Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

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War and Peace and Poltergeists

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

by Hope Madden

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – there’s not a lot of grey area there. If this is your bag – if you’ve always wanted to see Lizzie Bennet (Lily James) prove her inner badassedness with a katana to an undead skull – you can’t go entirely wrong here.

You will find all the old familiars: Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, their many marriageable daughters, the scoundrel Wickham (Jack Huston), the dashing Bingley (Douglas Booth), the haughty but lovestruck Darcy (Sam Riley). The main difference is England, which has been overrun by “unmentionables” for some years, making that foul weather trip from the Bennets’ to the Bingleys’ dangerous for more reasons than a simple flu bug.

In 2009, writer Seth Grahame-Smith found himself with a surprise success in his novel, co-written by Jane Austen (whose original text is firmly in the public domain). Given that someone adapts her novel for the screen about every 25 minutes, it is no surprise that Grahame-Smith’s version has made its way to the cinema. And just in time for Valentine’s Day!

I don’t say that ironically. Like Shaun of the Dead, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would make a fine date movie for a very specific crowd.

Director Burr Steers keeps the violence mostly off screen and the blood to a relative minimum, preferring to focus on the heaving post-fight-scene bosom. Which, let’s be honest, gets tiresome. He’s probably more intrigued by the image of gorgeously appointed young unmarrieds who hide daggers in their garters than he should be – these are the Bennet girls, for God’s sake – and herein lies the problem.

Burr seems unclear on the film’s audience. He’s unsure just how much action to pack into an Austen narrative, fuzzy on the amount of blood that’s appropriate to the tale, blurry on the balance of levity versus seriousness versus gore.

Lucky for him, this is a very proven story of delayed gratification and all the longing that accompanies it. Plus, zombies. It’s hard to go wrong here, and for the most part, PPZ doesn’t go too wrong. It’s an entertaining if uninspired retelling of a retelling of a tale you’ve heard, read, and seen a dozen times. But this time, Lizzy Bennet’s packing heat, which just seems right.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Masterful Restraint

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45 Years

by George Wolf

If you were surprised to see the name Charlotte Rampling in this year’s Oscar nominees, 45 Years will justify that recognition in a hurry.

It only takes a few scenes before you realize the subtle depth Rampling brings to her role as Kate Mercer, a woman on the verge of celebrating 45 years of marriage to her husband, Geoff (Tom Courtenay). As their big anniversary party approaches, a bombshell piece of news gets dropped.

Swiss authorities have recovered the body of Geoff’s old girlfriend Katya, five decades after she fell into a crevasse while the two were hiking. Though plans for the party move forward, the couple struggles with the effects of this sudden revelation.

Writer/director Andrew Haigh adapts David Constantine’s short story with elegance and restraint. Secrets are at work here, but they have nothing to do with Katya’s accident. What Haigh is after isn’t nearly as easy to define or resolve.

What bonds two people together for a lifetime? How easily can those bonds be shaken to the core?

Rampling and Courtenay are simple perfection, creating a lived-in chemistry that is utterly authentic. There is never a doubt that their characters have built their lives together, and the actors bring the gravitas that often renders dialog unnecessary. Half-hearted smiles and brief glances can be deafening, and Haigh confidently allows these small moments the space they need to cut deep.

Kate can “smell Katya’s perfume in every room,” and the curiosity about her husband’s former life begins to alter Kate’s perception of her entire marriage, just as that marriage is set to be celebrated for its success.

Rampling may indeed deliver the finest performance of her illustrious career. Ultimately, she is the conduit for making the couples’ intimate details resonate on a universal level, and she does it with deceptive ease.

45 Years may speak softly, but it compels you to listen hard, and sends you home from the party with a shattering final shot that may not leave your head for days.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

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Hey, What’s That Z About?

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Jeruzalem

by Hope Madden

Doran and Yoav Paz have hit upon a ripe premise. Inside the walled city of Jerusalem is the epicenter for three of the world’s largest and most eruptive religions. If Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all share one holy land, is there something about this place – something otherworldly? And wouldn’t this be the likely spot for the Armageddon to begin?

