Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, in his increasingly angry and fun-to-read Roger Ebert’s Journal has once again hit the nail on the head. His subject? The fact that movie critics everywhere are getting fired and thoughtful reviews are being replaced by celebrity news briefs about Britney’s clubgoing or cute bits about how Suri “won’t wear pants.”

I quote: “The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically.”

I have been thinking about printing some kind of critic’s creed for this site, something that attacks “critics” who spend half of their review summarizing plot and/or making snide remarks about the actors in the film they are reviewing, rather than getting involved on any sort of deeper level with the movie itself. Ebert wrote his own personal Little Rule Book just last month. (Examples: Provide a sense of the experience, Advise the readers well, Keep track of your praise.)

Don’t get me wrong. Celebrity culture has its place. It’s not for me, but I get why it exists. It’s just that when I go see a movie, I like to get lost in it. I don’t want to be thinking about Suri’s dressing habits or Tom jumping on the couch when I watch “Mission: Impossible III.” I want to believe, for two hours, that superspy Ethan Hunt fears for the life of the girl he loves. Or that sexist evangelist Frank Mackie from “Magnolia” has a secret buried in his past that makes him say vile things in public and make a tremendous amount of money from them.

That’s because I love the mystery and magic of filmmaking. That’s why I do this site. I love to see films, write about films, discuss films, and examine how they reflect my life and how they open my eyes to others’ lives. Film is culture, that’s all there is to it. Anyone who doesn’t see that isn’t thinking about what they see.

Ebert mentions several great film critics whose prose is as good as their content. I’m always working on both and I’m never quite content with what I write, but I always strive to get better—more focused, more insightful, honest. There are/were also plenty of of lazy-ass critics out there who love to be the first ones to see and pass judgement on a film and really think nothing of it. I’ve seen plenty. In print and in person. They like nothing better than wielding what little power they have, and think very little about the consequences of words and comments tossed off so nonchalantly.

One reason people are becoming so pissed off at critics is because most of them are so formulaic and boring to read. Reviewing film is not a checklist activity. You don’t go right on down the line and talk about every little technical issue without discussing overall content and culture. The cinematography may be beautiful to look at in “Australia,” but how does that relate to the story? What is the filmmaker telling us? Is it differnet from what he thinks he’s telling us? Are there mixed messages being sent? The neo-realistic puke-cam look of “The Blair Witch Project” advanced that film’s purpose a thousand times better than the big-budget excess of “Australia” becuase the horror movie’s design was absolutely tied into its lack of budget.

If reviewing movies is different, then, from simply commenting on whether the acting was ”astounding” or the set design was “marvelous,” what is it that bugs you about movie reviews? (I’l tell you what bugs me. Quote-whore critics who throw one-word value-judgement adjectives in movie ads.) What would you like to see writers avoid? What are you tired of? Or, what would you like to read more of? Now is your chance to sound off.

I hope you will start thinking soon, because it won’t be long before you will be a scene-stealer. Big changes are on the way here at Scene-Stealers.com, and soon this site will be allow YOU to be the critic. Ever wonder how that line gets drawn in the sand betwen a “credible” critic and everyone else? We are going to kick it right back in the faces of anyone who doesn’t think our opinions about movies matter. We’re the ones they make them for, after all.

Now it’s their turn to listen to us.

Tags: celebrity, critics, cult, ebert, little, movie, news, opinions, quote whores, review, roger, rules, scene-stealers creed, suck, why

Baz Luhrmann is the type of filmmaker who revels in excess. His last picture, the lush and melodramatic “Moulin Rouge!” was a lesson in how to make the old seem new again. He toyed with the formulas of tragic romances, over-the-top musicals, and slapstick comedies, and pillaged the back catalog of rock n’ roll’s greatest hits, placing them in early turn-of-the-20th Century Paris. The result? A risky, dazzling movie steeped in classic Hollywood mythology.

If only he were so daring with the new epic adventure that bears his home country’s name. “Australia” has very little of its predecessor’s irreverence or nose-thumbing spirit, opting instead for a stubborn adherence to the tenets of the budget-busting Hollywood prestige pictures of the 1950s and 1960s. Don’t get me wrong—sweeping countryside shots on the wide-open canvas of Australia are about as beautiful as they come. Why then would Luhrmann support his large-scale cinematic sense with the most silly and derivative of scripts? More importantly—why leave a corny, old-fashioned screenplay corny and old-fashioned? Why was “Australia” virtually un-tweaked by Luhrmann’s ever-so-slightly bent vision?

