THIS IS THE END Review

"This Is the End" is a comedy where we find Seth Rogen (Seth Rogen), Jay Baruchel (Jay Baruchel), Craig Robinson (Craig Robinson) and Jonah Hill (Jonah Hill) all hanging at James Franco's (James Franco) new digs in L.A. for a housewarming party. Rihanna is there, and so is Aziz Ansari, Jason Segal, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mindy Kaling, Emma Watson and a coked-out-of-his-mind Michael Cera. Then comes the end of the world as they know it. Yeah.

In its meta-filled nudges and self-pleasing schtick about actors playing parodied versions of themselves (the Academy Award-nominated Jonah Hill is faux pretentious and refers to himself as that actor from "Moneyball"), here's a comedy that is delirious, outrageous, wildly inspired and roll out of your chair in tears hilarious. It's the funniest movie since the original "Hangover" and likely to be the funniest movie of not only this year but perhaps a few years.

The script was penned by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who previously collaborated on "Pineapple Express" and "Superbad," the movie which kicked off most of this gang together. This marks their directorial debut as they take a one-joke movie and keep delivering and riffing on it with awesome comic timing. Once the four guys are holed up inside Franco's house, Danny McBride (Danny McBride) shows up and throws a wrench into their whole survival plan, eating all their food and drinking all their water. It's like an apocalyptic actor-starring "Real World," a pressure cooker of a situation where the main goal is to poke fun at these actors as much as possible.

You have to know these guys' stuff to be in on a lot of the jokes, of which these self-referential zings are the laugh-out-loud funniest. Take for example an entirely homemade sequel to "Pineapple Express" guest starring Woody Harrelson. But I've already said too much. You gotta see to believe how zany, nutty and balls-to-the-wall insane things get escalating to gut-busting proportions. In a raunchy mix of comedy and horror, Rogen and his team absolutely deliver the goods in a product that actually feels refreshingly independent aside from its major stars. It's smart about its stupidity and even squeezes in something to say about the status of celebrity and the nature of faith. And if you thought all those cameos at the start were something, just wait.

SPRING BREAKERS Review

We open to a sea of tanned, beautiful bodies with guys twirling beer pongs, girls with their tops off being sprayed with liquor, and it's all set to the thumping beat of Skrillex. Upon first watching, you might think you stumbled into a big screen version of "Girls Gone Wild." Not so fast. This may be spring break -- and the bros in your audience may be eating it up -- but it's also writer and director Harmony Korine's ("Trash Humpers," "Mister Lonely") ethereal, hypnotic and dreamlike "Spring Breakers," which serves up the stereotypical wet and wild party of college kids in Florida and takes a skewer to it.

He centers the story around four bored college girls, two of which were former Disney teen actresses, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, next to Ashley Benson and Rachel Corine. They are Faith, Candy, Brit and Cotty, and through a series of hazy, non-sequential scenes we piece together that they don't have enough money saved up to go on spring break. The solution? "Pretend it's a video game," one girl says to the group. "Act like it's a movie." And like that they're robbing a local chicken shack with a sledge hammer and squirt gun and on the bus to spring break.

"Spring Breakers" is also the alternative James Franco fare in theaters for those who don't want to see him pigeon-holed into his stifled "Oz" role. As a violent lunatic version of his stoner from "Pineapple Express," Franco's Alien is the type of character he should be playing. He's a white gangster rapper, wearing grills on his teeth and long cornrows, who bails the four girls out of jail after a party gets busted. He inherits them as his harem of women, and he their deranged prince charming. In a truly bizarre scene, he shows them his abode proclaiming, "Look at all my shit!" showing off his loads of cash, clothes and arsenal of weapons. Later he sits at a white piano and plays a rendition of Britney Spears' "Everytime," the girls fawning over his vapid caricature of success.

Guns are fetishised, and the fusion of sexuality and violence in Korine's vision creatures sultry out of malice. You're meant to cringe and squirm as he takes the youth American dream and pursuit of happiness to the ends of depravity, vanity and selfishness. The film is marked as a comedy, but you'll find any chuckles getting caught in your throat and turning into silent agape horror -- but you're also transfixed. The film's style is elliptical and nears a tonal poem. Phrases of dialogue are repeated, scenes flicker back and forth between past, present and future and the dreamscape -- photographed gorgeously by cinematographer Benoit Debie ("Enter The Void") -- is awash in neon lights. It's a beautiful dark fantasy that devolves into a disturbing nightmare.

Are these girls -- bikini-clad wearing pink ski masks and toting automatic weapons -- monsters, ignorant, privileged, clueless? Or are they a cog in the system of teenage adolescence looking for a reason to party and have fun? It's also Korine having fun with us as an audience in a trip that doesn't go down easy. It can't be considered a cautionary tale because it's too outrageous, but it does make you think. You certainly won't look at spring break the same way again.

