Tag Archives: entertainment

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Splash

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Lu Over the Wall

by Rachel Willis

To give away too much of the plot of Lu Over the Wall would be to steal the joy of experiencing this unique, quirky film. Director Masaaki Yuasa has crafted a sweet fantasy that explores the moving friendship between a boy and a mermaid.

The first half of the film offers an unpredictable journey that follows Kai as he gets to know the buoyant Lu. Along for the ride are Kai’s friends, Yuho and Kunio.

Before Lu, Kai is sullen and morose, having recently moved from Tokyo to a small fishing village with his dad following his parents’ divorce. Yuho and Kunio try their best to engage Kai, even talking him into joining their band. But it isn’t until Lu appears, drawn by Kai’s music, that he begins to open up to the world around him.

Though the first half of the film is unusual, and, at times, downright weird, the second half falls into a more predictable pattern. However, the shift into a more traditional story doesn’t detract from the film. And though the second section is more certain, the quirks and oddities of the story are maintained through the animation. Lu and Kai, along with Yuho and Kunio, face challenges as old prejudices and new curiosities are aroused by the arrival of Lu.

At times, the animation is reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki’s work, but it also occasionally has the slapstick style of Tex Avery’s old Bugs Bunny cartoons. The blending of styles, along with the film’s own specific elements, merge together to serve the unconventional story well. From the monstrous creatures to the everyday people to the village’s shops and streets, the visuals are the most memorable part of the film.

Music also plays an important role, but the soundtrack is a little stale when paired with the rich animation. Too often, the score and soundtrack fade forgettably into the background when the movie would be better served by sound that enhanced the animation onscreen.

Though often strange and unusual, Lu Over the Wall is a touching tale.

 

 

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One Bad Mutha

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Breaking In

by Hope Madden

Breaking In—the latest in a line of Liam Neeson movies—sees a desperate parent doing whatever it takes to save their tender offspring.

This time around Gabrielle Union plays Liam Neeson. Well, she plays Shaun, a woman who’s brought her two children with her to her recently-deceased father’s wooded property to get the place ready to sell. Problem is, somebody’s already there.

Shaun suddenly finds herself in the situation of trying to save her children from the men who’ve come to rob her late father’s safe.

The film was penned by Ryan Engle, who’s written two of Neeson’s own Liam Neeson movies (Non-Stop, The Commuter). The man likes a formula.

Union convinces as the family’s level-headed, savvy matriarch.

She’s locked out of her dead father’s tech-dense fortress while her kids are locked in with baddies. The clock is ticking until the cut phone cable brings the cops. Shaun’s indeterminate experiences at her shady father’s secluded property have apparently better prepared her for this event than the villains would have expected.

There could be something here.

Though little more than a mishmash of domestic thriller clichés, still, with a bit of style and a little creativity, it could make for a tense and brisk 90 minutes.

If only the bad guys moved quickly, as if they were working against a timer. Show a little urgency, fellas.

Or if all that tech—the cameras, the motion-sensor lights, the door locks—worked consistently rather than conveniently.

Or if director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) brought any style to the project. Any at all.

Home invasion movies can become pressure cookers of tension and diabolical possibility. Too bad McTeigue has no idea how to exploit any of the tenser elements Engle gives him, nor does he have the skill to draw your attention away from any of the gaping holes littered throughout this plot.

Union’s fighting against more than seedy criminals.

New In Theaters, Slider

A for Effort

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Life of the Party

by Matt Weiner

One of these days we’ll finally get a Melissa McCarthy movie that deserves her talents and doesn’t just desperately depend on them. Even though Life of the Party is written by McCarthy along with husband and frequent collaborator Ben Falcone… well, the wait isn’t over quite yet.

McCarthy stars as Deanna Miles, a woman whose life is upended by a sudden divorce with her husband Dan (Matt Walsh). Realizing that she spent her adult life meekly going along with other people’s wishes, Deanna decides to finish her abandoned senior year of college. It’s a positive message, as far as mid-life crises go.

This brings her into embarrassingly close contact with her daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon), who is also finishing her senior year at school, as well as Maddie’s sorority sisters. (All standard “not actually that weird” movie misfits, except for Gillian Jacobs, who injects some actual off-kilter menace as Helen.)

The idea of a former student getting into classes immediately (apparently without the need to re-take additional core requirements), and paying to live on campus despite living 20 minutes away raises some logistical questions. But McCarthy’s comedic gifts have saved staler setups. She turns Deanna into a woman to root for, not pity, as she completes her degree, relives her youth and gets over her spineless ex-husband.

Not that the film’s cringe comedy with a heart comes without a cost: the gentle nudges toward empowerment and inclusivity make for a welcoming message. But the steady laughs are all a bit defanged, especially for a setup about a woman whose husband has just divorced her after decades of building a life together (and who apparently still controls their finances in a way that makes her life materially difficult).

Given how much the story invests in the contrived college setup, the real missed opportunity feels like the uninhibited adult comedy nipping at the outer edges of what ended up on screen. Maya Rudolph is wickedly good as Christine, the best friend living vicariously through Deanna. And Walsh can tease out more notes than should be possible when given the room to work his sad sack variations.

