Gil Mansergh's Cinema Toast

New Releases 6/26/09

NEWS:
Oscars expand the Best-Picture category to 10 films
"After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year," Academy President Sid Ganissaid earlier this week. "The final outcome, of course, will be the same - one Best Picture winner - but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.

In 1931-32, there were eight nominees and in 1934 and 1935 there were 12 contenders. The last time there were 10 nominees "Casablanca" won best picture of 1943.


Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (PG-13)
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson
Director: Michael Bay
The $60 million opening night proves the filmmakers know exactly waht this Next Gen wants to see. Humans are merely inconveniences in this computer generated series of more and more complicated (and destructive) robots obliterating everything in their path. Even Egypt's historic Valley of the Kings isn't spared (and we though the Taliban were bad!).
1 and 1/2 piece of boom, bang and crush toast


My Sister's Keeper (PG-13)
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva
Director: Nick Cassavetes
You should know going in, that this movie starts with a "donor child" suing her parents. She wants to prevent them from harvesting her kidney even though (or perhaps because) they used genetic engineering to make her into a perfect "match" for her leukemia diagnosed sister. But the story isn't about the court battle. It's about the family and the constant need to make decisions and then reassess outcomes and research entirely different options and then start the cycle all over again. This film could be criticized for having parents and doctors and siblings who are just a little too perfect and for manipulating the audience so tears flow, but so what. It works.
3 and 1/2 pieces of chemo isn't fun toast

Cheri (R)
Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates, Rupert Friend, Felicity Jones
Director: Stephen Frears
Two of French novelist Collette's works were combined to provide this story of a (supposedly) more decadent era of pre-WWI Paris. But instead of feeling puffed up and entertaining, the result is oddly deflated and quite dull.
1 and 1/2 piece of pretty, but clueless toast


NEW ON DVD

Inkheart (PG)
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent
Director: Iain Softley
Whatever magic made German author Cornelia Funke's children's book be translated into over thirty languages isn't evident in this confusing mish-mash of characters from Middle Earth and Oz and Greek mythology. Brenden Fraser tries hard and Helen Mirren seems to be enjoying herself, but this may be due to the fact that the movie was filmed in a beautiful part of Italy when the weather was perfect. By the way, Andy Serkis (Gollum) plays the kidnapper who transports the girl to a rather lackluster land of CG effects.
2 pieces of could have, should have had another director toast

Waltz With Bashir (R)
Starring: Ari Folman, Ori Sivan
Director: Ari Folman
The Israeli film nominated for an Academy Award as last year's Best Foreign Language Film is something quite different. Painful to watch, using animated scenes to retell one soldier's recollections of what may have really happened in the refugee camps during the Beirut war and then juxtaposing the drawings with actual footage of one incident. The result is gripping and very upsetting.
3 and 1/2 pieces of inventive but depressing toast