Jeruzalem opens promisingly enough, inviting you into this microcosm of faith and humanity to witness an event too big to even be called biblical. Unfortunately, the filmmaking brothers derail the effort almost immediately with a found footage gimmick.

Sarah (Danielle Jadelyn) receives Google Glass from her father as a gift. The entire balance of the film is basically a first person shooter video game with precious little in the way of shooting or action and far less in terms of character development.

It is so hard to do a decent job with found footage, a stunt that has far outlived its novelty. By virtue of some early-film contrivances, the Paz brothers manage to eliminate some of the obvious pitfalls of found footage, but the fact that we spend the film’s entire 87 minutes with that unnatural seeing-eyed view is Jeruzalem’s greatest drawback.

Sarah and her bestie Rachel (Yael Grobglas) are going to Tel Aviv and then onto Jerusalem. Sarah’s been unhappy since her brother’s recent death and Rach things this will perk her up. Running into that hot archeologist on board the plane (because archeologists are always gorgeous twentysomethings) did seem to boost Sarah’s mood, and now the girls have decided to hit Jerusalem first so they can spend more time with their own personal Indiana Jones (Yon Tumarkin).

Too bad they show up just in time for the end of days.

The Pazes unearth similarities in the judgement day tales of the three faiths, weaving them together into a kind of zombie myth, which, again, should have felt much more ingenious than it does. Their clever concept is utterly hamstrung by the film technique.

Watching as Sarah falls behind every time anyone runs, listening to her unrelenting and unrealistic breathing, sighing, crying, and screaming – it all becomes too tedious to bear. More than that, though, the fact that you are basically watching a zombie shooter video game in which zombies are almost never shot is incredibly frustrating on the most basic level.

It’s just a waste of a great idea.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcOg2Q0ZiB4

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Breaking the Waves

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The Finest Hours

by George Wolf

Plenty of films have created genuine tension telling stories where the outcome is already known. The Finest Hours may not reach the lofty heights of say, Argo, but it crafts a true-life adventure tale with an earnest and sometimes thrilling respect for the bravery involved.

Most of that respect goes to Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), the young Coast Guardsman who directed the greatest small boat rescue in the group’s history. In 1952, Bernie and a small crew braved brutal elements off the coast of Cape Cod to search for a stranded oil tanker that had been broken in half by the storm.

Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, Million Dollar Arm) seems most engaged by the set pieces involving the floundering tanker. As a desperate crew relies on the crafty ideas of Mister Sybert (Casey Affleck) to stay afloat, Gillespie creates a nicely paced contrast between the shrinking confines of the ship and the vast timelessness of the rising waters.

Back on land, we see an idealized, one-dimensional version of the 1950s. Bernie’s courtship of his future wife Miriam (Holliday Grainger) is sweet but superficial, as is most of the setup at Coast Guard base. The screenwriting team of Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson (The Fighter) draws parameters quickly, and for obvious purposes.

Bernie is a stickler for regulations, on a mission loaded with impossible obstacles. The more both points are labored, the less impactful it becomes when they fall away.

Pine has genuine movie star charisma, and he underplays Bernie nicely, but it is Gillespie who ultimately saves The Finest Hours. Not only does he make the sentimentality of the period details seem awkwardly appropriate, but lines such as “sometimes men die” and “not on my watch!” are more quickly forgiven amid spectacular storm sequences and the palpable tension of the actual rescue.

As effective as its finest moments may be, what The Finest Hours needs most is a deeper humanity to make it resonate after the credits. You end up saluting these heroes more than caring about them, keeping any lasting sea legs at bay.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

New In Theaters

Here’s Part One of Our Trilogy

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The 5th Wave

by George Wolf

You know the old slam on modern art, right?

“I could paint that!’