It's been announced that James Franco and Anne Hathaway will host the telecast of the 83rd Annual Academy Awards.

The first question that pops into my head: why?

Hathaway and Franco are both young, likable actors. I think the keyword in there is young. Picking them to host goes with the Oscar's recent efforts to attract a more popular and younger audience. But, how oh how are these two going to entertain us for the telecast's first 10 or 15 minutes? Are they going to crack jokes? I just, I worry. I worry that it could be dull and awkward.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are comedians. They could do it but just barely. The idea of co-hosting is just a bad one because it creates the tension of two people struggling to decide when it's the other person's turn to speak not to mention the painfully forced conversation between them.

Or maybe it could be great fun. Maybe these two have enough charisma and charm to make the pairing work. It also helps that Franco was recently seen in "127 Hours" and Hathaway--a whole LOT of Hathaway--was recently seen in "Love & Other Drugs."

I have to wonder, though. How uncomfortable will it be when James Franco stands there with his nomination for Best Actor when Anne Hathaway stands there with nothing? Will he make a crack about it? Or, better yet, will her hosting boost her chances in garnering a Best Actress nod?

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards will air on Feburary 27, 2011.

"127 Hours" (2010)

In April 2003, 27-year-old outdoors enthusiast Aron Ralston (James Franco) took a trip to indulge in his favorite activity of escaping miles and miles away from civilization. He traveled to the winding red rock formations of Blue John Canyon in Utah and failed to tell anyone where he was going. There, he fell and got himself trapped inside a small crevice with his arm crushed and wedged between a rock wall and a heavy boulder. How could the predicament of this man's entrapment and escape be made into a 90-minute film? Only through the visual genius of director Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire").

The film is both harrowing and entertaining, and from its very opening, it's also very much a Danny Boyle film. Our introduction to Aron serves also to introduce us to Boyle's keen visual style that will later be used to punctuate pivotal moments in Aron's struggle. Boyle sends us into the desert in a rush of flashy cinematography from the gifted Anthony Dod Mantle, who also worked on "Slumdog Millionaire," and Enrique Chediak. Also hailing from his work on "Slumdog Millionaire" is A.R. Rahman who returns with a driving score to fit the kinetic and breathless energy that Boyle pumps into each frame.

Boyle has a knack for bringing vivacity and life to dire and ugly situations. From heroin addiction in "Trainspotting" to poverty and violence in "Slumdog Millionaire," his films are exuberant and invigorating. His new film, "127 Hours," is perhaps the toughest challenge taking a story strictly confined to one man and one space and turning it into an experience that is completely visionary and transporting. Based on Aron Ralston's own memoir, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" and adapted by writer Simon Beaufoy ("Slumdog Millionaire"), it's a film that is immediately compelling, a survival tale about psychological and physical endurance and desperation.

It helps that James Franco is such good company. This is his one man show, and he is astounding. From a cocky explorer to a helpless victim having to shed his pride, the transformation could not have been portrayed any better, and Franco disappears in the role and gives us his most demanding screen presence yet. Franco doesn't create a hero, either. He plays a man who was foolish enough to get himself trapped in a horrible situation but also intelligent enough to know how to get himself out.

The last people to see Aron are two attractive young hikers, Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn), who appear to be lost. Aron takes the opportunity to boast about his knowledge of the area and offers to be their tour guide. He takes them to an underground hot spring, a temporary paradise. Aron's show-offish and reckless behavior here, however, is a tease for his avoidance of danger, a premonition and ironic forewarning of what's to come.

Once stuck, we soon get familiar with Aron's space. He sets his watch, rope, water bottle, camcorder, camera, other assorted items and, most importantly, that blunt knife of his on top of the boulder and fashions a pulley to keep himself hoisted up and keep pressure off his feet. There is a strip of sky above him where every morning around the same time a large bird flies past. He gets only 15 minutes of sunlight each day. He spends his time chipping away at the boulder with his knife and begins talking to himself on the camcorder.

Through imaginative storytelling, we also occasionally escape Aron's space. We enter into memories of his family, parents (Kate Burton and Treat Williams) and girlfriend (Clémence Poésy). We descend into fantasies and hallucinations, as well, such as a trippy montage of drinks as a vivid evocation of Aron's thirst, and these really embed us into his state of mind. At his core, Aron is a good-natured goofball. In one instance, he pretends to be on a talk show while recording himself, and he even includes audience response referring to his predicament as an "oops" moment. We all have those moments. Except this one could get him killed. Oops.

There are some gut-wrenching and intense scenes. Most notably the one the audience waits for in nervous suspense, the moment Aron decides to cut through his arm. It is a powerful scene and not gratuitous. The editor, Jon Harris, does an admirable job of showing us the procedure without actually showing us. What becomes the worst part is actually a sound rather than a sight. The scene communicates something larger than just a jolt of discomfort because at this point in the movie, we have lived vicariously through Aron and feel his pain.

