TMNT (2007)

I consider myself to be very much a child of the '80s, or more specifically, a lover of '80s pop culture. I think the only pop culture phenomena I didn't get into were the Transformers and G.I. Joe. Look up in my attic, and you'll see toys representing the Ghostbusters, He-Man, and Super Friends, along with a handful of Thundercats and even MASK toys. Also up there are toys based on my favorite reptilian superhero quartet, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I've spoken in three other reviews that I totally bought into Turtlemania in the late '80s, and although I was sad to see their reign over America's children end, I can't say that I didn't see it coming. Yeah, there were a few attempts to resurrect the Ninja Turtles, like that forgettable live-action show in 1997 and the Saturday morning cartoon that Fox began airing in 2003. But truth be told, I never really got into either of them. Because of that, I was beginning to think that maybe I'd put actually aside some childish things after all.

That is, until I heard that an animated sequel to the live-action movie trilogy was going to be produced. I knew that it was a movie I had to see. But for years, it went through developmental hell. John Woo was attached to direct at one point, and there was talk of making a movie that would balance live-action actors with computer-generated characters. However, the choice was made to go with a fully CG-animated film that — with the title abbreviated to merely TMNT — finally hit theaters on March 23, 2007, just one week shy of the original movie's seventeenth anniversary. And on that day, there was much rejoicing from yours truly.

In the years since they triumphantly defeated Shredder and the Foot Clan, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have put their glory days as a crime-fighting quartet behind them and have gone on to different things. Donatello (Mitchell Whitfield) started his own one-turtle tech support company; Michelangelo (Mikey Kelley) is "Cowabunga Carl," a costumed performer for children's birthday parties; and Raphael (Nolan North) has become an aggressive Batman-like masked vigilante known as "The Nightwatcher."

The fourth Turtle, Leonardo (James Arnold Taylor), has recently returned to the sewers of New York City after a year in a Central American jungle, where he was sent on a soul-searching mission by Master Splinter (Mako) with the intention of making him a stronger leader. Leonardo's return is greeted warmly by Donatello and Michelangelo, but he quickly finds himself butting heads with a resentful Raphael.

However, the hostility between Leonardo and Raphael isn't all that the Turtles have to worry about. Having left her life as a television reporter behind, April O'Neil (Sarah Michelle Gellar) has gotten into the archaeology business, with live-in boyfriend — and hockey-masked vigilante — Casey Jones (Chris Evans) handling the transportation and delivery of the artifacts she discovers. April has recently been hired to track down a collection of four ancient stone statues for billionaire industrialist Max Winters (Patrick Stewart), who has big plans for them. Very, very big plans.

Three thousand years ago, Winters was once known as Yoatl, a warrior king that sought to conquer the world. He had learned of a constellation named "the Stars of Kikan," which align every three thousand years, creating a portal whose energy would grant immortality to whomever opened it. Yoatl did open that portal and became immortal, but the consequences were dire; his army was turned to stone, and thirteen monsters were unleashed upon our world.

With the Stars of Kikan once again nearing alignment, the man now known as Max Winters prepares to break the curse of immortality that has plagued him for so long. As he readies to once again open the portal, he calls upon the remnants of the Foot Clan and their leader, Karai (Ziyi Zhang), to search for the thirteen monsters so he may return them to their dimension. He also successfully revives his four stone generals — Aguila (Kevin Michael Richardson), Gato (Fred Tatasciore), Santino (John DiMaggio), and Serpiente (Paula Mattioli) — and charges them with capturing the monsters.

But once the four generals realize that Winters will be taking away their immortality along with his own by sending the monsters back, they go into business for themselves. As things come to a climax, the Ninja Turtles must get past their sibling rivalries and stop the portal from releasing even more monsters into our plane of existence (and thus causing, for all intents and purposes, the apocalypse).

While it might not be a movie of Pixar-like proportions, TMNT is a wonderful little movie that doesn't let its shortcomings get in the way of its ability to entertain its audience. Yes, I just might be a little bit biased because I'm a fan of the Ninja Turtles, but their cinematic resurrection is a lot of fun to watch. The animation is fluid, the action is tight, and the voice acting is well-done. And though I thought the plot needed a little work, everything comes together to create a charming movie that I believe both kids and adults could enjoy.

As someone whose childhood was spent in front of the television watching their animated adventures, in the toy stores buying their action figures and playsets, and at the arcade pumping quarters into their video games, I have to say that I was in no way, shape, or form let down or disappointed by TMNT. It's everything I could have possibly hoped for. TMNT is the kind of cartoon that I'd have loved as a child, and the kind that the part of me who refuses to grow up still loves to this day.