Count me confused.

From the start, it’s obvious that something is off with the writer/director’s staging. An uptight English woman (Nicole Kidman) is supposed to be met by her husband’s reliable cattle rancher (Hugh Jackman) when she gets off the plane in Darwin, Australia. Instead, she ends up embarrassed and offended when her underwear gets thrown about as the rancher (known only as the Drover) uses her luggage to pummel some men in a barfight. The timing is all wrong. The scene is supposed to be charged with raucous spirit, but is thwarted by the incredible obviousness of it all and the fact that the actors telegraph every move before it happens. That moment played out funnier in my head before it had even ended onscreen.

The movie, set during World War II and featuring the oppressive weight of being a “historical epic,” eventually finds even more unreliable legs, jutting its awkwardly unfunny tone for a staid and boring one. An ode to Australia, Luhrmann tries to fit in as many issues that define the country’s national identity as he can, but each approach is more ponderous than the first.

A mixed-race Aboriginal boy called Nullah (Brandon Walters) narrates the film with a cutesy delivery just one baseball cap shy of Short Round, the plucky Asian stereotype of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Portraying Australia’s forced removal of “the stolen generation” doesn’t have to insult the natives as well (see 2002’s “Rabbit-Proof Fence”), and it probably isn’t what Luhrmann intended. Meanwhile, the mysticism of Nullah’s uncle is represented by the old man standing just outside the periphery of the entire plot, staring ahead like the wise creature he is. The problem? He’s supposed to be the suspect in a murder.

He obviously didn’t do it, because Neil Fletcher did. The usually-reliable David Wenham (Faramir from “the Lord of the Rings” movies) plays the villain as an over-the-top outback version of Snidely Whiplash. He’s as desperate and conniving as the evil Duke (Richard Roxburgh) from “Moulin Rouge!,” but with no sense of humor or wink of mockery. By the time Wenham’s character flowers into the grand baddie of the entire piece, it’s really too bad because he’s not menacing at all and it’s disappointing to know that there is nothing more going on in the script.

An almost-exciting cattle drive and a surprise Japanese bomber attack are high points in a movie that gets so weighed down by its own by its own stuffiness that its lead actors can barely muster enough character to craft a romance. This is the stuff of big theater productions, and Jackman and Kidman never really embody their roles. Instead, they act as if they were projecting to those sitting way up in the balcony. The actors are not helped by dialogue that is so bad that I wonder if it just skipped Luhrmann’s mind that he planned on replacing it at one point.

It’s hard to say at what point “Australia” completely lost me, but since the movie is two and a half hours of earnest emptiness, let’s just say it was a long, cold road to the closing credits.

Tags: Australia, awful, bad, baz, failure, film, hugh, jackman, kidman, luhrmann, movie, nicole, review

A life is a series of moments, lived chronologically one at a time, until death. A person looking from the outside in on someone’s life will have a perspective, but the only person who knows the inner workings of one’s soul is the person who lived the live and whose thoughts are constantly racing through one’s head.

Writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s remarkable new movie “Synecdoche, New York” wraps itself so completely around the head of its central character that any kind of shared reality becomes completely unreliable. The film is not about how other people see depressed Schenectady, N.Y-based theater director Caden Cotard (a brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman), but rather it presents the perspective of the man himself—a vision warped by his own neuroses and his natural tendency to view everything as a play.

Or does it? How would Caden know what went on between one of his female obsessions, Hazel (Samantha Morton), and her real estate agent if he wasn’t actually there? And why do the two of them discuss the danger of smoke inhalation so casually as small fires continue to burn in the corners of every room of the house?

There is no real way to give a straightforward plot summary of “Synecdoche,” so I won’t try. (But here’s a clue: The word “synecdoche” is a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part.) I can tell you this much—and this is my perspective: Some time around the moment that his unfulfilled wife (an artist played by Catherine Keener) leaves him, his point of view becomes one huge jumble. Rather than staging the moments of Caden’s life in any kind of chronological or even remotely representational manner, “Synecdoche” becomes a self-obsessed miasma where the players in his life story become involved in staging a bigger-than-life-sized play of Caden’s life that is constantly changing and never finished.

