Scream 4 ***

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette,

Erik Knudsen, Anna Paquin, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere

Rory Culkin, Mary McDonnell, Kristen Bell, Nico Tortorella

When Scream was released fifteen years ago, a new generation of moviegoers were introduced to the way a horror movie should be made. Drawing inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock, Dario Argento and the entire French New Wave, Wes Craven crafted the first in a series of postmodernist takes on the genre. The film’s constant self-references and winks at other horror movies made it both refreshing and old fashioned, it would remain the definitive slasher movie of the late twentieth century. By the time Scream 3 was released, the genre had once again fallen to victim to overwrought plots and excessive gore, yet Craven’s series remained smart and ahead of its time because of its social commentary and obsession with the media’s effect on our lives. It’s not an accident that Scream still manages to be scarier than Saw in all its incarnations and funnier than the Scary Movies made to poke fun of it.
Fast forward eleven years and we get Scream 4, which is actually more of the same. Whether this means a good or bad thing is strictly up to the viewer. Those looking for gore and excessive amounts of movie blood, will get their fix in limited quantities, while those looking for a lesson in cinephile geekiness, disguised as a genre flick, will go home more than satisfied.
The thing with Scream 4 is actually quite simple: you either like it or you don’t. The film feels like a time capsule which chooses to ignore how much horror sensibilities have changed in the past decade. Instead of turning Ghostface into a serial torturer or a demon, it gives us the same old Scooby-Doo mystery the first ones made us crave: who is the killer?
This time around Ghostface has gone on a killing spree to celebrate the anniversary of Maureen Prescott’s gruesome murder fifteen years before. Maureen’s daughter Sidney (Campbell) has become a successful self-help book author and is back in Woodsboro to promote her book and pay tribute to her mother. Sidney seems to have forgotten that whenever she’s happy, Ghostface will strike.
Lucky for her, she still counts with her friends: Sheriff Dewey Riley (Arquette) and his feisty wife Gale (Cox having more fun than anyone else!) who has reluctantly given up journalism to become a small town wife. There’s also a new group of nubile victims in play, including Sidney’s cousin Jill (a simply delicious Roberts), her friends Kirby (a scene stealing Panettiere) and Olivia (Marielle Jaffe). There’s also her ex-boyfriend Trevor (Nico Tortorella) and high-school movie geeks Charlie (Culkin) and Robbie.
The dynamics of this installment are the same as before (although an appearance from Jamie Kennedy to help us understand the new rules would’ve been great...) and Craven seems to be at his best delivering playful scenes in which Ghostface plays with his victims like a cat would with a mouse he’s about eat.
This dynamic between primal fear and comedy is what makes this film so effective. It might be more of the same, sure, but it still manages to feel fresh even when it makes so much fun of how stale the genre has become. In the opening scene there’s a movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie that takes meta out of proportion and turns it into a fascinating look at the Russian doll effect the media has achieved in the last few years.
The movie even comes with a dark message of sorts as Craven deals with the thirst for fame that drives people to do all kinds of crazy things. Scream 4 might be slightly misunderstood because it’s both the joke and the punchline. As much fun as it makes of unnecessary sequels it dignifies itself, in a totally self-aware way, thinking that it’s above them all. To call this film delicate might sound ridiculous, but in a way it is: it tries hard to grasp onto the last remains of a genre it helped refresh and like its scream queens, it seems completely unaware that it’s only a matter of time before they perish as well. As Dewey himself says “one generation's tragedy is the next one's joke.”

Burlesque **

Director: Steven Antin

Cast: Cher, Christina Aguilera

Eric Dane, Cam Gigandet, Kristen Bell, Dianna Agron

Alan Cumming, Peter Gallagher, Stanley Tucci

If The Pussycat Dolls could sing and had been discovered by Cher, their story would look something like Burlesque.

The story in the film has been told a million times (and in much better ways) but here's the deal:

Ali (Aguilera) is a small town girl trying to make it in Los Angeles, who just happens to sing like Christina Aguilera.

Tess (Cher) is a club owner trying her best to save her club from a real estate mogul (Dane) who wants to buy it from her, of course the club's not doing well and the only thing that could save them would be a new star...

Things do go as you expect them to and the movie pretends it's not about how well they tell the story but about how it looks.

