Site Re-Boot

Cinema Lowdown has been around for about three years now. While it has recently been on break, it is back. The link to on the sidebar has my old reviews including the popular SNL Best Ofs.

Otherwise the blog part of the site is starting over. Stay tuned for new reviews, news and anything else from the entertainment industry that catches my attention.

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DVD Review: The Hammer

Adam Carolla's boxing comedy The Hammer is so charmingly low key that it practically defies criticism. Carolla himself articulated it best (in the DVD's special features) when he said, "It's gonna be good, maybe not great, but definitely good." He is exactly right: the movie is good. It might not be Rocky (or even Rocky Balboa for that matter), but Carolla wasn't aiming quite that high in the first place. Clearly Carolla's goal was to provide a lightweight, sports-oriented comedy that could be enjoyed by a wide audience. In those terms, The Hammer is a smashing success.

The Hammer is a semi-autobiographical account of Carolla's pre-celebrity life. Carolla plays a freelance carpenter named Jerry Ferro who, despite being an all-around amiable guy, doesn't have much going for him. The film opens on Jerry's 40th birthday, as he realizes he hasn't quite accomplished everything he wanted to before that important benchmark. To top things off Jerry manages to get himself and his best friend Ozzie fired, and his girlfriend kicks him out of their apartment.

With nothing left except a boxing class he teaches at the local gym, he ends up on Ozzie's sofa looking for a way to change his life. Luckily Jerry still has a mean left hook, which in his younger days earned him his "Hammer" nickname. While sparring in the gym with another boxer, Jerry draws the attention of boxing coach Ernie Bell. Bell is recruiting boxers for the US Olympic team. He encourages Jerry to try out, even though Jerry hasn't boxed in twenty years. It's up to Jerry to decide where this opportunity will take him. Will he put the work in or will he give up, as he has been doing his whole adult life?

Carolla ably carries the movie on the strength of his likeable persona. Much of the success of The Hammer comes from how well Carolla's strengths are utilized. This isn't a belly-laugh type of comedy, but rather a comedy of chuckles and snickers - and those occur frequently. The movie is a very relatable take on the struggles of becoming successful. Jerry is not the cliched, pot-smoking loser who hasn't even moved out his parents' house, prevalent in so many movies that try to tackle the same themes. Rather he is a normal, self-sufficient guy who just never put in the effort needed to rise above just-getting-by status.

Carolla offers his trademark unique observations on society - not only to his pal Ozzie, but also to a young boxer (Harold House Moore) he takes under his wing. Adding a romantic dimension to the movie, Jerry begins dating one of his female boxing students, Lindsay (Heather Juergensen - also one of the film's producers). While the romance may be a fairly predictable element of the movie, it's really not a weakness. Whether Jerry is speculating about how cheap the Dutch must be to earn the "let's go Dutch" term or pontificating on the attraction of the La Brea tar pits, we are - along with Lindsay - won over by his charm.

While The Hammer may not be the most original or ambitious movie ever, it is certainly a worthwhile effort. Carolla made the movie independently and even ponied up some of his own dough to get prints made for a limited theatrical release. However, the movie looks as professional as any similar movie that comes out of a Hollywood studio. The acting is strong for the most part (Juergensen, though servicable, has her share of dull line readings). Oswaldo Castillo, who is a long time friend of Carolla's rather than a professional actor, turns in a particularly natural and funny performance as Jerry's friend Ozzie.

The DVD of The Hammer boasts a nice quantity of special features. The deleted scenes are nice to see, but it is no mystery why they didn't make the cut. The brief outtake reel is a waste of time - I mean, are these really the funniest mistakes that occurred during production? Somehow, with a master improviser like Adam Carolla, I doubt it. There are a number of other bells and whistles that are likely to be watched and never returned to again, including a series of behind-the-scenes promotional segments. The real highlight of the features is an informative (and hilarious) commentary track from Carolla and screenwriter Kevin Hench. Carolla talks for a living (on his nationally syndicated radio show) so it makes sense that he's in his element doing a DVD commentary. He offers a lot of interesting anecdotes about the production - all laced with humor.

Special mention must be made about The Hammer's MPAA rating; it earned an R rating. The reason cited is, and I quote, "Brief Language." Carolla was incensed at the rating, complaining frequently on his show that the language wasn't strong enough to warrant it. In fact, the dreaded F-word appears exactly twice - neither time in a sexual context (though one time it is preceded by "mother"). Seriously, if Carolla didn't want to risk receiving an R, why weren't those two potentially offending usages edited from the film (or redubbed)? Regardless, this is one of the mildest R-rated movies I've ever seen so don't let it scare you off. For the most part, The Hammer is suitable for all audiences.

