WE'RE THE MILLERS: that's absolutely nothing to brag about

REALLY?!
Jason Sudekis quit Saturday Night Live for a career making garbage like WE'RE THE MILLERS?
This film is so godawfully unfunny it makes SNL look like an episode of Frasier or Friends or Seinfeld or ..... well, you know, one of those genuinely laugh-out-loud funny tv comedies.
The red flags were clearly visible long before Sudekis stepped before the cameras for the first time.
Even if he hadn't read the script he would have known he would be co-starring alongside Jennifer
Aniston, and who among us is old enough to recall the last time she starred in a film that left you feeling like you'd got your money's worth?
All that pre-release hullabaloo about Aniston playing a stripper who actually strips down, says dirty words, and gives her pretend son a lap dance was just so much pr baloney. Sure she strips down to

lacy underwear which reveals precisely nothing (and looks especially un-alluring in the process), but she's no longer the adorable young Rachel Green of 'Friends' fame. She's kept herself fit but she can't disguise that weird heads grows larger thing that tends to happen to people when they reach middle-age, and a definite whiff of desperation clings to her performance.
Sudekis is adequate at best but lacks the comedy chops to wring anything memorable or truly amusing out of a lame script which makes barely a token effort at creating anything resembling a coherent storyline.
As I write this WE'RE THE MILLERS has just passed the $100 million dollar mark at the US box office. This sorry state of affairs suggests one of two things - either US audiences are so starved of quality comedy entertainment that they'll grab at anything that's put in front of them, or - sadly what's more likely - Hollywood has finally attained its ultimate goal - achieved thru years of churning out increasingly bland Aniston rom-coms - of so lowering audience expectations that they no longer have any memory left of what a really, genuinely good and funny comedy actually looks like.

KILLING SEASON: deadly dull

Presumably the intention of casting two heavyweight - and expensive - Hollywood stars in a film is to double the number of bums on seats. It creates an event, attracting not only fans of each of the two stars but also those interested in seeing the two working together - in this case for the first time.
Remember how much extra publicity the pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino generated for 'Heat'?
Well, KILLING SEASON is nothing like 'Heat.' It doesn't even rise to the level of 'Righteous Kill'

which was the disastrous attempt to capitalize on the buzz generated by 'Heat' by reuniting De Niro and Pacino and putting them together in practically every scene. It was just unfortunate that every scene stank.
KILLING SEASON gives us the first on-screen pairing of De Niro and John Travolta but completely fails to capitalize on their presence. The film is a total non-event, and the only thing that'll keep you from nodding off is the grating sound of Travolta's ridiculous attempt at a Serbian accent.
But, in retrospect, I really shouldn't have been surprised.
DeNiro's been turning in cruise and collect performances for years (with the notable exception of last year's 'Silver Linings Playbook') while Travolta's been milking his 'Pulp Fiction' rebirth for even longer (with the notable exception of 'Hairspray').
Rarely have two such big names contributed so little to a film, other than the further tarnishing of their reputation.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN: make that Shite House Down

Merely suspending your disbelief won't cut it. Even suspending, hanging, drawing and quartering it doesn't help.
WHITE HOUSE DOWN is so shouting at the screen in anger bad that no amount of withdrawal from the real world will allow you to experience anything remotely approximating escapist pleasure. Director Roland Emmerich's sole purpose is to blow up as much as possible of one of America's most iconic landmarks while ensuring there's not a hair out of place on the head of cinema's latest Bruce Willis self-effacing action hero wannabe, Tatum Channing.

He plays Capitol Hill cop John Cale who just happens to be on a tour of the White House with his young, politics-crazy daughter, Emily, when a bunch of terrorists masquerading as home theater technicians seize control of the mansion and take the President (Jamie Foxx) hostage.  Having just moments earlier been rejected for a job with the Secret Service because he's unreliable and doesn't follow orders, Cale now finds himself the President's sole hope of survival and the world's only defense against the outbreak of nuclear war.
As a ridiculously well informed news media covers every nail biting moment from ridiculously close to the scene of the action, the big question is - can Cale rise to the occasion or will he screw it up?
What do you think?
For all Emmerich's efforts to create a sense of uncertainty, the end result is never in doubt and the only real question is how much of the White House will be left standing by the time Cale's through proving to Secret Service Special Agent Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that she made a big mistake when she turned him down.
Despite being grotesquely outgunned by terrorists who've managed to smuggle a veritable arsenal of weapons into the most closely guarded government building in the world, Cale clearly has a whole gang of angels watching over him. How else to explain the terrorists complete inability to hit him with a single bullet despite firing hundreds at him and their marksmanship in taking out dozens of highly trained police and secret service agents with a single shot?
WHITE HOUSE DOWN is not the first action thriller to pit a lone individual against a gang of well armed, fanatical crack shots but it is the first one I can think of to represent the US government as both benign and totally incompetent at protecting itself from such a small-sized threat. Every single