Writer/director Kevin Munroe has done a fantastic job in putting this movie together. Munroe and Hong Kong animation studio Imagi have crafted a movie that looks nothing short of spectacular, like the characters have been taken straight out of the original comic books. I've read online that some people weren't into the movie's particular style of animation because it was more cartoony and stylized than the ultra-realistic CGI in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but I think that it works just fine for the Ninja Turtles. I point specifically to the epic showdown in the rain between Leonardo and Raphael. The character design in this scene looks particularly fantastic, wonderfully accented by the individually animated drops of rain. The work of Munroe and Imagi is gorgeous, and it's almost enough to make that worth the price of admission alone.

It's enhanced by the amazing music composed by Klaus Badelt, a score that properly and excellently evokes all the right emotions for each scene. It's marvelous music that really works even outside of the movie. Munroe also takes the opportunity to sneak in references to the franchise's past. Props from the three live-action movies — Shredder's helmet, the broken canister of ooze from Turtles II, the time scepter from Turtles III — all appear; a veiled reference to the Triceratons from the comics appears in the background of one scene; Michelangelo's "Cowabunga Carl" costume resembles the appearance of the Turtles in the '80s cartoon. It's these little things that make the movie just as special for the longtime, diehard fans as it would be for people just now getting into the Turtles. You almost have the movie more than once to catch everything.

Munroe's script is also acceptable, but the plot is unfortunately muddled. There's the feud between Leonardo and Raphael, Max Winters and the four generals, the Foot Clan, and the thirteen monsters (that are pretty much overblown MacGuffins). It's kinda tough to follow what's going on even if you're paying extra-close attention, and when you can make heads or tails of it, some parts feel kinda hollow. I appreciate his attempt to tell a story without going back to the all-too-familiar Shredder well, but I got the impression that Munroe just slapped something together in order to get the franchise off and rolling again.

And could the setup for the sequel have been any more obvious? They might has well have just said, "You guys are gonna fight Shredder in the next sequel, and it's gonna be awesome." If you're going to beat subtlety into the ground, why not finish it off all together?

However, there is some good in Munroe's script. The jokes are really funny for the most part, the verbal references to the past iterations of the Ninja Turtles are a lot of fun, and the way he has written the characters really pulls you in if you allow yourself to care about them. He also brings the long-smoldering rivalry between Leonardo and Raphael to the forefront and handles it well, though it almost comes at the expense of making Donatello and Michelangelo background characters. I'd also would have liked seeing more screen time for Karai, but I guess the mystery behind her can be built upon in future movies.

Lastly is the cast, one of the movie's most crucial ingredients. Veteran voice actors James Arnold Taylor, Nolan North, Mitchell Whitfield, and Mikey Kelley all bring a lot to the table as the Ninja Turtles. All of them are great, with Taylor and North handling the pathos, Whitfield handling the exposition, and Kelley doing the comic relief thing with gusto. The rest of the cast is composed of actors who gained fame with live-action work, all of whom are wonderful. Mako, who sadly passed away eight months before the movie's theatrical release, is fantastic as Master Splinter, bringing a sense of wisdom, fatherly warmth, and humor that the character needs.

Patrick Stewart is also fine as Max Winters, though not a whole lot is asked of him. He does have a great voice, though; I'm surprised he doesn't get more voice work than he does. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Chris Evans hand in sweet, amiable performances as April O'Neil and Casey Jones, and Ziyi Zhang is well-suited as Karai, contributing a performance that adds to her character's mysterious nature. Even the cameos by Laurence Fishburne and Kevin Smith are awesome.

Is TMNT a perfect movie? No, I can't say that it is. But it is a lot of fun, and that's really all that someone like me can ask for. It's an entertaining movie, taking a property and making it as kid-friendly as ever, yet letting it grow up and mature with the audience that fell in love with the Ninja Turtles twenty years ago. If the movie's intentions were to satiate old fans, create new ones, and reinvigorate a brand name that had become something almost resembling a relic of days gone by, then TMNT just might be a success. It reminded me why I became a fan of the Ninja Turtles to begin with, and most importantly, why being a kid in the '80s was so much fun. So I'll give TMNT three and a half stars (leaning towards four) and a loud, proud "cowabunga."

Final Rating: ***½

Hollywoodland (2006)

I think it can be stated without much argument that Superman could be called the greatest comic book superhero of all time, having long ago transcended his origins on the printed page by becoming a true cultural icon that is as much a part of Americana as baseball and apple pie. The Man of Steel has had his share of memorable moments since he first appeared in the pages of Action Comics #1 in 1938, but one moment connected to the character is memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Millions of children across America during the 1950s were absolutely enthralled with the television show The Adventures of Superman, making the show a huge hit and bringing fame to its lead actor, George Reeves. But these same children were devastated when they awoke on the morning of June 16, 1959, and saw the headline "TV'S 'SUPERMAN' KILLS SELF" on the front page of their local newspapers. Reeves, the man a generation of youngsters had come to see as the real-life face of their beloved superhero, was dead due to a gunshot wound to the head.

