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They Got a Thing Going On

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Keeping Up With the Joneses

by George Wolf

Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot as smooth and glamorous undercover spies? I’ll buy that. How ’bout Zach Galifianakis as a sensitive nerd and Isla Fisher as the wife just one makeover from bringing sexy back? Not a stretch.

Finding any good reason for Keeping Up with the Joneses, though, certainly is.

Jeff and Karen Gaffney (Zach and Isla) have just sent their two boys off the summer camp and finally have the house the themselves, so you know they first thing they do when they’re alone? Eat popcorn and watch The Good Wife on DVR!  That’s just the first of many obvious punchlines in search of a laughtrack.

See, the thrill is gone and the Gaffneys need that spice back! New neighbors Tim and Natalie Jones (Jon and Gal) bring it. They’re too perfect, and Karen just knows they’re up to no good, so she puts on a funny hat to follow Natalie, and they end up trying on lingerie together! Isn’t that zany and scandalous for these suburban wives?

This whole thing is just a waste of everyone’s time. The cast is talented, and director Greg Mottola has a fine resume (Superbad, The Newsroom) so shade might be thrown in the general director of Michael LeSieur and his inane script.

There’s nothing new here, nothing really creative (well, okay, the end credit graphics have a fine style) and very, very little that’s worth even a chuckle. Will the squares in white suburbia teach the superspies about feelings? Will the spies show the bored couple how to put sex and excitement back in their marriage?

Wait, wasn’t I in a movie like this, but better?

Yes, Gal Gagot, you were. It was Date Night, and it was funny.

This is not.Verdict-1-5-Stars

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Bottom Line Business

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The Accountant

by Hope Madden

For a middling thriller, The Accountant offers a handful of worthy items.

Its central character Christian (Ben Affleck) is an unusual choice for a hero. He’s a mathematical genius on the autism spectrum whose youth was spent learning to function in society, and developing mad mercenary skills. Why the second? Never really clear.

Affleck is a proven director. He doesn’t direct The Accountant, but recent roles suggest he’s become savvier with his acting choices as well. He seems to recognize what the rest of us have known for a while – he lacks range.

What better character for him, then, than a man who struggles to show the slightest emotion?

The film also boasts – much thanks to Affleck’s performance – humor. Rather than an amalgam of stereotypes and contrivances, Affleck’s bean counter comes off as a relatable human.

Another item of note: director Gavin O’Connor (Warrior) choreographs the impeccable action sequences with the kind of clarity and efficiency that reflect the film’s protagonist. Even as that sounds potentially dull, the result is quite the opposite. These are some of the clearest and most interesting action pieces of the year, actually.

O’Connor’s direction and Affleck’s performance are subtle with Christian’s tics, focusing our attention instead on slight changes in the character that make him more provocative. By pairing him with Anna Kendrick’s corporate CPA Dana – a sweet, jovial type – O’Connor explores the social awkwardness in all of us.

Now for the problems.

These fall mostly to the script, penned by Bill Dubuque, whose triad of storylines climaxes in a clean and witty shootout. Too bad every intentional surprise has long-since been guessed, leaving only those inconsistencies in the plot that are probably not supposed to have been noticed, either.

Christian, drawn to puzzles and possessing a super human knack for math, often works with disreputable clients. He’s taken a legit client – a robotics firm that makes prosthetics for the medical industry. But this isn’t as it seems, and brings Christian in contact with a corporate hitman who wants him silenced.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department is finally piecing together Christian’s whereabouts and may be onto him. Why now? Another mystery.

The criss-crossing, flash-backing, money-following and head-scratching don’t pay off because, at its core, the thriller is just exploiting a gimmick. But Affleck and O’Connor are not, which is why the film turns out as well as it does.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmKtb-Pvpf4

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Kevin Likes a Big Room

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Kevin Hart: What Now?

by George Wolf

Maybe you’ve heard the claim that, back in the 80s, pop balladeers Air Supply could in fact “make all the stadiums rock.”

But did they really?

Hard to say, as we never got that live footage which may have provided the elusive evidence of the Supply, a stadium and that aforementioned rocking.

