Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

So Bad It’s Criminal

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Hot Pursuit

by Hope Madden

Remember Election – Alexander Payne’s 1999 movie about high school student body electoral process? Reese Witherspoon was funny. She was also truly funny in Legally Blonde, a film that had no business working at all and yet did, miraculously, because of Witherspoon.

While Sofia Vergara isn’t quite as proven on the big screen, four Emmy nominations suggest she has some comic talent as well. So, if we can’t blame them, why in the world is Hot Pursuit so, so awful?

Better yet, why in the hell did they sign up to do it?

Witherspoon plays Cooper, an uptight cop assigned to transport duty. She needs to get a recently widowed drug lord’s wife to Dallas to testify against her late husband’s boss.

Things go terribly wrong, obviously, and soon Hot Pursuit clarifies itself as a fish out of water buddy cop cliché of a road trip movie.

They have nothing in common, you see. Cooper’s uptight, small, intense, while Vergara’s Daniella is a steaming pile of racial stereotypes. Daniella has big boobs, but Cooper dresses like a boy. How can they ever make it to Dallas?

Anne Fletcher, who also helmed the abysmal road trip cliché The Guilt Trip, outdoes herself with this one. Not one joke lands, not one gag goes over, not a frame of the film feels anything other than stale and beneath the talent involved.

David Feeney and John Quaintance took a break from anemic TV sitcoms to pen this. Dan Fogelman wrote The Guilt Trip, which means that Fletcher intentionally chose two separate, awful road trip movies to bring to the screen. Why? Does she hate us?

Witherspoon and Vergara work hard to keep this thing afloat, and Witherspoon fares a little better because at least her character is not outright offensive. There’s almost chemistry between the two – something that might have translated into a fun onscreen bond if either one of them had a single funny line to deliver. Banter is really too much to hope for.

Verdict-1-0-Star

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A Tenacious D

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The D Train

by George Wolf

Funny thing about The D Train…it’s not really funny.

In fact, if Jack Black wasn’t the lead, you’d be hard pressed to describe it as a comedy in the first place. It’s awkward, uncomfortable in spots, slightly amusing in others and carries exactly one big laugh out loud moment. But it also has a big heart, an unexpected social conscience, thoughtful writing and fine performances that make it worth a look.

Black stars as Dan, a socially challenged guy in Pittsburgh who keeps inventing nicknames for himself in hopes that one of them will stick. Think George Costanza and his quest to be called T-Bone, but less abrasive.

Dan remains stoic and upbeat, taking his position as chairman of his 20th high school class reunion committee very seriously…even if none of the other members will include him in their after meeting get-togethers. The RSVPs for the reunion are pretty sparse, but then Dan sees old classmate Oliver Lawless (James Marsden) in a TV commercial for sunscreen and has an epiphany.

He’ll come up with a bogus reason for an L.A. business trip, track Oliver down and convince the homegrown Hollywood star to come back for the reunion. With that, attendance will skyrocket and Dan will finally be the BMOC of his dreams!

It will come as no surprise that things don’t quite go as planned. What is surprising is how the film turns away from comedic high jinks to embrace a little introspection in today’s complicated times. Writers Andrew Mogul and Jarrad Paul (Yes Man) also make their directing debut with The D Train, displaying a commendable, if not completely successful ambition to bring a classic genre some fresh perspective.

While they cast the always funny Kathryn Hahn as Dan’s wife Stacey, she is asked to do nothing at all comedic. Talent wasted? Maybe. Or maybe her sympathetic turn is another way the film keeps you guessing and consistently entertained despite the lack of hilarity.

Both Black and Marsden are perfect, crafting a nice chemistry as they gradually give Dan and Oliver some layers of insecurity and misconception that may look pretty familiar.

You won’t be quoting many lines from The D Train at your next party, but you won’t be regretting the trip either.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

 

New In Theaters

Don’t Cry, Sad Clown

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Misery Loves Comedy

by Hope Madden

Is every clown really a sad clown? In his debut as a documentarian, actor Kevin Pollak seeks to find the answer to that question by asking it (or variations of it) to 50 or so of the brightest comic minds of the day.

Who? Tom Hanks, Amy Schumer, Martin Short, Jimmy Fallon, Janeane Garofalo, Judd Apatow and dozens of other stand-up comics and comedic writers and performers. What Pollak wants in return is a glimpse into the shared psyche of the funnyman.

Who were their influences? When did they realize they were funny? What’s it like to bomb onstage? To kill? They’re interesting enough questions and sometimes the answers are fun to watch, but the sheer volume of responses almost requires that the film remain superficial.