Investigators concluded that the shot was self-inflicted, but the five decades that have passed since then have given way to conspiracy theories that perhaps Reeves was not the one to pull the trigger after all. These theories eventually evolved into Hollywoodland, a movie that concurrently tells both the rise and fall of Reeves's career, as well as a fictionalized account of an investigation into his tragic demise. And folks, it's a damn fine movie.

Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) is a sleazy private detective, working out of a cheap flophouse apartment with his secretary and live-in girlfriend, Kit Holliday (Caroline Dhavernas). When he isn't stringing along his clients to make as much money as possible, he struggles to stay connected to his estranged son Evan (Zach Mills), one of the many young boys negatively affected by the death of George Reeves (Ben Affleck). After hearing that Reeves's mother (Lois Smith) believes that her son was murdered, Simo smooth-talks her into hiring him to look into it.

But what begins as a way for Simo to make an easy paycheck and get his name in the newspapers turns into something much more. As his investigation continues, he begins to discover that a number of people in Reeves's life had a motive to murder him. Turns out he was sleeping around with Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), whose husband ― MGM Studios general manager Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins) ― has no qualms with using underworld connections to make "potential problems" disappear. Another suspect is his fiancée, Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney), with whom he frequently quarreled. 

And then there's all the holes that appear in the case. The suicide contains questionable physics, there were no fingerprints on the gun, there are two mysterious bullet holes in the floor, and there's the fact that it took forty-five minutes before any of the people at Reeves's house at the time called the police. So how did George Reeves die? Did his fiancée shoot him after a particularly bitter argument? Did his mistress, angry over having been left for a younger woman, have her husband put a hit on him? Or in a bout of depression brought on by his less-than-desirable career trajectory post-Superman, did he shoot himself after all?

Hollywoodland is not just a story about the fictional investigation into an actor's death. It is a story of how one reacts after to hitting rock bottom, and how there are so many ways things can go wrong, but only so few ways things can go right. It is a story of love and loyalty, of the search for fame and the disillusionment that can come with it, and ultimately of redemption. It's a story that is told wonderfully, with wonderful direction, acting, and writing that makes it a fantastic movie.

Let's go with the screenplay first. Penned by Paul Bernbaum, the screenplay bounces back and forth between Louis Simo's story and the last ten years of George Reeves's life. When I first saw Hollywoodland during its theatrical run last year, I wished they had just stuck to Reeves's story, which I believed to be the more intriguing of the two. But upon revisiting it on DVD, I had to change my mind. The second viewing showed me just how much the stories are alike despite their different conclusions Both start the movie just trying to get a little attention, but as things progress, both Reeves and Simo learn that the things they want are not always what they appear to be. Simo's lousy relationship with his estranged wife and son and accepting any job that comes along as long as he gets a paycheck parallels Reeves's love life and the hardships being recognized as Superman had on his career. The fact that Simo's story ends so differently from Reeves's makes his death feel more tragic, and leaving one to wonder just what could have happened had Reeves's real life tale had its own happy ending.

Bernbaum also takes things in a different direction than most film noirs by not settling on one particular resolution. He doesn't point any fingers at who's to blame for Reeves's death, but instead takes a page from Akira Kurosawa's classic Rashomon and presents three different theories as to what happened, allowing the viewer to make their own conclusions. It's an intriguing way to handle things, and it gives the audience something to talk about once the credits have rolled. The relatively open ending makes for a great topic of debate, and perhaps it was the best way to keep the mystery of Reeves's death alive.

Making his feature film debut after directing television shows, particularly numerous episodes of The Sopranos and Sex in the City, Allen Coulter shows a lot of promise as a movie director. His work here is sound, successfully balancing the two separate timelines with ease. He and cinematographer Jonathan Freeman craft a visually appealing film with their great camerawork, filming Simo's scenes somewhat roughly and Reeves's with a fancy elegance. Certain color schemes and lighting techniques are also used to enhance the movie. Things are bright and happy during many of Reeves's scenes, shadowy during Eddie's scenes and when Reeves undergoes moments of emotional crisis, and moving to washed-out sepia tones during Simo's scenes. These differences in color really go a long way in establishing the proper mood and tone for the movie. Helping this is the fine music composed by Marcelo Zarvos, a blues and jazz-oriented score that really gives the movie a big boost.

Last but not least is the movie's greatest ingredient, its cast. Every actor and actress in the movie does a fantastic job, especially those playing the four primary characters. Adrien Brody is great as washed-up private eye Louis Simo, handling well the character's arc as an opportunistic slimeball that learns over the course of the movie that there are perhaps more important things in life than money and recognition. Diane Lane is nothing short of wonderful from start to finish as Toni Mannix. She plays the role with a certain vulnerability, yet is still a strong, take-charge kind of woman when she needs to be. Bob Hoskins also turns in an admirable performance as Eddie Mannix, but since it seems like he's used to playing heavies, it's probably not all that much of a challenge for him at this point in his career. Robin Tunney, Lois Smith, and Jeffrey DeMunn also do fine jobs as Reeves's fiancée, mother, and agent respectively.