Everything about The 5th Wave is so cooly calculated, it feels like the result of watching “young adult” trilogies rake in millions, and copping that same attitude.

All the building blocks are here, but like so many of the other imitators, the finished product just reminds you again how much more effective The Hunger Games is at assembling them.

Cassie (Chloe Grace Moretz) is just a normal teenage girl in Ohio when the first wave of alien attacks hits. The incredibly lazy device of voiceover narration assures girls in the audience Cassie is just like them, so the film’s extended metaphor about surviving adolescence will resonate more quickly.

Cassie is conveniently separated from her parents, and she has a young sibling to protect, so those two boxes are quickly checked off. A love triangle you say? Cassie pines for her high school crush Ben (Nick Robinson), but then the hunky Evan (Alex Roe) saves her after she takes a bullet, and the aliens apparently haven’t touched his supply of hair gel or workout equipment so..conflicted emotions!

Even with all the usual trappings, there are possibilities hiding in The 5th Wave. Rick Yancey’s source novel includes a twist that could have been mined for effective social commentary, no matter how quickly you see it coming (hint: quickly).

Director J Blakeson (The Descent: Part 2) and his screenwriting team seem more interested in just feeding the YA beast. There’s no emotional payoff here, only cliched dialogue and convoluted padding to set up future installments, plus one unintentionally hilarious scene that metaphorically depicts teen sex.

Moretz has talent, and her charisma does manage to sell some of the action sequences, but as was the case with the woeful If I Stay, she plays down to the material and forgoes depth for mere posing. Her young co-stars are just more window dressing, but at least Maika Monroe (so good last year in It Follows) gets to say, to a barracks full of young soldiers being trained for alien battle, “Any of you touch me….and I’ll kill ya!”

Five bucks if you yell, “Lighten up, Francis!” at the screen.

Sorry, kids, that a reference to a stone-age movie called Stripes. Your parents will understand, and tell them to watch that again while you watch The 5th Wave.

 Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

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Dirty Work

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Dirty Grandpa

by George Wolf

Hey, I’m a simple man. When I see a guy in a horse head mask, I laugh.

Dirty Grandpa has a guy in a horse head mask, along with plenty of other funny business to offset the weak spots.

By the way, that “dirty” in the title is not there just for show. Grandpa (Robert DeNiro) is definitely dirty, and he has ladies on his mind about five minutes after his wife’s funeral. Playing the guilt card, he convinces Jason, his yuppie lawyer grandson (Zac Efron), to drive him down to Florida for a little family bonding.

And by “bonding,” Gramps means partying in Daytona for spring break, where he tries to get “Alan Douche-owitz” to forget his upcoming wedding and be Grandpa’s wingman.

Much of John Phillips’s debut screenplay is a scream, with DeNiro vigorously chewing on merciless putdowns or raunchy sex talk. An unusually chipper drug dealer (Jason Mantzoukas) and a pair of sarcastic cops (Mo Collins and Henry Zebrowski) also bring inspired nuttiness, but MVP honors here go to Aubrey Plaza.

As Lenore, a young spring breaker with a blank space next to “old man” on her to-do list, Plaza goes toe to toe with DeNiro in a riotous series of hilariously awkward who’s-gonna-blink-first exchanges. Their interplay is the consistent high point of the film.

Peaks, meet valleys.

The well of certain jokes is revisited once too often, and director Dan Mazer overplays his attempt to be an equal opportunity offender, as some of the gags – particularly those with sexist leanings – take on mean spirited edges. In a similar vein, “laughing with” quickly turns to “laughing at” when Grandpa grabs the mic for some painful rapping on karaoke night.

Jason’s relationship with his bitchy fiancé Meredith (Julianne Hough) is lifted straight from The Hangover, and expect the requisite mood music when it’s time for life lessons about fatherhood, chasing your dreams, and true love.

Will Jason be inspired to put aside what others expect from him and follow his heart? Can Jason’s attraction to cute coed Shadia overcome the complete lack of chemistry between Efron and co-star Zoey Deutch? Will Lenore and Grandpa get busy? Just who is under that horse head mask?