security system it has in place to protect the President and the White House and the Capitol Building and Air Force One fails, at the same time as the scores of supposedly highly trained Secret Service agents and police demonstrate their total unpreparedness to respond to a surprise attack - which is presumably what all that training was intended to prepare them for.
Seen in this light WHITE HOUSE DOWN is actually a deeply disturbing critique of the current political-military obsession with security and secrecy, dressed up as a celebration of the enduring belief in the power of the individual to make a difference. We should be out in the streets protesting en masse at the continuing surrender of our rights and personal freedoms in the name of protecting our security! And maybe we would be if enough of us had actually gone to see the film but - sadly (or not) - at the time of writing the film has yet to recoup even half of it's estimated $150 million dollar budget at the box office.
I'm not surprised at the failure to capture the public's imagination. Despite the similarities with, and references to, Emmerich's 1996 box office smash 'Independence Day', WHITE HOUSE DOWN doesn't come close to recapturing that magic and, at times, it veers dangerously close to an unamusing parody of that earlier blockbuster. Tatum makes a bland and unmemorable leading man, while Foxx carries too much baggage as an action star to be plausible as an ultra-liberal, cerebral, never-handled-a-gun chief executive who's more than happy to defer to Cale when it comes to defending himself from the bad guys. The producers could not have made a worse choice had they cast Wesley Snipes in the part (his disagreements with the US government over taxation policy aside)!
Contrived, implausible, cliched, predictable and just plain stupid, WHITE HOUSE DOWN features everything I hate about summer blockbusters. Bring on the fall and a return to something close to more intelligent filmmaking.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS: the bravery, horror, confusion and deceit of war

When six GIs were photographed raising the American flag over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima on 23 February 1945 they had no idea it would change their lives forever.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is the true story of how that one black and white picture helped win

World War Two. It’s also the story of how it was misrepresented and the soldiers featured in it manipulated to serve a greater cause.

 One of them was Navy corpsman John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe). Afterwards he would never talk about his wartime experiences, so following his death his son sets out on a journey across the USA to interview the last survivors of that bloody battle, in an attempt to discover the truth of what happened.

The reality he uncovers reveals how a legend is created, and how that process distorts and rewrites the truth to suit a different purpose. The flag raising photo was one of many taken that February day by a journalist accompanying the troops, but it seized the imagination of a war weary nation. To them it represented victory. The fact that it actually happened just five days into a thirty five day battle for control of the island when the outcome was still far from certain, was immaterial.

The US government was quick to recognise the propaganda value of the picture. After more than three years of fighting the United States was almost broke, and there was a real fear that they would be forced to negotiate a peace treaty with the Japanese because they could no longer afford to pay for guns and bullets.

The photo became the focal point of a new campaign to raise desperately needed funds by persuading the American public to buy more war bonds. The order went out for the soldiers in the picture to be brought home to front the campaign, touring the country and speaking at rallies where their presence as real life heroes would encourage people to open their wallets.

There were just two problems. All the soldiers in the photo had their back to the camera and no one could remember for certain who they all were. Some of them were already dead, killed in the fierce fighting. The other problem was that the photo actually captured a second flag raising. A different group of soldiers had already planted Old Glory on the top of the mountain. This was just a replacement, and on neither occasion was it raised in the heat of battle.

For the US government and military however, the symbolic value was too important to let the facts get in the way, and the three somewhat bewildered surviving soldiers were brought home to do their patriotic duty. Of the three it is Private Ira Hayes, played by Adam Beach, who has the hardest time dealing with the deceit. The film charts his mental disintegration as he turns to alcohol, unable to cope with being labelled “a hero” by the same people who patronisingly call him “chief” and treat him as a second class citizen because he’s American Indian. Today, we would also recognise him as suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

But it’s wrong to assume FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is an anti-American film. Director Clint Eastwood’s aim in telling this story is not to denigrate the myth, mock the patriotism or belittle the achievements and sacrifices of the men involved. What he does is return the flag raising event to its proper context, portraying it as an event performed by a group of men who gave it little thought at the

time because their energy was focused on capturing the island. They were true heroes not for planting a flag on top of a mountain, but for the incredible bravery they displayed in taking on an enemy which was prepared to literally fight to the death.

The camera doesn’t flinch in showing us the full bloody horror and confusion of war, and how thousands of young men died fighting for each other. They weren’t thinking of the Stars and Stripes or abstract notions of patriotism and heroism when they charged towards Japanese machine gun nests. They were trying to save their own life and the lives of their buddies. The battlefield sequences are nightmarish scenes of graphic carnage, made disturbingly real by Eastwood’s decision to drain them of colour, giving them the look of genuine World War 2 newsreel footage.

The message to take away from this film is that, despite the official manipulation and dishonesty, the flag raising photo stands as a symbol of the heroism displayed by thousands of GIs on the battlefield, rather than a heroic act in itself, and therefore still has value. But it must also be remembered that these men were real people with families waiting for them back home, and those that survived were haunted by their experience for the rest of their lives.

This is not the easiest film to get into. The first thirty minutes are very disorienting with the story jumping around in time, from the battle on the beaches at Iwo Jima, to the present day, to the war bonds tour across the USA. This lack of a stable storyline creates the same kind of confusion that happens in war. We are not really sure what is going on because we cannot see the full picture. It is in exactly this kind of situation that an event can be taken out of context by people not in full command of the facts and used to promote a message not anticipated by those involved in the original event.