Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Put That Popcorn Down!

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Fed Up

by Hope Madden

Today’s children will be the first generation with a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

With that sobering piece of information, Katie Couric and director Stephanie Soechtig explore America’s obesity problem, poking holes in conventional wisdom and exposing a culture far more concerned with profit than with our kids’ life expectancy.

Despite our culture’s twisted fascination with thinness, the market saturation of fitness products and low-fat food alternatives, and a First Lady committed to getting our kids in shape, America still leads the world in obesity and diabetes. According to this documentary, the numbers will only keep growing.

Likening the American food industry to the tobacco industry of just a few years ago, Fed Up points to a willful, frighteningly slippery misinterpretation of facts, burying of evidence, and corporate spin to account for our catastrophic rise in obesity rates.

First of all, Couric and Soechtig, along with a host of nutritionists, doctors, scientists, and Bill Clinton, want you to understand that the old adage that to lose weight you need to take in fewer calories and burn more calories is nonsense.

I know!

But they systematically point to evidence of cause and effect to actually back up their claim, and then they go on to unveil the corporate wheeling and dealing, governmental complicity and savvy marketing that has turned unprecedented numbers of our elementary school children in to diabetics.

The film is startlingly eye-opening, even for those who consider themselves fit.

Though her film is a well crafted, truly effective call to action, Soechtig missteps here and there.

Surprisingly, though Soechtig spends plenty of time on the almost oppressive availability of junk food – a fact that makes breaking the sugar habit potentially impossible for children and adults – she never really talks about the role convenience plays in our eating habits.

She also, and rightly, points to the fast food and soda conglomerates’ hold on our public school cafeterias as the younger generation’s involuntary indoctrination into a life of awful eating habits. She suggests we all call our principals and tell them to turn down junk food money. Maybe instead she should tell us to vote for some levees so our public schools wouldn’t be so desperate for funding that they get into bed with Pizza Hut, Coke and McDonalds.

Faults aside, the expose that emerges is one with unfiltered, confrontational information to share. It’s not infotainment, but a call to action, and one that we truly must heed.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqymWYB-18

 

 

New In Theaters

Portrait of a Lady

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Belle

by George Wolf

 

A scandalous affair. An innocent child. A society obsessed with money, power, and its own prejudices.

Belle is the latest historical drama to remind us that sometimes, the past looks pretty familiar.

It’s based on the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, born in the 1700s as the bi-racial daughter of a slave and an Admiral in the British Navy. She was raised by members of her father’s aristocratic family, standing alone as an anachronistic mix of wealth, prestige, and brown skin.

Actually, the story of how writer Misan Sagay came to find Belle could be a movie in itself.

Inspiration leapt from a painting of Belle and her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, that Sagay (who adapted Their Eyes Were Watching God for TV) encountered while in Scotland as a college student. After years of research, Sagay’s screenplay mixes fact with poetic liberties to make Belle’s story truly compelling.

The cast is letter-perfect. In the lead, Gugu Mbatha-Raw delivers a breakout performance, infusing Belle with an effective mix of intellect, wonder, spirit and hurt. As family patriarch Lord Mansfield, Tom Wilkinson is…well, Tom Wilkinson, an actor who’s seemingly impervious to missteps.

Director Amma Asante not only gives the film a fitting majestic sheen, but delicately balances Jane Austen-style period romance with serious social commentary and historical heft. At times, Belle flirts with overplaying its hand on both fronts, but Asante displays fine instincts for restraint before the storytelling takes too obvious a turn.

It is a fascinating story and a completely satisfying film. When Asante finally throws her trump card and you glimpse the inspirational portrait, it’s clear that, whatever barbs historians may throw, they can’t keep Belle from hitting a bullseye.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

 

New In Theaters, Slider

Benefitting from Low Expectations

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Blended

by Hope Madden

In 1998, Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore and director Frank Coraci made The Wedding Singer, one of Sandler’s more charming comedies. While Barrymore’s meandering career path has had its hits and misses since then, Coraci’s films have gotten progressively worse. Meanwhile, Sandler’s produced two Grown Ups installments, Jack and Jill, and That’s My Boy, among other affronts to both cinema and good taste.

