Richard Jenkins Page 2

Tom Cruise may be oddly miscast in this big action movie, but he certainly knows how to make one of these preposterous films connect with an audience. And writer-director McQuarrie adds a driving sense of internal logic that keeps it consistently enjoyable. So even if the hero in Lee Child's series of novels is a 6-foot-5 blond-haired, blue-eyed muscle-man, the cast and crew get away withThe story takes place in Pittsburgh, where a multiple shooting leads Detective Emerson (Oyelowo) and DA Rodin (Jenkins) to a withdrawn gun nut (Sikora). It seems like an open-and-shut case until man of mystery Jack Reache (Cruise) turns up. An off-the-grid ex-Army agent, Jack offers to help defence attorney Helen (Pike) prove her client's innocence. Of course, he instantly solves the case, uncovering a conspiracy and putting himself and Helen in danger from a ruthless Russian (Herzog) and his henchman (Courtenay). Meanwhile, Jack befriends a gun-range owner (Duvall) who has a connection to the case.

There's clearly an attempt here to echo Bourne-style questioning of identity and morality through Jack's hazy history and super-spy methodology. And the plot is also packed with far-fetched details and silly connections (Helen is Rodin's daughter), although McQuarrie does his best to keep things plausible and intelligent enough to hold our attention. There's also a sense of the bigger issue in Jack's life, that he can't cope with the grey-scale relativity in society and prefers right-or-wrong battlefield morality. He also hates modern-day connectivity, refusing to carry a mobile phone. But then he doesn't travel with a vehicle, weapon or change of clothing either; he prefers to "borrow" everything as needed.

Despite being nearly a foot shorter than the literary Jack, Cruise inhabits the role nicely, offering a slightly scrapper, more shadowy version of his Mission: Impossible character. But he's just as sexless, never putting much oomph into his flirtation with the always terrific Pike. On the other hand, he generously lets his costars steal every scene. Duvall is hilariously offhanded, while Herzog adds his own mad genius into his role as a, well, mad genius. And Oyelowo more than holds his own opposite these veteran hams. So even if the film never tries to be anything more than a ripping, mindless thriller, the stylish filmmaking and cool characters make it an enjoyable waste of time.

Continue reading: Jack Reacher Review

Moral murkiness makes this hitman thriller gripping to watch, mainly because we're never quite sure where it's going. Even though it's set in 2008, Australian director Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James) shoots it like a 1970s thriller, which gives the whole film a superb sense of moral murkiness. And since it's based on a 1974 novel (Cogan's Trade by George Higgins), the film has an almost timely feel to it, using offbeat rhythms and complex characters who refuse to do what we want them to do.

At the centre is Jackie Cogan (Pitt), hired by a bookish mafia executive (Jenkins) to clean up the mess after a mob card game was robbed. The problem is that the two guys behind the heist (McNairy and Mendelsohn) are dimwits who have no idea what they've stumbled into. But Cogan is also annoyed by mob bureaucracy, which takes far too long to get anything done. And he's even more short-tempered with his old pal Mickey (Gandolfini), who he brings in to bump off a middleman (Liotta), except that Mickey is too interested in alcohol and sex to get the job done properly. Clearly, Jackie will have to do everything himself.

Pitt plays the role with a terrific sense of world-weary charm. He has no time for the losers around him, but takes pride in his work, preferring to kill his targets softly rather than causing pain. Meanwhile, Gandolfini is playing an alcoholic twist on Tony Soprano, Jenkins is doing his usual officious schtick, and Liotta is a more soulful version of the mafioso he's played many times before. By contrast, McNairy and Mendelsohn are hilariously clueless. Like characters from a Coen brothers movie, they're likeable even though we never have any hope that they'll get anything right.

Continue reading: Killing Them Softly Review

Taking a break from her pre-med studies, Dana (Connolly) heads off to a mountain cabin with her flatmate Jules (Hutchison), their stoner pal Marty (Kranz) and Jules' muscle-jock boyfriend Curt (Hemsworth), who has invited his friend Holden (Williams) as a possible date for Dana. But they have no idea that two sardonic businessmen (Jenkins and Whitford) are managing an elaborate underground operation during which they are manipulating everything about the cabin. And it starts to become clear that, to save the world, all five young people must die in the correct order.

