Title: Quarantine

Director: John Erick Dowdle

Cast: Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Steve Harris.

Genre: Horror

Runtime: 89 minutes.

Rated: 18A

Released: October 10 2008.

Reviewed By: Victoria Asikis. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

There are plenty of risks when a director undertakes the task of re-creating a movie into an English adaptation; perhaps a risk some might call being lost in translation. For John Erick Dowdle, re-creating Quarantine from the 2007 Spanish film [•REC] was anything but lost from the original film.

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Title: Max Payne

Director: John Moore

Screenplay: Beau Thorn

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, BeauBridges, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges

Genre: Action

Runtime: 100 min.

Rated: PG-13

Released: October 18^th, 2008

Reviewed by: Alan Jones (Toronto Correspondent)

Rarely have I ever experienced an audience reacting as negatively towards a film as the audience in this screening of Max Payne. As the film ended and the screen faded to black, there was a loud “Boooo!” that came from the upper reaches of the theatre, I heard a person behind me say “That sucked”, and as a I walked out of into the movie theatre hallway, I heard a another person tell his friend “There wasn’t one good thing about that movie!” This isn’t necessarily true. There was one good thing about the movie: it achieves a distinctively stylized visual aesthetic. In other words: it looks cool. But director John Moore appears not to have been worried about doing anything else that might possibly have resulted in a good film.

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Title: What Just Happened

Distributor: Magnolia Pictures

Director: Clint Eastwood

Screenplay: Art Linson

Cast: Robert DeNiro, Robin Wright Penn, Catherine Keener, John Turturro, Bruce Willis

Genre: Satire/Comedy

Runtime: 107 min.

Rated: R

Released: October 17^th, 2008 (Limited)

Reviewed by: Alan Jones (Toronto Correspondent – Canada)

Barry Levinson’s last film was called Envy. It was a high concept comedy released in 2004 to dismal box office and scathing reviews, despite starring Ben Stiller and Jack Black. The movie was so disregarded, in fact, that I barely saw a mention of it when Stiller and Black reunited this summer for the much more successful Tropic Thunder. After Envy, Levinson was forgot as well. Perhaps it was because of Envy film that he decided to make What Just Happened, a film about the trials and tribulations of being a Hollywood producer based on the life of producer Art Linson. Just like Levinson, the protagonist of What Just Happened has to deal with almost disregarded in show business. Perhaps this is why Levinson took the job; the film was financed outside of the studio system and it offered him a chance at ridiculing the industry that forgot him. If that was Levinson’s goal, then he failed. What Just Happened isn’t nearly as ruthless as the best satires, but he succeeded in making life in Hollywood look like hell and he succeeded in creating a few laughs out of the life Linson, who also wrote the film and the book, it was based on.

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Title: Synechdoche, New York

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis

Genre: Drama

Runtime: 124 min.

Rated: R

Released: October 24^th, 2008 (Limited)

Reviewed by: Alan Jones (Toronto Correspondent)

A star rating seems futile for a film like this. In fact, just reviewing Synechdoche, New York seems like a futile effort. It’s obvious that a lot of effort went into its creation, it’s obvious that it is the work of a genius, it’s obvious that to understand it in all of its subtlety requires multiple viewings, and it’s obvious that it will be talked about in college classrooms and dormitories for years to come, despite the tepid response it has received from critics thus far. Some have called Synechdoche, New York a failure, but nothing could be further from the truth. From what I saw on the screen, Synechdoche, New York is exactly the film that Charlie Kaufman intended to make.

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