DVD Review: Donkey Punch (2009)

Donkey Punch ***
Directed By: Olly Blackburn.
Written By: Olly Blackburn & David Bloom.
Starring: Robert Boulter (Sean), Sian Breckin (Lisa), Tom Burke (Bluey), Nichola Burley (Tammi), Julian Morris (Josh), Jay Taylor (Marcus), Jaime Winstone (Kim).

For such an extreme horror film, Donkey Punch is surprisingly plausible. Each step in the movie escalates the action just enough to keep it all in the realm of possibility. By the time we have gotten to the gruesome finale, you feel like you may have actually seen something that could have happened. None of the characters are really all that “good”, but none of them are really all that “evil”. They make, what at the time, seems to be the most logical decisions.

The basic story is this: three British girls on vacation meet up with four British guys on vacation. They laugh, and flirt and drink, and then the guys suggest taking the party to the yacht where they are staying. The girls agree. More laughing, drinking and flirting take place, followed by some experimental drug use. The guys, trying to impress the girls, start telling sex stories, including some rather graphic, and kinky things, none more so then the “donkey punch”, which is essentially when taking a girl from behind, right before the guy cums, he punches the girl in the back the neck, causing her an involuntary muscle spasm, and increasing the man’s pleasure. Everyone just laughs the story off.

That is until three of the guys, and two of the girls go downstairs to the master bedroom. What follows is a rather convincing orgy scene that ends when the least experienced guy, egged on by his friend who is of course videotaping the whole thing, gives one of the girls the dreaded donkey punch. Instead of having a muscle spasm and increasing the pleasure, she simply falls dead on the bed. What to do next, divides the remaining people into two sides – one who want to report it immediately, and ones that want to dispose of the body over the side, and say it was all a drunken accident. The conflict leads to more fights, and more deaths. By the end of the film, we’ll have seen people shot, stabbed, set on fire, gore with an outboard motor, jump to their death and strangled with a rope. Yet, somehow, the movie remains plausible throughout.

I realize I haven’t really mentioned the characters to this point, and they reason being is because they are in many ways mere caricatures, and not real people. For the guys, we have the take charge captain, the sweet guy trying to keep the peace, the seemingly shy guy who is more cold blooded than the rest, and the braggart who is really a coward. For the girls, we have the innocent, who is just trying to get over a breakup, the party girl who is willing to do anything, and a character who falls somewhere in between. The movie really isn’t interested in who each of them are as people – there isn’t really time for that. Once the crisis takes over, there’s too much to do.

Donkey Punch works because it feels real. What would you do if you were in the same situation as the men? What if you were in the same situation as the women? We definitely see terrible, evil things done during the course of the movie, but in reality there were no good choices to be made. The characters seem to try and choose the lesser evil each time, which inevitably leads to even greater evil. To do the right thing is no longer an option, so they either have to try and soldier on, or give up. It is a fine little movie – one that stays with you long after it’s over.

Movie Review: Hannah Montana: The Movie

Hannah Montana: The Movie **
Directed by: Peter Chelsom.
Written By: Daniel Berendsen based on characters created by Michael Poryes and
Richard Correll & Barry O'Brien.
Starring: Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana / Miley Stewart), Billy Ray Cyrus (Robby Ray Stewart), Emily Osment (Lilly Truscott / Lola Luftnagle), Jason Earles (Jackson Stewart), Mitchel Musso (Oliver Oken / Mike Standley III), Moises Arias (Rico), Lucas Till (Travis Brody), Vanessa Williams (Vita), Margo Martindale (Ruby), Peter Gunn (Oswald Granger), Melora Hardin (Lorelai), Jared Carter (Derrick), Barry Bostwick (Mr. Bradley), Taylor Swift (Herself).

I am not overly embarrassed to admit that occasionally, I will watch an episode of Hannah Montana. It is unpretentious fun, and sometimes when I have nothing better to do, and nothing else is on TV, I can sit back and even kind of enjoy the show. Yes, it’s a silly, rather stupid show, but it serves its purpose. I had been planning on skipping the movie until its arrival on DVD, but my fiancé wanted to go, so off we went to movie. I wish I had waited until video.