Continue reading: The Cabin In The Woods Review

In 1960, Kemp (Depp) applies for a job at the San Juan Star in Puerto Rico, working for the sardonic editor Lotterman (Jenkins). He shares a ramshackle flat with photographer Sala (Rispoli), who home-brews super-strong rum with another journalist (Ribisi). While getting slowly pickled, Kemp also gets to know the fast-talking Sanderson (Eckhart), a public relations expert who is using property developers to increase his fortune. Sanderson also has a sexy girlfriend, Chenault (Heard), who immediately catches Kemp's eye. Trouble is brewing everywhere.

Continue reading: The Rum Diary Review

After a humiliating breakup, Dylan (Timberlake) meets with high-achieving headhunter Jamie (Kunis) about a new job. Friendship blossoms, and since Jamie is emotionally damaged after a recent split and Dylan is emotionally unavailable, they decide to sleep together without any deeper attachment.

Meanwhile, they get increasingly involved in each others' lives, most notably as Dylan and his sister (Elfman) cope with their senile father (Jenkins). Of course, the main question is whether Dylan and Jamie can remain friends even if they have sex.

Continue reading: Friends With Benefits Review

What if you really had the chance to change all of that? What if you could talk to yourself when you were only eight years old and explain how to take a stand for yourself, give the younger you understanding of why dad is so angry at the world, and give yourself hope for retaining individuality in a sea of conformity. In the new Disney film The Kid Russ Duritz gets that once in a lifetime chance.

Continue reading: The Kid (2000) Review

This time out, we get American Pie alum Chris Klein and the saucy Heather Graham in what is undoubtedly the crudest film we will ever see. That is, at least until Tom Green takes center stage in Freddy Got Fingered later this year.

Continue reading: Say It Isn't So Review

A comedian whose schtick has always been his acute social-sexual dysfunction, in "What Planet Are You From?" Garry Shandling is nothing if not well-cast as an alien packed off to Earth by his neutered, all-male race to impregnate an earth female as a prelude to invasion.

Given a crash course in inept pick-up lines and fitted with a motorized prosthetic penis that hums when he's aroused, Shandling is transported to the privy of a passenger jet and emerges to piggishly proposition stewardesses and every other female in sight, in what has to be the most awkwardly sexist comedy since the 1960s.

Populated by fundamentally unlikable, abusive men and pathetically needy, bitchy women, the drudging, deadpan farce tracks Shandling's libidinous frustration as he fails to pick up chicks and is chased by FAA investigator John Goodman (his arrival caused an air traffic incident), who figures out his secret with the flimsiest of suppositions.

Continue reading: What Planet Are You From? Review

If only Jim Carrey's uninhibited and completely unhinged, sweet-and-sour insanity was by itself enough to carry a movie, it might not matter so much that the plot of the Farrelly Brothers' "Me, Myself and Irene" is nothing but an undercooked on-the-run road movie.

Full of crooked cops and rich, double-crossing ex-boyfriends, it's a dim bulb script the boys had shelved ages ago and dusted off last year only after a couple post-"There's Something About Mary" projects fell through.

Sustained only by its outrageousness (breast milk gags, anyone?) and Carrey's hammy physical humor, the movie does have its fair share of laughs. But between guffaws there's nothing to keep the uneven "Irene" from collapsing under its own dead weight.

Continue reading: Me, Myself & Irene Review

It would be a terrible shame if talented actors like Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo and Alfre Woodard have reached a point where money trumps professional pride. But I can't imagine any other reason they'd sign on to a half-witted, obscenely formulaic, huge-budget save-the-Earth sci-fi embarrassment like "The Core."

Almost exactly the same movie as "Armageddon" -- and almost as insufferable -- it features a handful of good-looking scientists and NASA astronauts who, instead of going into space to set off a nuke and save the world from a asteroid, travel to the center of the Earth to set off a nuke, thus restarting the dying molten core and saving the world from electromagnetic disaster.

The exact same shopworn characters die in the exact same order, some accidentally, some heroically to save the mission. The simplest laws of physics and even plain-as-day physical facts are utterly ignored (the nuke-the-core plan is based on two-dimensional thinking even though the Earth is -- duh! -- a sphere).

Continue reading: The Core Review