Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

I Throw Food in Your General Direction

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Burnt

by George Wolf

What was once Adam Jones is now Burnt, a film that, by any name, will quickly be forgotten.

Bradley Cooper stars as Mr. Jones, a once-respected American chef in Paris who lost it all to drugs. After getting sober and doing penance by shucking a million oysters in New Orleans (seriously, one million, he counted), Jones heads to London to round up old friends and get back on top!

Despite the gorgeously photographed cuisine, much of what Burnt serves up is strictly processed, pre-packaged and overheated.

Screenwriter Steven Weight sports an impressive resume (Locke, Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises), which makes this clunky script a curiosity. Early exposition is hurried and obvious, where lines such as “But I said to myself, you’re a lesbian, so…” and “We were like brothers!” put characters in shallow, easily accessible boxes.

After a roundup of crew members (Sienna Miller, Daniel Bruhl) that comes dangerously close to the Blues Brothers putting the band back together, everyone falls in line with Jones’s plan for a posh new eatery and a wish to cook food that “makes people want to stop eating.”

Wait, wouldn’t that be bad for business?

Director John Wells (The Company Men) supplies montages aplenty along the route to a destination that is never in doubt. Jones hurls food, breaks plates and screams at his staff while battling demons and learning to look beyond himself.

It’s all mildly entertaining, but a waste of the talent involved. Cooper and Miller both dig in, their performances all the more impressive for how they in no way resemble the same humans who co-starred so magnificently in American Sniper just last year.

Mainly, Burnt feels lazy, as if a good character study was here at some point, but too many focus group edits whittled it down to something that doesn’t aspire past “good enough.”

Check please.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

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

New In Theaters

Be Prepared

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Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

by Hope Madden

“Do you know what’s cooler than cool? Scouting!”

OK, maybe not, but Boy Scouts are exactly the people you need on your zombie survival team. Who doesn’t know that? They know how to tie knots properly, they can forage, find their way around in the woods, and they’re handy. They’re prepared. Duh.

Director Christopher Landon, working with a team of writers, puts this wickedly logical premise into action with his new horror comedy Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.

The only three scouts left in Scout Leader Rogers’s (a characteristically wacky David Koechner) troop are at a crossroads. Augie (Joey Morgan) thinks scouting is the best. “Scouts forever!”

Carter (Logan Miller) wants to ditch the uniforms and badges before their high school reputations are ruined forever. “Junior year is the year all the girls become sluts!”

Ben (Tye Sheridan) is torn between both really convincing arguments.

And then zombies overrun the town and they’re glad 1) they weren’t invited to the super-secret cool kids’ party, and 2) they have mad scouting skills.

After a series of really impressive dramatic turns (The Tree of Life, Mud, Joe), Sheridan shoulders the lead in this coming-of-age comedy quite well. He’s a talented actor, able to fill out what could have been a one-dimensional good guy role.

Both Miller and Morgan fit the bill as the goofball sidekicks, while pros like Koechner and Cloris Leachman fill out the rank and putrid ensemble. (Not the actors – their characters.)

The film will win no feminism badges, but a story told from the point of view of three 15-year-old boys should probably be preoccupied with boobs and other assorted whatnot.

This is not a family film, though – make no mistake. This is definitely an R-rated movie, but for all its juvenile preoccupations and vulgar body horror, a childlike sweetness runs through it that keeps it forever fun to watch.

Says Augie upon entering a girl’s bedroom, “It smells like pixie stix and hope in here.”

Cleverly written, directed with a keen eye toward detail and pacing, brimming with laughs, gore, friendship, and dismembered appendages – but utterly lacking in cynicism or irony – it’s a blast of a film with a lot to offer.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

New In Theaters

Simply Complex

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The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers

by George Wolf

Director Richard Trank follows up 2013’s The Pioneers with part two of his The Prime Ministers documentaries, Soldiers and Peacemakers, a less theatrical but equally determined look at Israeli history.