That doesn’t mean that the movie was really that bad – it is just about as good as any episode on the TV show has ever been – just that the experience of watching it on the big screen was kind of odd. These are characters that, for me, exist on my small TV, and in their own little world, they work. The big screen is TOO big for these small characters, who have trouble filling it. Had I watched it on DVD, where I could have just pretended it was an extra long episode of the show, I may have even enjoyed it.

The movie follows everyone’s favorite teenager, Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) and her pop superstar alter-ego Hannah Montana over her summer vacation. Miley has grown up a little since she first became a star, and now she’s starting to act like a diva, getting into fights with Tyra Banks over shoes, blowing off her brother Jackson (Jason Earles) and ruining her best friend Lily’s (Emily Osment) sweet sixteen party. This is when her father, Robby Ray (Billy Ray Cyrus) decides to put his foot down, and takes Miley back home to Tennessee for two Hannah free weeks.

You know where this is going. Miley will act like a spoiled brat for a while, but soon the down home country wisdom wins her over, she falls for a cowboy, and is starting to wonder if like as Hannah is really worth everything else she has to go through. There are comic misadventures, as when Hannah is committed to going to a fancy dinner, and Miley is supposed to go on a date with her cowboy, prompting her to run back and forth between venues, which are of course across the street, changing each time.

Taken on its own terms, Hannah Montana: The Movie actually works pretty well. I do not doubt that the tween girls who have made Miley Cyrus a multi-millionaire and cultural icon will love each second of the movie, and beg their suffering parents to watch it again and again. Poor parents. But Cyrus does have a nice screen presence, and has a gift for comic timing. True, she isn’t exactly going to winning an Oscar anytime soon, and whenever she decides to try and break into “real” movie roles, she will undoubtedly struggle for a while, just like Hilary Duff, the “old” Miley Cyrus, is doing right now. But none of that really matters right now. Hannah Montana: The Movie delivers what it sets out to deliver, to the audience that it has targeted. Had I been in that target audience, I would have loved it. But I’m not.

Movie Review: Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious ** ½
Directed by: Justin Lin.
Written By: Chris Morgan based on characters created by Gary Scott Thompson.
Starring: Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto), Paul Walker (Brian O'Conner), Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto), Michelle Rodriguez (Letty), John Ortiz (Campos), Laz Alonso (Fenix Rise), Gal Gadot (Gisele Harabo), Jack Conley (Penning), Shea Whigham (Agent Ben Stasiak), Liza Lapira (Agent Sophie Trinh), Sung Kang (Han Lue).

Fast and Furious is exactly the movie you would expect it to be. It has a bare bones plot, something that seems to be ripped off from an old episode of Miami Vice that is essentially an excuse for the filmmakers to stage one massive car chase after another. The chases are done with skill and speed. Unlike many car chases in the movies, you actually know where the cars are in relation to each other, and the cars feel real. In last year’s Speed Racer, the cars felt so lightweight and false that there was never an impending sense of doom. Not so this time. But shouldn’t a movie be more than just skillful car chases? For me, the answer is yes. But judging on the box office total for this movie, many people seem to disagree with me.

The marketing hook for this movie was that it brought back together the four main actors from the first movie for the first time. After the original, Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez bailed, leaving Paul Walker as the last man standing for the sequel. The third film, didn’t even have him. But for whatever reason – most likely money and the fact that none of their careers seem to have really taken off – all four actors are back this time.

Diesel is a natural at action movies. His hulking body, his deep voice and eyes that seem ready to explode out of his skull in a sudden burst of violence, are tailor made for the genre. It is his bad luck that by the time he became famous, action stars had moved away from He Men like Stallone and Schwarzenegger and into more “realistic” heroes like Matt Damon and Daniel Craig. Oh well. There is still a market for the He Man, and Diesel does it better than just about anyone. His Dominic Toretto is his signature role – a bad guy you cannot help but like. He lives by a code, and if you cross him, you’re dead. Paul Walker has never struck me as much of an actor, more of a pretty boy, but in an undemanding role like this, he does the job just fine. Michelle Rodriguez is still playing “one of the boys”, as she has in every role she’s ever done. She’s all bluster and posturing, but it’s hard to complain too much since that’s all she’s asked to do. Jordana Brewster is very good as the sweet, not so innocent girl next door, baby sister type. John Ortiz makes a convincing, slimy villain as Campos, who hires drivers to smuggle drugs across the border from Mexico. In all, the actors do what is expected of them and nothing else.