Even more, "127 Hours" culminates to an inner monologue from Aron where he addresses the guilt of his selfishness. He thinks back realizing this rock had been waiting for him his entire life. All of his actions and choices had been leading up to this single moment. Cutting off an appendage was not only freeing himself physically but freeing himself spiritually in a moment of existential bravery and poignancy.

Archive: 'Pineapple Express'

Movie Review
Pineapple Express (2008)


"Pineapple Express" may be the first stoner flick that you can still fully enjoy without having to be high. There's a smart level of humor here that an intoxicated person may otherwise miss. It's by no means nothing more than a druggie comedy, but it's an extremely well-made one, and one that'll make you laugh until your sides hurt. The reason behind the movie's success may come from it being directed by David Gordon Green, the least likely candidate who, before this, had directed small American indie movies such as "Snow Angels." He's used to dealing with the intricacies of human emotion. Here? Well, maybe a little.

Judd Apatow is officially a major force in Hollywood right now. His winning formula is still outrageous amounts of profanity and raunch while still holding a heart and being downright relatable. And with dopey but likable characters always on the forefront unleashing plenty of pop culture references, the line begins to blur between extreme stupidity and creative genius. Apatow has fueled his recent movies on barely having any plot at all and simply barreling down wherever his characters take him, and it has worked. This time, it's done quite literally as two seemingly harmless pot-smoking buddies accidentally get involved in a murderous crime. Apatow's recent comedies such as "Knocked Up" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" have been close to the category of romantic comedy. But, is this really so much different? A male buddy movie essentially does the same thing just with two guys bonding instead.

Imagine a stoned-out version of "Superbad," and you've essentially got the first half of "Pineapple Express." A process server named Dale (Seth Rogen) spends his days delivering a couple summonses but mostly sitting in his car smoking joints and visiting his high school girlfriend, Angie (Amber Heard). He's best friends with his drug dealer, Saul (James Franco), who sits in his apartment all day selling and smoking his merchandise. Dale stops by one day to buy some weed, and Saul introduces him to something he just recently got from his connection. It's called Pineapple Express, and he says it's so divine that smoking a joint of it is equivalent to killing a unicorn. After leaving Saul's, Dale goes to deliver a summons on a man named Ted Jones (Gary Cole) who actually turns out to be Saul's supplier.

Dale sits outside in his car to smoke one more joint and gets scared when a police car pulls up behind him. That turns out to be the least of his problems when he then witnesses firsthand a murder by the drug lord Ted and a crooked female cop (Rosie Perez). Still high, Dale flips out and speeds off. Unfortunately for him, he leaves his roach behind and after just one sniff Ted Jones can easily track down the murder witness because there's only one dealer in the area selling Pineapple Express. This marks Dale, Saul, and Saul's middleman connection, Red (Danny R. McBride), all for dead, and it puts them all on the run from a group of rather incompetent hitmen.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who co-wrote "Superbad," take Judd Apatow's stoner action farce vision and turn it into something that starts out ridiculous and only gets wilder from there. Dale and Saul find themselves in a forest, and then they lose their car and hitchhike their way to their buddy Red's house. Before arriving there, though, Dale shows up dirty, out-of-breath, and bleeding for a dinner with his girlfriend and her parents, which results in fleeing from her dad's rifle. Once at Red's, that's when the giddy over-the-top action starts to pick up, a first time for an Apatow feature. First comes a hilariously choreographed brawl in Red's house, followed later on by a police car chase that is the furthest thing from conventional as Saul drives at full-speed with his foot through a slushee-covered windshield.

It all ramps up to an all-out gang war between Ted's group of men and another group solely referred to as "the Asians." It's a hilarious shootout where the likes of Gary Cole and Rosie Perez are totally serious about the situation while Rogen and Franco are cruising along in a haze like it's just another inconvenience in their already hectic day. There's a clever nod to 70s and 80s action movies throughout this portion with plenty of subtle humor running beneath the apparent crude gags. Cinematographer Tim Orr makes this and the rest of the movie all look so good, too, by composing some surprisingly artful shots. That is, if you want to pay attention to that sort of thing, although, considering all else that goes on, it's not necessary.

The casting of James Franco, who's known mostly as the handsome guy from the "Spider-Man" series, is inspired as he proudly dons long, greasy hair and pajama pants as a reckless and carefree stoner pal. And Seth Rogen pulls off the action hero role perfectly, as unexpected as that is. Together they are comedic dynamite and give off the vibe of a believable bond. They're not gay, but they sometimes sure act like it, and the movie has fun poking at that possibility. McBride has fun, too, especially during a hysterical end scene in a diner where the three friends spend time reminiscing about the events of the day. There's a bit of Tarantino hiding within Pineapple Express from the "Pulp Fiction"-esque dialogue to the humorous spurts of violence and gore. There's something to it.