Can a reunion with the romantic lead and creative drive behind an earlier, moderately enjoyable film rekindle enough chemistry to craft another passably entertaining flick?

Almost.

The group reunites for Blended, an impossibly contrived mash-up of The Parent Trap and Sandler’s 2011 debacle Just Go With It.

Sandler plays Jim, the schlubby but loving widowed father of three girls. Barrymore is Lauren, divorced mom to two boys. As the film opens, Jim and Lauren are on a blind date. They do not like each other at all.

I know – where could this possibly be going?

Do you suppose Jim’s daughters need a make-over…er…I mean mother?

And what about Lauren’s boys? Who will teach them to hit a baseball?

But wait! What if both families wind up accidentally sharing a suite in a South African resort – and during that resort’s Blended Families Celebration?

Do you believe in magic?

If you look beyond the ludicrous premise, and the themes that were relevant in the Seventies, and if you’re not too bothered by the mildly racist depictions of the hotel staff…all right, it’s no gem, but it’s no Jack and Jill, either.

Barrymore’s effortless likability helps a lot, as do relatively sharp cameos from Kevin Nealon, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Jessica Lowe.

Perhaps more importantly, there are no cameos from David Spade, Kevin James or Rob Schneider, so we can at least be thankful for small mercies.

You won’t laugh, but you might offer an anemic chuckle here and there. The film’s heart seems to be in the right place, more or less.

Seriously, did you see Jack and Jill? It’s really hard not to be grateful for Blended.

 

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPsBx82FN78

New In Theaters

A Road Trip Like No Other

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Locke

by Hope Madden

Give him the chance and Steven Knight will restore your faith in low budget filmmaking. All you need is a well written script, a car, hands free mobile, and Tom Hardy.

Actually, maybe all you really need is Tom Hardy.

In writer/director Knight’s Locke, Hardy plays Ivan Locke, and he and Knight invite you to spend 85 minutes in the car with him. The entire duration of the film takes place inside that car, alone with Ivan, who handles a crisis at work and a crisis at home simultaneously, all on the phone. Roll credits.

While it may sound boring as hell, please give it a chance, because Tom Hardy – and probably only Tom Hardy – has the natural charisma and bone-deep talent to keep every second of the film riveting.

Lucky Knight’s such a fine writer. Having penned the Cronenberg masterpiece Eastern Promises as well as Stephen Frears’s darkly winning Dirty Pretty Things, Knight’s proven to be a nimble storyteller. Locke offers none of the sinister, international dread that saturates those other efforts. Rather, like the driver of the car himself, we are trapped and yet propelled forward in a story confined to the immediate decisions and potentially disastrous effects spilling at the second.

It doesn’t just give Locke a powerful sense of immediacy. The simplicity of conversation and traffic and moments of silence between calls offer an undiluted image of action and consequence situated in such a familiar setting that it can’t help but feel universal.

Ever the chameleon, always an actor who leaves himself behind and utterly inhabits a character, Hardy’s performance here is nothing short of an education. He reveals more with less than any performer you’ll see this year.

He feeds off the talent of the ensemble – all vocal talent only – and it’s truly like nothing else onscreen. He establishes a character, authentic and whole, and though you are ostensibly trapped with him as he grapples with the collapse of his painstakingly crafted life, you cannot look away.

I can imagine no better antidote to a summer of monsters, mutants, super-this and exploding-that than a film so simple and powerful as Locke.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Vampires Done Right

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Only Lovers Left Alive

by George Wolf

 

Vampires again! Can’t we just give it a rest already?

I hear ya, but before you write them off completely, let Only Lovers Left Alive renew your faith in the genre’s possibilities.

Leave it to visionary writer/director Jim Jarmusch to concoct the perfect antidote to the pop culture onslaught of romantic teenage blood drinkers. OLLA is a delicious black comedy, oozing with sharp wit and hipster attitude.