His doc would have benefitted had Pollak narrowed down the interviewees, perhaps focusing solely on stand-up comics. We also hear from film directors, sit-com actors and one radio morning show. The breadth only draws attention to the lack of depth.

And yet, there are ways in which the cast feels very narrow. The group is – whether inadvertently or not – pretty white and male. Pollak may simply have raided his own personal phone book, calling in favors from friends for the film, but the result is breathtakingly one sided. He talks with 5 or 6 women, one of whom (Whoopi Goldberg) is not white. He also talks to one male (Kumail Nanjani) who isn’t white.

So, 40+ white guys tell us about the context of being funny. Presumably this is not because of some deeply held belief of Pollak’s, but that doesn’t excuse it. Forget that whatever thesis he may be trying to put forward is irredeemably skewed by this, the fact that anyone could direct a documentary about stand-up comedy without including the point of view of one African American male – no Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, Tracy Morgan – is astonishing.

Plus, honestly, the film itself is almost never actually funny. He talks to fifty funny people about being funny yet catches almost no comedy on film. What?

In the end the film is dedicated to the memory of Robin Williams, and I’m sure Pollak’s heart was in the right place. It’s just that nothing else was.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

New In Theaters

She’ll Be Back

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Maggie

by Hope Madden

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in the zombie flick Maggie, but Conan the Zombarian it is not.

Forget the set pieces, explosions, pacing and quips generally associated with the big Austrian. Here he plays an anxious Midwestern father in a time shortly after the zombipocalypse. His teenage daughter (Abigail Breslin) is a member of the infected and he is more interested in protecting her from the outside world than in protecting the outside world from her.

Director Henry Hobson’s feature debut upends expectations no matter what they may be. By blending genres and placing stars in very different situations than their norm he’s opened the audience up to accepting some odd turns. The film itself does not always deliver on this intriguing promise, but despite the slow pace and quiet tones, it keeps your attention because you can never be sure what will happen next.

Breslin, already the star of one of the best zombie comedies of all time (Zombieland), proves a nuanced performer with this pensive turn as a teen awaiting the inevitable. Schwarzenegger has never offered as dialed-down and somber a performance, and while the film is absolutely Breslin’s show, his support is tender and unexpected.

Maggie is a character study, and a gamey twist on the coming of age film as father and daughter wait – not for that impending dawning of womanhood, but for her imminent death, and what comes after. Hobson and screenwriter John Scott 3 are not in it for exploitation. Although the film inevitably gives over to sentimentality, the filmmakers’ restraint throughout allow the proceedings a little dignity.

The film may have a tough time finding a niche. Schwarzenegger’s fans may hope for something a little flashier while genre fans may be left unsatisfied. But Maggie has something to offer. It’s a small film that explores something relatable and intimate, even if it chooses an unusual setting to do it.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

New In Theaters

Doin’ It For Themselves

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Girlhood

by Hope Madden

Moments after Girlhood’s perfectly disconcerting opening, you settle into the world of its protagonist, Marieme, but writer/director Celine Sciamma has already told you something very important. You shouldn’t assume anything.

Few, if any, films have been able to do justice to coming of age the way Sciamma’s does. Girlhood is a character study, following Marieme (Karidja Toure) through her days as an adolescent in a deprived Paris project, struggling against each of her equally unappealing life options.

Good girl Marieme sees one important door toward opportunity close. On the same day, she catches the eye of a trio of wilder girls and slowly she finds the joy in extending her adolescence and the power in solidarity and sisterhood.

Sciamma, thanks to a quietly powerful performance from Toure, represents more than just the bittersweet romance and nostalgia generally associated with the coming of age film. Saying goodbye to childhood is rarely as simple and lovely as movies make it out to be, and Sciamma’s interest is in seeing the same transition from an under represented point of view. The fact that this feels so fresh is itself an indictment. For Marieme, her choices are limited along racial, sexual and socioeconomic lines, but Sciamma’s perceptive film is too honest and understated to feel preachy.

Wisely, Sciamma disregards every filmmaking technique we’ve come to expect in a movie about a girl blossoming into womanhood. Her observant style, cast of amateur actors, and her own penetrating storytelling give the proceedings a quiet authenticity.

Like Sciamma’s previous films Tomboy and Water Lillies, Girlhood explores youth in crisis. She never judges her characters, and Toure’s ability to showcase her character’s humility and strength simultaneously ensure the audience’s empathy.

