiger in the bathroom and blinding headaches you can almost feel. What there isn't, yet, is any shred of regret.

Like the chicken that is picking its way through this mess, Phil starts trying to get the guys to help reconstruct the night they can't remember.

If you're a gambler, and we're in Vegas after all, the friend to bet on is Galifianakis' Alan, the most complex and strangely likable one of the bunch. Socially awkward, completely inappropriate, genuinely innocent and prescient at the same time, he's like having an R-rated kid on your hands.

When you tire of Stu whining over his missing tooth, or the endless invective of a small, naked, gay Chinese high-rolling mobster named Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) representing every possible cliché and racial slur rolled into one angry body, Alan is there doing the hard emotional work of The Hangover. While his scenes with the baby are priceless (and sometimes tasteless), Alan turns out to be the one with the emotional depth.

Piece by sordid piece, the night starts coming back to them: the hospital, the police station, the wedding chapel, and, in keeping with its theme of overindulgence, much more. Some bits are better than others, but one of the best comes when former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson enters the picture, his right hook still deadly and his version of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" already a YouTube classic.

Another saving grace is the soundtrack. The music provides its own narrative score, whether an oldie such as "It's Now or Never" that has that born-in-Vegas feel, or Kanye West's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" that plays as Vegas' neon skyline unfolds in front of us.

And of course Alan is in there too, finding his inner absurdity and delivering yet another deft touch that lifts the film beyond the ordinary. His best musical moment comes in the back seat of the classic Mercedes convertible his father (Jeffrey Tambor) lent them for the trip. Bruised and nearly broken, both the car and the boys, they are heading toward what they hope will finally be Doug.

It's a simple sing-song that goes something like this, "We're the three best friends that anyone could have, we're the three best friends that anyone could have . . . " Which is also what passes for the moral of this story -- in spite of everything that does happen in Vegas, you could do worse than having friends like these.

Next Day Air (2009) movie

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Cast: Donald Faison, Mike Epps, Darius McCrary, Mos Def, Wood Harris, Yasmin Deliz, Omari Hardwick, Emilio Rivera, Cisco Reyes
Director: Benny Boom
Genres: Comedy of Errors, Crime Comedy, Comedy

When two bumbling criminals (Mike Epps and Wood Harris) accidentally receive a package of grade-A cocaine, they think they've hit the jackpot. But when they try to cash in on their luck, it triggers a series of events that forever changes the lives of ten people in Next Day Air, an uproarious action comedy featuring an all-star cast including Donald Faison, Mos Def and Debbie Allen.


Next Day Air Critic Reviews:
Next Day Air can't decide whether it's a broad stoner comedy or a gritty Tarantino-esque action flick. The humor is there, but violence brings the laughter to an abrupt halt.

Scrubs' Donald Faison plays Leo, a pot-addled delivery man who drops off a package containing a shipment of cocaine to the wrong apartment. The residents, a pair of petty thugs (Mike Epps, Wood Harris), regard it as a gift from God and make plans to sell it to a dealer cousin (Omari Hardwick).

The crook waiting for the coke shipment is their unsavory next-door neighbor, Jesus (Cisco Reyes), and his take-charge girlfriend, Chita (Yasmin Deliz). Deliz is hilarious as a sassy Latina who makes Rosie Perez seem like a shrinking violet. Fearing for their lives, Jesus and Chita try to track down the drug shipment. All signs point to Leo or a fellow delivery man, Eric (Mos Def).

The funniest gag comes when Epps has an incomprehensible phone conversation with Hardwick which necessitates subtitles. The formal translation of their trash talk is reminiscent of Airplane's Barbara Billingsley and her "I speak jive" bit.

Director Benny Boom is aiming for a jokier Guy Ritchie caper, interspersing events with quick cuts, flashbacks and freeze-frames. But when the would-be criminal neighbors meet, guns blazing, things get shockingly ugly. It's the bullet-riddled finale that lands the death blow on a film that would have been better had it blunted the shocks and focused on the guffaws.

State of Play (2009) movie

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Cast: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Genres: Political Drama, Drama


Oscar® winner Russell Crowe leads an all-star cast in a blistering thriller about a rising congressman and an investigative journalist embroiled in an case of seemingly unrelated, brutal murders. Crowe plays D.C. reporter Cal McCaffrey, whose street smarts lead him to untangle a mystery of murder and collusion among some of the nation’s most promising political and corporate figures in State of Play, from acclaimed director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland).

Handsome, unflappable U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is the future of his political party: an honorable appointee who serves as the chairman of a committee overseeing defense spending. All eyes are upon the rising star to be his party’s contender for the upcoming presidential race. Until his research assistant/mistress is brutally murdered and buried secrets come tumbling out.