Great lead performances don’t hurt, either, and Jarmusch gets them from Tom Hilddleston and Tilda Swinton as Adam and Eve (perfect!), a vampire couple rekindling their centuries-old romance against the picturesque backdrop of…Detroit.

I’m not going to lie, they had me at Swinton/Hiddleston/Jarmusch/vampires, but it’s such a treat to find the end result only exceeds expectations.

Not since the David Bowie/Catherine Deneuve pairing in The Hunger has there been such perfectly vampiric casting. Swinton and Hiddleston, already two of the most consistently excellent actors around, deliver cooly detached, underplayed performances, wearing the world- weariness of their characters in uniquely contrasting ways.

The less you know about the lifestyles of Adam and Eve, the better, and the plot consists mainly of consequences from a surprise visit by Eve’s sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska). But Jarmusch, as he often does, creates a setting that is totally engrossing, full of fluid beauty and wicked humor. 

His camera lingers in dark corners and high ceilings, swimming in waves of sublime production design, evocative music and mood lighting that is subtle perfection.  This is a master class in style and atmosphere, conjuring up a dark world you’re just geeked to spend time in.

There is substance to accent all the style. The film moseys toward its perfect finale, casually waxing Goth philosophic about soul mates and finding your joy.

Ironically, Jarmusch treats the possibility of nightwalkers among us more realistically than any vampire flick in recent memory. And in the process, has some wry fun with how the whole thing went south.

Talk about finding our joy.

Vampires are back, baby, and Edward can suck it.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Slumdog Maguire

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Million Dollar Arm

by Hope Madden

Disney – the studio who brought you Miracle, The Rookie, and Invincible – needs a family-friendly sports movie for the summer. It must be based on a true story. It requires one or more underdogs, a romantic subplot, and plenty of opportunities for lessons learned. Fish out of water are a plus.

The only surprising thing about Million Dollar Arm is the group of people who convened to answer Disney’s ad for a blockbuster.

Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) and screenwriter Thomas McCarthy join a talented cast who, collectively, have no business making a predictable crowd pleaser like this. McCarthy, in particular, had a flawless resume up to now, having written and directed the brilliant Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win and having written the Pixar masterpiece Up. What’s going on here?

The two inexplicably crafted a film from the true(ish) story of down-on-his-luck sports agent JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm) and his plan to find the next great MLB pitcher in India. And while Million Dollar Arm is equal parts Slumdog Millionaire and Jerry Maguire, and is obvious as all get out, it’s somehow pleasant and appealing.

The filmmaking duo seem to embrace the cliches of their topic, and they manage to expose some ugly realities – sports capitalism, for instance – while they’re at it. They are aided immeasurably by a cast that, too, has far too much talent to be involved with this film.

Jon Hamm embodies the flawed humanity of his character beautifully. While his romantic entanglements are as unmistakable as the hard-won lessons in his near future, his grace and humor provide enough distraction to almost overcome the lack of surprise.

Likewise, neighbor/love interest Lake Bell and potential MLB phenoms Suraj Sharma (Life of Pi) and Madhur Mittal (Slumdog Millionaire) charm in roles that could easily have been one-dimensional. Instead, the three develop a sweet chemistry and find a little believable complexity for their characters.

Alan Arkin, on the other hand, offers the same performance we’ve seen from him in his last 20 or more films, while Bollywood star Pitobash settles for broadly drawn comic relief.

Together it’s a mish-mash effort that has no business entertaining as much as it does. Even penned inside a formula, McCarthy can write, Hamm can act, and Gillespie can make it all appear fresh regardless of the fact that we know from the opening credits exactly what we’ll see by the time those credits roll again two hours later.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

New In Theaters, Slider

Oh No! There Goes Tokyo!

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Godzilla

by Hope Madden

Movies love to depict our fear of science, a trend that dates back to Edison’s 1910 rendition of Frankenstein. But the real frenzy came with the onset of the atomic age.