Such unanswered questions will not haunt Kevin Hart. What Now? takes us to Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, where in August of last year Hart sold out his hometown stadium for a standup routine featuring rock concert ambitions. A football stadium sold out for a comedy show. Impressive, and though Hart’s third concert film takes a little time to hit its stride, it eventually delivers steady and sometimes gut-busting laughs.

As with 2011’s Laugh at My Pain and 2013’s Let Me Explain, What Now? buffers the standup with additional footage directed by Hart favorite Tim Story (Think Like a Man, both Ride Along films). The opening checks in with Hart some three hours before showtime and mixes parodies of both 007 and The Equalizer (Denzel version) that rate more clever than funny, earning bonus entertainment points courtesy of cameos from Halle Berry, Don Cheadle and Ed Helms.

Once Hart trades his tux for leather and hits the stage, Leslie Small takes the director’s chair, leaning a bit too heavily on quick cuts and overly manipulative audience reaction shots. I get it, there’s only one performer to frame and you’d like to avoid ninety minutes of Chris Rock-style stage stalking, but letting Hart’s set, adorned as it is with jumbo video screens and changing backgrounds, breath a bit would better feed an in-the-moment atmosphere.

The film, like its star, is always likeable, consistently funny and sometimes hilarious. Now that Kevin Hart has rocked a stadium harder than Air Supply, What Now? answers one question while it’s asking another.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

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The Rising

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The Birth of a Nation

by George Wolf

Two years ago, Selma delivered a graceful reminder of one man’s courageous commitment to a civil rights movement rooted in non-violence.

Now, The Birth of a Nation recreates a primal scream of outrage from one man driven to a violent uprising against the inhumanity of slavery. It is a passionate, often gut-wrenching film that stands as a stellar achievement from director/producer/co-writer/star Nate Parker.

Parker pours his soul into this film, both behind the camera and in front, delivering a searing performance as Nat Turner, the Virginia slave who organized a bloody rebellion in 1831. Parker’s film is blunt and visceral, displaying a strong sense of visual style and narrative instinct.

Reportedly kicking in over one hundred grand of his own to ensure more creative control, Parker’s use of poetic license is understandable even when it is questionable. Here, Turner’s motives for turning from an obedience-teaching plantation preacher to a vengeful killer are rooted in retaliation for brutal rapes rather than a spiritual calling. This doesn’t help the definition of the film’s female characters (a criticism smartly addressed by co-star Gabrielle Union in recent interviews) but it does allow Parker space for a more dimensional religious undercurrent.

He shows us how faith can be both a source of comfort and an instrument of oppression. Samuel Turner (a terrific Armie Hammer) finds fellow plantation owners will pay handsomely for his “preacher” to come help them quiet unruly slaves. After multiple trips to preach salvation through obedience, Nat Turner decries that for every Bible passage the slaveholders cite to support their actions, he can find another “damning them to Hell.”

Parker’s debut as a director, while often short on nuance, is remarkably assured, displaying a sharp eye for framing, a nicely controlled pace and a confidence in the effect of his visuals. Using Nina Simone’s haunting version of “Strange Fruit” could have been jarringly anachronistic, but Parker lays it over a montage so striking the combination proves undeniably powerful.

The story of Nat Tuner’s rebellion absolutely deserves a big screen treatment like this, and Parker presents a brilliant irony right up front. The title rebuts one of the most notoriously racist films in history while it serves as a stark reminder that much of this country was built with slave labor. The Birth of a Nation is a truly raw and moving experience that finds humanity in the horrors of history.

Shouldn’t it be even more than that?

As unarmed black men continue to die at the hands of law enforcement, as non-violent protests are labeled anti-American and as overt racism stains a Presidential campaign, shouldn’t this film embrace its chance to be the generational bellwether we need right now?

Those are grandiose and mainly unfair expectations, as it’s not Parker’s responsibility to give us something to post about on social media to prove our “woke”-ness. This is an important film, due less to the climate in which it arrives than to the fact that it heralds an important new creative voice, and moves us one step closer to the day when this diversity in cinema is more commonplace.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

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Ain’t That Peculiar?

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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

by Hope Madden

The biggest problem facing Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is that the film is not nearly peculiar enough.

