UK, 2003
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Score: ******

Documentarist Kevin Macdonald makes the best films. His One Day in September, an energetic account of the Black December terrorist attack on Israeli athletics during the 1972 Munich Olympics won the 1999 Oscar for best documentary.  His latest docudrama, appropriately titled Touching the Void, is an equally harrowing tale, this time of two climbers who not only scale the icy unconquered Siula Grande of the Peruvian Andes but return to tell their epic tale. 

Macdonald’s film feels like a documentary as he intersperses interviews with the actual climbers Joe Simpson, Simon Yates and the base camp companion, Richard Hawking with the reenactment of the climb and descent.  Joe and Simon (played now by actors Brendan Mackey and Nicholas Aaron) make it to the summit in two days without much difficulty.  Disaster strikes on the way down with Joe breaking his leg and worse when he is left to perish in a crevasse after Yates is forced to cut the rope (a criminal act in the climbers’ books) joining them.  What happens after, during the next 5 days makes the essence of this compelling film.

The camerawork and special effects are top-notch. The snowstorms, icy blizzards, white-outs, avalanches and snowy plains are handsomely captured on film by cinematographer Mike Eley.  But besides the nature elements, it is in the elements of the human nature (character, friendship, trust and endeavor) that Macdonald effectively triumphs with.  His coverage of the material is exhaustive from the investigation into the reasons of the climb (a brilliant day out?) to the mechanics of this dangerous sport (the melting of ice to create drinking water, the formation of the hooks on a rope to make an ascent).  At the same time, he leaves the viewer with plenty to think about – the mysteries revealed at the point of death, the psychology of desperation, the odd exhilaration of reaching the peak, et al.  By being nonjudgmental, particularly on Simon cutting the rope, he leaves the two principals as decent human beings the viewer can draw their own conclusions upon.  Yet there is an effective balance between horror (some scenes are too gruesome to look at) and humor (injected at the point when the climbers’ final embrace).

Combining great story-telling techniques, awesome photography, visual effects and a fine story in thriller mode, Macdonald proves that no drama can be as effective as a real life tale of what human endurance and determination are capable of.  One of the pleasures of being a film critic is to be able to influence others to see a film they otherwise would not. Touching the Void deservedly won the 2004 BAFTA (the British Academy Awards) award for Best Film.  This must-see is what a good film is all about – affecting the viewer so that he or she would leave the auditorium a different person or at least one who will now look at life from an entirely new angle.

Review by Gilbert Seah.

USA, 2004
Director: Jeff Schaffer
Cast: Scott Mechlowicz, Michelle Trachtenberg
Score: No stars

High-school grad Scotty Thomas (Scott Mechlowicz) has just been dumped by his cheating girlfriend Fiona (Kristin Kreuk).  To make matters worse, he has just hit the ‘send’ button on his email telling his German computer pen pal not to visit him in Ohio, thinking that this girl (Mieke) is a guy.  When Mieke blocks his further emails, Scotty figures there’s only one solution to find the girl of his dreams – not a road trip this time (Eurotrip is from the same producers as Road Trip and Old School) to recover a mailed video cassette, but a Eurotrip! – which entails traveling across the continent to Berlin with his best friends, Cooper (Jacob Pitts), and twins, Jenny (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Jamie (Travis Wester).  The ensuing frolics, which include an uninvited visit to a private Manchester United club in a London pub, traveling through Italy in a train compartment with a pervert, tasting brownies in Amsterdam and queuing at the Louvre in Paris are less funny and crasser than would be expected, even for a teen movie.  The cameos from Lucy Lawless (Xena) and Vinnie Jones (Lock. Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) do not help much either.

But what is unforgivable is the script’s offensive and tasteless humor - poking fun at the Germans with Mieke’s kid brother doing ‘Adolf Hitler’ antics, having Scotty and Mieke performing intercourse in a confessional booth and Cooper tolling the Vatican Bells to signify the death of the Pope. 
Eurotrip’s filmmakers only serve to enforce the fact why American tourists are so often detested in Europe.

And don’t expect to see any exotic European sights in either. Eurotrip was filmed entirely in Prague.  The Coliseum, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and other recognizable backgrounds were added using CGI to transform Prague into Rome, London, Paris and other cities.  Stay away from this Eurotrip. This film makes Gigli look like a masterpiece.

Review by Gilbert Seah.

