The Happening

The honeymoon has long been over for filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. Take a look at the reviews of his latest movie, The Happening, available tomorrow (Oct. 7) on DVD.

With 163 reviews counted, the Web site Rotten Tomatoes calculates only 18 percent are positive. Just 12 percent of 33 "top critics" gave positive reviews.

That's down even from Shyamalan's poorly received fairy tale—and box office flop—Lady in the Water (2006), which has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 24 percent.

The Happening is far from a perfect film, but it's hardly deserving of the vicious reviews it received when it opened in theaters back in June. Many critics seemed to take delight in attacking both the movie and Shyamalan himself:

Interview: 'Flash of Genius' director Marc Abraham

Marc Abraham, a producer with a long list of credits that includes Children of Men, The Rundown, Bring It On, The Hurricane and Air Force One, makes his directorial debut with Flash of Genius. The movie, starring Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham and Alan Alda, is based on the true story of Dr. Robert Kearns, a college engineering professor who, in the 1960s, created and patented the intermittent windshield wiper only to have Ford and other automakers steal his design. Undaunted, he took them to court and, though it took years and the strain on his family was great, he eventually won millions.

I had the opportunity to interview Abraham last month when he was in Easton, Md., for the movie’s premiere on opening night of the first-ever Chesapeake Film Festival.



Greg Maki: You’ve been a producer for a number of years. Were you looking to direct a movie or was it this in particular that made you say, “I want to direct?”

Flash of Genius

Were it fiction, Flash of Genius would be a hard movie to wrap your head around. But that’s a problem it doesn’t have to face and its true story, filmed and acted with great skill, has an uncommon poignancy.

In 1967, Dr. Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), a college professor, family man and part-time inventor, creates and patents what would seem to be the most mundane of inventions — the intermittent windshield wiper.He takes the invention to Ford, which immediately strikes a deal with him and brings him on as a consultant. Eighteen months later, the deal is off.

A few years go by before Kearns sees a car—a Ford—with windshield wipers obviously using his “Kearns Blinking Eye Motor.” Without hesitation, he takes on the daunting task of suing the Ford Motor Company for patent infringement.

Chris Moore on 'The People Speak'

EASTON, Md. — Why would Chris Moore, producer of hit films like Good Will Hunting and American Pie, make a documentary inspired by a history textbook?

“My mom says I make too many R-rated movies,” Moore, an Easton native, said during a presentation of The People Speak at the Chesapeake Film Festival.

About a year ago, “I had just made this horror movie, I was getting tired of killing teenagers and I thought I needed to do something that feels a little better,” he said.



The seed for The People Speak was planted more than a decade ago in Good Will Hunting. In one scene, Will (Matt Damon) advises his therapist, Sean (Robin Williams), that he should read Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States if he wants to read a real history book.

Chesapeake Film Festival: Opening night

EASTON, Md. — More than a year in the making, the inaugural Chesapeake Film Festival has taken over Easton this weekend, starting Friday evening with a gala at the Tidewater Inn and a screening of Universal Pictures’ Flash of Genius at the Avalon Theatre.

“Our mission is to entertain, educate, inspire, enrich,” said Doug Sadler, the festival’s artistic director.

“If you look at what we’re offering and the people we’re bringing in, I feel we have totally met our goal this year,” he said.

The slate of films includes premieres of major Hollywood studio movies (in addition to Friday’s Flash of Genius screening, New Line Cinema’s Western Appaloosa starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen closes the festival Sunday night); issue-driven documentaries such as I.O.U.S.A., which examines the national debt, and At the Death House Door, which focuses on the death penalty; work of local residents, including The White Pony, written by Laura Ambler of Easton, and Charlie Obert’s Barn, a documentary by Kurt Kolaja of Queen Anne’s County; screenings of classics The Best Man (1964) starring Henry Fonda, followed by a political panel, and William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill (1959) enhanced with live effects provided by ArtHouse Live; and more.

Chesapeake Film Festival

EASTON, Md. — The first-ever Chesapeake Film Festival will open and close with premieres of major Hollywood films.

New Line Cinema's Appaloosa, a Western starring Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger and Jeremy Irons, will close the festival Sunday, Sept. 21, at the Avalon Theatre.

Directed by Harris and adapted from a Robert B. Parker novel by Harris and Robert Knott, the movie is set in the Old West territory of New Mexico and tells the story of two friends and lawmen (Harris and Mortensen) hired to police a dangerous town run by a ruthless rancher (Irons). A young widow (Zellweger) arrives and further complicates matters.


Viggo Mortensen, left, and Ed Harris in a scene from New Line Cinema's Appaloosa.

Knott, who also served as a producer and appears in the film, played one of the lead roles in Swimmers, a film shot locally by the festival's artistic director, Doug Sadler.

The Rocker

Take a helping of the Jack Black family-friendly, rock 'n' roll comedy School of Rock, a dose of the Mark Wahlberg rock 'n' roll fantasy Rock Star, a touch of Almost Famous, throw into the mix one of the funniest actors working in television today, and what do you get? A movie that is much less than the sum of its parts.

The biggest problem with The Rocker is that it simply does not rock. It begins in 1986 with Vesuvius, a clone of Poison and countless other "hair" metal bands, ready to take over the world. You can try to suspend your disbelief all you want, but nothing can hide the fact that this band is a joke and probably would have been considered such even when this type of thing was huge.

Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder is a movie you know should be good just from hearing the names of the actors involved and the characters they play—and, boy, does it deliver on that promise.

Ben Stiller, who directed and wrote the screenplay with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, is Tugg Speedman, a once great action star whose career has fallen on hard times. His attempt at respectability, starring as a mentally-challenged man in a movie called Simple Jack, was a colossal flop. The Vietnam war epic Tropic Thunder might be his last chance to salvage his flailing career.

Jack Black is Jeff Portnoy, the drug-addicted star of the Fatties comedy franchise, in which he plays every character in a morbidly obese family.

Pineapple Express

Strange as it may seem, Pineapple Express is, in a sense, an experimental film—an action movie from a bunch of guys who look like they've never even seen a fight.

It comes to us from producer Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), whose name has become its own brand within the comedy world.Apatow shares a story credit on a screenplay written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, longtime friends who previously collaborated on the semi-autobiographical Superbad.

The director is David Gordon Green, known for small-scale indie dramas like George Washington, All the Real Girls and Snow Angels.

The stars are Rogen and James Franco, best known as Harry Osborn from the Spider-Man movies and the one person here who has significant experience with this type of production.

It all adds up to an action-comedy that falls a little short in both areas.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

It must be nice to have $175 million to pump into a sequel for which there appeared to be no real demand.

That’s problem No. 1 for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Problem No. 2 is the choice of director: Rob Cohen, the man behind the Vin Diesel vehicles The Fast and the Furious (2001) and XXX (2002), and Stealth (2005)—a movie that still makes my head hurt when I think about it. He replaces Stephen Sommers, director of both The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001). (Sommers retains a producer credit here.)

Cohen has specialized in action movies, yet has little idea of how to shoot an action scene. In this movie, he has the services of Jet Li as the titular emperor, a ruthless man who conquered ancient China and enslaved his foes. His cast also includes Michelle Yeoh as the witch the emperor employs to give him immortality. Instead, the witch curses him, mummifying him and his entire army.