Also published by me on BlogCritics

Book Review: The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made by David Hughes

David Hughes' The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made is a fascinating glimpse into the world of the motion picture industry. Hughes examines the script to screen (or oblivion as the case may be) process of several well known sci-fi franchises. This book exemplifies how movies are not simply made up of artistry and vision but of bureaucratic red tape, celebrity egos, and fanciful whims of studio executives.

Why did a new Superman franchise take over ten years, a multitude of script rewrites, and millions spent on an ultimately canceled project before the lackluster Superman Returns finally hit the big screen? The reason can pretty much be summed in one word — fear. Fear of doing the “wrong” story, fear of casting the wrong actors, fear of angering loyal Superman fans. Ultimately so many writers, directors, actors, and producers had come and gone on the project the only vision left was to play it safe and keep the story as close to the original Superman movie as possible.

It was those same kinds of fears that plagued many would-be sci-fi projects over the years. Understandably, studio executives are hesitant to sink millions and millions of dollars into a movie that ends up tanking at the box office. And science fiction can be a tough sell. Even tried and true franchises like Star Trek had to go through their share of finding acceptable scripts and endless director and casting negotiations before finally getting the green light.

This book examines the careful balance that has to be struck between creativity and bankability, between vision and budget, and between flights of fancy and plausibility. Find out why so many great ideas were never realized, such as a big screen version of The Six Million Dollar Man or a Ridley Scott-directed Planet of the Apes. Why did it take so many years to get a new I Am Legend off the ground? Why did Steven Spielberg ditch his alien thriller, Night Skies, after nearly a million dollars spent in pre-production, for family friendly E.T.? And was Star Trek IV really intended as an Eddie Murphy vehicle? The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made has all the answers and many more.

This is truly an indispensable book for any sci-fi and/or movie fan. It offers well researched insight into a world that is not readily shared with movie audiences. While it is sometimes disappointing to discover what could have been, the peek into stories unrealized is well worth it.

Movie Review: X-Files: I Want To Believe

Don’t let negative reviews and diminishing box office returns fools you. X-Files: I Want to Believe is actually a good movie. By the time I saw the movie on the morning of its third day of release I had already seen a plethora of unenthusiastic reviews and poor weekend box office results. I prepared myself for the worst. But the worst is not what I got — far from it.

X-Files: I Want To Believe is a fast paced thriller full of unpredictable twists and turns. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson easily fall back into their roles as Mulder and Scully, albeit not exactly the same Mulder and Scully we last saw. Now a wanted man, Mulder spends his days hiding from the FBI in isolation. It is painful to see his paranormal investigations reduced to clipping newspaper articles and pinning them to the wall of his cluttered office. His “I Want To Believe” poster still hangs nearby, a reminder of his never-ending quest to find the truth.

Scully is now a practicing medical doctor. She spends her days at a small Catholic hospital. Like on the show, she is still wrestles with her faith in God and her reliance on scientific fact. Scully must confront her indecision when she is faced with a moral decision in the treatment of a terminally ill child. Should she use radical and painful treatments that may or may not save his life, or leave his illness “in God’s hands?” It is at this time the FBI comes back into her life.

The FBI is searching for a missing agent and the only clues to be had are a severed arm buried several feet in the snow and the ramblings of a self-proclaimed psychic. They need Mulder’s help. If Scully can unearth Mulder and convince him to help, all his past “crimes” will be forgiven. No longer caring about Mulder’s constant prying into government cover-ups, the FBI has forgotten all about the X-Files. But have the fans forgotten?

Well, maybe not forgotten, but six years gave fans a long time to imagine what a new Scully and Mulder adventure might involve. Perhaps its rather terrestrial plot is not what they had in mind. Couple that with an ill-timed post-Dark Knight release and a practically non-existent ad campaign and you’ve got a recipe for disappointment at the box office.

Take away all the baggage and the movie works. The story seems somewhat benign at first. Missing persons and severed arms are not all that extraordinary after all. But the arm was discovered because a psychic (brilliantly played by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly) led them to the location – a barren, snow-covered field with no visible landmarks. And the psychic is not just an ordinary psychic (because in the world of X-Files psychics are somewhat commonplace), but he is a defrocked pedophile priest who lives in the creepiest sex-offender halfway house of all time. Is the psychic real, is he just looking for some sort salvation, or is he in on the crime? The story unfolds like an onion, each layer revealing something even more horrifying than the last.

Plenty of thematic elements from the television show are present in this movie. Scully still doubts and Mulder still wants to believe. The central force of Mulder and Scully’s unwavering partnership is still the glue that holds the whole thing together. As always there is that struggle between faith, be it in the unknown or in God, and science. Scully’s moral dilemma concerning her young patient eerily parallels that of the ominous man who may be responsible for the strange events. The question for all involved becomes whether the ends justify the means and the edges of morality and malice become blurred.

And while the movie poses these questions it does not answer them, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions on such heavy topics. In the meantime the movie offers a lot of excitement and action and plenty of strange phenomena for Mulder and Scully to sink their teeth into.