But perhaps my favorite performance among the cast was Ben Affleck. Hollywoodland marks Affleck's big comeback after spending three years out of the scene, and it's ironic that he's playing George Reeves. Reeves's career stalled out following The Adventures of Superman's cancellation in 1958, and though he still got work in movies like From Here to Eternity, he went to his grave known primarily as Superman. His story is a sad one, the movie depicting him as so unable to break away from the shadow of the Man of Steel that he was left left a depressed, bitter, and brokenhearted man. Quite similarly, Affleck's career suffered a severe slump as well, thanks to a combination of his overexposed relationship with Jennifer Lopez, and the bad luck of starring in four straight movies — Gigli, Paycheck, Saving Christmas, and Jersey Girl — that under-performed at the box office. Hollywoodland marks his return to movies, and while it was not a massive blockbuster either, it's a good place for him to start. Affleck plays the role perfectly, sucking the viewer in with his at times humorous, at times utterly sympathetic performance. It's a shame that he didn't receive at least a nomination for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, because he definitely deserved it.

I wouldn't say that Hollywoodland isn't the greatest neo-noir ever made, but it's certainly one of the best in recent memory. It never tries to be more than what it is, and that is a tale of a man who reached for the stars, yet ultimately paid the high cost of living in Hollywood with his life. The story of George Reeves ended under disheartening consequences no matter who you believe pulled the trigger that night, but to paraphrase the movie's tagline, dying in Hollywood perhaps brought him a greater fame than he had in life. And it goes without saying that that fame made for a great movie.

Final Rating: ****

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Every genre has a number of sub-genres, some more prevalent and noticeable than others. Take, for example, action movies. There's numerous styles of action movies, but few are more clichéd the "buddy cop" movie. Movies like Point Break, Die Hard With A Vengeance, and the 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, and Rush Hour franchises are all about a duo (one or both of whom are a police officer) that get into a few gunfights and car chases, cause lots of explosions and chaos and mayhem, and save the day without a moment's hesitation.

After successfully lampooning horror movies in their marvelous British zombie flick Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost teamed up once again to give American action movies the same treatment with Hot Fuzz. And just like their previous movie, Hot Fuzz is nothing short of spectacular.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is the perfect police officer. So perfect, in fact, that he manages to outclass and outperform every other officer on London's Metropolitan Police Service on a regular basis. His mind-boggling overachievement earns him not only a promotion to the rank of sergeant, but a transfer as well. Nicholas's superiors have decided to reassign him to a town where he won't be able to make them look bad anymore: Sandford, a sleepy rural community that appears to be virtually devoid of any crime whatsoever.

Once he arrives in town, he's immediately enforcing the law, clearing out a pub full of underage drinkers and arresting someone for drunk driving. Turns out that the drunk driver is his new partner, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the naïve but enthusiastic son of the local police chief (Jim Broadbent). A devoted fan of police-centered action movies, particularly Point Break and Bad Boys 2, Danny is completely in awe of Nicholas, who he believes lives a life as dangerous and as exciting as the lives of his favorite movie characters.

But as the two new partners bond, Nicholas finds himself having a rough time adapting to his new, simpler life in Sandford. Outside of writing parking tickets, catching shoplifters, reprimanding a farmer for illegally clipping a neighbor's hedges before discovering a massive cache of unlicensed weaponry in his barn, and tracking down the occasional lost swan, nothing of note happens in Sandford. That is, until the murders begin. The small town is rocked by a series of violent deaths that, despite all evidence pointing towards foul play, are dismissed as tragic accidents, with only Nicholas convinced that these accident victims were murdered.

As he tries to get to the bottom of things, the fact that people just aren't murdered in Sandford causes his fellow police officers to relentlessly mock his overzealousness even in the face of the bizarre, unlikely explanations for these so-called "accidents." But Nicholas remains undaunted, vowing to catch the killer even if it costs him his reputation (or worse). But just who is the murderer? Is it Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton), the sleazy supermarket owner that's way too suspicious for his own good? Could it be one of Sandford's more eccentric residents? Or could it be someone else entirely?

Hot Fuzz is quite similar to Shaun of the Dead, in that both of them successfully and hilariously satirize their chosen genres before actually becoming a great genre film in and of themselves. And although Hot Fuzz doesn't hit start really going wild with the action stuff until the last thirty minutes, it's an amazing twist on all the silly conventions that appear in every movie like this. Until then, it's a pretty straightforward murder mystery. That's the great thing about Hot Fuzz, too. Recent parodies — the Scary Movie franchise, Date Movie, Epic Movie — have no respect for the movies they mock, just stringing things along from one weak gag to the next with nothing remotely resembling a story.