Tim Burton takes on director duties for Ransom Riggs’s popular young adult novel about how special it is to be special. Jake (Asa Butterfield) lost his beloved grandfather (Terence Stamp) mysteriously and visits the orphanage of his childhood looking for closure.

What he finds involves loops in the time space continuum, Burton-esque hotties, creepy twins dressed as scarecrows, and eyeball eating.

It’s impossible to watch this film without comparing it to both the X-Men and Harry Potter series, which means Peregrine has to be Goth enough to set itself apart. You would think, if anybody can Goth up a story, that body is Tim Burton.

Working again with cinematographer Bruno Delbonnell, Burton gives the film a lovely look that creates a nostalgic quality. He’s also made a couple of casting choices that elevate the effort.

Eva Green excels as the titular headmistress, giving the character just enough falcon-like characteristics to make her fascinating.

Samuel L. Jackson – working with some pretty weak dialog – still brims with more swagger than necessary to keep his villainous Baaron interesting.

Butterfield – so tender and wonderful in Scorsese’s 2011 Hugo – falls flat here. So, so flat. His awkward outsider, so weary with the ordinariness of his suburban Florida adolescence, is perhaps too convincingly flattened out by life.

There is a fun Ray Harryhausen-inspired fight sequence in the third act, but by that time you realize that the film has offered so little in the way of interesting visuals or action of any sort that it’s almost jarring.

Not as jarring as all that eyeball eating, though.

On first blush, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children felt like the perfect match of content and director. And Burton could use material that makes him work for it (Big Eyes), rather than just “Tim Buttoning” it (Alice in Wonderland). Maybe the most peculiar thing about the film is that he does neither.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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Safety Dance

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Deepwater Horizon

by George Wolf

With a nice throwback vibe, crackling tension and terrific ensemble acting, Deepwater Horizon is a surprisingly compelling package. Director Peter Berg, surpassing his similar work with Lone Survivor three years ago, is again all about making sure a tragic true-life tale is told with proper respect for the heroes involved.

This tragedy was the worst in U.S. oil .drilling history, as the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana in 2010, killing 11 crew members and exposing a scandalous gap in safety protocols from BP.

Berg, armed with a crisp, economical script from Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand, introduces us to the souls involved with a rapid succession of quick vignettes from their day, just hours just before boarding the rig. Mike (Mark Wahlberg, as good as he’s ever been) gets frisky with his wife Felicia (Kate Hudson), while Andrea (Gina Rodriquez from TV’s Jane the Virgin) can’t get her car started and has to hitch a ride to the airport from her boyfriend, and so on.

Snapshots of crew members’ lives crisscross each other, and the film needs minimal screen time to get us invested in multiple personalities. This is a roadblock for scores of films that Berg and his writers sweep away. They give us people to care about, and they increase the chance that events to come will resonate. Extra points for providing helpful primers on drilling practices in ways that feel organic, such as Mike’s daughter rehearsing a classroom presentation.

The tension builds steadily, with a single bubble of air escaping from an undersea drill line, and leads to a spectacularly staged string of explosions that engulf the entire structure. Berg has long shown his skill as a tactician, and here he gets us breathtakingly close to the chaos with an authenticity that’s refreshingly unencumbered by CGI effects.

You may be reminded of more recent movies (especially Wahlberg’s own The Perfect Storm), but Deepwater Horizon has a retro kinship with classic disaster films of the 70s, along with an in-the-moment humanity that salutes the real players whose lives hung in the balance.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

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Suicide Posse

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The Magnificent Seven

by Hope Madden

What if women, traumatized veterans, blacks, Asian Americans, American Indians, Mexican Americans and whatever white men we have left with a conscience exerted their inalienable right to govern a country that belongs as much to them as to anyone?

Or, what if Hollywood injected these themes into an old Western and hired fewer white guys playing Mexicans?

I give you, Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven.

Denzel Washington anchors the septet as Sam Chisolm, bounty hunter. Newly widowed Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) approaches him with a proposition: Rid Rose Creek of its evil despot (Peter Sarsgaard, wearily evil) in return for everything they have to give.

He’s been paid a lot before, but never everything.

So, Chisolm gathers a group of amiable rogues and heads to near-certain doom in the name of justice – like a Suicide Squad that doesn’t suck.

Based on John Sturges’s 1960 adaptation of Kurasawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, Fuqua’s attempt is already three steps removed from originality. More than that, it’s tough to reignite the spark that made a 50+ year old story fun in the first place.

Not that Fuqua doesn’t take some liberties. Riding alongside Chisolm is as diverse an array of gunslingers as you’re likely to find.

Byung-hun Lee’s efficient knife expert, the solitary Comanche (Martin Sensmeier), and Mexican lawbreaker Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) join haunted Confederate Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawk, voted coolest name), Chris Pratt (playing Chris Pratt) and Vincent D’Onofrio as something else entirely. As Pratt’s Faraday describes him, “That bear was wearing people clothes.”

The film’s multicultural, multi-gendered slant, while appealing, is also jarringly anachronistic. Aside from a handful of good-natured barbs from inside the posse and a bit of stink eye from some of the dodgier locals, there’s nary a racist whisper. In America, circa 1867.

Let’s not even talk about Bennett’s cleavage.

Obvious flaws aside, you can’t argue the cast. D’Onofrio’s a freak (I mean that in the best way), Lee is quietly fascinating, and Denzel has the inarguable gravitas and wicked charm to pull the plan together.

For those of you afraid that Hollywood was about to turn your favorite old Western into an action flick with one liners – I give you…

Seriously, though, Sturgis’s film is more charmingly nostalgic than it is classic – like a toothless Wild Bunch. Fuqua respects the film that inspired his, and works in affection for many of the Westerns that define the genre.

He proves again his capacity to stage action, and the film’s final hour is a mixture of genre odes and glorious choreography as explosions crash, bullets fly and projectiles project.

Which would be great – given the cast, it might even be enough – if Fuqua understood the element that separates Westerns from other genres. It’s not a gatling gun, a saloon or a lonesome street itching for a shoot-out. It’s the haunted heartbeat of the damaged gunslinger. The Magnificent Seven, though fun, is too slick and superficial to find that rhythm.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

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Go Stand In the Corner

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Blair Witch

by George Wolf

Buried now under so many years of bad found footage movies and viral marketing gimmicks, it’s easy to forget that in 1999, The Blair Witch Project was a scary sensation for good reason: it was creepy and frightening on a brilliantly primal level. It may be impossible now to view that film without the baggage nearly twenty years have added, but the main complaint from the naysayers is usually “it’s not scary…nothing happens!”

Director Adam Wingard hears you, and he has something for you.

Wingard’s Blair Witch began last year with the unassuming title The Woods, before unveiling itself as a BWP sequel (Book of Shadows  is wisely ignored) a few months back. Repeating the genius of the original film’s “is it real?” firestorm wasn’t going to happen, but this rope-a-dope title switch was an early sign of Wingard’s solid instincts for both limitation and opportunity.

Remember poor Heather from BWP? Her brother James (James Allen McCune) thinks he glimpses her in a strange online video, so he tracks down the poster, Lane (Wes Robinson). Lane says he found the tape while hiking in the Black Hills Forest, the same area in Maryland where Heather, Mike and Josh went missing years before.

James’s friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) is the budding documentarian this time, so along with friends Ashley (Corbin Reid) and Peter (Brandon Scott), they head into the forest, filming their search for the mysterious house deep inside it where, hopefully, Heather can still be found.

Wingard (You’re Next) and usual screenwriter Simon Barrett know we know some of what’s coming, so they serve it up. Strange noises at night, twigs, and piles of stones are all here (which, if this is the same witch at work, they should be) but we also get an eerie expansion of the ways time and space seem to break down inside the forest.

There are plenty more jump scares, too, and then a sly acknowledgement that this device can quickly grow tiresome, before it’s on to the main event. The tension, naturally, doesn’t feel as tight as when we first went into these woods, but Wingard, as he did with the film’s “fake” title, is confidently exploiting his chance to bring our guard down.

Once inside the house, things most definitely happen, and it’s a helluva fun ride.

The pace becomes almost breakneck, and as the point of view is mainly through a video camera, we’re scanning all corners of the screen for a light source, a way out, someone standing in the corner..or worse.