In truth, it is a film which stretches the definition of “documentary” to the breaking point. Calling it a lecture or presentation might be more suitable, as it consists entirely of thoughts from Israeli diplomat and author Yehuda Avner punctuated with historical still photos and news footage.

Trank eschews the celebrity voiceovers he utilized in The Pioneers for a more basic approach, which amounts to both a positive and a negative. While there’s no distracting gimmickry of Sandra Bullock providing the voice of Golda Meir, hearing from anyone other than Avner eventually becomes long overdue.

From the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states in 1947 to more latter-day tensions with Syria, Avner, and only Avner, dissects how the different Israeli Prime Ministers have made their historical marks.

That’s not to throw shade at his credentials, but when you hear Avner stress how complicated the Middle East situation is, you realize a great way to illustrate that would be to include other viewpoints.

Trank doesn’t, and Soldiers and Peacemakers becomes a detailed, overlong sermon to the choir.

 

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

 

 

 

 

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So Much for Brand Names

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Our Brand is Crisis

by Hope Madden

In 2005, with her film Our Brand is Crisis, documentarian Rachel Boynton unveiled the puppeteering that American political-strategists-for-hire undertake the world over. Her film followed James Carville’s team as they set their sights on putting their candidate in office during Bolivia’s 2002 presidential elections. With insight, cynicism, mirth and horror she detailed their “no wrong but losing” efforts – and its bloody aftermath – breathtakingly painting the way competition utterly eclipsed the good of a nation.

Director David Gordon Green takes a stab at updating Boynton’s tale, adapted by the generally quite wonderful Peter Straughan (Frank, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). They enlist Sandra Bullock as “Calamity” Jane Bodine, a longtime political strategist who, after a series of embarrassing losses and a spate of even more embarrassing behavior, has retired from the biz.

But she’s pulled out of retirement – What? No way! What’s the lure? It’s not the lame duck Bolivian presidential candidate supported by former colleague Nell and her partner Ben (Ann Dowd and Anthony Mackie – both embarrassingly underused). No, it’s the involvement of old nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton – the spitting image of Carville), lead strategist for the leading candidate.

An unkempt Bullock and slickly creepy Thornton offer fiery chemistry, and as long as they share the screen, Our Brand is Crisis captivates. But the film can’t decide whether it’s a political comedy, a change-of-heart drama, or an underdog thriller.

While Straughan is an almost sure bet, Green’s unpredictable thumbprint as director is more of a question mark. His best films blend comedy and drama with an almost poetic balance, but he cannot find his footing here.

Straughan’s uncharacteristically muddled writing sinks sharply comical jabs at our political machinery with an undercooked conscience, a patronizing representation of Bolivians, and an oh-so-tired White Savior routine.

Although Scoot McNairy is a hoot.

In retrospect, it’s hard to explain the hot mess that is Our Brand is Crisis. It had all the elements it needed to be a winner – talented director, wonderful writer, heavy-hitting cast. Sometimes, though, even a sure bet comes up a loser.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

New In Theaters

Miss Wiig If You’re Nasty

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Nasty Baby

by George Wolf

So, does Nasty Baby live up to its title?

No, not really.

You won’t find any devil child on a bloody rampage, or any precocious toddler cracking dirty jokes with the help of a celebrity voiceover.

Instead, writer/director Sebastian Silva (The Maid, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus) delivers a semi-autobiographical slice of adulthood that keeps you cleverly off balance until it makes a drastic narrative decision that is likely to win it as many detractors as it does converts. Indeed, Silva has said the Toronto Film Festival was so turned off by the third act, it rejected the film entirely.

The “Nasty Baby” is actually a video project that Freddy (Silva) is hoping to debut at a New York gallery. But lately, he’s been trying to secure a different sort of arrival.