Hot Fuzz, on the other hand, actually crafts a story and lets the humor develop naturally from that. It has a sly intelligence that, although it pokes fun at the silliness recurrent in other cop movies, also exhibits why the filmmakers love these movies so much. The best kind of parodies are the ones that draw humor from imitating clichés, not denigrating them. That's why the brains behind Hot Fuzz have been making such great comedies, because they understand that.

The direction by Edgar Wright is wonderful, teaming with cinematographer Jess Hall to visually reference the style of various directors to emphasize the movie's satirical nature. The fast-paced style of Tony Scott's Man on Fire and Domino are humorously referenced in scenes that would be considered mundane otherwise, while they use the murder mystery angle to work in visual nods to Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, Roman Polanski's Repulsion, and Dario Argento's Italian giallo movies.

Wright also uses music to emphasize things, using certain songs by various British rock bands to add either humor or a certain semblance of dread (or both) to particular scenes. For example, the character of Simon Skinner drives by the locations of the murders while listening to music that oddly coincides with the victims or how they met their end. It really enhances the sleaziness of the character, which I'm sure is what Wright was aiming for. And Wright's use of certain bits of music taken directly from action movies — such as the music from the trailers for all four Lethal Weapon movies — also really enhances the satire as a whole. The score composed by David Arnold also successfully imitates the typical music heard in action movies, enhancing the exciting and dramatic scenes as necessitated and being quite effective in the process.

The screenplay pegged by Wright and Simon Pegg is also thoroughly spectacular. Things really don't start getting crazy-go-nuts until the last thirty minutes of the movie, but that's not to say that the first ninety aren't worth watching. The movie is very much driven by its characters and its plot, and neither are letdowns. Each of the characters has something about them that makes them worth watching, and the dialogue is full of lines worth quoting once the end credits have rolled. Wright and Pegg also set up numerous gags, both visual and through dialogue, that end up coming back at later points in the movie to humorous effect. And while the humor during the first hour and a half is a tad more restrained than the over-the-top finale, the whole thing is comic gold.

Wright and Pegg also make sure to reference various action movie standards, from character constructs to one-liners to how the action goes down. There are also numerous subtle jabs at these clichés too, especially the "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" relationship between Nicholas and Danny. It seems like a lot of these "buddy cop" movies have a faint homoerotic subtext, whether it's intentional or not. Wright and Pegg seem to have noticed that, and the duo have Nicholas and Danny share numerous moments that would seemingly lead to a lurid encounter. But things stay purely platonic, which only makes the whole thing that much funnier.

Last but not least is Hot Fuzz's amazing cast. The team of Pegg and Nick Frost make the entire movie, as the pair have a spectacular comedic chemistry together. Separately, they're just as entertaining. Pegg is fantastic portraying Nicholas as a straight-laced, tough-as-nails supercop that's so devoted to upholding the law that he has no clue how to loosen up, while Frost plays Danny with a childlike enthusiasm that makes the character thoroughly lovable.

But let's not forget the rest of the cast, either. Timothy Dalton gleefully plays the role of Simon Skinner, almost as if he were Snidely Whiplash come to life. Jim Broadbent is warm and amiable, and Paddy Considine, Rafe Spall, and Olivia Colman are a lot of fun as members of the Sandford police force. Colman's character's double entendres and the smart-alecky antagonism of Considine and Spall's characters toward Nicholas and Danny are some of the movie's lesser-acknowledged highlights, and the performances of the actors make that so. Even the cameos from well-known names like Bill Nighy and Cate Blanchett are great.

Hot Fuzz might be considered a parody of action movies, but it's about a much a parody of those films as Chicken Run is a parody of World War 2 prisoner-of-war movies. It's more of a comedic homage to movies of a similar style, but even if it's considered a parody, I'm willing to bet that Hot Fuzz is better than most of the action movies that it imitates. It's phenomenal from start to finish, an entertaining movie that's worth being watched by both fans of action movies and comedies. Shaun of the Dead was a tough act to follow, but Wright, Pegg, and Frost pulled it off nicely. I'm giving Hot Fuzz four and a half stars and a hearty seal of approval.

Final Rating: ****½

Ghost Rider (2007)

When you hear the word "superhero," images of people decked out in capes and spandex tights probably come to mind. However, one superhero stands out as being cut from a completely different cloth than other comic book superheroes: Ghost Rider. While the name was originally used by two separate cowboy titles by two separate publishers, it is a name most recognizably associated with a supernatural stunt biker named Johnny Blaze.

Created by writer Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog, Blaze made his first appearance in the pages of Marvel Spotlight #5 in 1972, and got his own monthly series from Marvel Comics shortly thereafter. Though the series came to an end in 1983 and a new Ghost Rider was eventually introduced, it was Johnny Blaze that got the nod when it came time for the Rider to join other Marvel characters with his own cinematic adaptation.

