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The Debt -vs- Munich

The Debt (2011) -vs- Munich (2005)

August 29, 2011 Eric Volkman 0

Israel’s Mossad is one of the world’s most effective secret intelligence services. Its agents prowl the globe tracking any potential threat to their country, and keep their hands firmly on their triggers should it become necessary to kill in the name of national security. It’s an organization composed of smart and deadly secret operatives ready to give their lives to protect their nation. At least that’s what Mossad would have us believe.

Hollywood takes a more skeptical view. Are Israeli agents really so bloodless, calculating and effective? Possibly not. In both The Debt and Steven Spielberg’s expensive 2005 drama Munich, a Mossad team struggles with the practical and moral aspects of avenging an injustice done to their country and its people. Blood is spilled and punishments are delivered, but ugly complications ensue. […]

Colombiana -vs- Taken

Colombiana (2011) -vs- Taken (2009)

August 26, 2011 Mark Sanchez 9

“You done me wrong – and you’re going to pay!”

How many times have we witnessed the impulse for revenge? In the movies, just consider Michael Corleone, Kill Bill 1 & 2, and fully half of Clint Eastwood’s impressive oeuvre.

Colombiana just opened with a stylish, bloody bang from writer-producer Luc Besson. He mines familiar territory with a female protagonist holding her own against long odds (Le Femme Nikita, Leon the Professional, The Fifth Element). This time the heroine is Zoe Saldana, whose character, Cataleya, offers an astonishing response to a traumatic childhood.

Besson has his bets covered in this Smackdown! Having co-written and produced the very popular revenge-fest Taken, from 2008, he can’t lose either way. This Defending Champion features some of the worst characters ever deserving the fate awaiting them. Liam Neeson is the protagonist with a lethal grievance. Grab your flak jacket, put away the moral compass and be glad somebody else will be cleaning the carpets. […]

The Help -vs- Driving Miss Daisy

The Help (2011) -vs- Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

August 21, 2011 Rebecca Coffindaffer 4

Social upheaval. Economic strife. A wildly unpopular war. And racial bigotry that will forever tarnish a great country’s history. If it all sounds familiar, it’s because the problems of the 1960s are still pretty much with us… which is why movies about that era will probably always be popular. It’s so nice to look back in time at the battles for social justice that we’ve fought and won. It helps us forget for a few hours how much work is still left to do.

One of Hollywood’s favorite ways of remembering this period is through the partnerships and friendships that formed between ordinary blacks and whites and the ways they sometimes worked together to make things better for all of us. Civil rights stories have been prominent in cinema since D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance in 1916, but in 1989, Driving Miss Daisy pretty much set the template for telling a certain kind of ‘60s story, winning four Academy Awards in the process.

Now we have another soft-focus take on the era with The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett’s novel, which was as much of a phenomenon as Alfred Uhry’s 1987 play, Driving Miss Daisy, was a game-changer off- and later on Broadway.
[…]

30 Minutes or Less -vs- Nick of Time

30 Minutes or Less (2011) -vs- Nick of Time (1995)

August 13, 2011 Ben Silverio 0

Everyone knows, when you want something done right, you hire some unsuspecting schmuck to do it for you. Wait, that’s not how it goes. The bad guys in these two films are doing it all wrong, which is why this Smackdown includes, among other things, a competition for the title of undisputed laziest criminal in movie history. In one corner we have Dwayne, played by Danny McBride in the new comedy 30 Minutes or Less. In the other corner, Mr. Smith — no not that Mr. Smith; the one played by Christopher Walken in the 1995 thriller Nick of Time. These villains don’t want to get their hands dirty, so each one scopes out his surroundings and picks out someone randomly to act on his behalf. […]

Another Earth (2011) -vs- Sliding Doors (1998)

July 23, 2011 Eric Volkman 1

You’re not actually reading this. In fact, you’re living in an alternate world, where all your dreams have come true; you’re together with the love of your life; and you’re incurably rich. No, wait… nirvana is not all it’s cracked up to be. Get back here and finish this Smackdown. We have a winner to determine.

Alternate worlds and parallel lives are the themes here, with moody, sci-fi indie Another Earth is pitted against the 1998 “what if” romantic dramedy, Sliding Doors. Both concern heroines who have the chance to experience a better life. In the case of our just-released challenger, troubled protagonist Rhoda (Brit Marling, who also co-produced and co-wrote the film with writer-director Mike Cahill) gets a one-in-a-million shot at visiting a newly discovered planet. This world looks very Earth-like and seems to be inhabited by people who are… well, doubles of ourselves. As for Sliding Doors, our girl Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow, in an early starring role) is a bright young professional freshly fired from her job. As if that weren’t painful enough, she’s got a shiftless, philandering boyfriend, Gerry (John Lynch) to come home to. If anyone’s in need of a different life on a more accommodating plane of existence, it’s she.

