Jim Mora The Same

RocknRolla
Guy Just Wants To Have Gun
Trailers & Mo

Guy Ritchie’s personal and professional life of late hasn’t been so rosy. There’s the whole Madonna/A-Rod affair, yet that pales in comparison to the awfulness that was his psychologically inert film, Revolver, which took two years to even get a US release date… and will probably take two years for us to get rid of the headache that it gave us. Since becoming the heir to Tarantino by handing in the fab Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998 and even fabber Snatch two years later (has it really been that long?), Ritchie has gotsen swept away at his own British gangsta game by deliciously rich(-ie) films like Layer Cake (directed by his ye olde producer Matthew Vaughn) and this year’s The Bank Job (starring his find Jason Statham). The question has been begged again and again (mostly by us), where have you gone Guy Ritchie? Question answered with RocknRolla (one of the dumbest film titles we’ve heard in awhile), which finds the director happily back in the (un)safe surroundings of London’s underground (poor choice of words, cause we aint talking about the tube), filled with his usual witty and twitty gunmen, double dealing each other until the end credits. Since he’s treading on common ground again, nRolla‘s not as fresh as Lock, Stock or as polished as Snatch, but it is mos certainly as fun as either of them, and we’ll take that kinda repetitiveness over the kind Kevin Smith doles out over and over

This time the MacGuffin aint no shotgun or shiny diamond, but a prized painting from a Russian real estate mogul (Karel Roden) that goes missing after he lends it to a crime boss (Tom Wilkinson, whose cockney performance as Lenny Cole is worthy of being placed on Richie’s Mt Rushmore alongside Brick Top and ‘Hatchet’ Harry) that he’s doing bidness with. This sets off a series of events with everyone and their mother (and we mean everyone, from Gerard Butler, playing the Statham role, although not as well + solid turns from Mark Strong, Toby Kebbell, Jimi Mistry and even Ludacris and Jeremy Piven for the hell of it) looking for the piece of art, and trying to steal some cash from one another in the process. While you’ve seen it all before, Ritchie does throw something new into the mix– a female character who’s more than up to the challenge of hanging with the tough boys, electrifyingly played by the beyond hotness that is Thandie Newton. We think he’s on to something here, and if he’s scrounging for another shoot’em up after his Robert Downey/Jude Law Sherlock Holmes, might we suggest an all lady gangster flick?

Girls Richie: Richie’s all about the eye candy, and tosses us tossers some lovely ladies besides Thandie. There’s Tiffany Mulheron and Quantum Of Solace Bond girl Gemma Arterton, who supposedly was born with six fingers on each hand! Eat that Count Rugen!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
A Teeny Bit Familiar
Trailers & Mo

The world has waited long enuff for the next John Hughes to arrive, and guess we’ll have to keep on waiting, cause ever since Home Alone went into sequel mode no one has been even close to occupying the teen film throne that he once sat on. Sure, there’s been some enjoyable adolescent one-off romps since the mid-90s like Clueless, American Pie, Bring It On and She’s All That (recent pics like Juno and Superbad really aren’t the Burt’s Bees Knees, so shut it), but none of them carry the teen weight and relevance that a Hughes film did. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist aims for Hughes’ territory, but the results are more like John Snooze. Sure, watching the awkward stylings of Michael Cera make cute with the always on-screen sour-puss-edom of Kat Dennings (see, or don’t, more of her perma-frowny faces in 40 Year Old Virgin or House Bunny) will be a viewing pleasure for today’s 8th thru 12th graders, but for the rest of us, the story of their courtship is juss a bunch of recycled teen movie bits you’ve seen a zillion times… the plot has them running around NYC in a Yugo (it was funnier and more ironic/moronic when we saw one in Dragnet 20 years ago) searching for a secret gig by their favorite band (Lohan did the same in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen), while they also try to locate their lost friend (straight outta the Adventures In Babysitting playbook), Ari Graynor, who practically steals the film from N&N. Sprinkle in some shitty cameos (did we really need to see the unfunny Andy Samberg as an unfunny homeless guy?) and a hip soundtrack (although we hear about mix CDs, we never see a single playlist!) and that’s purty much that. If John Hughes isn’t gonna come back to save this genre, we hope someone makes like Clifford Irving and writes a fake autobiography that lures him out of hiding so he can debunk it juss like Howard Hughes did. That may not be the mos original idea nick goings, but it’s a heckula lot more interesting than Nick & Norah, which seems to be stuck on shuffle

Nick at Nite: you can visit all the hotspots that N&N hit up with this handy dandy map here

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

RocknRolla opens today in NYC, LA and Toronto, while Nick & Norah is already playing at a theater new jews

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…