But getting the movie into theaters, however, would be a long hard road out of developmental hell. Scheduling conflicts with the cast and crew, script issues, and studio changes ended up delaying production until early 2005. Columbia Pictures even changed the movie's expected August 2006 release date on two occasions, eventually deciding to release it this past February, where it was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews from professional critics. But screw those guys, I enjoyed it a lot and I'll tell you why.

As the movie begins, we're introduced to Johnny Blaze (Matt Long), a teenager who teams with his father Barton (Brett Cullen) as a duo of death-defying stunt bikers for a traveling carnival. After he discovers that his father is dying of an untreatable lung cancer, Johnny is approached by the demonic Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda), who offers to cure Barton's cancer if Johnny will trade his soul. The young man is understandably leery at first, but ends up inadvertently accepting the deal when he accidentally pricks his finger and lets a single drop of his blood drip onto the contract Mephistopheles had presented him. That's a cheap way to do business, but nobody ever accused the devil of playing fair.

Johnny awakens the next morning, believing he's simply had a really bizarre dream. But it's no dream; his father's fit as a fiddle. At least he is for a little while, because it isn't long before a freak accident during their show leads to Barton's tragic and untimely demise. Ah, irony; how I hate you, how I love you. Johnny starts making all kinds of wild accusations about who's at fault for the accident, but Mephistopheles retorts that he only agreed to cure Barton's cancer and not keep him alive. And it's not like it matters either way, since he still owns Johnny's soul and he'll be coming to collect one day.

Years later, the adult Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) has become immensely famous. Take Evel Knieval's fame and multiply it by a million, and you've got Johnny Blaze. Although he has achieved this recognition through unbelievably dangerous stunts, he is equally renowned for walking away from horrific crashes that would kill normal people. His manager and best friend Mack (Donal Logue) suggests that he has a guardian angel on his side, but Johnny thinks it's something else. And deep down, he knows it.

He's spent his life regretting the decision he'd made, looking for a sign that he's getting closer to a second chance at the happy life he'd had before his deal with Mephistopheles was struck. And as he prepares for his next big stunt, he gets that sign in the form of Roxanne Simpson (Eva Mendes). The two had been madly in love with one another and even planned to elope, but after his father's death, Johnny fell into a pit of self-loathing and left her behind without a word. Roxanne became a television reporter in the years since, and her station has sent her to interview Johnny before his next stunt.

The pair hit it off and slowly begin to rekindle their relationship, but a scary, demonic wrench gets thrown into the gears. Shortly before a big date with Roxanne, Johnny is finally called upon by Mephistopheles, who needs Johnny to remedy a problem for him. Blackheart (Wes Bentley), the son of Mephistopheles, has arrived on Earth with the intention of locating and procuring a long-hidden contract that will give him access to a thousand wicked souls and enough power to overthrow both Hell and Earth.

Mephistopheles just can't have that. So he cashes in Johnny's half of their bargain, enlisting him to serve as the latest in a line of fiery skull-faced bounty hunters that carry the name "Ghost Rider." He charges his new Rider with eliminating Blackheart and his three minions, sweetening the pot by offering to return his soul if he is successful. With a little help from a mysterious cemetery caretaker (Sam Elliott), Johnny learns the basics of his newfound power as he searches for a way to stop Blackheart from reaching the contract while reclaiming his own soul.

I don't believe I'm being controversial when I say that Ghost Rider is a solidly B-list character. So I think it only makes sense for him to be translated into a wild B-movie. While I will admit that the movie has a preposterous story and some hammy acting, it's all handled in such a way that makes it entertaining and just plain fun to watch. Sure, there's a few moments that will probably make you roll your eyes. Sure, there's a few moments that are corny and don't really work. But no matter, because the movie tries with all its might to be entertaining, and I think it's a success.

Writer/director Mark Steven Johnson is no stranger to the world of comic book superheroes, having previously helmed Daredevil in 2003. And just like Daredevil, Ghost Rider might not be built on the strongest of foundations, but it has its moments. Johnson's screenplay is a mixed bag. Among the bad are its fair share of clichés, predictable spots, and groan-worthy bits of dialogue (the only time the line "you're going down" has worked was when Bruce Campbell said it to a decapitated head in Evil Dead 2), while I felt the villains were lame. A superhero movie is only as strong as its villains, and Blackheart and his three henchmen were totally weak. And I also got the impression that the henchmen — played by Daniel Frederiksen, Mathew Wilkinson, and Laurence Breuls — were only included in order to boost the number of action scenes. It didn't help anything that the three were disposed of relatively quickly, either. Why even include them at all if they're only going to get one scene a piece? That time could have been used to make Blackheart seem like more of a threat, but what do I know.

However, Johnson balances the negatives with some positives. He gets the comedic bits right, and he includes a fun twist on a typical superhero movie cliché. You know how in most of these movies, conflict is created by the superhero trying to keep his girlfriend from finding out that he's the superhero? Batman, Superman, Spider-Man; they're all guilty of it. So what does Johnson do? He has Johnny come right out and confess to Roxanne that he's the Ghost Rider, and Roxanne treats him like he's out of his mind. It's the little moments like that that help save the script from complete mediocrity.