You’ll only care about half of those questions, and Dirty Grandpa will leave you laughing about half of the time.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

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Desperate Men Go Into the Desert

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Mojave

by Hope Madden

“I’m into motiveless malignacy. I’m a Shakespeare man.”

So begins the battle of wits and wills at the center of Mojave, writer/director William Monahan’s meditation on the alpha male.

Thomas (Garrett Hedlund) is having an existential crisis. He’s been famous his entire adult life, and now that he has everything, there’s nothing left for him to want. His downward spiral leads him into the desert, where he happens upon a drifter (Oscar Isaac).

The duo’s hyper-literate fireside exchange is tinged with predatory tones, each man intrigued by the shifting ground of dominant/submissive beneath the wordplay.

The stilted, noir-esque characters – including bizarre cameos from Walton Goggins and Mark Walberg – are too hard boiled to be authentic. Instead Monahan and his cast create entertainingly dead-eyed facsimiles of humans, each floating (often meaninglessly) in and out of the battling pair’s dilemma.

What is that dilemma? Well, something happened out in that desert, and as drifter Jack says, “The game is on, brother.”

The wealthy, handsome Thomas misjudges his lowlife adversary, but Jack is equally guilty of underestimating the superficial pretty boy he’s set as his mark. Don’t look for a good guy in this battle, though, because the world would be better off without either party, and they both know it.

Isaac ranks among the most talented actors working today. If you only know him from Star Wars, you need to look deeper into this chameleonic performer’s work. He struggles here and there with Mojave, though, because Monahan’s writing makes it hard to find a real person beneath all the machismo.

Hedlund is no Isaac, but it’s fun to see the chemistry between the two (who shared a similarly uncomfortable chemistry during their fateful car ride in Inside Llewyn Davis).

Ultimately the cat-and-mouse thriller drowns in its own testosterone – the pair of utterly suicidal antiheroes buckling beneath their burdensome masculinity. Still, as literary references abound and the more-alike-than-different outsiders bristle at societal constraint, this over-written mess remains curiously fascinating.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pwwVQ8YCl4

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Boy Meets World

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Boy and the World

by Hope Madden

Often a joyous riot of colors and sounds, and just as often a somber and spare smattering of dehumanizing imagery, Boy and the World poignantly encapsulates the clashing emotions and evolving comprehension of the human spirit.

Ale Abreu’s Oscar nominee for Best Animated Film offers deceptively simple animation to pull you into complex ideas. Boy – the wee, titular character who is about to start quite an adventure – sees a wondrous, kaleidoscopic world saturated with confusing but fascinating sounds and images, colors and experiences.

But as thrilling and vibrant as these early moments are, Abreu’s vision is edged with cynicism. It’s an idea that takes hold sporadically, when industrialization depletes the chaotic energy from the screen, when scores of stooped stick figures lose their meager jobs, when urban blight changes the tone from primary colors to smoky browns and greys, and finally when animation gives over to live action footage of deforestation.

Though the filmmaker’s themes are always evident – occasionally less subtle than they might be – the heartbeat of the story is that of the imaginative, innocent Boy. It gives the whole film a touch of sadness, but balances the anger with an optimism and innocence that’s often beguiling.

A contagious score from Ruben Feffer and Gustavo Kurlat emboldens Abreu’s pictures, emphasizing the vibrancy of the individual’s spirit as well as the celebration of human connection.

Boy’s journey is a circuitous one, a coming of age and acceptance informed by struggle and nostalgia but brightened with bursts of color.

There is something terribly lonesome but simultaneously jubilant about Boy and the World. It’s a heady mix from a confident new filmmaker, and a welcome addition to an entirely laudable set of animated Oscar contenders.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Bay Really Tried

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13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

by Hope Madden

While it may be tough to separate the release of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi from the US presidential race, there’s little question that the tale itself offers the kind of compelling material suitable for the big screen.