Among the countless “creature features” spawned by our global fear of the destruction science had wrought, Godzilla reigned supreme. Ishiro Honda’s Hiroshima analogy simultaneously entertained and terrified as it tapped our horrified fascination with the destruction, once unthinkable, that was suddenly an ever-present danger.

Back in 2010, visual effects maestro Gareth Edwards tread similar ground of societal guilt, dread and terror with his underseen alien flick Monsters. More than anything, though, that film clarified his aptitude for creature action, a talent that serves him well for his Godzilla reboot.

He’s assembled a phenomenal cast for the monster mash up, though I’m not sure why. Award-winning actors Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Juliette Binoche and Aaron Taylor-Johnson appear onscreen (and do little else) as we wait for the epic battle between Godzilla and two new creatures with a taste for radiation.

Taylor-Johnson is a military bomb defusing expert who leaves his wife (Olsen) and their son behind in San Francisco to fly to Japan to bail his crazy scientist/grieving widower father (Cranston) out of jail. He’d been caught trespassing on a site quarantined for 14 years – ever since the nuclear reactor disaster that killed his wife.

Well, there’s more to that story than meets the eye.

The talent-laden cast doesn’t get the opportunity to flesh out their characters, so there’s little human drama to cling to as chaos approaches. Perhaps even more damaging, Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham’s screenplay fails to truly lay blame for this behemoth blood match on mankind.

Flaws aside, Godzilla delivers the creature feature goods. Few summer blockbusters contain such gloriously realized action sequences, gorgeously framed images of disarray, or thrillingly articulated beasts.

Edwards never hides his inspiration (the lead’s name is Brody, for God’s sake).  While he draws from Jaws, Aliens, Close Encounters, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and any number of previous Godzilla efforts, the amalgam is purely his own.

This is an easy franchise to take in the wrong direction. Who remembers Godzuki? But Edwards brings a competent hand and reverent tone to breathe new life into the old dinosaur.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Write it Down, Nic Cage Acts

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Joe

by Hope Madden

After seven years of exploring the big budget, big star world of Hollywood, filmmaker David Gordon Green revisits his ultra indie roots. He hasn’t returned alone, though. For his newest effort, Joe, he brought with him Hollywood staple and Internet joke Nicolas Cage. And God bless him for it.

As the eponymous Joe, Cage reminds us that he picked up that Oscar for a reason. He dials down the bug-eyed mania of many recent efforts in favor of a textured performance that emphasizes his natural chemistry with other actors, his vulnerability and barely caged rage, and his weirdly charming sense of humor.

Joe’s a good-hearted guy with a lot of issues, a volcano that’s never fully dormant. It’s part and parcel for a sun dappled, visually lovely film absolutely saturated in violence. While Joe bursts into less outright carnage than many films, the pervasive dread that violence could erupt at any second is the very air the film breathes.

In the middle of this modern Wild West atmosphere, Joe befriends a boy in need of a mentor. Gary is played by the increasingly impressive Tye Sheridan. With just three roles under his belt – Tree of Life, Mud, and Joe – Sheridan has proven to be an amazing natural talent. In his hands, Gary’s youthful exuberance is equal parts darling and tragic, given his circumstances. Sheridan’s performance is amazing, and his repartee with Cage is perfect.

Both are helped by an excellent ensemble, many of them nonprofessional actors. One particular stand out is a sinister Ronnie Gene Blevins as the oily Willie. But no one in the film can outshine street performer turned actor Gary Poulter. His turn as Gary’s drunken father offers more layers than anything a seasoned actor has offered yet this year, each one as believable as it is shocking. His performance is stunning, and it elevates the film immeasurably.

The film is not without its faults. Several characters are severely underdeveloped given their ultimate place in the story, and there are times when Cage cannot match the naturalism of the performers around him. The film also suffers from its resemblance to Mud, Sheridan’s 2012 cinematic of coming-of-age poetry.