That pretty much sums up the movie. While watching it, you are mildly entertaining by all the action flashing by at light speed, and by the few good lines of dialogue that the screenplay offers. We know what the score of the movie is going to be before the characters do – Walker and Diesel will have to team up to bring down Campos, for differing reasons, things will go bad, they’ll go rogue, and nothing will stop them. This has been the plot of countless action movies before, and it always seemed to work before, so why mess with it?

Perhaps I am too hard on the movie. After all, it is hard to argue that it isn’t the exact film that the filmmakers set out to make, and watching it I was never bored. But I also never really got involved in the story – I didn’t care if and when they brought down the bad guy, because from the outset we know that they will. The movie is an enjoyable way to kill a couple of hours, and if that’s all you demand from a movie, then enjoy.

Movie Review: The Haunting in Connecticut

The Haunting in Connecticut **
Directed by: Peter Cornwell
Written By: Adam Simon & Tim Metcalfe.
Starring: Virginia Madsen (Sara Campbell), Kyle Gallner (Matt Campbell), Elias Koteas (Reverend Popescu), Amanda Crew (Wendy), Martin Donovan (Peter Campbell), Sophi Knight (Mary Campbell), Ty Wood (Billy Campbell), Erik J. Berg (Jonah), John Bluethner (Ramsey Aickman), D.W. Brown (Dr. Brooks).

The Haunting in Connecticut is another one of those “ghost” story movies that seem to be popular right now. The film is well acted, and well made, so if this movie is your type of thing, than you will probably enjoy it. For me, the film was simply too clichéd, relied too heavily on “boo” moments and doesn’t really do anything all that scary. It is effective at what it tries to be, but I don’t think the filmmakers really set their sights high enough.

Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner) is a teenage boy dying of cancer. Every week, his mother Sara (Virginia Madsen) has to drive him hours from home to Connecticut where he is a part of a cancer trial that is probably his last hope. The treatment leaves him in pain and nauseous, so even though the family cannot really afford it, they agree to rent a house close to the hospital where they can stay. They only home in their price range that meets their needs, is an old, run down place.

They move in, and almost immediately strange things begin to happen to Matt. He sees a teenage boy in the house, starts to hear strange noises, and overall thinks he’s starting to hallucinate. The treatment could be causing this, but since he risks being thrown out if he reveals them, he keeps it to himself. The only person he confides in is a fellow cancer patient, and former Reverand (Elias Koteas), who offers support and advice.

I don’t need to tell you that it is not the treatment causing Matt to see things. At first, no one but the Reverand seems to believe him that strange things are going on, but soon it becomes fairly undeniable that something is wrong with that house.

The film is effectively, creepily well made by director Peter Cornwell. The house is a dark, mysterious place, full of hidden rooms, dark corners, a creepy attic, and a dumbwaiter that, of course, no one seems to be able to resist exploring. The scares in the movie are most of the “boo” moment variety – those moments where something appears from out of nowhere to shock and scare the audience. This is a cheap kind of thrill, but effective if you don’t have high expectations. The performances – especially by Gallner, Madsen and Koteas – are effective in that they create real characters out of their roles, and not just cookie cutter people meant only to be pawns in the game. I wish they had not felt the need to make the father, Martin Donovan, into a drunk struggling with sobriety, and the two young kids, and the hot cousin, in the film don’t really add anything, except more characters to scare.

The audience I saw the film with, made up of mostly teenage girl, seemed to be fine with the movie. They screamed in all the right places, and generally seemed to enjoy the film. Good for them. For me, the film never really taps into that primal spot needed to make a truly effective horror movie. For me, horror films are most effective when they make me ask myself what I would do in the same situation, and even more effective when I realize that I would probably do the same thing the characters do, even if it ends up being an exercise in futility. Here, the answer seems clear from the outset – move! But the characters take far too long to catch up with me in the film, so for me, they film is merely okay. It’s not boring, but it’s not really scary either. And for a horror film to work, that’s one of the requirements.

Movie Review: Sunshine Cleaning

Sunshine Cleaning ** ½
Directed By: Christine Jeffs.
Written By: Megan Holley.
Starring: Amy Adams (Rose Lorkowski), Emily Blunt (Norah), Alan Arkin (Joe), Jason Spevack (Oscar), Steve Zahn (Mac), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Lynn), Clifton Collins Jr. (Winston).