When a lanky, balding man named Sammy (Tom Noonan) offers himself up as the perfect actor to play Caden in his masterpiece-in-progress, he says he is right for the role because he has been watching Caden his entire life. Looking back on some of the earlier scenes in the film—sure enough—there he is, lurking silently in the background. Is this possible?

Probably not. Everything in “Synecdoche,” including Caden’s last name (Cotard’s syndrome sufferers believe that they do not exist), is a symbol. I can tell you right now that this movie is not for everybody. But what it lacks in a cohesive logical storyline, it more than makes up for in its broad-spectrum mentality and the sheer power of its emotion.

Before the story goes too far off the rails, something Caden’s wife says about his latest theater production—“Death of a Salesman” cast with younger actors ( A symbol? You bet.)—sticks with him and haunts him for the rest of his life. She says that she believes he has a more important story to tell; that there is a lot more in him. It gives him a longing for that seemingly unreachable “more” and also provides him with a lifetime of self-doubt.

There is no way to dissect “Synecdoche, New York” in order to find out “what really happened;” no surefire method to construct a realist narrative. But when the screen went white at the end, I felt as if I’d viewed a very intimate and somehow complete snapshot of one man’s life and how he saw the players in his story as they weaved their way in and out. Kaufman has succeeded in portraying an unflinchingly honest and deep examination of the soul of a person without jumping through traditional hoops of “this happened here, this happened next.”

Charlie Kaufman also wrote the screenplay for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a movie that I adore. A film professor of mine said about that movie: “Anyone who says they understand it is just pretending to understand it.” But “Eternal” has an even more straightforward narrative than “Synecdoche”—so much so that “Eternal” could be easily mapped out for those who feel they need it. Kaufman’s newest is up for way more interpretation, and begs this question: “What constitutes understanding?”

I don’t feel compelled to map out the plot of a movie in my mind when I leave the theater. More than anything, I yearn to have an emotional connection with a movie, and I had a big one with “Synecdoche.” Kaufman’s film seems very personal. Are the neuroses of Caden Cotard shared by Charlie Kaufman? Most assuredly, I say. Otherwise this movie wouldn’t have such a strong emotional charge. Does it translate? Most definitely.

Summing up the lessons learned in a life doesn’t have to take a lifetime, despite the fact that in our lives, one day will inevitably follow another just as it always has. Movies don’t have to work that way; they can be rearrange and change. “Synecdoche, New York” is an impressionistic view of one man’s life from inside out as he gradually learns that his is not the only story. It’s a synecdoche—his life stands for everyone else’s and everyone else’s life stands for his own. Caden puts it best in the movie when he says, “There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They’re all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.”

Tags: charlie, hoffman, kaufman, movie, new, philip, positive, rave, review, seymour, Synecdoche, York

Stephanie Meyer’s teen vampire romance book “Twilight” makes it to the big screen this weekend starring Robert Pattinson as Edward and Kristen Stewart as Bella. There’s no doubt that “Twilight” will make tons of cash, but will it satisfy fans an non-fans of the book alike? Eric and guest co-host Whitney Mathews (www.whitneymathews.com) review “Twilight” from the perspective of someone who has and someone who hasn’t read the book. Is the Catherine Hardwicke-directed vampire romance fantasy just for teenagers? Find out in this on-camera movie review of “Twilight.”

Tags: catherine, clips, hardwicke, kristen, movie, pattinson, review, robert, stewart, trailer, twilight

Eric and drummer extraordinaire Billy Brimblecom tackle the newest installment of the James Bond franchise. “Quantum of Solace” stars Daniel Craig as a less-talk, more-rock version of the mighty British 007 spy. This movie is already out in the U.K., but we here in the U.S. get our first crack at it this weekend in theaters. How does “Quantum of Solace” add up the the last Craig-Bond movie, “Casino Royale.” Find out in this on-camera review!

Tags: 007, bond, craig, daniel, james, movie, of, quantum, review, solace

It may not be the most original comedy ever, but what “Role Models” lacks in originality of concept, it makes up for in the natural wittiness of its actors.

Directed and co-written by David Wain (director of “Wet Hot American Summer” and an alumni of MTV’s early-1990s sketch comedy show “The State”), “Role Models” follows the basic formula of the life-changing moment in some poor schlub’s life that happens suddenly and unexpectedly. Eventually, the tin man realizes the error of his ways and gets a heart.