But Green’s once-trademark touches – meandering storyline, poetic score, bruised masculinity – are in full bloom as he reworks Larry Brown’s novel into his own unique vision of low income Americans’ melancholy struggle. In doing so, he’s reestablished not only his own artistic authority, but Cage’s as well.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

New In Theaters

A Few Missing Pages

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God’s Pocket

by George Wolf

Seedy neighborhoods, sad sacks and shady characters populate God’s Pocket, an uneven drama that gets a big boost from its strong ensemble cast.

An adaptation of Peter Dexter’s first novel, the film is the big screen directorial debut for veteran actor John Slattery (Mad Men). He does show a confident, generous hand with his performers, but Slattery’s instincts for tone and storytelling aren’t quite as polished.

Dexter (The Paperboy, Deadwood) based the story partly on his own experience as a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, when he suffered a severe beating at the hands of a local gang angry over one of his pieces.

Set in a hard knock Philly neighborhood dubbed “God’s Pocket,” the film follows events set in motion by the death of Leon Hubbard (Caleb Landry Jones), a young slacker who is killed while working as a day laborer on a construction site.

Leon’s distraught mother Jeanie (Christina Hendricks) isn’t satisfied with the official version of the accident, and she pressures her husband Mickey Scarpato (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) to call upon his semi-connected associates and dig for more details. 

Right off, Jeanie’s suspicions seem desperate. Is there a reason she instantly thinks the death wasn’t accidental, or is it a convenient way to push her unsatisfying husband deeper into dangerous waters?

We never know, and ambiguous motivation is a problem throughout the film. These are interesting characters that beg for insightful backstory, but all we’re given is the neighborhood. Yes, we get that these are tough people who close ranks against outsiders, but this story needs more than vague cliches to truly resonate.

Slattery, who helped adapt the screenplay, also has trouble finding the appropriate tone to incorporate the black humor. It’s no easy feat, even for masters such as the Coens or Jim Jarmusch, and here we’re left unsure about feeling for these people, or laughing at them.

There’s nothing unsure about the cast. Hoffman, who reportedly wanted to move away from these “loser” roles before his tragic death, wears Mickey’s burdens like an old shirt you can’t bear to part with, only reinforcing how badly his talent will be missed.

Hendricks gives Jeanie a smoldering vulnerability, and enough mystery to justify the obsessive attention of Shellburn (Richard Jenkins), the boozing newspaper columnist whose life is awakened by her charms.  Jenkins, customarily excellent, cements Shellburn as the differing reference point the film needs.

God’s Pocket ends up resembling a book with too many missing pages. There are some fine moments here, all searching for a foundation strong enough to keep them from drifting away.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Sci-Fi Trailblazer

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

by George Wolf

 

Jodorowsky’s Dune isn’t actually the famed director’s long-overdue treatment of a science fiction classic, but you’ll end up wishing that it was.

And, ironically, that’s a testament to how well this documentary tells its story of “the greatest sci-fi film never made.”

Chilean artist/writer/filmmaker/actor Alejandro Jodorowsky came to prominence in the early 1970s with surrealist, boundary-pushing films such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain. In 1975, he began a project that aimed to turn Frank Herbert’s epic novel Dune into something resembling an acid trip on film.

By all accounts, that film would have been awesome, so why didn’t we get it?

Director Frank Pavich answers that question in an interesting, entertaining way, wisely putting Jodorowsky himself front and center.

Jodorowsky is still energetic and ambitious at age 85, and you can’t help but buy into his vision. Even now, he bubbles with excitement when outlining his failed plans, which included offering Orson Welles his own on -set personal chef just so Welles would join the cast. Budgets were not much of a concern to Jodorowsky, and you begin to understand why the big film studios were a tad frightened.

Science fiction geeks and movie nerds will be in behind-the-scenes heaven, but the film also works on a mainstream level. It’s a compelling story of the creative process and the passion that drives it.

Pavich showcases Jodorowky’s “most interesting man”-style charisma, and surrounds it with the relevance needed to both entertain and satisfy. By the time Pavich offers concrete examples of how the original Dune storyboards continue to influence Hollywood, you’ll be sorry Jodorowsky’s Dune isn’t the opener of a nonexistent double feature.

Verdict-4-0-Stars