Final Destination
Crash
The Pink Panther
Final Destination
The imaginative deaths made the first "Final Destination" installment powerful. The sequel offered more of the same. And the third time around, the deaths are still worth a look 's and a laugh. This movie is completely unserious. However, even if neither the acting nor the story are anything special, the movie touches some basic human fear of dying a sudden, violent and painful death, and, believe it or not, that is entertaining. Still, the movie could have been better. The teenagers targeted by Death have ways of predicting how they die, which removes some of the suspense and shock. But all in all, "Final Destination 3" is a nice watch'sand'sforget-it movie, offering some blood-spattered kitsch.
( Julie Vinten )
A group of teenagers escape a horrible death on a rollercoaster thanks to an amazingly filmic premonition of it happening by a girl with a special gift for that sort of thing. Death then has to kill them all off one by one in order to maintain its original plans. If you saw the first two "Final Destination" movies then you have as good as seen this one too. It's enjoyable in its unabashed stupidity and there are even a couple of nice comic moments. The elaborate death of two girls in a tanning salon has to be the best yet in the series for innovation. But I almost felt guilty enjoying this nonsense. Dying is simply too serious to be treated so glibly. It's far more horrifying to see death's human face.
( Tim Ochser )
Crash
It was quite a surprise to hear Jack Nicholson utter the words "and the Oscar goes to (pause) 'Crash'!" when the words that should have come out of his mouth, the words everyone was expecting to hear, were "Brokeback Mountain." Surprising yes, and then again, perhaps not. The Academy's collective guilty conscience about racism 's one they may not have about homophobia 's granted "Crash" the best picture Oscar, thereby stating that they had all now dealt with racism and thereby forever banished it from the face of the earth. "Crash" is a devious "Magnolia" rip-off and a mediocre picture at very best, but mainly, it's manipulative in the most unscrupulous manner. Technically, the movie is sufficient, but the narrative is anything but imaginative. Even though the emotions run high in this feature, they don't run deep 's it boils down to something very empty.
1/2 ( Julie Vinten )
"Crash" weaves together several interrelated stories in a racially divided LA with all the subtlety of a mass pile up at high speed. A racist cop has to rescue a black woman he molested the night before from a burning car. Wham! An Iranian man goes to kill a Hispanic man after wrongly blaming him for his store being robbed. Bang! A good white cop kills a good black kid in a terrible misunderstanding. Kerboom! "Crash" means well but unfortunately that doesn't mean much in itself. It seethes with moral indignation and tragedy while hardly touching on the real causes behind all this human wreckage. There are some good moments here and there but ultimately the film is a melting plot of naivety, caricature and bombast.
( Tim Ochser )
The Pink Panther
"The Pink Panther" of 2006 shares extraordinarily few similarities to the original Pink Panther-movies with Peter Sellers from the 60's and 70's. The title might be the same, but this movie is so boring and so entirely forgettable, you almost forget that you are watching it while actually watching it, and your mind starts drifting to more interesting, and hopefully, funnier matters. The filmmakers don't seem to understand that it's a pure waste of time spending a whole scene on Steve Martin pronouncing hamburger "amburger" over and over again. The days when Martin could make us laugh with just the smallest, unforced detail, like a simple raise of the eyebrow, are (unfortunately) in the past. And poor Jean Reno. That wonderful and cool actor is reduced to Steve Martin's sidekick. I repeat: Steve Martin's sidekick! There is simply no situation where that can work. It is such an unbelievably crazy idea, it's almost funny.
1/2 ( Julie Vinten )
As a kid I loved the Pink Panther films. This remake is in the slapstick spirit of the original but Steve Martin doesn't come close to Peter Sellers as the extraordinarily hapless Inspector Clouseau. He mostly just purses his lips in a look of absurdly affected arrogance. Sellers made Clouseau tragic-comic, while Martin's detective is just plain silly. The story as a whole is vaguely amusing but most of the jokes fall well short of their target. Beyonce Knowles is especially irritating in her supporting role as Xania. The singer has an ingratiating love-me-and-buy-my-records look seemingly grafted onto her face. All in all, "The Pink Panther" is just another pointless remake in the recent epidemic of pointless remakes. It will make a tidy profit and disappear from cinemas a few weeks later. That's movie magic.
( Tim Ochser )