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are too of my favorite actresses working right now, and they almost save Sunshine Cleaning from itself. At its heart, this is another clichéd indie comedy/drama about a dysfunctional family of eccentrics. Adams and Blunt elevate their characters above where they would otherwise be, but in the end, the movie seems to collapse under its own weight.

Rose (Adams) was once head cheerleader and prom queen, who dated the captain of the football team. Now, ten years later, she is raising her son Oscar (Jason Spevack) on her own, working as a maid, and although she’s still sleeping with the captain of the football team, Mac, who is now a cop (Steve Zahn), now it’s as his mistress. Norah isn’t even that lucky. She’s one of those party girls, getting a little old for it, drifting from one dead end job to another, and still living at home with her eccentric father Joe (Alan Arkin), who fails at one get rich scheme after another.

While at a suicide call, Mac notices that they hire a cleanup crew and pay them a few thousand dollars to clean up all the blood. He tells Rose about this, who decides to start up her own business doing the same thing. She calls on Norah for help. For Rose, this is an opportunity to make something of her life – to have something more. For Norah, it provides a job, but it’s one that comes from painful memories – their mother committed suicide, and Norah doesn’t even remember her.

The movie probably sounds a little more interesting that it actually is. True, the film gets off to a good start, and the film never gets boring – watching Adams and Blunt at the top of their game makes sure of that. But after a while, I got a little tired of all the eccentricity. Arkin is essentially repeating his old, wise cracking grandpa role from Little Miss Sunshine. Spevack is one of those “movie kids” that is a bit too odd to be believable. Throw in Mary Lynn Rajskub as a weird blood drive woman who Norah befriends after a job, and Clifton Collins Jr., as the helpful, one armed man who runs a cleaning supply shop and there are just too many weird subplots and tangents and offshoots that movie tries to cram into its running time. Not only that, but questions and plot points seem to be dropped when they become inconvenient to the overall movie, as it just runs onto something else altogether different.

Sunshine Cleaning is far from a bad movie. It’s just that watching it, you wish that Adams and Blunt had a movie that was up to their level. They make believable, realistic characters out of their roles, and are let down by a movie that puts them through one cliché after another. It’s a fine little film, that is disappointing only because of what it could have, should have, been.

Movie Review: Observe and Report

Observe and Report *** ½
Directed by: Jody Hill.
Written By: Jody Hill.
Starring: Seth Rogen (Ronnie Barnhardt), Ray Liotta (Detective Harrison), Michael Peña (Dennis), Anna Faris (Brandi), Dan Bakkedahl (Mark), Jesse Plemons (Charles), John Yuan (John Yuen), Matt Yuan (Matt Yuen), Celia Weston (Mom), Collette Wolfe (Nell), Randy Gambill (Pervert).

Observe and Report is a comedy about a lonely, delusional man who sees himself as some sort of hero, when in fact he is a sad, pathetic little man. He is a man who has been beaten down constantly by life, but doesn’t really seem to realize it. It is almost painful to watch him live his daily existence, seeing him rejected time and again without ever knowing that everyone sees him as pathetic.

Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen) is bi-polar, taking pills every four to six hours to keep him from getting over hyper. He is the head of security for the local mall, and his team of security guards are loyal to him to the point of hero worship. When a flasher starts stalking around the parking lot, the police are called in, led by Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), but Ronnie doesn’t think that they are doing enough to protect the workers and shoppers at the mall – especially not his beloved Brandi (Anna Faris), who works at the makeup counter. That she thinks Ronnie is pathetic loser is something that is lost on him. The affection shown to him by Nell (Collette Wolf), the new girl in the food court, is equally lost on him. In fact, there is not much that isn’t lost on Ronnie. He thinks of Harrison as his arch nemesis, when in fact Harrison is just annoyed by him. When he applies to the police academy, and goes for his psych exam and tells the woman he sees himself as a hero, and he wants to go out there and shoot some bad guys, he doesn’t understand why he fails the exam. When Harrison calls him in to give him the bad news, and brings his friend into watch, his friend leaves after a little while saying “I thought this would be funny. But really, it’s kind of sad”. I have a feeling that many audience members are going to feel the same way about the movie.