The musical numbers are done in a Bob Fosse-meets a Kylie Minogue concert way and as such are quite effective. There's lots of lights, lots of feathers, more hot girls than Tess could ever afford to keep on payroll and of course Aguilera squeezes those pipes like there's no tomorrow.

Yet the thing is that for all of its flash and glitter, the movie can't help but feel absolutely lacking. For instance the second Aguilera comes onscreen (which is immediately after the studio logos appear) we know the gal can sing (in fact she does a number by herself as soon as the opening credits appear).

So when the moment comes for Tess and the club people to realize she has a talent, the audience is way knowledgeable of this fact (not to mention that Aguilera isn't much of an actress and Ali really comes often looking as a poorly dressed version of the singer).

In between numbers we get glimpses of the characters' lives and Aguilera gets a love triangle (with the efficiently cute Gigandet and Dane), Tess gets rejected by banks and other characters fill stock roles with grace (would've been fantastic to see more of Kristen Bell's bitchy Nikki).

The movie is instantly forgettable but boy do we come out craving more Cher. Her appearances are quite limited and she does the best numbers in the movie but we just can't get enough of her attitude, her flawless skin and her stingy one-liners (her chemistry with Tucci who technically reprises his character from The Devil Wears Prada) is just fantastic.

But Burlesque will not please those who expect their films to make any sense and demand more than lights and heavy makeup to have a good time at the movies.

For those, a complimentary cocktail or two are a must before entering this club.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall ***

Director: Nicholas Stoller
Cast: Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand
Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Jack McBrayer, Paul Rudd

Peter Bretter (Segel) is an average looking, music composer who happens to be dating hot TV star Sarah Marshall (Bell).
Sarah works in Crime Scene, a CSI type of show where she plays a sexy investigator who must deal with Billy Baldwin's smarmy one liners and later having her life commented by Billy Bush.
Peter watches all this from a distance knowing that despite the fact that he's the guy always hiding behind the spotlights and flashes, when the day is over, he has that woman in his house. Things change when Sarah breaks up with him after she falls in love with British rockstar Aldous Snow (Brand).
Shattered by the breakup, Peter goes on a one night stand frenzy, only to be left feeling emptier. Then, by the suggestion of his stepbrother Bryan (Hader) he takes a vacation to Hawaii, only to realize Sarah is staying in the same resort with her new man.
Following his male pride he decides to stay and face her, seeing the events as a sign from God he has to get over her.
During his stay he meets a colorful array of characters, including stoner surfer Chuck (the reliably scene stealeing Rudd), obsessive waiter Matthew (Hill), southern virgin Darald (a hilarious McBrayer) who's having a hard time satisfying his new wife's sexual needs and beautiful hotel receptionist Rachel (Kunis), with whom Peter sees the opoortunity of falling in love again.
Mixing raunchy humor with more emotional moments this film successfully continues the style that has made Judd Apatow (a producer here) and company so popular.
It seems as if these men are compiling pages of wisdom to aid men in future generations, as they deal with issues most hetreosexual males will go through at one point or another.
What makes their movies work in a way chick flicks never have, is that the things they put in practice are drawn from real life experiences.
While other romantic comedies always seem to rely on the need to blame someone for what goes wrong and assume its characters always need to be with someone else, Apatow's take on relationships infuses them with just about the same amount of romance and cuteness as of pain and melancholy.
Take for example the characters here: in some other movie the fact that this man, who is certainly not the most attractive specimen out there, is dating what is conventionally described as a hot girl, is never the issue they deal with.
We never know why and how they got together and when the time comes for them to break up, the very smart screenplay makes us empathize with both their sides.
Even when Peter calls Sarah "the devil" we know better than to just throw judgment around.
The ensemble makes the film work wonderfully; Segel has just the charisma to pull off some difficult moments and overcome them making us root for him, while Bell is simply delicious, showing us a side of stardom that few actresses would have gone for.
Brand's kind of careless, self parody humor that mocks European values fits perfectly with the rest of the cast's "all American goodness".
But the film's real treasure might lie in its painfully honest, too real to be completely funny screenplay, that even masters the tough art of creating uncomfortable silences in movies.
Some lines coming out of the characters might sound as lines you've said before in the exact same situations, or some, for that matter that you will start using from now on.
And the film only fails when it tries too hard to make its poinst, like a scene where Segel bares it all physically, assuming it will do the same emotionally.
A film that contains such wise words along with hilarious heartbreak should know better than to go and do that.