What makes “Role Models” such a surprisingly funny film is in the details. Let’s start with the casting. Paul Rudd, so terrific in supporting roles in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” finally gets a movie that lets him be the leading man while showcasing his smart-ass, ultra-dry sense of humor. Rudd is the anti-obvious jokemeister. Where other actors would mug and get louder to telegraph the fact that they are doing comedy, Rudd simply torpedoes each statement with a nasty, biting remark.

He plays Danny, an unhappy promo man for Minotaur—an energy drink being sold to high schools as an alternative to doing drugs. His oversexed buddy Wheeler (Seann William Scott) accompanies Danny at school presentations in a full minotaur costume. The two get put into a Big Brother-type mentoring program after one particularly bad day at work ends with the corporate truck riding atop the school fountain.

It’s a ridiculous premise to be sure, made more ridiculous by the presence of a hard-charging reformed coke addict (played hilariously by Jane Lynch) as the head of child-mentoring group Sturdy Wings. Again, the funny is in the details. She assigns Danny and Wheeler two of the organization’s toughest cases, a foul-mouthed brat named Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson) and a teenaged social outcast named Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, proving that his McLovin character from “Superbad” was not the only role he could do) who likes to dress up as a knight and battle for a fictitious realm with foam swords in the park. They are not the most typical of troubled kids.

While the formula may be familiar, all of the comedic situations stem not from the absurdity of the situations, but from how seriously the characters take them. It’s a nice change. Despite the fact that it’s an R-rated movie, “Role Models” never panders to the level of fart jokes. Incredibly foul language, sure, but no fart jokes. It doesn’t need to pander because its actors actually elevate the material.

All that said, “Role Models” doesn’t have the deftness of touch as, say a Judd Apatow movie (although it employs about half of the actors from that same stable). It’s a sloppier movie that misses every now and then, and it doesn’t get nearly as deep with its themes or characterization. But it’s so fast-paced that it recovers from any ill-advised steps very quickly.

On a side note, I also have to add in what I am calling “the KISS factor.” My personal bias: I’ve been an unabashed KISS fan since I was six years old. Wheeler’s obsession with the titular 70s-glam heroes is a simple one. He loves the band because they get a lot of chicks and sing about it non-stop. This astute observation about “four Jewish guys from New York who dressed up like clowns” powers a lot of great jokes in the movie and make what would otherwise seem like a rote ending a lot more fun.

Tags: david, film, jane, lynch, Models, movie, paul, review, Role, rudd, scott, seann, wain, william

Variety is reporting that Antonio Banderas is in final negotiations to play surrealist Salvador Dali in the Simon West-helmed indie biopic “Dalí .” I would absolutely love to see a movie that portrays one of the 20th Century’s most interesting media manipulators and artists, but is Simon West really the director to do this?

The movie is said to be a combination of music and CGI sequences that will combine (in a surreal manner, I suppose) to form a picture of the man who used sin, sex, and surrealism to stoke the fires of America. it will also concentrate on his relationship with wife/muse/manager Gala.

Simon West must really want to change up his modus operandi, because he is the same guy who has directed big-budget tentpoles such as “When a Stranger Calls,” “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” “The General’s Daughter,” and “Con Air.”

Meanwhile, Al Pacino is also slated to portray Dalí in Andrew Niccol’s “Dalí & I: The Surreal Story.” Niccol is the guy behind the underrated sci-fi film “Gattaca,” starring Ethan Hawke, Jude Law, and Uma Thurman, but he’s also the director of “S1m0ne.” The latter is his only collaboration with Pacino, and I had the severe misfortune of watching it on an overseas flight when nothing else but “C.S.I” reruns were on. It was a painful, painful experience.

“Dalí & I” is based on a book by Belgian writer Stan Lauryssens, who has been in jail in Belgium and Spain for fraud and selling faked Salvador Dalí works of art. The movie’s perspective is through his eyes. Lauryssens is slated to be played by Cillian Murphy (the Scarecrow from “Batman Begins”).

The only movie that’s completed is “Little Ashes,” which has no American release date yet, but has been shown at some European film festivals. Starring Robert Pattinson (of the upcoming “Twilight” and Cedric Diggory in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”), it’s not just about a young Dalí, but also the lives and loves of filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.

