Wait, they made another Street Fighter movie?  Why?

Wow…here’s a movie I thought I’d never see.  Everyone remembers that the first Street Fighter movie was a gigantic bomb, right?  So why is Hollywood bothering to try again?  And why cast a block of wood like Kristin Kreuk–a.k.a. Lana “My parents are dead!” Lang from Smallville–as your title character?  At least Jean-Claude Van Damme, who was the lead in the first Fighter flick, had actual martial arts experience.  That said, I gotta admit the camp factor on this movie is likely to be incredibly high, which means I’ll almost definitely check it out.  And hey look, its got Oscar-nominee Michael Clarke Duncan in the cast as the battling boxer Balrog!   I wonder if he’ll bring a more realistic edge to this misunderstood character than his predecessor in the part, Grand L. Bush, star of such classics as Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence and Secret Agent 00 Soul.

Vintage Trailer of the Week
Keeping with the video game theme, travel back in time with me to May 1993.  Bill Clinton had been in office for four months, Sylvester Stallone was staging yet another big-screen comeback with Cliffhanger and A Different World was approaching its series finale.  But that month’s premiere event was the theatrical debut of a big-screen live-action movie starring those lovable Nintendo pitchmen Mario and Luigi.  Of course, the duo’s first movie also turned out to be their last and for good reason–it’s freakin’ awful.  But this trailer remains a thing of early ’90s beauty.  I can’t decide what I like more: the extensive use of C+C Music Factory’s “I’ve Got the Power” track, the sight of a super-skinny John Leguizamo running around in green overalls or the hilarious voice-over narration that delivers such bon mots as: “They’re brothers…they’re plumbers…they’re on the trail of a kindnapped princess and a mysterious meteorite!”  This ain’t no game indeed.

Oh and just for the heck of it, here’s the trailer for 1994′s Street Fighter movie.  Take note of JCVD’s coked-out line readings–how much blow was he snorting between camera setups anyway?

Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour Che Guevara flick is a must-see, Keanu Reeve’s remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is a must-flee.

Che
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Rodrigo Santoro, Catalina Sandino Moreno
****

There are a lot of other things you could be doing in the 262 minutes it takes to watch both parts of Che, Steven Soderbergh’s intimate epic about controversial revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.  For example, you could prepare and serve a full-course French dinner, make a dent in Ayn Rand’s 1000-plus page Objectivist manifesto Atlas Shrugged, or hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail while rocking out to the entire output of Sly & the Family Stone.  But please don’t let Che‘s butt-numbing runtime scare you away.  It’s a remarkable movie and a career landmark for both Soderbergh and his star Benicio Del Toro, who completely disappears into a larger-than-life role that would defeat most actors.

Actually, the movie’s title is something of a misnomer as Che is less about the man than the movements he led.  Part 1 presents a detailed account of the Cuban Revolution, during which Guevara evolved from a simple medic/soldier to Fidel Castro’s top commandante.  The second part then jumps ahead roughly ten years ahead to chronicle his disastrous Bolivia campaign.  In both halves, Soderbergh forgoes the usual biopic exposition and drops the audience into the middle of the action, trusting us to keep up.  He has also cleverly designed the two parts as mirror images of each other, with the lessons Guevara learned during his rise in Cuba later contributing to his fall in Bolivia.

Viewers hoping for a more critical look at Guevara’s legacy may be disappointed by Che and, to be fair, they have a point.  By telescoping the narrative to deal with only these two events, the movie sidesteps having to deal with his divisive actions in post-revolution Cuba.  At the same time, Soderbergh and Del Toro are careful to not blindly heroicize Guevara, instead presenting him as an individual whose single-minded devotion to his cause is both his greatest strength and his greatest failing.  Che is also a terrific combat film, filled with harrowing sequences that capture the organized chaos of guerilla warfare.  So yes—this movie does demand four hours of your life.  But you’ll leave the theater richer for it.

Verdict: See It

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The Day the Earth Stood Still
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Jaden Smith
**

Released in 1951 in the early years of the nuclear age, Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still is a B-movie that was elevated to A-list status thanks to its timely social message and then-awesome special effects.  The story of a pacifist alien who pays mankind a visit to convince us not to destroy ourselves, Day is more talky than the kinds of sci-fi blockbusters we’re used to seeing at the multiplexes these days, but its low-key nature is a big part of its charm.  Appropriately, the best parts of Scott Derrickson’s big-budget remake are the quieter scenes where the human characters have to wrestle with how to react to discovering they aren’t alone in the universe.

The first 30 minutes of the new Day the Earth Stood Still are surprisingly gripping, particularly considering that it’s from the same director that made the laughable horror movie/courtroom drama The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the same screenwriter that penned the forgettable Robert Redford prison movie, The Last Castle. Jennifer Connelly plays the movie’s heroine Helen Benson, a brilliant astrobiologist who, while cooking dinner on a seemingly ordinary evening, is suddenly taken into custody by a phalanx of federal agents and escorted to a top-secret meeting of scientists and government officials.  It seems that some kind of unidentified flying object is about to slam into Central Park, completely obliterating Manhattan and much of the surrounding area.  Missiles are being dispatched to intercept the UFO and Helen and her fellow eggheads are put on a chopper to NYC to plan for the aftermath.

Once in the air though, they see that the flying object isn’t a meteor or a giant ship filled with ray-gun toting space squids.  Instead, it’s a giant ball of energy, which touches down gently in the park without displacing a single tree or blade of grass.  Out of this crackling globe steps a vaguely human figure…who is promptly shot by a trigger-happy soldier.  Rushed to a nearby medical facility, the alien recovers and acquires the face and voice of Keanu Reeves.  Keanu…excuse me, Klaatu then informs his captors—including trigger happy Defense Secretary Regina Jackson (played by Kathy Bates, clearly channeling Dick Cheney)—that he’s come to Earth to strongly encourage us to respect the environment…or else.  That’s right: the first alien we meet is literally a little green man.

