THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT...

Quick Movie Reviews: Pirates of the Caribbean II, Little Miss Sunshine

It's been a sort of blah summer in terms of summer movie quality, although overall box office is up about 10 percent. All of Hollywood can thank Johnny Depp for that, as PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST has surprised everyone by setting box office records and ringing up nearly $400 million (and counting) domestically.

Picking up pretty much where the first theme park ride--er, movie left off, DEAD MAN'S CHEST* finds Keira Knightley's Elizabeth and Orlando Bloom's Will getting arrested and blackmailed on their wedding day. The typically sniveling evil Lord who puts them in his employ wants them to find the wayward pirate Jack Sparrow (Depp) and liberate him from his "magic compass", which supposedly points only to what its owner most desires. It's not long before Will finds Jack, Elizabeth finds them both and all three of them, plus the luckless crew of Sparrow's ship The Black Pearl, have run afoul of one of the nastiest, most memorable group of screen villains in ages, the squid-headed Davy Jones (voice and mannerisms by Bill Nighy) and his barnacled crew of the damned. As if that's not enough, Jones commands a legendary giant tentacled sea creature called a kraken that can devour ships whole.

As you can imagine given that this isn't Shakespeare (or even vintage Spielberg), this is plenty enough plot for one movie, and indeed the whole thing ends on a double cliffhanger guaranteed to have them lining up around the block when everything wraps up in the third film of the trilogy due in December. The movie begins a bit slowly, to set the plot and characters in motion, but once all the characters are on the open sea and running from Davy and his kraken, there's more than enough adventure to keep even kids with ADD engaged. And of course Depp is the secret weapon, his Jack Sparrow proving just as irresistable to watch as in the first movie, swishing from one adventure to another with gleeful amorality. (My Grade: B)
* - Trivia: this is the second movie Johnny Depp has starred in with "dead man" in the title. Can you name the other one and who directed it? Answer below...

Sharing the honor of the best movie of the summer so far (with Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion) is LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, the debut indie feature from the music video directing husband/wife team of Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. This is one sick, funny, surprisingly touching film. I'll skip a description of the plot (best for people to discover it themselves I think) and simply say that this a bent road movie centered around a highly dysfunctional family attempting to get their youngest member to the Little Miss Sunshine kiddie pageant in Southern California. The winning cast, led by Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell and Alan Arkin, is game for anything and even though some deeply weird and downright disturbing things happen along the way, the film captures the neuroses, ambitions and stresses of a typical family better than many dramas do. (My Grade: A)

And A Quick TV Recommendation...

If you're lucky (or rich) enough to have Showtime, make sure this coming Monday you catch the season premiere of WEEDS starring Mary-Louise Parker. Having caught the first season on DVD, I found this dramedy about the pot pushing suburban mom to be immediately addictive (pun intended) and surprisingly well-drawn for a first year show. It's as good as anything on the overhyped HBO.

Tomorrow, time willing, a few notes from the sports world and then back to our new schedule (see previous blog) next week.

Trivia Answer: DEAD MAN, directed by Jim Jarmusch (1999) in which Depp plays an accountant named William Blake who gets mistaken for the poet William Blake in this surreal, black & white, Western allegory. A good rental, if you're looking for something slow and meditative--in other words, something the opposite of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN!

Peace...