The storyline is necessarily untidy as Marieme takes on and casts off wildly different personas, illuminating the almost heartbreaking courage of youth. Regardless of the choices she makes from among the options limited by discrimination on almost every front, we must root for her fight for a life she can accept.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

New In Theaters

When Worlds Collide

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Story of My Death

by Hope Madden

Infamous womanizer Giacomo Casanova’s autobiography “Story of My Life” became an irreplaceable documentation of 18th Century Europe. His libertine lifestyle and the age it represents come to an unusual conclusion in the hands of Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra, whose film Story of My Death introduces Casanova to another major European literary figure, Dracula.

Weird, right?

Well, it is certainly unique, as is every frame of Serra’s film. Utterly naturalistic performances, a judgment free approach to the proceedings, a painterly cinematic quality and a very loose narrative structure keep the film feeling simultaneously realistic and surreal.

Casanova (Vincenc Altaio) spends his waning years in his castle penning memoirs, then embarks on an extended journey to more rustic locales in the Carpathian Mountains.

Altaio brings something wonderfully fresh to his turn as Casanova, a performance that’s all sensuality and no smolder, no seduction. Delighted by bodily functions and enamored with every sensuous aspect of daily life, he makes for an unusual hero in a deeply peculiar film.

His Casanova is an overripe figure – something, like his era, just a bit past its spoil date. We spend fully half the film lazing about his castle with him and his coterie, slurping pomegranates (among other things!) and waxing poetic. Serra’s lighting and framing take on a magisterial quality, but all this – the flouncing, the debauchery, the balance of light and dark – develops a more brutal, sinister quality as the film moves to its second half out on the mountainside.

The daintiness of the chateau has no place in this land of the hardy. While Casanova’s behavior back home elicited nonchalance, here in Romania it finds disdain, whispers of condemnation, worries over wickedness.

Why does Casanova meet Dracula (Eliseu Huertas)? Serra’s image is less a monster mash up than a metaphor. By pitting iconic figures of the two eras, the film animates the moment that the age of reason gave way to the Romantic period, when reason took a back seat to darker thinking.

Serra’s film is never quite as simple as that, with every seemingly random and spontaneous scene nonetheless riddled with metaphors and busy with details. From concept to execution, his film is a unique piece of art that will confound and entertain in equal measure.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

New In Theaters

A Maria Full of Grace

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Clouds of Sils Maria

by George Wolf

Somewhere between Twilight and the tabloids, Kristen Stewart began doing some real acting. She’s better than ever in Clouds of Sils Maria, and though hers is a supporting role alongside one of the screen’s major talents, Stewart pulls plenty of weight in a terrific drama with much to say.

Juliette Binoche is customarily excellent as Maria, a famous actress returning to the stage in a revival of the play that launched her career twenty years earlier. This time, though, she’s playing the older female lead, while a Lindsay Lohan clone named Jo-Ann (Chloe Grace Moretz, striking just the right tone of clueless entitlement) is taking the role Maria originated.

Stewart is Maria’s ever-present personal assistant Valentine, who not only runs both errands and lines for Maria, but serves as her bridge to a younger generation.

Writer/director Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours) takes the intimate psychological playground of Polanski’s Venus in Fur, and laces it with the pop culture commentary of Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. Binoche and Stewart swim gracefully inside the play within a play setup, slowly moving Maria and Valentine in directions that mirror the script both characters are reading.

The actresses display an easy chemistry, never more apparent than when Valentine is trying to sell Maria on the merits of young Hollywood. In the film’s most deliciously meta moment, Stewart might just as well be telling all of us Twilight haters to get over it already.

Assayas’s script is sharp and his camera is fluid, effectively blurring the line between onstage and off. Revisiting the play forces Maria to confront her past and question her present, and Binoche reveals the various layers with a gentle, masterful touch.

The beauty of Clouds of Sils Maria lies in its subtle complexity. It offers sly insights that sneak up on you, and an exceptional cast to make them stick.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

New In Theaters

Get it Sorted!

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Hyena

by Hope Madden

Michael Logan (Peter Ferdinando) makes a lot of arrests. Yes, he plants some evidence, keeps a little off the top for himself, and stuffs more drugs up his nose than most people could fit into the trunk of a car, but that doesn’t make him a bad cop.

Maybe it does, actually, but more to the point, it’s all catching up to Logan right now. The Turk he’d been doing business with is dead, which means he has to start all over again with the brutal Albanians. Meanwhile an internal investigation is mucking everything up.

This grey area where he lives is getting darker all the time. No need to fret. He’ll get it sorted.

The film Hyena’s success is due in part to Peter Ferdinando’s conundrum of a performance. Though the character is likely beyond redemption, Ferdinando keeps you hoping as it seems he may be hoping himself.

This is not the first collaboration between filmmaker Gerard Johnson and star. Their 2009 serial killer flick Tony proved that Johnson can find a new way to tell a familiar story, and their collaborations side by side show Ferdinando’s impressive range.

