“Jennifer’s Body”
DVD, Blu-ray: Megan Fox stars, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody wrote the script, and still the movie was a flop. It’s easy to see why. The story Cody cranked out is reduced to this: Jennifer (Fox) is longtime best friends with the less-attractive Needy Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried), whose name sounds something like “lesbian” because lesbian undercurrents run throughout the movie. Isn’t that clever? So is this: Their friendship is a classic cliché — pretty girl boosts her self-esteem by sticking close to a friend who will fuel it. That’s Needy for you. She’ll do anything for Jennifer, including going into some random bar where some random satanic band is playing some random rock music. Convinced Jennifer is a virgin (ha, ha, ha), the band members decide to scurry her away to their van and then do all sorts of uncool voodoo stuff to her. The result? Jennifer and her body are turned into some sort of blood-munching demon thing while poor Needy’s life becomes a hell-fire mess because of it. “Jennifer’s Body” has issues. It wants to walk that fine line between comedy and horror. On paper, this is why Cody was an inspired choice to write the script — as anyone who saw “Juno” knows, Cody has a way with a cutting quip. Unfortunately, her wit is wasted here, partly because she doesn’t seem inspired by her own material and partly because Fox doesn’t have the required bite to carry off the good writing when it hits. Essentially, she’s a poseur posing onscreen, and while she looks great doing so, you wish there was some intelligence within that body to give the movie the boost it needs. Rated R. Grade: C-
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“9”
DVD, Blu-ray: Since “9” is based on Shane Acker’s Academy Award-nominated, 11-minute short, which you can watch on YouTube by searching for “9 short film,” everything about the trailer for the full-length version of “9” spoke to something fresh and exciting, only broadened. For those who have seen the short, the questions were obvious. What would the additional 70 minutes offer? How would Acker and writer Pamela Pettler improve upon a story whose strength is in how much it holds back? The fact that Tim Burton was attached to the movie as one of its producers was another cause of interest. Since all of these questions generated a sense of excitement, it’s disappointing to report that the movie — while terrific to look at and rousing in parts — is not the movie it could have been. There is plenty to admire here, most of it visual, all of it of the postapocalyptic variety. Massive landscapes are created with impressive detail, as are nine doll-like creatures infused with the soul of their creator and who must make their way through a ruined world determined to undo them. As the advertising slogan notes: “In the final days of humanity, a scientist gave his nine creations the spark of life. It’s up to them to protect the future.” Against what? In this case, an evil onslaught of machines that turned against the world, destroyed it, and that are designed to capture and suck the souls from the nine little ones in question. Before 9 (voice of Elija Wood) joins the eight others (voiced by Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, Crispin Glover, John C. Reilly and others), the M.O. was to hide. But 9 is feistier than that, and his charge to the group is to stand up to the machines, fight back and fight hard. Battles ensue, all so impressively mounted that the movie’s potential for mining emotional heft is diminished in the face of them. That’s the real problem with “9.” While the action doesn’t stop, your heart isn’t beating at a breakneck pace because of it. We never really come to know these oddities. They were gifted with a “spark of life” from a human, but they themselves are not human. So what are we to make of them? If humanity as we know it no longer exists, how will they protect the future and for whom? Themselves? It’s not enough. Rated PG-13. Grade: C+
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“Paranormal Activity”
DVD, Blu-ray: Regardless of its rock-bottom budget, this successful film proves that when it comes to a horror movie, often the less you see, the more intense the story. The movie features three main characters, only two of whom we see. They are Micah (Micah Sloat) and his girlfriend, Katie (Katie Featherston), who live in San Diego with an unseen roommate who isn’t exactly paying his share of the rent. As the movie opens, we’re on the cusp of Micah and Katie’s nightmare. Micah has purchased a high-definition video camera designed to capture paranormal activity taking place in their house. Through this camera we receive our first-person view of what’s unfolding in the movie. Micah is a realist, but not so unbelieving about the things going bump in the middle of the night in their house that he’s going to ignore them. As for Katie, she hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with Micah. Ever since her house burned down when she was a child, she has been visited by a ghost whose interest in her now is increasing to the point of madness. What kind of havoc this creature wreaks we’ll let the movie answer, but when Micah and Katie go to bed at night, with the camera humming from a corner of their bedroom, you never know what it’s going to capture. And, my, does it ever capture. Throughout the movie, there’s a lot to admire — how spare it is, how its undercurrent of horror gradually reveals itself to us and then consumes us, its genuine jolts of terror, and particularly the acting, which is trickier than some might expect. What we’re viewing is supposed to be a homemade video, and so to pull that off, the actors had to come off as real people aware of the camera in most scenes, annoyed by it in others, and absolutely unaware of it when shocked out of the moment by the presence of the other-worldly. Since so much of the dialogue was ad-libbed, the difficulty level of carrying the movie forward was even more of a challenge. And all challenges were met. Rated R. Grade: B+
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“Rounders”
Blu-ray: Almost everything that’s wrong with John Dahl’s 1998 film, “Rounders,” can be attributed to Matt Damon’s face. The film’s success hinges on whether audiences will believe Damon in the role of Mike McDermott, a high-stakes poker player who risks losing his girlfriend, his college career and, at one point, his own life for the love of gambling. But Damon, as good as he has become in recent movies, is woefully miscast here. The five-card stud performance he should have delivered plays more like Old Maid. His bleached-blond hair, prep-school clothes and adolescent face are too whitewashed to take seriously in the smoky, sleazy, underground arena Dahl creates. This is, after all, a world in which the men look as if they gargle with gasoline, floss with flint, then blow out candles for the sheer hell of it. Making matters worse is the film’s plot, which offers zero tension. Mike, a brilliant poker player-law student who has given up gambling out of respect for his girlfriend, Jo (Gretchen Mol), is pressured back into the game by his friend Worm (Edward Norton). Worm has just been released from prison and needs $25,000 fast in order to pay off a debt owed to the Russian mob. Will Mike help out? Of course. Does he lose his girlfriend as a result? Naturally. Does the film build to a big poker match that pits Mike against the head of the Russian mob? What do you think? As thin as “Rounders” is in plot, it’s thinner still in its relationships among the characters. In order for audiences to believe that Mike would risk his life, give up the woman he loves and throw away his college career for a man named Worm, that relationship better be as strong as the gambling that binds them. Too bad it isn’t. Rated R. Grade: D
WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, DVD giveaways and movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.