Tags: al, andrew, antonio, ashes, banderas, biography, biopic, cillian, dali, film, little, movie, murphy, niccol, pacino, pattinson, robert, salvador, simon, west

It is way to early to think about this (or maybe not, since Oliver Stone’s “W” dramatized the life of a sitting president), but I keep hearing the word “history” used over and over again today in the media. Barack Obama getting elected the 44th President of the United States is certainly historic. I even heard a caller on a talk show this morning talk about how tears were streaming down his face while he watched the TV last night.

“It was like the ending of ‘Ben-Hur’!” he said.

History being compared to movies. I think that’s a signal that now it’s time to think about who will play Obama in the eventual biopic of his life.

“Too soon!” you may say. And, technically, I might agree. But isn’t it fun to play the game?

It’s crazy how quickly current events are turned around into historical films these days. HBO’s recent “Recount” was about the fight over the 2000 election. Paul Greengrass’ amazing “United 93″ conveyed the immediacy and urgency of Sept. 11. On the less serious side of things, the usual turnaround of TV movies about sensational news stories like the Texas cheerleader scandal, the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan incident, or the baby caught in a well has been traditionally very fast. (And how many Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuco movies were rushed into production?)

Especially in this lightning-fast communications age, we are also able to see history as it happens. What’s bizarre is how quickly an event can be registered as “history.” No doubt, yesterday was one of those days. And movies and TV played a huge part in the making of yesterday’s election results. Don’t think that they didn’t. Besides the fact that Americans had two full years to observe the way Obama carried himself as a public figure, we also had two years to get used to the idea of a black president. It wasn’t that hard; it’s something that has been out there in the culture for quite awhile.

It’s often said the Hollywood is extremely liberal, so black actors portraying the President in movies like “Deep Impact” (Morgan Freeman) or “Head of State” (Chris Rock) are no surprises. (Not to mention “The Fifth Element,” “Idiocracy,” “The Man,” although those weren’t necessarily game-changers). Probably the role with biggest cultural effect, however, was from Fox’s “24,” a TV show created, ironically, by a conservative writer/producer.

David Palmer (played by Dennis Haysbert, the reassuring presence from those Allstate commercials) was one of those tough presidents who tackled problems with an equal amount of smarts and morality. He was the kind of president you’d wish we could have in the White House one day, and his run on that popular TV show did a lot to get the country used to the idea of a black president, I believe. He was assassinated after he was out of office, and his brother Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside) was elected not long after that. Two black presidents. One show. Plus lots of sketchy, scheming white men swirling around them…

Now that the moment is upon us, let’s get hypothetical. What current actor has the range, gravity, and physical characteristics to play President-elect Barack Obama in a movie?

My top choice would be Jeffrey Wright, who was so good as the moral compass in “W.” He played Colin Powell as a character, not an impersonation. His conflict and conscience were guiding lights in a movie where virtually everyone else had their own agendas. He’s proven in tons of great supporting roles (Bill Murray’s loquacious best friend in “Broken Flowers” and the uber-confident villain in “Shaft” leap to mind) that he’s got the chops and I think he could portray Obama’s tenacity in all the key moments in his life.

Will Smith would obviously be any movie producer’s first choice due to his box office clout, and I think he could handle it. He made me forget he was Will Smith in Michael Mann’s flawed-but-interesting “Ali,” and would have the same uphill battle portraying another very famous face were he to tackle Obama.

Terrence Howard, recently let go as Jim Rhodes in the “Iron Man” series, might be a good choice. He was totally convincing in his Oscar-nominated role as the pimp-turned-rapper in “Hustle and Flow,” and that same year played a successful yuppie TV producer in “Crash.” (Though I hated the movie, his performance was quite good.)

Lastly, I think British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor is a true chameleon. Having appeared in everything from “Children of Men” down to “Love Actually,” he is probably the most versatile actor on this list. Plus, he is not a household name or a bankable actor yet, so his personality won’t get in the way of Obama. Right now, especially with his hard-to-pronounce name, he is still “that guy who’s always good in everything he does.” He also has a history of choosing really risky roles with great directors over more commercial work,

Now it’s time to hear from you all. It’s probably too early, but we all know it’s a great story, and Hollywood loves great stories, especially the against-all-odds “only in America” kind.

