The Scenester: Fast & Furious

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The Scenester: Fast & Furious

POSTED: Friday, April 3, 2009, 7:00 PM

Filed Under: Movies | Scenester Watch

Admit it, you want more from this week's movie section. Here's what didn't make it into this week's paper and oh-so-much more.

Fast & Furious

Saddled with the thankless task of sexing up characters that peaked in sexiness close to a decade ago, Justin Lin's not-quite reboot of the Fast and Furious franchise unfolds exactly how you expect it to ' plenty of nitrous oxide, dozens of guard-rail-bending crashes and a friendly dose of unnecessary philosophical insight courtesy of big-bald-bad criminal mastermind Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). Here, Dom reunites with drag-racing FBI frienemy Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker, looking exhausted) to infiltrate the organization of a heroin importer who ' yes! ' uses street racers to smuggle his shipments across the border. (I will never understand why the crooks in these flicks select the most gawdy and conspicuous vehicles in America to do their dirty work.) Dom's girl Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) succeed in looking really good while all this happens. Lin (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), by all accounts a slick and talented director, orchestrates some exhilarating sequences, but it all comes off a bit like an old dude rocking a haircut a few years too young for him. Your buddy from high school with the neon ground effects on his Impreza will love it; you merely will tolerate it. Unless, of course, you got ground effects, too. 'Drew Lazor

Get showtimes and tickets here.

But that's not all ...

Adventureland - B+

Shaun Brady says:

Greg Mottola's follow-up to Superbad asserts the director's independence from Apatow-land, more of a return to the precisely observed character tics of his debut, The Daytrippers, than the raucous and raunchy comedy its marketing suggests. Adventureland is an almost note-perfect coming-of-age tale that captures the purgatory between graduation and adulthood when hormones, hopes and uncertainty collide on what seems like an hourly basis.

Read the rest of the Shaun Brady's review and get tickets/showtimes here.

Alien Trespass - D

Shaun Brady says:

R.W. Goodwin's years as a director and producer for The X-Files would seem to prove his sci-fi insider bona fides. But Alien Trespass is an utterly bland pastiche, not knowing enough to be forgiven as homage and too lacking in humor to be considered parody. In its particulars, Goodwin betrays a lack of familiarity with not only the genre but with '50s Hollywood in general.

Read the rest of Shaun Brady's review and get tickets/showtimes here.

caffeine head

Posted 2009-04-05 16:04:22

the classic cars they use in Fast and Furious are what make this movie worth watching

Posted by Molly Eichel @ 7:00 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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