Johnson also helps to mask the script's inadequacies with his energetic direction. He and cinematographer Russell Boyd give us some fantastic camerawork that, when combined with the spectacular CGI effects, makes for a movie that is visually astounding. Johnson also makes sure to keep things going at a rapid pace, only really slowing down when we need to get the plot out of the way. This works in the movie's favor, since it is a movie driven by action sequences and exciting visuals, and slowing down would take away from that.

And I have to compliment Johnson's idea to change the color of Ghost Rider's fire depending on his mood. There's the usual orange when he's all about business, then a soft blue to represent sadness and worry, then a rare transition to black for pain. It's pulled off nicely, and I think it was a great idea since it's not like skulls can emote or anything. Johnson's direction is bolstered by not only the CGI, but by Christopher Young's great score as well. Containing elements of both the western and horror genres, Young's music is quite effective in setting the mood and establishing the movie's atmosphere. A couple of classic rock songs are put to good use as well, so I'm not complaining about the music at all.

Last but not least is our cast. Nicolas Cage is supposedly a big fan of the Ghost Rider comics, and his devotion to the character shows. I don't know if he's the first guy I'd have thought of to hire to play Johnny Blaze, but Cage is quite effective. He plays the role with an Elvis-like rock star flair, and the eccentricities he gives the character — sipping jelly beans from a martini glass, laughing his head off at videos of monkeys practicing karate, listening to the Carpenters to prepare himself for stunts — make the character likeable and engaging.

He also handles the dramatic scenes well, and his transformation scenes evidence a real knowledge of the character. In the scenes in which Johnny initially transforms into Ghost Rider, Cage exhibits tremendous agony that gives way to maniacal laughter as his flesh burns away. It shows that while the transition from man to monster causes Johnny pain, it gives the Rider pleasure; it's an interesting dichotomy that gives the character a certain subtle depth.

Eva Mendes is great as well, though I got the impression that her role was only there to serve two purposes: to be the token love interest, and to show off as much cleavage as possible so the 14-year-old boys in the audience will have something to watch between action sequences. But she's a lot of fun to watch, and Mendes and Cage have an amiable chemistry together that really makes their scenes work. Meanwhile, the character of Blackheart isn't all that great of a villain, but Bentley makes a good go at it. He at least tries, which I can respect. Our primary supporting actors, Peter Fonda and Sam Elliott, are both fantastic, but you wouldn't expect anything less from them.

Put it all together, and you've got a movie that, while not an all-time classic, is most certainly an entertaining way to spend two hours. I really don't get all the criticism against Ghost Rider; have people become so jaded by the artsy-fartsy pretentious crap that gets all the Oscar nominations every year that they just can't let themselves enjoy the simpler movies anymore? No, I wouldn't say that Ghost Rider is as good as Batman Begins or the first two Spider-Man movies, but it's still worth a watch. I mean, how many movies can say they have a stuntman forced to become a demon-fighting skeleton after getting the raw end of a Faustian deal he'd made years prior? What's not to like about that? So I'm going to give Ghost Rider three and a half stars, heavily leaning towards four, and a big thumbs-up. So go check it out, won't you?

Final Rating: ***½

Jackie Brown (1997)

The runaway success of Pulp Fiction in the autumn of 1994 rocketed Quentin Tarantino to stardom, earning him the Cannes Film Festival's highest honors, an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and a reputation as one of the most imaginative writer/directors in Hollywood. However, as the buzz surrounding his sophomore project cooled, Tarantino spent the next few years on other projects. He wrote and directed a segment of the 1995 comedic anthology Four Rooms, then wrote and starred in the awesome 1996 vampire film From Dusk Till Dawn.

He returned to the director's chair in 1997 for his third feature-length film, a loose adaptation of Elmore Lenard's novel Rum Punch that Tarantino titled Jackie Brown. An homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, Jackie Brown is a solid movie that, although it isn't as famous as some of Tarantino's other work, is a fantastic film worth watching.

Our story primarily follows Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), a flight attendant for a crappy Mexican airline. Though the job is awful and the pay is meager, it allows her to smuggle money into the United States for gun runner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Ordell has attracted the attention of the ATF, who've recently arrested one of his employees, Beaumont Livingston (Chris Tucker). Working on a tip from Beaumont, ATF agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) and local cop Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) catch Jackie as she arrives in Los Angeles with Ordell's latest shipment of funds. Initially refusing to deal with the agents, Jackie gets sent to jail pending trial.