Who do you think should play President-elect Barack Obama in the inevitable movie biopic?

Tags: actor, barack, biopic, Chiwetel, dennis, Ejiofor, film, haysbert, hollywood, howard, jeffrey, life, movie, obama, play, president, should, smith, terrence, who, will, wright

Eric Melin goes it alone in this, the first-ever, one-man review in the history of Scene-Stealers. Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks is reviewed by Eric, who has come under fire lately for not having enough of a female perspective. Find out what all the fuss is about Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” Was it really too explicit for some theaters? Is the movie as dirty as its banned movie posters? Did Eric even notice that there was porno-style sex in the movie? Find out in this Scene-Stealers On-Camera Review of “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.”

Tags: a, and, banks, elizabeth, jason, katie, kevin, make, mewes, miri, morgan, movie, porno, review, rogen, seth, smith, tords, traci, zack

“RocknRolla” is supposed to be writer/director Guy Ritchie’s return to form. What that means is that his first two movies “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” were so similar in style and plotting that they defined him as a filmmaker. After two ill-received departures (“Swept Away” and “Revolver”), Ritchie goes back to the well with his newest British tough-guy farce.

“RocknRolla” has all the hallmarks of Ritchie’s first two films. An ensemble cast of gangsters, lowlifes, thugs, and junkies are all after a “macguffin” (this time: a painting we never actually the face of). He throws a million different motivations from a million different quickly defined conmen together, mixes them up in a stew, and spits them back out like so much backwash. The plotlines intertwine in the most unlikeliest of ways, and for a brief moment, it seems like the rest of the slog might have been worth it. It’s not.

Hint number one that your movie doesn’t make any sense: A narrator is constantly explaining everything. Tom Wilkinson is a nasty crime boss whose stepson (Tony Kebbell) is a drug-addicted rock star pretending to be dead (but for some reason still goes out to clubs); while lunkheaded crook Gerard Butler (King Leonidas in “300) and a crew called the The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah reference?) pull off a series of robberies for a cool-as-ice upper-class hottie in a slinky dress (Thandie Newton) whose motives are suspect. Come to think of it, everybody’s motives are suspect—and after a late-term plot revelation, it’s not even worth it to try to sort it all out because it’s impossible to care anymore.

Intricate plots are fine as long as you follow the characters through all the muck and actually care about what happens to them. Either that, or the window dressing is so impressive that it doesn’t matter. (Case in point: “The Big Sleep,” starring Bogart and Bacall.) “RocknRolla” has neither, although it does contain exactly two very memorable scenes.

A funny chase involving Butler’s hapless gang features two Russian hitmen who take a licking (or four or five) and (ridiculously) keep on ticking. Besides being well-paced, there are also some nifty point-of-view camera tricks that enhance the characters’ desperation. There is also a sex scene of jump cuts that lasts about 10 seconds and gives the viewer a pretty accurate idea of the amount of emotion involved in that small time frame.

But the rest of “RocknRolla” is one identical scene after another where one guy tries to out badass the other guy. Some of them, it turns out, are bluffing—they aren’t so badass after all—but most of the time, Ritchie’s “characters” act like only movie-cool gangsters act. You know the kind: They crack wise down the barrel of a gun and spend all of their time either one-upping someone or getting one-upped. It’s tiring after a while to watch these macho men perform the same schtick over and over again.

Maybe if the dialogue were more clever (the onslaught of gay jokes between one group gets old fast and then keeps coming back), it would be easier to swallow this familiar Ritchie formula. Instead it goes down like sour milk. Some of the actors, particularly the American ones, are not up to the task. Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is completely unconvincing in a small role, and Jeremy Piven’s comedic talents are completely wasted in a thankless part. (Piven may be an Emmy winner for playing a ball-out agent on HBO’s ‘Entourage,’ but he ought to fire his agent forgetting him another small role in another hipster crime ensemble—although “RocknRolla” is way less annoying than “Smokin’ Aces”).

In the end, “RocknRolla” suffers from the law of diminishing returns. Ritchie may be going back to a style of film that he knows well, but much of the movie seems like moldy leftovers from “Snatch.” I can only assume that the sequel—promised during the closing credits of “RocknRolla”—will smell even less fresh than this one.

Tags: butler, film, gerard, guy, jeremy, ludacris, movie, newton, piven, rating, review, ritchie, rocknrolla, thandie