Going in Style

Review by George M. Thomas

Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Alan Arkin in GOING IN

STYLE.

Another week, another remake?

That summarized the initial thought about GOING IN STYLE.  There aren’t many modern film fans who’ll recognize that the film is a remake of a George Burns (who?) comedy.

The remake shares plenty of cinematic DNA with its predecessor, but has a more daunting challenge.  Burns and co-stars Art Carney and Lee Strasburg were veterans and legends by that time.

Who could director Zach Braff get to match that pedigree?  He pulls it off by giving us three Oscar winners in Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin.

Million Dollar Arm

Review by Pete Roche

My 9-year old son is no stranger to my movie-going ways.  He’s tagged along on several cinema outings over the last couple years.  But he couldn’t join me last Monday.  Not on a school night.

“What are you seeing?” he queried last Monday.

“It’s called MILLIION DOLLAR ARM,” I say.

“Oh, wow!  Is it about a guy with a bionic arm?”

If only.

Grudge Match

Review by Joseph Anthony

Once in a while a movie comes along that makes you ask how, why, and who. As in, how did this get made? Why did the people in this movie agree to make it?  Who was the intended audience? GRUDGE MATCH is one such movie, unfortunately.

If you’ve seen the trailers, you get it. And sadly you’ve seen most of the good jokes too. Stallone vs. DeNiro. ROCKY vs. RAGING BULL. GRUDGE MATCH presents two great fighters past their prime. One, Kid (DeNiro), longing for the spotlight and hoping to take on his long time rival. The other, Razor (Stallone), happily walked away from it all but finds himself in need of a payday.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Review by Pete Roche

Funnyman Steve Carell plays a down-on-his-luck magician vying for a second chance on the Las Vegas strip in THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE.  Directed by sitcom svengali Don Scardino (30 Rock, Ed, George Lopez), the rags-to-riches farce does for professional magic what SEMI-PRO and BLADES OF GLORY did for basketball and figure skating. 

An opening flashback shows young Burt as a 1982 latchkey kid who must bake his own birthday cake because his busy mother works two jobs.  He’s got zero self-esteem and is force-fed tree bark by a neighborhood bully (played by DIARY OF A WIMPY KID’s Zachary Gordon, oddly enough)—but Burt’s outlook improves when he receives a magic kit whose clunky instructional VHS videotape promises to make him the center of attention.  He’s enthralled by the art of illusion and can barely wait to demonstrate his skills for sickly school chum Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi).  The two oddballs form an alliance that transforms them into sleight-of-hand superstars, a la Siegfried & Roy.

Argo

Review by Bob Ignizio

52 United States citizens were taken hostage by Iranian revolutionaries on November 4th, 1979; their ordeal would last 444 days. Only six employees from the U.S. Embassy managed to escape being taken, eventually finding sanctuary in the Canadian embassy. Unfortunately, they still couldn't leave their safehouse, so while their conditions were certainly better than those of their fellows, they were effectively still prisoners. But thanks to the power of science fiction, comic book art, and the movies (plus a little bit of help from the CIA), the Americans were smuggled out of Iran and back home after 79 days. ARGO, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, is the more or less true story of how that happened.

Thin Ice (Opens in Cleveland March 23rd at the Cedar Lee and Capitol Theatres)

[THIN ICE opens in Cleveland on Friday March 23rd exclusively at the Cedar Lee and Capitol Theatres.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Ethically challenged insurance salesman Mickey Prohaska (Greg Kinnear) is looking for that one easy score that will enable him to put his shambles of a life back together in THIN ICE, the new quirky crime film/light comedy directed by Jill Sprechler and co-written with her sister Karen. When Mickey hires a new salesman, the optimistic to the point of naivete Bob Egan (David Harbour), to bring in new business, it looks like just such a score has been dropped in his lap in the form of the senile Gorvy Hauer (Alan Arkin). Gorvy is a nightmare of a customer, but he also happens to possess an extremely valuable violin which he thinks is junk. It seems a simple matter for Mickey to get the old man to part with the instrument, but it turns out to be anything but.

Wait Until Dark (February 26 at 5:15 p.m. and February 27 at 1 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[WAIT UNTIL DARK screens Saturday February 26th at 5:15 p.m. and Sunday February 27th at 1 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Wow, watching 1967's high-profile suspense thriller WAIT UNTIL DARK today ought to make our 21st-century jazz musicians, models, actors and artists appreciate just how tough and complicated it was for their predecessors of an earlier generation to obtain heroin. Maybe they'll stop being all snooty and looking down on rural folk or Cleveland west-siders for turning to easily available methamphetamine instead. 

The premise of WAIT UNTIL DARK is that a fortune in smack has been sewn into a rag doll in Canada to get it past customs and into NYC. For reasons I still can't really understand, the doll is passed on to an unwitting (?) accomplice who leaves it in a supposed safe place; the walk-down apartment-darkroom shared by a commercial photographer and his pretty wife Susan (Audrey Hepburn), who was blinded in an accident and is still learing to adapt. Now, all that remains is for the bad guys - a troika, consisting of two longtime scammers (Richard Crenna and Cleveland-born Jack Weston) and a beatnik-punk interloper Stanley Roat (Alan Arkin) - to infiltrate the place and locate the elusive doll.