Freddy and his live-in boyfriend Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) want a baby, and their friend Polly (Kristen Wiig) wants to help, but after several tries at artificial insemination, Freddy’s sperm count is found to be a bit low. The obvious answer is for Mo to step up, but he is having reservations about such a commitment.

Meanwhile, a small annoyance in their Brooklyn neighborhood is slowly turning into something bigger. A local resident who calls himself “The Bishop” is making noise much too early in the morning, shouting at Freddy, and getting aggressively friendly with Polly.

Is he a harmless nut fighting gentrification, or a potentially dangerous threat?

The gradual manner in which The Bishop affects the lives of the three main characters is Silva’s skillful device for upsetting the conventions usually seen in this genre. Nasty Baby may be a difficult film to love, but that is precisely what makes it effective.

A loose, improvisational script, subtle direction and finely drawn performances draw you into a recognizable neighborhood where you feel comfortable – until you don’t.

There are countless films you want badly to like, but know in your heart they don’t earn it. Nasty Baby sits proudly on the opposite pole, inviting your scorn until you realize it’s gotten completely under your skin.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

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… or Consequences

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Truth

by Hope Madden

James Vanderbilt’s Truth is hardly the first film to point out the folly of marrying journalism and profit. From Sidney Lumet’s 1976 masterpiece Network to last year’s creepily spectacular Nightcrawler, cinematic history is littered with brilliant examples of this disastrous partnership.

Truth stands apart for two reasons. 1) The recent history lesson is, in fact, a real life event, and 2) Cate Blanchett stars.

The film is at its best as an excavation of the bits and pieces of a 2004 story produced by Mary Mapes (Blanchett) and reported by Dan Rather (Robert Redford) for Sixty Minutes II, a now-defunct Wednesday night airing of the CBS news program.

In 2004, Mapes – having recently broken the story of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse – chose to dig in to George W. Bush’s less-than-impressive Texas Air National Guard records. It was the middle of an election during which his opponent John Kerry’s military record was being “swift boated.” It was also the dawn of an age in journalism: make enough noise about an inconsequential detail and the story itself becomes nothing but background noise.

Vanderbilt’s screenplay, based on Mapes’s book “Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power,” chronicles both the details of the reporting and the larger machinations of political power-wielding and corporate gutlessness, landing on some tragic consequences for a population interested in the truth.

Conservative bloggers insisted Mapes used forged documentation – a fact that could never be 100% corroborated or dispelled – and in one of the ugliest scenes of corporate media overreaction and cowardice, CBS fired Mapes and her team and forced Dan Rather into disgraced retirement.

Like Vanderbilt’s screenplay for the David Fincher film Zodiac, Truth is alive with details. Unfortunately, Fincher’s skill behind the camera gave Zodiac the compelling pull of a mystery, where Vanderbilt’s focus waffles between minutia and big picture without an elegant flow.

There are moments of real greatness here, especially as the story begins to crumble before Mapes’s eyes, and decisions made in the heat of story construction come back to haunt her. Basically, Blanchett is perfect, even when the writing fails her, even when the direction feels underwhelming. She’s fiery and raw, creating a character who is naturally in battle at all times.

Redford, on the other hand, comes casually to Dan Rather. He does not look the part. He looks like Robert Redford, which is curious given that he’s playing a public figure. But it isn’t long into the performance that you find an understated, dignified man whose professionalism and scruples have fallen out of fashion.

The film is a scary, flawed, but fascinating look at a frighteningly flawed and fascinating business.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

New In Theaters

Shareef Don’t Like It

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Rock the Kasbah

by George Wolf

“Star Waaaaars! Nothing but Staaar Waaarrrs!”

It’s been nearly forty years since Bill Murray’s Nick the Lounge Singer crooned on SNL. Wouldn’t it be a kick to check in and see how life has treated Nick Ocean?

Rock the Kasbah could have been that movie. Too bad, because instead we get a few solid moments of Murray lunacy amid the wildly unfocused whitewashing of one courageous woman’s journey.