His inner turmoil is forever on display, and while you want to believe it’s his moral compass finally trying to point north, you’re at least equally convinced he’s just worried about his own skin.

Between the ride along camera and jarringly meticulous sound work, Johnson immerses you in Logan’s spinning, seedy world in a queasying way. His anxious camera makes you feel as sickly, involved and trapped in this sketchy, bloody business as Logan. His synth-heavy score is equal parts debauched party and regret-filled hangover.

Yes, there are many familiar elements: dodgy cops, Albanian crime lords, gritty crime in an urban underbelly. And it’s not really as if Johnson takes a particularly unusual perspective, or that his insight is greater, or that his film offers anything utterly unique. He just tells this particular story better than most.

The provocative ending could not have worked without Ferdinando’s conflicted, enigmatic performance.

Bad decisions and the traps they lay, that’s the bleak and bloody tale of Detective Inspector Michael Logan. His life is spinning wildly out of control and you’re invited to witness it.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

 

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More Assembling Required

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Avengers: Age of Ultron

by Hope Madden

Glorious ridiculousness thrives in Joss Whedon’s Marvel universe, a place so vivid, witty, emotional, exuberantly paced and generally epic that you’re too busy trying to keep up to notice how overpopulated it is.

Here’s what matters: the band is back together! But is it a reunion tour or a retirement tour? Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr. – duh) looks like he might be ready to hang it up, hoping there is a bigger, better, more certain solution for Earth’s safety. Meanwhile, there’s a romance abloom, and it’s not between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans). Damn it!

The mad scientists of the group (Stark and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner) keep toying with AI, even though their experiments sometimes develop a God-complex and snarky personality (thanks to a wonderfully realized turn from James Spader, who relishes Whedon’s quotation-happy dialog).

Spader’s Ultron adopts some freaky twins from another segment of the Marvel universe, there’s a birth of sorts, and more fight sequences, tossed vehicles, imploded buildings, and general chaos than can safely fit on a normal sized screen. That’s why they went IMAX, baby.

As with its predecessor and the best of the individual Avenger flicks, this adventure is loaded with visual style, but the film is at its best when it lets its characters become personalities. Whedon’s writing is so far superior to that of other superhero scribes – more naturally comedic and rich with opportunities for his cast to create characters – that the film cannot help but entertain. And beyond the funny one-liners, this Avengers explores some dark corners to undercover questionable moralities.

Still, there is a lot of icing on this cake. The film throws extra screen time and added layers toward some of the less-appreciated Avengers, nearly doubles the size of the team, and throws in so many super hero cameos it feels less like Age of Ultron and more like Avengers and Friends. There is so much going on that, to a certain degree, not much happens.

It’s huge, fast, colorful and fun. It’s smartly written and capably, enjoyable performed. It lacks the resonance and visual articulation of Captain America: The Winter Solder, and even when Ultron sings bitterly of Pinocchio, no villain in the Marvel universe has been able to hold a candle to Loki.

The thing is, it’s just cool to hang with these guys. Maybe it’s not their best album, but the live show is always fun.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

 

New In Theaters

Love Is Magic

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Cheatin’

by George Wolf

Alright, I’ll give you about 75 minutes, give me a series of frenetic vignettes that might seem silly, but end up pulling each other along to paint a charming picture of that crazy little thing called love.

Doable? Oh yeah, make it animated, and dialogue free.

Veteran animator Bill Plympton does it with Cheatin’, one couple’s story of passion, jealousy, magic and bumper cars.

Long, lovely Ella catches the eye of every man just by walking down the street, and beefcake-y Jake is the town stud muffin. So naturally, when a mishap at the county fair brings them together, passions ignite.

Cold water comes in the form of a jealous other woman, who hatches a scheme to convince Jake that Ella has been unfaithful. He eases his pain with a bevy of nameless babes, which leads Ella to fight for her true love..with help, of course, from a magician who can transform Ella into the souls of Jake’s new conquests.

It’s nonsensical fun with a solidly romantic heart beating underneath. The trials of Jake and Ella begin to personify all the joy and pain of love itself and why, for the right person, it’s all worth it in the end.

Plympton’s unique animation style can require some adjustment time if your unfamiliar, but soon the strangely elongated torsos and morphing elements win you over with inspired creativity. The pastel-laden set pieces give way to simple charcoal drawings and back again, all moving with a fluidity that becomes downright gleeful.

I mean, if Jake and Ella can make it, there’s hope for all of us.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

Catch Bill Plympton in person at a special Q&A session after the 7pm screening of Cheatin’ on April 27th at the Gateway Film Center.