Writer/director Jody Hill walks a fine line in this movie. A little too far on one side, and all he’s doing is making fun and looking down on his characters. A little too far on the other side, and all the humor in the film is lost, and you have a deep, depressing drama. Hill didn’t get the right mix in his last film, The Foot Fist Way, which was overly cruel and nasty, but he strikes just the right tone this time. The film is often very funny, but it’s not the type of humor we expect from a Seth Rogen movie. Rogen plays his role straight in the film – and that makes it all the more funny, and painful, then it would have been otherwise. If he doesn’t take the character seriously, then the film falls apart. But Rogen plays his role brilliantly. He is supported by an excellent cast. Liotta follows Rogen’s lead also plays his role straight – he is worn out cop, just trying to do his job. He doesn’t want to hurt Ronnie, but is put in a situation where he pretty much has to. Michael Pena plays Ronnie’s right hand man, doing some sort of bizarre Luis Guzman impression, that is somehow appropriate. Faris plays her typical bimbo role, but brings a little more depth to it this time – there is a cruelty and malice behind her performance in the film that works.

The film owes an obvious debt to the work of Martin Scorsese – most notably Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. Like the “heroes” in those movies, Ronnie has to endure rejection and humiliation at nearly every step of the movie. Like Bickle in Taxi Driver, it all seems to be leading up to the inevitable outburst of violence that Ronnie seems destined for. But for much of the movie, Ronnie lives more like Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy – living off his delusions of grandeur, almost deliberately misreading the other characters in the movie to feed off his own ego. When he realizes that everyone sees him as a pathetic loser, it is too much for him to bear. By the end of the movie, Ronnie seems to be right back where he started from – a ticking time bomb of rage that can go off at any time.

If I have made this movie sound more like a serious drama than a comedy, that’s because in many ways it is. It’s true that the moving is often hilarious, but it’s hilarious in that way that is almost too painful to watch – we laugh to keep from crying. Underlying all the comedy is a drama about a man simply doesn’t fit in, no matter how hard he tries. This is an impressive achievement.

Weekly Top 10: Actors In Need of a Comeback

A new feature starting this week. Each week, I'll post a top ten list of something movie related. For this debut edition, I chose the top ten actors in need of a comeback. In the past few years, we've seen Robert Downey Jr. and Mickey Rourke rise from the dead, so why not these 10. None are really as far down as they were, but all need some career help. So, without further ado, here's the list.

10. Edward Norton
Perhaps its unfair to put Norton on this list, because in truth, he hasn’t really gone anywhere. He continues to make at least one or two movies a year, often movies that get a wide release (last year for example, he was in The Incredible Hulk and Pride and Glory). But when I think back to the Norton who got Oscar nominated for two of his first five performances between 1996 and 1998, and the Norton of today, there is a difference. After American History X in 1998, I was convinced that Norton would win and Oscar within the next 10 years. Now, 11 years later, he has yet to be nominated again, and in fact hasn’t really come close. True he was good enough in Fight Club (1999) and 25th Hour (2002) to deserve nominations, but they didn’t come. But in the seven years since 25th Hour, what has he really done that is truly special? He has made seven films since then, and he is good or very good in all of them, but only one, his supporting role as the masked King in Kingdom of Heaven was truly great. Part of Norton’s problem is that he has garnered a reputation as difficult, which has kept top notch directors away. Look at who he worked with between 1996 and 2002 – Woody Allen, Milos Forman, John Dahl, David Fincher, Frank Oz, Julie Taymor, Danny DeVito and Spike Lee. And since then? F. Gary Gray, Ridley Scott, David Jacobson, Neil Burger, John Curran, Louis Letterier and Gavin O’Connor. Which list is better? Norton needs to get back on track, because the fact of the matter is, difficult or not, he is more talented than almost any other actor working right now. Perhaps Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, where he plays a dual role, will get him back on track, or perhaps his project after that, Motherless Brooklyn, which is also directing will. I hope so. I miss the Edward Norton who could blow me away with a performance.