Murray is Richie Lanz, a struggling L.A. talent agent who catches a break when his client/secretary Ronnie (Zooey Deschanel) gets booked on a USO tour…in Afghanistan. Ronnie quickly regrets entertaining in a war zone, so she hires local mercenary Bombay Brian (Bruce Willis) to get her out of the country post haste.

While Richie is trying to figure out a way home himself, he’s befriended by a native cabbie (Arian Moayed), the local hooker with a heart of gold (Kate Hudson), and two crazy ammunition peddlers (Scott Caan and Danny McBride).

It’s all silly, contrived and only mildly amusing, but when a job offer from the ammo guys takes Richie to Pakistan, he hears the young Salima (Leem Lubany) singing and instantly decides he needs to introduce her to the world.

Richie is told singing in public would bring a death sentence for Salima, but she stows away in his cab back to Kabul, and defiantly auditions for the TV show Afghan Star.

It’s all built around real events in the life of Setara Hussainzada, who still faces death threats after revealing her face and competing on Afghan Star. Her story has been told in two documentaries – 2009’s Afghan Star and 2010’s Silencing the Song – and is certainly deserving of a serious dramatic treatment. Though she does get a nice acknowledgment before the credits, screenwriter Mitch Glazer and director Barry Levinson are more interested in the “white savior” angle and creating a comedy vehicle for Murray.

Thud.

Characters disappear at will, plot lines are invented and ignored, no one really seems interested, and the Kasbah is left more bored than rocked.

“Please let these Star Wars……staaaaaaaaay!”

If only.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Pretty One Dimensional

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Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

by Hope Madden

“That doesn’t conclude anything!”

This – the disappointed outcry from an audience member as the closing credits rolled on Paranormal Acvitity: The Ghost Dimension – only scratches the surface of the problems with this film.

The sixth feature in the series begun in 2007 with Oren Peli’s ultra-low-budget indie seeks to tie together all the various strands of storyline spun from the previous efforts and put the final bow on the franchise.

Ryan (Chris J. Murray) invites his heavily mustachioed brother Mike (Dan Gill) to spend some post-breakup time with him and his family over the holidays. Also visiting – Toby. You may remember Toby from such hauntings as Paranormal Activity 3.

Mike will wish he’d visited his mom instead.

The entire cast does a perfectly serviceable job, and Ivy George is devastatingly adorable as young Leila, the object of Toby’s interest. But Jesus, her parents are stupid!

Mike and Ryan come across a giant, old, eighties-style camcorder when digging out Christmas decorations. It’s so nutty! With it you can see things like giant black tar monsters lurking over your baby daughter’s bed – too crazy. Wonder whether you should do something about that immediately, or debate with your wife about whether the camera’s just broken. Because, you know, it’s not like your daughter’s in jeopardy.

Once a priest is attacked in the house, you might expect the houseguests to politely exit – particularly the friend of the family who’s visiting for no important reason. But no! There is apparently nothing that will make her spring for a hotel while she’s in town for her yoga retreat – not even the malevolent presence of a demon.

Speaking of – and I know I’m picking nits here – but why go to the bother of explaining to us film after film after film that we are dealing with a demon, not a ghost, and then call the final movie in your franchise The Ghost Dimension?

For what it is – a low rent found footage spookfest – this franchise has actually managed to break the law of diminishing returns for a long time, but their luck began to slip a couple episodes ago. Let’s hope this really is their final effort.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

New In Theaters

God Save the (Scream) Queen

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The Final Girls

by Hope Madden

Part of the satisfying lull of a slasher film is its predictability: idiotic characters behave lasciviously and are repaid for their indignities with the hard justice of a machete. They are scary movies for people who don’t really want to be scared, they’d rather enjoy the idiocy.

People like, I think we can assume, co-writers M. A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller, whose The Final Girls celebrates the genre and its fans with a meta-flick brimming with genre affection and upbeat carnage.