Ordell, having already disposed of Beaumont after bailing out of jail, fears that Jackie too may be inclined to talk to the ATF like Beaumont did. He contacts Max Cherry (Robert Forster), the bail bondsman who arranged for Beaumont's release, and convinces him to bail Jackie out too. Max gets her out, and is smitten as soon as he lays eyes on her. He offers a ride home, and on the way to her house, offers to help determine her legal options. Jackie isn't home long before Ordell shows up at her house to silence her, but she gets the drop on him. She pulls a gun that she stole from the glove compartment of Max's car, and cuts a deal where she'll pretend to help the ATF while still managing to smuggle half a million dollars to Ordell.

To accomplish this, Ordell employs a few others, mainly ditzy stoner Melanie Ralston (Bridget Fonda) and Louis Gara (Robert De Niro), a bank robber recently released from prison. Nicolette organizes a sting to catch Ordell, though Ordell believes that Jackie will double-cross him by diverting the money before he can make an arrest. But unknown to any of them, Jackie plans on keeping the money for herself with a little help from Max. Everyone has their eye on that 500,000 dollars, but only Jackie knows how it's going down.

That synopsis may look relatively simple, but the movie is a complicated one. Fail to pay attention, and you'll probably get a little lost. But that's the beauty of Jackie Brown. It's hard to avoid getting pulled into the movie. It's a shame that it is, for all intents and purposes, the forgotten movie on Quentin Tarantino's résumé, because it's a fascinating watch. There are no wasted moments with Jackie Brown; everything serves to either develop the characters or move the plot forward. It's fascinating to watch where things go and how they're getting here.

Tarantino's direction, as always, is fantastic. Though his technique in this particular flick is no different than anything you'd see in any of his other movies, he at one point utilizes a technique straight out Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Instead of following one important sequence through one point of view, we see from three. Though I'm not sure how much of this was necessitated by the plot, it's intriguing to see just how this scene is perceived from each party involved. I don't really know if I'd call it an innovation or anything like that, but it's still pretty neat.

Where Tarantino really succeeds, however, is his screenplay. I haven't read Rum Punch so I can't vouch for any similarities or dissimilarities between the book and Jackie Brown, but the script once again shows Tarantino's knack for writing dialogue. However, it differs from his usual style because of its mostly straightforward narrative that isn't as frenetic as we would come to expect from him. It's a rare move on Tarantino's part, but he still manages to keep his audience guessing. He's successful in including plenty of twists and turns, making us wonder just how things will turn out until it's all revealed in the grand finale. So I guess it's a variation of a typical Tarantino theme: making sure we never really know how we're getting from Point A to Point B until we actually get there.

Let's not forget the cast, either. Nearly everyone puts forth an amazing showing. In the title role, Pam Grier is absolutely superb. She displays the strength that made her characters from Foxy Brown and Coffy so memorable, yet makes Jackie Brown distinguishable from those two by giving Jackie a certain vulnerability as well. She really makes you care about Jackie; she makes you believe that she could amount to more than just a washed-up stewardess on some crappy airline. Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson is, as always, fantastic as the swaggering arms dealer that talks a good game and tries backing it up.

Michael Keaton is fine as the trusting ATF agent, and Robert De Niro and Bridget Fonda are both acceptable as the dimwitted duo that backs up Ordell. Not to make any accusations, but I think Fonda is only in the movie to satisfy Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish. Seriously, Reservoir Dogs is the only one of Tarantino's movies that doesn't have a close-up of the bare feet of one of his actresses. The guy likes what he likes and I won't knock him for that, but come on, Quentin. Not everybody's into feet, dude. Could you cool it in your next movie?

But perhaps the most surprising performance comes from Robert Forster, who earned an Oscar nomination for his appearance here. The majority of the characters that Tarantino has created over the years have been either irredeemable scumbags or over-the-top people that wouldn't exist in the real world. But Forster's character is different. You could believe that someone like Max Cherry exists, both due to how Tarantino has written him and how Forster portrays him. Forster gives Max a heart and soul while having an extremely amiable and believable chemistry with Grier, and I'll say he deserved that Oscar nomination.

And I'd be remiss if I neglected the excellent soundtrack Tarantino has put together. The soundtracks for each of his movies are great, and this compilation of '70s R&B and soul is no different. The opening title sequence alone, set to "Across 110th Street" by Bobby Womack, was enough to sell me on the music. But there are so many wonderful songs in the movie, it's hard not to find at least one song to like. The only exception to that is "(Holy Matrimony) Letter to the Firm" by rapper Foxy Brown. This song is really out of place when compared to the rest of the music, and I think the only reason Tarantino uses it at all is because Foxy Brown's stage name was inspired by a certain movie starring Pam Grier.

Of all the movies Quentin Tarantino has directed over the years, Jackie Brown is the only one that feels like it could take place in the real world. Maybe that's why it's his most underrated piece of work. Everyone is used to Tarantino giving us characters and situations that are bigger than life, but everyone and everything in Jackie Brown could truly exist. It might be what makes it so underrated, but it might also be what makes it such an entertaining film. So I'll give Jackie Brown four stars and the "Sutton At The Movies" seal of approval.

Final Rating: ****