9. Juliette Lewis
I know Juliette Lewis is not the popular actress in the world – I personally know of some people who cannot stand the sight of her. But for me, Lewis has always been a strange, one of a kind talent. There is some appealing about her loopy, free spirited style of acting that always drew me in. The hurt look of a lost little girl that she had in some of her best roles. After being nominated for an Oscar for her brilliant turn in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear, she had a decent career going. Strong work in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (1992) Domenic Sena’s Kalifornia (1993), Lasse Hallstrom’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)was followed by a great performance in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994). After that she did some good work in 1995 and 1996, most notably in Kathryn Bigelow’s underrated Strange Days (1995) and in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). Then, she kind of dropped off the map. There have been some good performances since then – in Christopher McQuarrie’s Way of the Gun (2000) and Mira Nair’s Hysterical Blindness, but more often then not, she shows up in small roles in dumb comedies (Old School, Starsky and Hutch, Daltry Calhoun and Catch and Release) or in dumb thrillers (Enough, Cold Creek Manor) or in stuff that ends up going direct to DVD. I know that Lewis works with her rock band, Juliette and the Licks, quite often, but I want to see her back on screen in a role worthy of her strange, one of a kind talent.

8. Michael Keaton
Looking over Keaton’s resume, I was surprised by how few truly great roles there have been in his career. He is an actor I instinctively like every time I see him on screen, and yet there have been precicous few roles that actually allowed him to do great work. Chief among them is of course Beetlejuice (1988), but also Clean and Sober (1988) the two Burton Batman films (1989 & 1992), The Paper (1994), Multipilicity (1996), Jackie Brown (1997) and Live from Baghdad (2002). But that’s about it. In everything else I have seen Keaton in, he has never been less than good, but the movies themselves have often been terrible (his most recent hit, 2005’s White Noise is a prime example). Keaton has been slumming it for far too long now – taking roles in things like Herbie and the upcoming The Post Grad Survival Guide, most as the “dad” character. He needs a great role again. Hopefully someone gives him one.

7. Bridget Fonda
According to the IMDB, Fonda hasn’t acted since 2002. She married Danny Elfman in 2003, and since then, I guess, has had a happy home life. You can’t fault her for that, but damn, do I want to see Bridget Fonda in a movie again. Her two greatest roles, in arguably, came in back to back years in 1997 and 1998. The first was in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, playing the stoned Melanie, who flirts and fucks and generally annoys Robert DeNiro’s Louis, until he shoots her and leaves her for dead in the parking lot. In Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998), she plays the pregnant wife of the main character, who we first suspect is all innocence and sweetness, but is really Lady Macbeth in disguise. Fonda has other great work on her resume – Shag, Scandal, Singles, The Godfather Part III, It Could Happen to You – but these two roles marked her as someone to truly watch for. So, in closing all I have to say is this: Fuck you Danny Elfman, for making Bridget Fonda happy and taking her away from acting. And by the way, all your damn scores sound the same – deal with it.

6. John Goodman
I love John Goodman. As Dan Connor on the sitcom Roseanne, he played just about the perfect TV husband, but also made him a realistic person. That he never won an Emmy for that show, one of the best of the 1990s, is criminal. But his movie work is just as good. His work with the Coen brothers – in Raising Arizona (1987), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The Big Lebowski (1998) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) remains his best work, but there are other films as well. The Big Easy (1987), Sea of Love (1989), Mother Night (1996), The Borrowers (1997), Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and Todd Solondz’s Storytelling (2001) chief among them. He is also one of the most reliable voice actors around, doing his best work in Monsters, Inc. (2001), and whenever he shows up on TV, especially his brief run of The West Wing, he is superb. Goodman is that rare actor who can do over the top comedy, and truly scary down to earth drama with equal measure. I know there are probably few roles for a 300 pound man approaching 60, but Goodman deserves to get some better roles. He has no fewer than 7 in development credits on IMDB, two of them being voice work, but none seem all that great. I hope that a director finds Goodman a role worthy of his talent again soon.

5. Willem Dafoe
The list of Willem Dafoe’s great work is long – To Live and Die in LA (1985), Platoon (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Mississippi Burning (1988), Born on the 4th of July (1989), Wild at Heart (1990), Light Sleeper (1992), Affliction (1997), eXistenZ (1999), The Boondook Saints (1999), Shadow of the Vampire (2000), American Psycho (2000), Animal Factory (2000), Spider-Man (2002), Auto Focus (2002), Finding Nemo (2003), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), The Life Aquatic (2004), The Aviator (2004), Manderlay (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Walker (2007). So why does it seem like Dafoe only ever shows up in unglamourous supporting roles, or in films that no one sees? He is a great actor, capable of being creepier than just about any other actor on the planet, but he can also do spirituality very well. I want to see Dafoe in a role that he truly gets to sink his teeth into. Perhaps this year’s Antichrist, directed by Lars von Trier or Werner Herzog’s My Son My Son What Have You Done will provide that role for him.

