Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie questionably turns Arthur Conan Doyle's titular sleuth into an action hero in "Sherlock Holmes."

Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) must prevent the recently reincarnated Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) from taking over the world with black magic, or something to that effect. Holmes’s love interest Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) gets tangled up with dubious motives.

Downey Jr.’s performance is strong and humorous, playing Holmes as a detached genius with poor social skills. He has great chemistry with McAdams as well as Law; the two playing Holmes and Watson like a bickering married couple is a pleasure to watch. This makes it unfortunate that Watson’s betrothed is needlessly introduced in this film, driving a wedge between the two heroes. It would have been nice to see more unadulterated antics between the two.

But despite the strong casting, the film suffers under the hand of Ritchie, a director mismatched for the material. He is more concerned with making Holmes a cool action hero than providing real mystery. Ridiculous action set-pieces and bad CGI seriously detract.

Also, an elaborate set up for the inevitable sequel is laid throughout the picture, which actually feels more like a preposterous cop-out than an ingenious story arc. With the last few minutes of the picture are uncomfortably dedicated to setting up Sherlock 2.

Here’s hoping there’s more mystery next time.

- Eschew It - Two Stars

The Fourth Kind

Sorely lacking scares and aliens, “The Fourth Kind,” directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, drops the ball on an interesting premise. The title originates from UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek's classification of close encounters with aliens, in which the fourth kind signifies abduction.

Milla Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychologist researching supposed alien abduction cases in Nome, Alaska. Before the action begins, Jovovich eerily addresses the audience informing them that she is an actor portraying a real person.

After several patients experience identical sleeping problems, Tyler starts video taping their sessions and begins to suspect alien abduction. Tyler uses hypnosis on one patient with disastrous results, and from there she becomes more and more convinced.

Interviews with the “real” Dr. Tyler and sessions with her patients are intercut with dramatized footage of actual events. Therein lies the film’s biggest flaw – it tries so hard to sell itself as being based on “actual case studies” that one becomes even more suspicious of its legitimacy.

Gimmicky split screens simultaneously show sessions with real patients and dramatized patients. The idea that we’re watching real people is preposterously pounded into our heads again and again.

In the meantime, Tyler’s family continues to struggle with the loss of their husband and father. The unsolved murder adds some soapy family drama, with the daughter inexplicably losing her sight and the son blaming Tyler for his father’s death.

To be fair, there is more action in the movie than the trailer implies. A suicide and a possible alien visit add much needed variety to the scenes in Tyler’s office. But most of the scares are supposed to come from patents twitching around while under hypnosis. Yawn.

Recent horror hit “Paranormal Activity” uses the “found footage” concept well because it doesn’t try hard to pass itself off as real. “The Fourth Kind” never lets you forget, explicitly stating that it is “based on actual case studies” in its marketing campaign.

The film provides a couple of scares, but Osunsanmi is not competent enough to really terrify the audience. We never get to see anything which becomes very frustrating. “Paranormal Activity” is scary because it leaves most things to the imagination, but in this film it feels like a big cop out. I’d like to actually see some aliens.

Add to mix some unforgivably bad dialogue, continuity errors, and uneven acting, the scariest thing about “The Fourth Kind” is how bad it is.

- Eschew It - One and a Half Stars

Cold Souls

Plotted like a bad fusion of Charlie Kaufman films, such as “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Cold Souls,” from writer and director Sophie Barthes, does little with its intriguing premise.

Just like in “Malkovich,” actor Paul Giamatti literally plays himself, or at least a caricature of himself. And like in “Sunshine,” Giamatti goes through a high-concept surgery with unexpected side effects. Instead of erasing memories, Giamatti removes his soul.

Giamatti’s role in a production of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya,” is causing him unbearable stress and anxiety. An advertisement in the New Yorker for a high-tech clinic that removes and stores souls sounds like a promising solution.

Apparently, souls are heavy, and having a twisted soul is worse than having no soul at all. At least that’s what Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) tells Giamatti on his first visit. He doesn’t go into more detail, which is one of the film’s problems.

Dialogue barely begins to scratch the surface. Extracting one’s soul hardly seems worth it, especially when the benefits are brushed over. Of course this is a high-concept comedy, but the film makes the idea unnecessarily hard to buy.

Giamatti loses all emotional and physical feeling and realizes he can’t act without a soul. Not wanting his own burdening soul, he fittingly chooses a Russian poet’s soul. His acting performance improves, but he desperately wants his own soul back. He discovers it was stolen by a soul-trafficking mule (Dina Korzun) and must go to Russia to retrieve it.

The film is more interested in its own ideas of soul trafficking and soul remnants left after an extraction than the true nature of the soul. In his first scene, Dr. Flintstein explains that they still don’t understand much about souls, let alone if they are immortal or not – yet souls are inexplicably physical objects. The film opts for the easier road and skimps on the more weighty philosophical and spiritual implications of removing souls.