Max (Taissa Farmiga) never really got over the loss of her mother, scream queen Amanda Cartwright (Malin Akerman). She and her friends find themselves pulled into Mom’s most famous film – the ‘80s slasher Camp Bloodbath – and need to use their knowledge of slasher conventions to survive.

The film is far more a comedy than a horror flick – the casting of Adam DeVine (Workaholics) alone clarifies that. But don’t expect a spoof or cynical parody. There’s real love for the ironic pleasures of the genre that keeps the film lighthearted and fresh.

Director Todd Strauss-Schulson deconstructs the overly familiar genre, replacing its mean spirit with broad strokes of goofiness. He and his cast see these characters as something one-dimensional, but still worthwhile – rather than presenting them as simply the ingredients for Camp Counselor Slurry.

Supporting work from DeVine, Tom Middleditch, Angela Trimbur, and Alia Shawkat freshens up the predictability with sharp, spontaneous comedy that elevates the film above its clever gimmick.

The film shoehorns in some emotion as well, but it’s at its best when reveling in the familiar. Farmiga is saddled with the least playful, mostly humorless role, but her dour presence is offset by the fun lunacy around her.

There are flat spots, and the film is never the laugh riot of other recent horror comedies (Deathgasm, for instance), but it is a spot-on send up that entertains throughout.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

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Intelligent Design

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Steve Jobs

by George Wolf

The first voice you hear in Steve Jobs is from legendary writer Arthur C. Clarke, explaining in a decades-old interview the many ways computers will one day affect human life.

It’s not only a clever way to introduce a film anchored in the rise of personal computers, it’s a subtle reminder that some people just see the future better than others.

From there, writer Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle take a visionary approach themselves, crafting an appropriately intense and completely engrossing profile of Jobs’s history with Apple, Inc.

We get a character study in three acts: the launch of the Mac brand in 1984, Jobs’s start of Next computers in ’88 after his ouster from Apple, and his triumphant 1998 return to the company he co-founded. A more traditional biopic style may still have been compelling, but it would never be the mesmerizing time capsule film Steve Jobs is.

Sorkin and Boyle understand that a man so self-aggrandizing and obsessed with design deserves a treatment that is both. Sorkin’s wordplay – always of the smartest-guy-in-the-room variety (because, let’s face it, in most rooms he probably is) is piercing and ambitious, barely pausing for air before another sharp line finds its mark.

The settings seldom move beyond the backstage areas of convention halls, but Boyle – as he did so masterfully with the claustrophobic 127 Hours – expands the film’s universe with effective flashbacks and fluid camerawork. The look is appropriately sleek and almost poetic, highlighted by a beautiful image of Apple board members voting to fire Jobs beneath windows being pummeled by the pouring rain.

Michael Fassbender delivers a masterwork as Steve Jobs, making him an utterly fascinating enigma. This is miles away from a complete biography, but Fassbender takes full advantage of the chances Sorkin and Boyle give him to offer glimpses behind the bluster and into Jobs’s psyche.

The sublime supporting cast offers more greatness. Kate Winslet (as Jobs’s longtime marketing exec and all-around right hand Joanna Hoffman), Jeff Daniels (Apple CEO John Scully) and Michael Stuhlbarg (computer scientist Andy Hertzfield) display the nuance and humanity that they so often do, while Seth Rogen doesn’t shrink from his call up to the big leagues.

As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Rogen brings impressive dramatic chops to a role integral to some of the film’s most powerful scenes, as “Woz” pleads with his old friend to give a small measure of credit to someone other than Steve Jobs.

It is a movie that’s overly dramatic in spots and yes, idealistic as well, but that feels more than fitting for a look at the wages of genius. Challenging and ferocious, brilliantly conceived and performed, Steve Jobs is nothing short of thrilling cinema.

 

Verdict-4-5-Stars