Director Michael Bay helms the film chronicling the disastrous consequences of understaffing the security detail surrounding an American ambassador and a secret CIA installation in one of the globe’s most unstable nations.

The trivia section for this film’s IMDB page notes that this is Michael Bay’s third film based on true events, after Pearl Harbor and Pain & Gain. That does not inspire a lot of optimism. And yet, for a Michael Bay film, 13 Hours is surprisingly restrained, respectful, and solid.

Had it been any other director, the word “restrained” would probably not appear in that sentence, but Bay dials down his own bombast to a degree that is genuinely surprising.

The screenplay, written by Chuck Hogan from Boston Globe reporter Mitchell Zuckoff’s book (co-written by surviving members of the security team), offers the point of view of the veteran security detail hired by the CIA to police and protect their compound. Staffed by retired Marines, Navy SEALs, and Army Special Forces, the security team on the ground on the 11th anniversary of the September 11th attacks had the skills, but not the number, to contend with the organized militant attack.

John Krasinski and James Badge Dale anchor the film with believable if under-dimensional performances of two of the security contractors in a by-the-numbers combat procedural.

Sidestepping politics in favor of nerve-shredding action, Bay creates set piece after explosion-and-firebombing-ready set piece. His tendencies and crutches are on full display, though the film feels relatively simply crafted when compared to his other atrocious efforts. It’s a welcome change of pace because self-congratulatory violence would undermine this truly harrowing ordeal.

Yes, CIA agents are painted as one-dimensional pencil pushers jealous of and abusive to their physically superior security guards; yes, individual character weaknesses are exaggerated; yes, tragedies and fatalities are telegraphed from the opening scene. And, yes, the story these survivors have to tell would likely have been better handled by another filmmaker.

13 Hours, though, is not a terrible film. It’s no Zero Dark Thirty, not even a Lone Survivor, and perhaps the sheer volume of blood spilled for the sake of excitement and hoo-rah is too great to consider the film deeply respectful of its subject matter. But I think it’s safe to say that Bay really tried, and, to a limited degree, he succeeded.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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Miamerly Hills Cops

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Ride Along 2

by George Wolf

A year ago, Ride Along used the 48 Hours formula to give Kevin Hart a mainstream buddy cop vehicle. It worked, at least at the box office, so part two rewrites another Eddie Murphy classic to equally disappointing results.

Since emerging as a bumbling hero in part one, security guard Ben Barber (Hart) has become an actual Atlanta police officer. But, he’s still just a rookie beat cop, several rungs below his future brother-in-law, veteran detective James Payton (Ice Cube).

When they bust a local thug with mysterious ties to the Miami crime scene, James gets the green light to head south alone and follow some leads. Ben? No way! He’s too green and unfocused, and still has no idea what serious detective work is about! Shut up, it’s not gonna happen!

So it happens, and the pair hits South Beach, spurring Ben’s hope for a catchy nickname such as “the Brothers In Law!” In short order, the BIL team up with a Miami detective (Olivia Munn) and a computer hacker on the run (Ken Jeong) to try and prove a prominent businessman (Benjamin Bratt) is actually a violent crime lord.

As with the first go round, Ride Along 2 makes you wonder why it’s taking so long for a film to take full advantage of Kevin Hart’s comedic talent. The About Last Night reboot came close, but Hart’s was a supporting role overshadowed by the boring leads. Here, it’s the laziness of not rocking a popular boat.

Director Tim Story and screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi all return from the original Ride Along, crafting an obvious rewrite of Beverly Hills Cop with an over-reliance on Hart making faces, Cube looking tough and Munn sporting cleavage. All three are better than this.

There are a few genuine laughs here, but they are buried under silly contrivance and the dead horse beating of James and Ben’s no-you-can’t-yes-I-can banter. We get it.

What we don’t get, again, is a project that takes full advantage of the talent involved.

Verdict-2-5-Stars