State of Play Critic Reviews:
There is a rich tradition in film of taking a political thriller and putting it squarely in the cross hairs of an investigative journalist -- think All the President's Men, The Killing Fields and The Year of Living Dangerously. State of Play definitely wants to join that crowd, and with a cast headed by Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Helen Mirren, you'd expect all the stars to align.

Yet instead of another classic, what director Kevin Macdonald has given us is a meandering movie that sometimes hits dead center and sometimes misfires dismally, resulting in a drama more tangled than taut.

There are all sorts of reasons why this particular intersection is such an intriguing one to filmmakers: the stakes are always high, whether it's lives or a country's future on the line; the DNA of investigative journalists is not unlike a Michael Vick pit bull -- they are programmed to go for the kill; nothing is ever quite as it seems, which, with luck, keeps us guessing until the final denouement; and there is that precious high moral ground that flawed humans are clawing to take.

Inspired (and, if you've seen it, overshadowed) by the exceedingly fine 2003 BBC miniseries, the film is set in Washington in what feels like the later days of the Bush administration when disillusionment was running high and a fresh-faced congressman with a fistful of integrity could make a mark. Two seemingly unrelated murders jump-start the action, at least one coming with a juicy, and familiar, Beltway back story: beautiful young aide involved with her married boss -- Affleck as Congressman Stephen Collins, whose rapid ascent on the back of a congressional hearing into corporate high jinks just might be derailed now.

Collins' old college roommate, Cal McAffrey (Crowe), is a hard-boiled investigative reporter now with a Washington Post-styled newspaper, madly trying to crack the case before the cops or the competition. In short order, it's hard to tell whether Collins is more valuable to McAffrey as his friend or as an extremely well-placed source.

Though there are many players in keeping with Washington's legions of the self-interested, the narrative circles around three -- the beefy and unkempt veteran journalist (does Hollywood create any other kind?), the polished-to-a-high-sheen politico and a newspaper industry, like the politician, fighting for its life.

McAdams comes into the picture as a hyperaggressive new-generation blogger, essentially serving as little more than a tote bag of a collaborator for Crowe rather than a real window into the friction between Web and print; and Mirren gives us a finely executed Kay Graham-styled newspaper editor, whose acerbic tongue and desperation are equally lethal.

As he sometimes has in recent years, Crowe seems not all that interested in his character, who could have used some of the roguish charm he brought to 3:10 to Yuma. Meanwhile Affleck struggles to give texture and depth to his compromised congressman. That presents a real problem for State of Play, which needs these two characters to feed off of each other to work.

That McAffrey slept with the congressman's wife (Robin Wright Penn) years ago, which should have cast a shadow on the relationship, results in nothing more than a few throwaway moments with no payoff other than a little screen time for Penn, who wears years of disappointment and resignation well.

When the characters are on the move, the film works, whether it's Crowe's pressuring (and secretly videotaping, which I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to do) a source for information on one of the murders, or Penn at Affleck's side facing down the chorus of humiliating questions from reporters about his infidelity, essentially taking that vow of silence we see all too often in the nation's capital.

The filmmakers know how to mine political and journalistic turf for tension. Macdonald took us inside the treacherous palace of Uganda's Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. And the extensive screenwriting team includes Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom), Tony Gilroy ( Michael Clayton), Billy Ray (Shattered Glass) and some uncredited revisions by Macdonald friend Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon).

Yet despite all of their experience in those very same trenches, somehow when State of Play should be at its stomach-clenching best, the tension simply evaporates.

What the film does well is to remind us that when corporations with billions of dollars at stake come to Washington, someone besides the politicians better be watching. In the world Macdonald has created, a nettlesome press willing to dig through all the numbers, the subterfuge and the garbage literal and otherwise, remains our last best hope -- it's just not as fearsome and passionate a place as it should be.

Drag Me to Hell (2009) movie

Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, David Paymer, Dileep Rao
Director: Sam Raimi
Genres: Supernatural Horror, Horror

Evil Dead director Sam Raimi takes the helm for this spook-a-blast shocker about an ambitious L.A. loan officer who incurs the wrath of a malevolent gypsy by refusing to grant her an extension on her home loan. Determined to impress her boss and get a much-needed promotion at work, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) lays down the law when mysterious Mrs. Ganush literally comes begging for mercy at her feet. In retaliation for being publicly shamed, Mrs. Ganush places the dreaded curse of Lamia on her unfortunate target, transforming Christine's life into a waking nightmare. Her skeptical boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) casually brushing off her disturbing encounters as mere coincidence, Christine attempts to escape eternal damnation by seeking out the aid of seer Rham Jas (Dileep Rao ). But Christine's time is fast running out, and unless she's able to break the curse, she'll be tormented by a demon for three days before literally being dragged to hell. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide