Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

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You Had Me at Wes Anderson

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The Grand Budapest Hotel

by Hope Madden

Let’s be honest, film critics love Wes Anderson. How can we help ourselves? An auteur if ever there was one, he owns a style unlike any other, marries whimsy with melancholy, gathers impeccable casts, draws beautifully unexpected performances – basically, he invites us into an imagination so wonderful and unusual that we are left breathless and giddy. We are not made of stone.

So, yes, to quote a recent (and brilliant) SNL sketch, with The Grand Budapest Hotel, you had me at Wes Anderson.

To be fair, with Anderson’s previous and most masterful effort, Moonrise Kingdom, he set a pretty high bar for himself. And while GBH doesn’t offer quite the heart of that picture, there’s a real darkness to this brightly colored outing that gives it a haunting quality quite unlike any of his previous films.

It’s a story told in flashback by one time lobby boy Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) of the last great hotel concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Feinnes), and a conspiracy, an art theft, a jailbreak, excellent manners, and finely crafted pastries.

The filmmaker’s inimitable framing and visual panache is unmatched, but he’s taken it to new highs with this effort. A frothy combination of artifice and reality, GBH amounts to a wickedly clever dark comedy despite its cheery palette. Anderson’s eccentric artistry belies a mournful theme.

Feinnes is magnificent in the central role, and the cast Anderson puts in orbit around him are equally wonderful. Adrien Brody, conjuring Snidley Whiplash, makes for an exceptional nemesis, while Anderson regular Willem Dafoe cuts an impressive figure as his thug sidekick.

The only filmmaker who can out-cameo a Muppet movie includes brief but memorable, brilliantly deadpan scenes with all the old gang: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel. But the real scene stealer is Europe itself.

Set between the two great wars, the film is a smoky ode to bygone glamour, a precisely drawn if slightly faded love letter to an image of the past.

Of course it is.

Says Zero of his mentor Gustav, “His world had vanished long before he ever entered it, but he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.” He could obviously have been speaking of the director as well.

 

Verdict-4-5-Stars

 

 

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More Muppet, Less Man

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Muppets Most Wanted

 

by MaddWolf

 

There are few casts of characters who have brought more sheer delight to audiences – regardless of age – than the Muppets. Sure, they’ve had their low points (good God, the Muppet Babies!), but on the whole, their variety show mayhem has offered nothing but fun.
The fuzzy ensemble returns this week for their 8th feature film, Muppets Most Wanted.

 

The new adventure picks up immediately after the finale of 2011’s The Muppets, when the group is approached by prospective road manager Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais), who wants them to launch a world tour.

Meanwhile, the diabolical Constantine, a dead-ringer for our beloved Kermie and widely known the world’s most dangerous frog, breaks out of a Russian gulag. Coincidence?

About 3/4 of the team that brought Kermit and Co. back after more than a decade of absence for The Muppets returns for the sequel. Producer/co-writer/star Jason Segel is noticeably absent, though, having made the upcoming Sex Tape instead (although that could have given the Muppet franchise an interesting wrinkle).

But director James Bobin, co-writer Nicholas Stoller, and, perhaps importantly, songwriter Bret McKenzie return.

McKenzie (one half of the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) delivers clever enough tunes such as “We’re Doing a Sequel”, “I’m Number One”, and “Interrogation Song,” but none come close to the charm of “Man or Muppet,” his Oscar-winner from the last film.

And though most of the flesh and blood crew that made The Muppets so warm, fun, irreverent and yet sweet return, the film is clearly missing something. Segel, we’re looking at you.

The important characters are all accounted for: Kermit, Miss Piggy, Dr. Teeth, Bunsen Honeydew and Beeker, Fozzie, Gonzo, Sam Eagle, etc, etc.

And, the requisite cameos pile up: Diddy, Chloe Moretz, Usher, Ray Liotta, Danny Trejo, Tom Hiddleston, Zach Galafianakis, Saoirse Ronan, Celine Dion, Salma Hayak, Tony Bennett, Josh Groban – it’s a long list.

Though the film does many things right – starting with putting the spotlight back on the Muppets themselves – it can’t shake the feeling that this is more an assignment than a labor of love. The mistaken identity plot begins to drag, even with co-starring roles for Tina Fey as the Gulag warden and Ty Burrell as a bumbling inspector.

It’s fun enough, nostalgic enough, self-reverential enough, but never magical.

 

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

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And Her Name Is Veronica

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Veronica Mars

 

by George Wolf

Fans of Veronica Mars have been clamoring for a movie ever since the television series left the air in 2007. Their wish has finally been granted, and the result is a film that will not only preach to the choir, but also entertain those unfamiliar with the exploits of the teenage private eye.

Of course now, Veronica (Kristen Bell) is all grown up, and she’s left the P.I. business in California for a new life in New York. She’s done with law school and is up for a plum job at a big time law firm when…her old life comes calling.

Director/co-writer Rob Thomas shows great instincts for giving his baby a successful upgrade to the big screen, and for paying VM fans back for their devotion and kickstarter love. He gets everyone caught up in the first few minutes, then centers a murder mystery around Veronica’s 10 year high school reunion. Longtime viewers get to relish the return of all the familiar faces, while Thomas provides the snappy dialogue and brisk pace to keep everyone engaged.

Sure, the shenanigans here are presented with all the depth of adolescent TV, but Thomas offsets it all with a wonderful streak of self-awareness. There isn’t an ounce of pretense in Veronica Mars, which only increases its charm.

Back in the role that made her famous, Bell has never been more likable, carrying the film with a satisfying mix of confidence, intellect, sex appeal and wit.  Also, some nice cameos pepper the ensemble cast, only adding to the fun.

And that’s mainly what Veronica Mars ends up being: fun.

No crime in that.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

 

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Sam Rockwell Wants to Party with You

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Better Living Through Chemistry

by Hope Madden

For a film about drug use, extramarital sex, feces smearing and conspiracy to commit murder, Better Living through Chemistry retains a surprisingly cheery disposition throughout. In its own way, it also champions wholesome values, all without ever really condemning the extramarital relations, drug use or attempted murder. It does seem to frown on that excrement thing, though, so there are lines it is willing to draw.

The always welcome Sam Rockwell plays beleaguered good guy/pharmacist Doug Varney with characteristic aplomb. Varney’s mild mannered, put-upon existence takes a sharp left when he meets Elizabeth (Olivia Wilde), a trophy wife and fashionable druggy with some lessons to share with the druggist.

Wilde and Rockwell share a fun, edgy chemistry while Michelle Monaghan, playing Varney’s ball-busting wife, steals her every scene. (Stealing a scene from Sam Rockwell is a noteworthy feat.) The three are a blast to watch. They have a lot of fun with the pseudo-subversive silliness and are entirely responsible for whatever enjoyment there is to find in the film.

Too bad the writing/directing pair of Geoff Moore and David Posamentier offers the acting trio too slight a script, as well as tone deaf direction. And their narration device is far less clever than they think.

The film lacks the bite of a true satire or dark comedy. If the point was one of consequence-free binging, the film would actually have been on better footing in that at least it would have been provocative. Instead, it’s a hollow exercise in finding your inner strength through drug-induced misbehavior, and then allowing convenient scripting to help you know when to say when.

 

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

 

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Breaking Very Bad

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Need for Speed

by George Wolf

 

I never watched Breaking Bad, but I believe you when you say it is awesome, and that Aaron Paul is awesome as Jesse. I don’t doubt it for one second. Really.

But trust me, Need for Speed  isn’t Breaking Bad, it’s just bad.

Paul moves on from Jesse to star as Tobey Marshall, a badass gearhead/street racer who was framed for murder by an old adversary. After serving a prison stint, Tobey rejoins his old garage crew to enter a legendary cross-country race, and hatch a plan that will bring both sweet victory, and sweet revenge.

Even for a film based on a video game, Need for Speed is achingly shallow. Director Scott Waugh‘s biggest error is to give the film the same overly dramatic, utterly heroic tone he brought to Act of Valor.  It made sense on Valor, as Waugh was directing active-duty Navy SEALS who had trouble acting, but at least deserved the treatment.

Here, though, the approach is so over-the-top it results in a cornball mess of high octane ridiculousness. Though it’s hard to tell from the squeaky-clean garages, neatly pressed clothes and perfect fingernails, these are street racers, not world-savers. Lighten up already.

George Gatins’s sophomoric and painfully obvious screenplay doesn’t help, bursting as it is with groan-inducing dialog and plotting fit for coma patients.

I suppose there is something here if you like to see cars going fast, but even those sequences are bland, especially after Waugh makes the mistake of including a snippet from Bullitt, one of the greatest car movies ever made. Honestly, you can find more auto-excitica (you’re welcome) in The Town or one of those Jeff Gordon-in-disguise Pepsi commercials.

Even the music is awful, alternating between melodramatic crescendos and tone-deaf remakes of rock classics.

A sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek vibe would have worked wonders on Need for Speed. As it stands, it can’t outrun the stupid, no matter how fast it goes.

 

Verdict-1-0-Star

 

 

 

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A New Grecian Formula

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3oo: RISE OF AN EMPIRE

by Hope Madden

Back in 2006, director Zach Snyder paired a Frank Miller graphic novel with a mostly naked, very beefy Gerard Butler, and ancient Greek history was born. The visually arresting 300 was a stylistic breakthrough, if nothing else. Eight years later, though, it’s tough to understand the point of a sequel.

And yet, 300: Rise of an Empire picks up where 300 left off. It’s less a sequel or a prequel and more of a …meanwhile. That is to say that, while Leonidas (Butler) and his 300 Spartans battle Persian god-king Xerxes on the ground (the previous film’s climax), Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) and the rest of Greece takes on Xerxes’s navy, led by the angry Grecian ex-pat Artemisia (Eva Green).

Gone is the painterly quality of the original, an artistic choice that often pays off as it gives the sea battles a little more life. Don’t look for authenticity or gritty realism here, though; the sequel is very definitely cut from the same CGI-laden cloth as Snyder’s epic, but director Noam Murro (Smart People) makes some stylistic alterations here and there.

The sequel is bloodier and rape-ier than its original, all the lurid detail captured in vivid splatter-cam glory. There’s far less exposition and nearly no character development this time around. Murro’s plan of attack seemed to be action sequence followed by rousing speech followed by action sequence overdubbed with rousing speech, and so on.

Given the sheer volume of action (and speechifying), it’s surprising the film becomes so tedious so quickly. To enjoy the full 102 minutes, you might need to have a real itch to see beefcake in battle. (No to shirts, yes to capes in the military uniform? Really?).  That is, except for the ferocious presence of Eva Green.

Playing the bloodthirsty naval commander with a grudge against Greece, Green steals every scene and commands rapt attention. She delivers more badass per square inch than the entire Greek and Persian navy combined in a performance that entertains, but also exposes the blandness of the balance of the cast. Even without their shirts.

It’s not the worst waste of time onscreen right now, thanks to Green, but it’s nothing you’ll remember tomorrow, either.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

 

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Airport 2014!

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NON-STOP

 

by George Wolf

 

The long, national nightmare is over..the Airport franchise is back, baby!

Okay, not really. There’s no George Kennedy, or Charlton Heston, and no Love Boat-style parade of guest stars hoping for more face time, but Non-Stop brings the mid-air disaster back to the big screen with plenty of B-movie chutzpah.

Liam Neeson stars as Air Marshall Bill, a boozy grump with a tragic past who isn’t too happy with his latest assignment on a transatlantic flight. His particular set of skills is tested a few hours after takeoff, when he begins getting text messages from an unseen passenger. Wire 150 million dollars to a secret account, Bill is told, or every twenty minutes, someone on the plane will die.

It amounts to an interesting setup from a team of writers, one with a Hitchcock-meets-Agatha Christie vibe that director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, another Neeson thriller) has no trouble fleshing out.  Things move fast and deliberately, as suspicions fall on a collection of interesting passengers, including the friendly redhead who insists on sitting next to Bill (Jullanne Moore, classing up the joint).

The clearer the resolution becomes, though, the more the film struggles with flimsy contrivance. Yes, it’s a bumpy ride, but Neeson again proves his mettle as a late-blooming action star, and there is just enough fun in Non-Stop to make it an enjoyable, if easily forgettable, trip.

 

 

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

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Welcome to Adulthood! Yes, It Does Suck

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Adult World

by Hope Madden

“Fame is your generation’s Black Plague.” So says Rat Billings (John Cusack), world-wearied poet and reluctant mentor to naïve college grad and would-be poet, Amy (Emma Roberts).

Rat has lots of good lines – he is a poet, after all – about the strange era of newly formed adults who grew up working toward fame for fame’s sake. “Generation Mundane” he calls them.

Unbeknownst to Amy, she herself fits that description, and that irony is at the heart of the bright indie comedy Adult World. The chemistry at the heart of the film belongs to Roberts and Cusack.

When Roberts’s Amy leaves the nest 90K in college debt with no marketable skill (her degree is in poetry, after all), she takes a job at an old style porn shop. There, a unique and fascinating world revolves around her, but she’s too busy “feeling, deeply feeling” to notice. Which is, of course, the problem with her artistry – she’s trying to write when she has refused to live, so what could she have to write about?

We watch as Amy refuses to participate in life, insulated from the world by her misguided, socially-instilled belief in her own specialness. Thankfully, director Scott Coffey’s film – scripted with refreshing self-deprecation by Andy Cochran – is rarely too overt with its theme. Sometimes, sure, and you would never call the film exactly subtle. But it has some real freshness to offer instead.

While the cast on the whole is quite solid, Roberts really hits high gear in scenes with Cusack. When these characters are together we get to see each at his or her most potent. Films rarely offer such undiluted presences. Neither actor is afraid to embrace what is unlikeable about their own character, and their scenes together are a kind of joyous celebration of flaws. A giddy artistic energy flows between the two performers that is a blast to watch.

Not every pairing goes as well. Amy’s onscreen love interest is played by Roberts’s offscreen love (and American Horror Story co-star) Evan Peters. Though their romance is sweet, its course is also predictable.

Worse still, the great Cloris Leachman is underused, and Armando Riesco’s drag queen is tacked onto the story sloppily and without real meaning.

Still, much of this story rings true, and the approach taken to poke fun at Generation Mundane is clever and well-intentioned. More than anything, though, it’s great to see Cusack running on all cylinders and matched so well.

 

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BpdW7Cvxno

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The Weight

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Generation Iron

 

by George Wolf

 

“We can do what 99.9 percent of people can’t do..lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.”

“We” refers to the best bodybuilders on the planet, and Generation Iron reveals their world in thoughtful, compelling fashion.

In fact, after nearly forty years, we may have the perfect companion piece to 1977’s Pumping Iron. That film, or course, gave young Arnold Schwarzenegger a big push on his path to icon status, as it followed his attempt to defend the Mr. Olympia title in 1975.

Writer/director Vlad Yudin crafts Generation Iron in similar fashion, focusing on the 2012 Mr. Olympia competition, as champion Phil Heath prepares to takes on several challengers, most notably Kai Greene. But, while parts of Pumping Iron were scripted, Yudin plays it straight, presenting a fascinating look at bodybuilding and the athletes who devote their lives to the sport.

Yudin’s instinct for pacing is spot on, as he moves between the different competitors and their training regimes. We get to know them, and their honesty (well, except about steroids) makes us care. Bodybuilding is not only their sport, it is their job, and the amount of devotion it requires can come with a high price.

The presentation of the film also holds your attention, even for those who may not have an interest in bodybuilding. Yudin follows competitors on a trip to the zoo (creating a nice contrast between the animals on display and massive physiques out in the real world) and a casting call, as the shadow of Arnold’s superstardom continues to loom large.

As it builds toward the showdown competition, a certain philosophical nature envelopes the film, though it comes more from the athletes themselves than from Mickey Rourke’s whispered, often melodramatic narration.

Generation Iron not only informs and entertains, but leaves you eager for a sequel focusing on female bodybuilders.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd-4qBhUSR4

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Miyazaki’s Final Film?

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The Wind Rises

by Hope Madden

The Wind Rises – the Oscar nominated, animated, fantastical biopic of Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi – may be genius filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s final film.

A body of work like his – Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke and so many more – deserves a unique capstone, and The Wind Rises is certainly unique. This film is not only unlike anything else Miyazaki has crafted, but unlike anything else period.

Set in Japan in the early 1920s, the film offers a fictionalized account of a nearsighted boy who dreams – literally – of aircraft. In Jiro’s dreams, Italian aeronautical pioneer Gianni Caproni enlightens the boy to the elegant, creative possibilities of airplanes. Unable to become a pilot because of his eyesight, Jiro determines to design planes.

Like everything Miyazaki does, Wind is a visual glory. Whether crowded city streets, mountainside locales, or cloud-speckled heavens, the scenery in this film is breathtaking. Touching, intimate moments and catastrophic acts of God or of war, Miyazaki treats them with the same poetic brushstroke.

The subject matter here proves more adult than his previous efforts, though, and he limits the fantastical elements because of it. Though the dream sequences are a joy, don’t expect to find unusual creatures or outright feats of magic in this one.

Rather, Miyazaki attends to some of Japan’s most epic historic moments, contextualized behind the journey of one quiet, delicate young man’s voyage through life. The result is less giddily entertaining than what you might expect from the filmmaker, but no less captivating.

Maybe we can hope for just one more?