It makes sense that the filmmakers swapped nuclear weapons out for the environment, which is certainly more a hot-button topic amongst this generation.  And if the movie actually had something to say about our impact on the planet, it may have reached out to an audience that has previously resisted such cinematic calls to action as An Inconvenient Truth and Wall*E.  Ultimately though, Day is just using the environmental angle as a way to achieve its real objective: blowing lots of shit up.  Once Helen helps Klaatu escape from the government, the movie turns into an extended chase sequence with random scenes of bloodless violence tossed into the mix.  It also accomplishes the difficult feat of making the characters dumber as the story continues; don’t be surprised to find yourself rooting for Klaatu to off Helen and her annoying stepson Jacob (played by Will Smith’s kid Jaden) along with the rest of mankind.  The movie’s emphasis on brawn over brain might not be so off-putting if the action sequences provided Iron Man-level whiz bang wow, but all of the big set-pieces are marred by confusing choreography and low-grade digital effects.  Unlike a lot of sci-fi fans, I wasn’t horrified by the announcement that The Day the Earth Stood Still was being remade as the original certainly has some dated qualities to it.  But I am horrified that so much money and talent was wasted on a movie that has so much contempt for its audience, it doesn’t even bother to give us an ending that makes sense.

Verdict: Skip It

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Also in Theaters

Wendy and Lucy
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Starring Michelle Williams
***1/2
Writer/director Kelly Reichardt made a big splash with the critically acclaimed film Old Joy a few years back, but his latest effort is a much stronger movie, with an emotional resonance that its predecessor lacked.  Michelle Williams plays Wendy a young drifter passing through Oregon with her dog Lucy by her side.  Stopping in a small town to pick up supplies, Wendy unwisely decides to shoplift food from the local supermarket, while Lucy waits outside.  She’s caught in the act and thrown in the slammer for the afternoon.  When she’s finally released and heads back to the scene of the crime to recover her dog, Lucy is nowhere to be found.  With her dwindling finances, Wendy can’t afford to stick around until Lucy is found, but she also knows that she can’t leave her only friend in the world behind.  Clocking in at a brief 80 minutes, Wendy and Lucy is the cinematic equivalent of a great short story.  Reichardt never overwhelms the viewer with exposition, keeping the narrative lean and focused.  And Williams continues to prove why she’s the only ex-Dawson’s Creek cast member who actually has a shot at winning an Oscar one day.
Verdict: See It

Nothing Like the Holidays
Directed by Alfredo De Villa
Starring Alfred Molina, Elizabeth Peña, Vanessa Ferlito, John Leguizamo
**
If you like your holiday movies served with heaping spoonfuls of melodrama, it’s possible that you won’t experience heartburn while watching this overbaked, underseasoned Christmas story.  (Enough food metaphors for ya?)  Set in Chicago’s Puerto Rican-heavy Humboldt Park ‘hood, the movie pays a visit to the squabbling Rodriguez clan, who have gathered together to share good meals, good cheer and lots of painful family secrets, from infidelity to serious illness.  The cast, which includes Freddy Rodriguez, Vanessa Ferlito and Elizabeth Peña, does their best, but the script is strictly dinner theater material.
Verdict: Skip It

What cracks jokes, stars on Broadway and likes Crown Royal? These guys!

At Monday night’s (Nov. 17) American Buffalo after-party where Cedric The Entertainer presented his American Buffalo co-star John Leguizamo along with several of the American Buffalo producers with personally embroidered Crown Royal XR bags to commemorate the show’s opening night on Broadway.

The limited-edition Crown Royal XR bottle retails at $179.

The stars of Love in the Time of Cholera get comfortable with one another, and wild for the camera.

John Leguizamo and Benjamin Bratt, co-stars in Love In The Time of Cholera, share their interpretations of Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece and ponder the mysteries of love, lust and language.

On reading Love in the Time of Cholera:
Leguizamo: I had read 100 Years of Solitude before, but I never read Love in the Time of Cholera because it was a romantic story. I had to read it for the movie, and I fell in love with the book! This guy waits fifty years for his one true love, but he sleeps with six hundred and twenty-four fuckin’ women to get there! That’s my type of love story.

Bratt: I thought I had read it because the title is so popular. But when I opened the first two pages, I recognized it for the masterpiece that it is, and I realized that I hadn’t. If I had, it would have made an indelible impression on me. Márquez is one of the founders of magical realism, and I think his understanding of love and all its perplexities is astonishing. He understands and illustrates clearly how romantic love can become an addiction and create a kind of sickness. We go insane if we get to taste it but don’t get to have it. We will do everything in our power to get it—including sleeping with six hundred and twenty women.

Leguizamo: I would have forgotten at fifty—after the crabs!

On the difference between working on a film like Pinero versus Love in the Time of Cholera:

Leguizamo: This is much more of a commercial venture, whereas Piñero and Crónicas were more organically Latin. They were films created by Latinos, directed by Latinos and starring Latinos. It’s a different sensibility.

Bratt: There is a familiar structure to the story—boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. But between the last two phases there’s a span of fifty years, and that’s what makes it unique. Beyond that, what makes it incomparable is the mastery of the language.
Leguizamo: And you’ve never seen eighty-year-old people hitting skins like you have in this movie. Imagine your grandparents getting it on. How sexy is that?