And if you have one certain phobia, expect to squirm plenty.

Blair Witch is Wingard and Barrett’s most complete film, because it understands why the original Project was scary, and how to honor that horror legacy while turning the action up a notch.

Or three.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

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Wing and a Prayer

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Sully

by George Wolf

Carrying a true American icon both in front of the camera and behind it, Sully lands with a smooth craftsmanship as fitting as it is inevitable.

In January of 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger pulled off the Miracle on the Hudson, landing a commercial jet on the Hudson River after dual engine failure, saving the lives of all 155 souls on board. Based on Sullenberger’s own memoir, this tale of American heroism in the face of extreme circumstance probably had Clint Eastwood’s name on the director’s chair before the Captain even finished his book.

And really, who else is more suited for the helm of a vessel in peril than Tom Hanks?

Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki rightly anchor the film with the miraculous landing, while highlighting the human drama of a conflicted hero and the lives that hung in the balance during 208  fateful seconds. We get a subtle overview of Sully’s four decades of flight experience, nicely balanced with glimpses into the lives of his passengers and the seemingly random events that brought them all together.

It’s a strange thing for an actor to reach the level Hanks has, where he is universally regarded as such a treasure that his startling performance three years ago in Captain Philips became some sort of jarring reminder that, oh yeah, he’s good. This title role bears obvious similarities, but Hanks is able to illustrate the differences with easy grace. From Sully’s nagging self-doubt, to a determined defense of his choice to bypass nearby runways, to the stifling effects of sudden fame, Hanks carves out layers that are unique and deeply felt.

Eastwood builds the tension quietly, maintaining a consistent tone of understatement that makes the spectacle of the water landing all the more breathtaking (and worth the extra dough for IMAX). Kudos, too, for the almost Rashoman-style approach to framing the tragedy, and the respectful acknowledgment to the painful memories rekindled by the image of a crippled plane in NYC.

Not every scene embraces subtlety and not every line finds its mark, but Sully does, because it approaches the story precisely the way Sully himself seemed to approach his job. It’s a film that is modest, prepared and professional, with important moments that rise to the occasion.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

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Mean Machine

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Morgan

by Hope Madden

The weekend of wasted talent rolls on with Morgan, a derivative AI adventure that boasts an impressive cast and a lot of borrowed material.

Luke Scott’s feature directorial debut finds trouble with the L7 – an unnamed corporation’s newest attempt at artificial intelligence. There’s been an injury, and we don’t want a repeat of Helsinki, (it’s always Helsinki!) so Corporate sends the risk analyst (Kate Mara) to assess the situation.

The cast offers loads of reason for optimism. Joining Mara are Brian Cox, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Toby Jones and the great Paul Giamatti. That is a stacked ensemble. And even if every single one of them is underused, each brings something genuine and human – you know, the kind of thing that comes from deep and true talent – to the proceedings.

Highest hopes, though, are hung on the potentially dangerous cyborg herself, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Hot off a brilliant lead in The Witch, Taylor-Joy again takes on a role in which her innocence is in question.

Like Witch helmsman Robert Eggers, Scott employs full screen close ups of Taylor-Joy’s face – her enormous, wide-set eyes and round, innocent features – to exacerbate a struggle to determine whether the character is good or evil.

And Scott clearly knows a good idea when he sees it because he borrows, grabs and plunders with glee.

His film is a mish-mash of Ex Machina, The Silence of the Lambs, Blade Runner and Terminator buoyed with decent performances and one vaguely fresh notion.

Every major character – every hero, villain, person of authority and character pivotal to the plot – is female. Every good decision, poor decision, and bit of badassery is made by a woman. And – get this – even when two of those women are soaking wet, their shirts are neither clingy nor sheer.

Right?!

I’m not going to lie to you – any horror/action hybrid with a predominantly female cast that chooses not to stoop to titillation and exploitation gets an extra star.

There are subtle moments that toy with sexuality, and Scott wisely lets Taylor-Joy express these themes primarily through a nuanced physicality. That, decent pacing and performances better than the material demands elevate the film above the predictable off-season action vehicle that it is.

Verdict-3-0-Stars