4. Winona Ryder
Remember Winona Ryder in the 1980s and early 1990s. She was adorable, and talented in films like Lucas, Beetlejuice, Mermaids, Great Balls of Fire, Edward Scissorhands, Night on Earth and Reality Bites. She received Oscar nominations for The Age of Innocence and Little Women. The later half of the 1990s weren’t as good, but there were some gems – Looking for Richard, The Crucible, Celebrity, Girl Interrupted. But then she was busted for shoplifting, became a punchline, and things fell apart. She has worked consistently since then, but with the exception of her work in Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, most of it has been in subpar films that no one has seen. Perhaps Ryder is already on the comeback trail – she has upcoming roles in The Informers, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Stay Cool and Star Trek. I hope so, because at one point, Ryder was one of my favorite actresses, but that was a long time ago.

3. Ray Liotta
When Ray Liotta gets the right role, he can be among the best actors of his generation. Remember is work in Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), GoodFellas (1990), Copland (1997), The Rat Pack (1998), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), Smokin’ Aces (2006)? All great. But more often then not these days, Liotta shows up in subpar movies that either go straight to DVD, or else require him to do little more than playoff his badguy image (see Wild Hogs, In the Name of the King or Bee Movie, which admittedly he was pretty damn funny in). Perhaps his best work this decade was his Emmy Winning guest role on ER. But, directors are not using him up to his full potential. Most recently, he sleepwalked through an underwritten role in Crossing Over. He has three other films this year – Powder Blue (which I have feeling will go straight to DVD), Observe and Report (which, hopefully, he is great in), and Youth in Revolt (another mean bastard role, but it could be a good one). Hopefully on of these roles get Liotta back to doing the great work he is capable of.

2. Woody Harrelson
Remember Woody Harrelson on Cheers? He was great as the naïve Woody Boyd. But then in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) he gave a truly outstanding performance, and a few years later, got an Oscar nomination for his work in Milos Forman’s The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). He also has done some great work in Kingpin (1996), Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), Wag the Dog (1997), The Thin Red Line (1998), North Country (2005), The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio (2005), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Walker (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), The Grand (2008) and Transsiberian (2008). But for the most part, the great roles this decade have been small roles, in often little seen films. Harrelson hasn’t been given a truly juicy role in years. Part of it is his own fault, since he is eccentric to say the least, but Harrelson is a gifted actor who deserves better. Hopefully Oren Moverman’s award winning The Messenger comes out soon and shows what Harrelson can do. He does a role in the large production of 2012, so that should help raise his profile. It’s too bad that it seems like Oliver Stone’s Pinkville has gotten the axe, because that could have also helped.

1. Val Kilmer
What the hell happened to Val Kilmer? This was once a star who was big enough to be cast as Batman, yet he hasn’t been in a movie released theatrically since 2006’s Déjà vu (and that was a role so small it was practically a cameo). This is an actor who has great performances on his resume in films like Top Gun (1986), The Doors (1991), Thunderheart (1991), True Romance (1993), Tombstone (1993), where he played the best version of Doc Holiday ever and Heat (1995). True after that, he hit a dry spell, putting out crap like The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Saint and At First Sight. But even though those movies, he was at least interesting to watch. He then did some great work in The Salton Sea (2002), Wonderland (2003), Alexander (2004), where he was far and away the best in the film, Spartan (2004) and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005). And yet, in the four years since then, he has starred in 12 films, with only the aforementioned Déjà vu getting any kind of theatrical release. The rest have gone straight to DVD. He has 11 other credits for upcoming movies, but only Streets of Blood with Sharon Stone, Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans look like they may actually hit theaters. Val Kilmer is an actor who I always enjoy watching, as he always seems to be up to something different in each role. I would love to see one of the directors he has worked with before – Oliver Stone, Michael Mann, Tony Scott etc, come up with something great for him. It would be amazing to see him on the big screen again.