Two Helens, two Rhodas, two Earths, two fates. This is almost turning into a tag-team match. But at the end of the day, it can only be one on one. Alternates, go to your corners; the Smackdown begins! […]

The Chameleon -vs- Changeling

The Chameleon (2011) -vs- Changeling (2008)

July 9, 2011 Ben Silverio 3

“Based on a true story” is where the real world and the cinematic world collide. Whether it be a romantic comedy, a micro-budget horror movie, or a courtroom drama, a film with that label carries weight vicariously, intriguing viewers with the promise that the story, or something like it, actually occurred and in fact could have happened to them.

Both The Chameleon and Changeling explore cases of unexpected reappearances of missing children and the dark secrets surrounding their returns. However, the two films take different approaches in point of view. In The Chameleon, the story is about a professional liar assuming a missing teenage boy’s identity, while Changeling focuses on a mother who, after her nine-year-old son is kidnapped, must deal with the trauma when police return the wrong child and insist he’s her son.

These stories involve what Hollywood sometimes calls “difficult subject matter,” which may be why Changeling, despite an A-List pedigree and considerable critical success, performed only modestly at the box office. The fact that it was based on a true story may have helped in some ways and hurt in others. Now viewers have the chance to experience two nightmarish family dramas, their attention heightened by the knowledge that both films hew more or less closely to true events. For those who can only take so much family angst, clearly a Smackdown is in order. Accept no substitutes. […]

The Tree of Life (2011) -vs- The Fountain (2006)

July 6, 2011 Mark Sanchez 9

The universe is full of mystery: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? If God exists, why does He allow evil? And perhaps most perplexing of all, how did not one, but two Hollywood productions in the last five years attract major financing for projects tackling those kinds of questions without linear stories that film critics, not to mention common moviegoers, could understand?

Well, the good Lord works in mysterious ways, and in the case of writer-director Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (now in theaters) and The Fountain (2006), written and directed by Darren Aronofsky with help on the story from Ari Handel, we are arguably better off for it.

Reactions are all over the lot on Malick’s latest opus, and so is the film, which examines a Texas family’s extended life and reaches for an emotional link connecting it to all of creation. Aronofsky’s metaphysical missile, on the other hand, describes a parabola between life and death, attempting to shed light on life’s essence through a sort of tag-team narrative, part of which deals with a literal search for — wait for it — the tree of life. […]

Larry Crowne -vs- The Company Men

Larry Crowne (2011) -vs- The Company Men (2010)

July 2, 2011 Mark Sanchez 4

With unemployment staring down more than 14 million Americans, it’s natural to want to address the issue on screen. Hollywood has helped define hard times before, through a range of classic films from The Grapes of Wrath to It’s a Wonderful Life. But making an uplifting film about surviving the loss of a job is tough. The best movies — like the best people — transform that disappointment into something different, and that’s the challenge our two competitors each tackle in their own way.

Tom Hanks mines the vein with a lighter touch in Larry Crowne, which he directed, starred in and co-wrote with Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding). Despite the uncomfortable subject matter, his Academy Awards, box office history and talent made this an easy project to green light. With Julia Roberts on board, the studio is clearly hoping this comedy about being on the wrong side of downsizing will be too big to fail.

The Company Men, released at Christmastime for Oscar consideration and expanded wide last January, shows us more realistically what it’s like to be squeezed out of the office: Longtime friends carry out their boxes of possessions and, like a re-enactment of Dead Man Walking in the workplace, those left behind wonder who’s next. We learn both who’s next and what they must endure in this film by writer and first-time movie director John Wells, featuring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner looking for traction and self-respect in a bad economy. […]

Brokedown Palace (1999) -vs- Return to Paradise (1998)

June 29, 2011 Mark Sanchez 1

Oh, to be young, independent, sexy… and rotting in some hellhole of a foreign prison.

Young Americans take a lot of things for granted. The right to party, to be spontaneous, to make quick friends, to stiff a rental service or skate on some free drinks, that kind of thing. Mostly they get away with it, and when things go bad, they can usually talk their way out of the consequences or get a lawyer to talk for them.

Around the time Bill Clinton was getting impeached for breaking the rules himself, Hollywood got in a game of chicken on two films about young American travelers who make some mistakes in judgment, run afoul of very strict drug laws and end up in nightmares they can’t wake up from. […]

Incendies -vs- The Year of Living Dangerously

Incendies (2011) -vs- The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

June 1, 2011 Mark Sanchez 0

Years ago, I reported and field-produced stories during a month-long trip into Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt. Well-armed authority ruled each country; I met guards with machine guns as I stepped from the plane in Riyadh, and private armies patrolled Damascus and other parts of Syria. Egypt was an active military state. This uniformed muscle enforced the appearance of order at the cost of personal freedom. This is the atmospheric real estate where the essential drama of Incendies plays out.

It now steps into the ring against a proven winner, The Year of Living Dangerously from 1982. This film combines a love story with armed revolution in Indonesia. It pushed Mel Gibson’s star even higher, and won Linda Hunt a well-deserved Oscar. Peter Weir directed and shares screenwriting credits with David Williamson and Christopher Koch in adapting Koch’s novel.

Here’s a Smackdown where lives collide with life-threatening situations. Which film survives the firepower to deliver the stronger human story? Duck and cover! […]

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