Giamatti does provide some good laughs, but isn’t even as lovable as his usual sad-sack characters; he doesn’t punch up the endearing neuroses as much as usual. The film shows more restraint than most comedies.

When Giamatti receives the Russian soul, he thankfully doesn’t start speaking with a thick accent, a device that a lesser film would have used. This film is smart in its own right, but it still doesn’t dig deep enough into its story.

Much like Giamatti’s character’s soul, the film itself is quite cold. Director Sophie Barthes shoots the film so the viewer will feel detached, which makes it especially hard to sit through when the pace is so slow.

“Cold Souls” is funny, but could have been funnier. It’s smart, but could have been smarter. For a film about such a heavy topic, “Souls” comes off as a lightweight.

- Eschew It

Inglorious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino reigns himself in after “Grindhouse” and the “Kill Bill” movies to make a more ordered and even more entertaining World War II picture that audaciously rewrites history as it sees fit.

Brad Pitt is effective as Lt. Aldo Raine, leader of the Inglorious Basterds, an army outfit whose military connection seems fishy at best. The Jewish troupe is an entity of their own, the best of the best at killing Nazis. Pitt is quite matter-of-fact about each Basterd collecting 100 Nazi scalps.

This is a film lover’s film. From flammable nitrate film to the appearance of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, Tarantino tucks away delightful nuggets of film history for cineastes. A central plot point even revolves around a gorgeous cinema owned by a lovely Jewish girl, Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent).

Tarantino once again divides his film into scene/character-centric chapters, this time in a near linear fashion. For carrying the film’s namesake, the Basterds don’t own the screen time. Chapters also revolve around Shosanna’s struggle with a Nazi courter and the assimilation of her cinema, and the deliciously evil, self-centered Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). The Academy had better take note Waltz’s pompous, highly watchable performance.

Light on action, the film is almost entirely dialog driven. There’s a lot of talking going on. Tarantino has always been good with interesting yet meaningless dialog and he’s gotten a lot better. Not more than half of the film is spoken in English; the German and French exchanges have a flair of exoticism that are perhaps the most intriguing.

The film clocks in at 153 minutes and definitely feels it, though it’s the film’s only major caveat. Tarantino chocked this film full of scenes that crackle with his usual tension and humor, a great story and superb acting. As one of the characters says near the end of the film, Tarantino would be justified in saying “I think this might just be my masterpiece.”

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It Might Get Loud

Jimmy Page. The Edge. Jack White.

Even reading those three names in a row makes me a little giddy. I almost got chills watching these guys play together.

Director Davis Guggenheim rounded up three generations of rock ‘n’ roll gods, guitarists from Led Zeppelin, U2 and The White Stripes in his documentary ode to the electric guitar, “It Might Get Loud.”

The triad met in January 2008 to chat about their six-string obsession but ended up jamming more than jabbering. Circular dolly shots take in the legends playing together. It’s exhilarating.

But the bulk of the film’s running time consists of fascinating individual artist portraits where the boys visit old stomping grounds, gush about musical inspiration and reveal techniques.

The Edge’s deconstruction of U2’s “Elevation,” with its embarrassingly simple two-chord pattern, is a testament to his mastery of pedals and effects. White’s raw, gritty blues flavored rock and anti-technology sentiment make for an interesting comparison.

The White Stripes frontman makes the most interesting subject, in part because his persona is the hardest to pin down. He wanders around conversing with a nine-year-old version of himself, lives in a rickety barn that looks like it’s about to collapse, and dispels “ease of use” – plus he makes an interesting opening hook for the movie, creating a makeshift guitar out of wire, nails and an empty Coke bottle.

Page’s screen time seems a little slighted, but he is also the most reserved of the three, making his segments less interesting.

Besides the one-on-ones with the artists, there is archival footage of a neon-clad, new wave playing U2, earnest-faced Jimmy Page in a British skiffle band and a Stripes concert where White still refers to Meg as his sister.

It’s a bit demystifying, though fun, to see where the greats found their own inspiration: Page from rock pioneer Link Wray, The Edge from punk outfits The Jam and The Clash, White from the rockabilly of Flat Duo Jets.

While the film itself is a bit helter-skelter, jumping from topic to topic haphazardly, it’s well-shot with numerous close-ups of guitar playing action, deifying the guitar players.

Differing musical styles aside, each of the men has a common yearning to play honest music. The spirit of rock ‘n’ roll lives on even though it is tragically drowned out on today’s airwaves.

The music geek’s ultimate documentary, “It Might Get Loud” will give hardcore fans hard-ons. Extensive knowledge of rock history or fingering frets is not even required. “Loud” simply lets three great musicians rock.

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