Let me say off that bat that I have nothing against Ray Romano. Granted, I’ve never seen his show Everybody Loves Raymond, but he seems like a truly nice, affable fellow. In interviews he seems funny enough, and when he’s hosted SNL, it was always one of the best of the season. So I’m not gonna bust on him for being Ray Romano.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about his first feature film as a lead, Welcome to Mooseport. While I can’t say it’s truly a horrible film, it’s not a very good film either. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it either. It’s just kind of there. I guess the best was to describe it as harmless. It doesn’t hurt anyone, it won’t make a dent. It might do a little business, but you’re not going to be clamoring out the door to get to the theater. I don’t think that anyone here will go see it, and I seriously doubt that any of you will even rent it. Maybe if it’s on cable you’ll watch it, but only halfway. You might be doing bills or reading a magazine at the same time.

Nice-guy Romano is nice-guy Handy, the town nice guy in an annoyingly quirky Northern Exposure –type town where a naked guy runs down the streets every morning and no one notices and all the old ladies are spunky and say things like “Don’t be a ***censored***!” The mayor is a shrill little crack-pot and there is an old man who yells really loud, for comedic effect. Yes, it’s the idyllic little town we all hope to never drive through, let alone live in.  But, Handy does live there, happily owning his own hardware store and dating the town’s bitchy veterinarian, played with mannish gusto by Maura Tierney. This being a TV movie for the big screen, Tierney’s character is obsessed with getting married and is tired of Handy dragging his feet after six years of dating.

All this changes when ex-President of the United States Gene Hackman, (aka “Eagle”, the greatest President since Kennedy, as we are told millions and millions of time throughout the course of the film) decides to move to Mooseport after the end of his term. The nerve-grating city council asks Eagle to run for mayor (because the last mayor died just the week before—how wonderfully convenient!) he accepts, thinking he’ll run unopposed. Uh-oh! Seems Handy filed papers to run for mayor earlier that day—add into the mix that the mayor just asked out Handy’s girlfriend on a date (which she accepts), so now it’s a wacky battle to the death.

Except for the fact it’s not wacky. It’s not funny. It’s mildly amusing, at best. It looks and feel like an expensive FOX Family Original Picture, only with a better budget. (And better stars!!! How the Hell did this movie get Oscar-winners Gene Hackman AND Marcia Gay Hardin? Did they need a paycheck? Were they bored? Are the roles drying up? The President’s role should have been played by someone low-rent like James Caan or Robert Loggia. Giving it to Gene Hackman is like making Josh Groban the lead tenor of the Kids of Widney High—it’s just not fair. ) But with a better budget, you’d think that they could of done something to make the story a little above average—but it’s nothing more than a Adam Sandler-vehicle that even Adam Sandler passed on—and you’ve seen the ***censored*** he’s done lately!

The main problem with the story is that I just don’t see why these guys are fighting so hard of Tierney. She’s a mean, abusive, manipulative ***censored*** in this movie. She hits Handy repeatedly (of course, played for laughs) and is so bitter and mean that any attraction I used to feel towards her (circa News Radio) is dead.

The main cast, as I said is above average with one notable exception: how can anyone hire that Beast of the Apocalypse, the horridly grotesque shrew that is Christine Baranski? Normally, I try not to judge a female’s appearance in my reviews, but Jesus she makes me want to stab my eyes out with a rusty shovel. And she is not only horrifying to look at (listen to—man, is she shrill!), she has no comedic talent and anytime she’s on screen (as the Pres’s ex-wife) the film becomes soooooo tedious that I almost got up to leave. Her mere existence proves that there is no such thing as God—after all, if there was a God, how could he create something like this?

Christ, I beg of you to answer this.

So overall, don’t worry about Welcome to Mooseport. It’s not going to hurt you if you see it, but it’s not going to help you either. If you must see it, just wait for cable or better yet, when it premieres on CBS six months from now.

Now if only that fat guy from King of Queens would make a movie… well, one can wish.

Review by Louis Fowler.

If you saw National Lampoon’s European Vacation but found it too mature and sophisticated, Eurotrip is for you. Not only is it from the producers of Road Trip, its plot seems like a discarded draft of Road Trip.

After being dumped by his girlfriend on the day of his high school graduation, Scotty (affable newcomer Scott Mechlowicz) receives an e-mail from his German e-mail pal, who suggests some face-to-face consolation. Wrongly believing Mieke to be a guy, a drunken Scotty tells his online friend to “fuc off,” only to learn the next morning that Mieke is, in fact, a hot blonde girl with whom
he has so much in common, they’re made for each other. However, his hasty reply results in Mieke (Euro pop star Jessica Boehrs) blocking his e-mails, so he spontaneously decides to forego a summer internship to hightail it to Berlin to explain himself. (Which is all fine and good, but couldn’t he just have e-mailed her from a friend’s account?)