It doesn’t really seem like the film is trying to connect with a younger audience anyway. The film is more homage to the triumphant ‘80s teen movies that McCarthy and Falcone would have eaten up as teens, with a “Save Deanna” finale and all.

This is a good thing when it comes to the sexual politics. (Have you re-watched Revenge of the Nerds lately?) But the predictable setup makes Life of the Party diverting yet wholly forgettable.

It’s a passing grade, but just barely.

 

 

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Alice in Underland

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Terminal

by Hope Madden

Femme fatales. Hitmen. Disjointed timelines. Neon.

Sin City was interesting in 2005.

Vaughn Stein’s debut as a feature film writer/director, after many years assisting, borrows heavily from the Tarantino explosion of the Nineties and early 2000s. He drops us into a metropolitan underworld where danger intersects with madness and borrowed style tries desperately to draw attention away from lack of substance.

He does have Margot Robbie, though, so that’s a start. Robbie plays the aforementioned femme fatale in a hulking underbelly of a soundstage meant to look like a cross between a wee-hours train terminal, an insane asylum and Wonderland—all with that vacant, neon emptiness of a neo-noir.

Robbie’s Annie is a hitman masquerading as a waitress in the terminals all-night diner. There’s a hidden mastermind, a mysterious cripple, a couple of contract killers and a teacher who needs a little nudge before he’s ready to off himself.

Vaughn immediately brings Sin City to mind with his splashy comic book noirisms. It’s hard for that to feel fresh at this stage in filmdom, and his tired hodge-podging of hyper-dramatic tropes doesn’t breathe any new life into the story.

In fact, the story is the problem. It’s an awful lot of nothing, truth be told, with nary a surprise and loads of letdowns.

There is a bit in the diner that’s worth a watch. An excellent Simon Pegg waits for a train and chit chats with a borderline insane waitress (Robbie). Their chemistry is odd and welcome, and Pegg’s delivery is particularly impeccable. In these scenes, Vaughn’s writing suddenly feels engaging and unpredictable.

The core story about two killers Annie is playing against each other peters out blandly, and though the answer to any other surprise has long ago been telegraphed in, still we sit through an intolerable backstory.

Robbie does what she can, though she leans a bit too heavily on her Harley Quinn character to sell Annie’s mental state. She’s mad as a hatter, you see. We know that because she told us so in an opening voiceover narration.

The film isn’t awful, but it isn’t good. Mainly, there is just nothing new to see here.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of May 7

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Wow, some very different films available for home entertainment this week. On one hand, artist Ai Weiwei’s utterly breathtaking documentary on displacement and refugees. On the other, the last and worst of the Fifty Shades films. Our guess is that either one or the other may interest you, not likely both.

Guess which one we like better. Click the link to read the full review.

Human Flow

Fifty Shades Freed

New In Theaters

Underwhelmed

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Overboard

by Hope Madden

More than 30 years ago, Garry Marshall directed one of those Eighties films: good-heartedly hateful and contrived in that colorfully rom-com way, Overboard.

It is the ridiculous story of comeuppance wherein a small-town carpenter (Kurt Russell), cheated out of payment by a scantily clad, uppity billionaire (Goldie Hawn), concocts a plan to get the money he is due when she washes ashore with amnesia.

Flash forward several decades and director Rob Greenberg makes his feature debut after a lifetime of sitcoms, revisiting Leslie Dixon’s 1987 screenplay.

His update sees Kate (Anna Faris) as a single mom just trying to pass that damn nursing exam so she can quit her two jobs (pizza delivery, carpet cleaner) and offer a better life for her three daughters.

She’s sent to sop up the champagne spillage on a yacht, meets spoiled heir Leonardo (Eugenio Derbez), argues and ends up in far worse financial trouble than she’d been in a day before.

Now she’ll never get that nurse’s license!

When the billionaire washes up back in Elk Cove, Kate’s pizza place boss (Eva Longoria) figures the least he owes Kate is some some day labor (so she doesn’t have to replace that job he lost for her), and enough chores to give Kate the time to study.

Only until the exam—then we’ll tell him.

The premise is no fresher or more believable this time around, though they do update in a couple of interesting ways. Leonardo is a Mexican heir; the day laborers only speak Spanish and most of the pizza crew is bilingual Mexican American, so about fifty percent of the film is subtitled.

This is an interesting choice, since the point of both versions of Overboard is to point out the hideous gap in work ethic and morality you can find between the rich and poor. Choosing not to “Roseanne” that image of the American working poor was a solid decision. Not that it can help this movie.

This is simply not a premise that has the strength to stand the test of time. The original was a success on the charm and natural (and obviously abiding) charisma of its stars. Why was it successful? Goldie Hawn was a comic genius, Kurt Russell was gorgeous, and it was the Eighties. That is it.

The remake has none of those things going for it. Greenberg, updating Dixon’s script with Bob Fisher (Wedding Crashers), can’t write his way out of the contrivance. Though Faris is certainly a talent, she lacks the charisma to carry a film.