Accompanying Scotty is the requisite annoying-and-horny best pal, and they meet up with their twin friends who are vacationing in Paris (one of whom is Buffy’s Michelle Trachtenberg, all grown up and sporting major cleavage). And because no Hollywood teen trip movie is complete without crazy shenanigans and hee-larious misunderstandings, they also encounter enraged soccer hooligans, a robot mime, a creepy Italian guy (SNL’s Fred Armisen, stealing the show), lots of scraggly naked fat dudes, oft-topless hookers (whose boss is Xena star Lucy Lawless) and, most belabored, the Pope.

Eurotrip aims for crude laughs and earns some in gags involving a cymbal-playing monkey, David Hasselhoff and the aforementioned Armisen. But much of it is just being vulgar or stupid for vulgar and stupid’s sake, as opposed to vulgar and stupid and funny. I guess either you find a near-incestuous encounter between inebriated brother and sister incredibly humorous or you don’t. Ditto a kindergartener who apes noted Jew-killer Hitler or a impoverished girl peeing while standing up on the sidewalk. I’m sure the kids will eat it up.

All in all, I liked (and disliked) it about as much as the similar Road Trip, but the more days that pass, the more infantile I find it. It’s worth noting that minute for minute, Eurotrip contains more gratuitous nudity than any movie of recent memory; the film is bustling with breast-rubbing, barely dressed prostitutes and public sexual encounters … and, unfortunately, dozens of uncircumcised Europenises in full view. Not since The Exorcist has the big screen seen such horrors.

And one burning question remains: How in the hell did they get Matt Damon to appear in this movie?

Review by Rod Lott.

One of the hardest things about being a film critic is not letting a bad day interfere with a film review. I mean, after a friend says he’s going to meet you there and you wait thirty minutes and he never shows, it hurts, but you try to put it behind you and watch the movie. Never mind that I’ve been depressed as all Hell lately and the actual human contact would have been nice, but losers can’t be choosers, and I my friends, am most definitely a loser.

So about 7:30, I trudged inside, trying to find one seat and not look like a pervert or something (c’mon—you know whenever you see a guy by himself at a screening like that that you think he’s some sort of pedophile). I found one towards the front and slumped down in my seat, ready to slash my wrists and slowly die as the blood paints the silver screen crimson, on comes a trailer for the new Will Ferrell movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy — one of the funniest trailers I’ve seen so far this year, and it will probably be one of the (if not, the most) funniest movie of the year.

That put me in better spirits.

Euro-Trip is an amusing, if not formulaic, cookie-cutter teen sex comedy that has more hits than misses, but not more tits than penises. It’s the typical story with many of the stereotypical characters we’ve become accustomed to in recent years: the mild-mannered every-teen whose girlfriend just broke up with him in the most embarrassing manner possible; his horny buddy; their nerdy, over-prepped friend and his tom-boy who’s really a hot girl sister that no one noticed before. After the mild-mannered guy accidentally tells his German e-mail pal to ***censored*** off, it’s a mad-cap dash across Europe to find her and tell her he loves her.

Along the way, they meet soccer hooligans in England, led by the scary Vinnie Jones. Then, after a montage in France (the music they play is Plastic Bertrand—very reminiscent of the same scene in National Lampoon’s European Vacation), the guys visit a male nude beach (where the directors show some guts and show over 100 penises on screen—I haven’t seen that much penis at once in my life, and I once watched a gay gang-bang porn!).

Then it’s off to Amsterdam where the horny buddy goes to a sex-club in Amsterdam and is anally raped (for laughs).  A creepy kid who idolizes Hitler is in the background in Germany and in the funniest part of all their travels, end up in a slum in Slovenia (the dog with the severed hand was priceless), which has to be the most depressing place on Earth. It all ends up in Vatican City, where a predictable set-up for wacky mishaps leads to a predictable set-up for the reconciliation for mild-mannered guy and German girl.

And oh yeah, I forgot—the brother and sister make out in a bar in a scene that is both hot and disturbing.

The main cast is basically a bunch of dumb kids I haven’t seen before, with the exception sister Michelle Tractenberg. If you don’t remember her, she was the little girl from Harriet the Spy. As much as they try to play her off as sexy, it’s pointless because she still has the same body she did in that movie. There are cameos galore, including a pointlessly unfunny one by Matt Damon, while SNLer Fred Armisen provides the most laughs with his face-licking “scuze” Italian. But the funniest one involves sex and an unwitting cameo by David Hasselhoff.

If you liked Road Trip or National Lampoon’s European Vacation but have very low expectations that this film would even come close to those cinematic highs, then you’ll enjoy Euro-Trip immensely. For me, it was a passably enjoyable lark--it has its moments, but in the end, there’s nothing to write home about.

Stay after the credits and watch a disturbing outtake from the Slovenia scene, where a little girl urinates on the street. It shows it.

Review by Louis Fowler.