Perhaps most damaging is the utter absence of chemistry between the leads, making every inch toward romance feel unnatural and, honestly, almost creepy.

New In Theaters

Home Again, Home Again

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The Endless

by Hope Madden

There is something very clever about the way Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead’s movies sneak up on you. Always creepy, still they defy genre expectations even as they play with them.

Camp Arcadia offers the rustic backdrop for their latest, The Endless. A clever bit of SciFi misdirection, the film follows two brothers as they return to the cult they’d escaped a decade earlier.

Just to visit.

Do you ever have those dreams where you find yourself back in your hometown and no matter how hard you try, you can’t leave? No? You must not be from Tiffin, Ohio.

Benson and Moorehead capture that particular panicked feeling, each slow-moving moment generating a louder and louder echo in your head, yelling: Why are you still here? Go already!

The other thing the directing pair creates with uneasy authenticity is that spotty forgiving and unforgiving bond between siblings.

The directors themselves play those siblings. Though Moorehead and Benson have had cameos in their previous films Spring and Resolution, as well as a handful of other horror flicks, The Endless, penned by Benson, is the first film they anchor.

Their acting chops are mainly solid, although perhaps not lead-worthy. Moorehead’s innocence and whining sometimes feel forced. Meanwhile, Benson’s character’s motivation is at times suspect, and he’s unconvincing as a sheltered, shell-shocked, co-dependent.

Though the lead performances sometimes undermine the agile storytelling, the turns the directors draw from their ensemble are strong across the board. Welcome familiar faces in a third-act surprise prove the filmmakers’ nimble skill with a fantasy storyline that could easily collapse on itself but never does.

It is this story and the pair’s storytelling skill that continues to impress. Their looping timelines provide fertile ground for clever turns that fans of the filmmakers will find delightful, but the uninitiated will appreciate as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRg7lwDsGpw

Outtakes

Users and Critics and Genres! Oh My!

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Users and critics and genres! Oh My!

by Thomas van Wageningen

At Veboli, we’re always thinking of ways to improve the movie advice we give the movie lovers on our site. Last summer we rounded up movie critics from all over the world, including five here at MaddWolf, to connect movie lovers to critics that best understand their own taste in movies. This, of course, generates a lot of data (Holy crap, there are more than 20,000 reviews!). With all that data, I wondered: how do you users compare to critics?

Before diving into the genres, let’s look at how the critics here at MaddWolf compare to the average user’s ratings on Veboli. George Wolf’s taste in movies is the most similar to the average Veboli user, Rachel Willis’ taste is the most unique. Below is a table of all the MaddWolf movie critics and their average difference from the average user rating on Veboli.

Critics Average Difference
George Wolf 0.9
Hope Madden 1.0
Matt Weiner 1.1
Christie Robb 1.6
Rachel Willis 1.9

 

Take Fight Club and The Lion King for example. The average ratings on Veboli for these two movies are 7.6 and 7.3. George gave these two movies an 8 and a 7 whereas Rachel gave them a 6 and a 10. Most of George’s ratings are pretty close to the the average rating of all of the users on Veboli while Rachel has more ratings that are farther from the average.

Looking at the table, I at first thought MaddWolf’s got three pretty average critics and two more unique ones. Which it turns out was a pretty accurate statement. The average critic has an average difference per rating of 1.08. But this misses an even bigger pattern! The average user has an average difference per rating of 1.51. Users on Veboli are a pretty diverse group of movie lovers. Some of the users even have an average difference of higher than 5. That’s crazy! If users on average give a movie a 5, these users would give it either a 0 or a 10.

I thought that horror would have the largest average difference between users and critics. I thought laughing, sympathizing and thinking are things that most people generally like in movies. But being scared is something that some people love and others hate. But horror’s only the sixth most disagreed upon genre, with adventure, science fiction, action, fantasy, and drama all having slightly higher average differences in ratings by users and critics.

So what did I find? It seems like factual movies (documentaries and historical movies) are less controversial than the more fictional movies (fantasy, horror and science fiction). The more energetic, fast-paced movies (action and adventure) are generally the most controversial. Below is a table of all the genres and the average difference in ratings between users and critics. The lower the average difference, the more users and critics agree about the movies in that genre.

Genre

Average Difference

Western

0.9

Documentary

1.0

Music

1.0

History

1.2

Animation

1.3

Mystery

1.4

Family

1.4

Crime

1.4

Romance

1.4

Comedy

1.4

Thriller

1.4

Horror

1.4

Drama

1.5

Fantasy

1.5

Action

1.6

Science fiction

1.6

Adventure

1.6

 

Head over to Veboli to see more movies that users and critics disagree or agree on. If you’d like to see more of the data on how users compare to movie critics explored, let us know in the comments below!

PS, The Wizard of Oz has a difference of 2.3, critics seem to like it much more than users.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of April 30

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Great animation, very good foreign drama, better-than-expected war drama and one seriously disappointing ghost story—these are the choices. Let us help you with that.

Click the film title for the full review.

Peter Rabbit

In the Fade

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

12 Strong

Winchester