Tag Archives: movie reviews

New In Theaters

Think Seriously About Skipping This

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Think Like a Man Too

by Hope Madden

The single most surprising thing about 2012’s Think Like a Man may have been that I did not hate it. The film identifies five potential couples, highlights relationship flaws, then advises the women on how to re-train and trap their men.

Gross.

And yet, as the misguided, sexist, illogical “comedy” unfurled, I began to believe that Kevin Hart could perhaps save any bad film by virtue of his inexhaustible humor.

This theory has been put to the test, as it appears the poor man is destined never to get a script for anything other than a bad movie: Ride Along, About Last Night, Grudge Match – good Lord, Grudge Match!

So, while Hart proves his own talent time and again, he’s also proven that no one human man can possibly save every bad movie director Tim Story wants to make. Case in point: Think Like a Man Too.

We check back in on all the happy couples of the previous installment as they meet in Vegas for one duo’s nuptials. But first, they will divide on gender lines for bachelor/bachelorette parties.

Nothing says fresh like a bachelor party movie set in Vegas.

Actually, stale is an excellent word to describe this lifeless retread. Story regurgitates every overused image and idea from about a dozen movies and a lengthy Vegas ad campaign. Do you think there’s an ultra-luxurious suite? How about some glamorous poolside action? Gambling antics? Rain Man mentions?

Don’t tell me there are strippers?!!

Why, yes, you can expect drunken debauchery (though nothing too raunchy that it can’t be forgiven) that leads to a race to make the ceremony.

I swear to God, it wouldn’t have surprised me to find out there was a tiger in the bathroom.

You know what might have been interesting? An Omaha wedding.

Instead, we get more and more and excruciatingly more of the same, shoveled shamelessly at us in the hopes that Hart can somehow make it funny.

Well, he can’t. The man is not superhuman. And that means there’s nothing at all to distract you from everything that is wrong with this film – which is everything.

 

Verdict-1-5-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

An Invitation to Lose Yourself

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Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

by Hope Madden

Sam Fleischner intends to take you somewhere, and though you may have been there before, it was never like this.

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors shadows Ricky (Jesus Sanchez-Velez), an autistic middle school student, on a day he decides to follow an interesting pair of shoes rather than going home after school. This is, in a nutshell, the entire story. Ricky ends up on the New York City subway, and no one else is aware. As he spends days on end circling the city underground, we’re treated to the character study of a character we can’t really hope to understand. And yet, almost magically, it works.

Though Fleischner has only one other directing credit, he’s logged some serious hours over the years as a cinematographer, a skill he puts to good use here. Rockaway Beach and NYC’s subway system provide not just backdrop, but become full characters in the film. Fleischner lenses the local flavors, color and sound in a way that is equal parts fascinating and terrifying, allowing us to experience them in just the way Ricky does.

Meanwhile, above ground, Ricky’s overworked, undocumented mother – played with an authentic mixture of relentlessness, stoicism and anger by Andrea Suarez Paz – searches helplessly.

A confluence of factors adds to the raising dread the film effectively develops, until you worry you’re trapped in a nightmare. It’s an absorbing hundred minutes or so, without a hint of hyperbole or a single false note – an honesty built mostly on Sandchez-Velez’s performance.

The actor, making his screen debut, offers none of the dramatic flair associated with recent onscreen depictions of autism, possibly because he carries an Asperger’s diagnosis himself. The subdued sorrow he brings to the performance is heartbreaking.

But you will need to be patient because Fleischner certainly is. Nothing is rushed, but everything matters: the newspapers littering the trains, the ads behind Ricky’s head, bumper stickers stuck randomly throughout the tunnels and trains. The film is asking us to lose ourselves the way Ricky has, but to notice things, too, just as he does.

It’s a rewarding and frightening experience. In fact, the quiet brilliance of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors is that it is so honestly observed that it feels universal.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

New In Theaters

Don’t Call It Lip Service

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Burt’s Buzz

by Hope Madden

Burt Shavitz does not measure success the way most of us do, but if you like old hippies, bees and golden retrievers, he may have just the movie for you.

That bearded kisser that graces the little tins of Burt’s Bees creams and jellies belongs to Shavitz, and filmmaker Jody Shapiro hopes to get behind those rheumy eyes with his new documentary, Burt’s Buzz. He’s not the only one. His film is littered with folks – Burt’s brother, his caretaker, his marketing contact in Taiwan – who would dearly like to make a personal connection, get to know the real Burt.

It turns out, the man is a bit of a conundrum, a walking contradiction, even – which should come as no surprise from the guy who uses his own ugly mug to hawk beauty balms.

Shapiro’s film is most engaging when it lets itself simply capture the contradictions: the septuagenarian Mainer living without electricity or hot water as he’s greeted by throngs of screaming, bee-costumed fans in a Taiwan airport; the fella too frugal to fix his hot water heater, complaining that the marketing folks didn’t bring Turkish coffee, but regular. But Burt is an eccentric old cuss and, more than anything, he is not what you expect and doesn’t care.

For many, including Shaprio, the film might seem a likely expose on the hostile takeover that forced beekeeper Shavitz from his company in the Nineties, when his then-partner in life and business Roxanne Quimby bought him out, only to later sell the company to Clorox for epic riches. (Yes, the international bleach company owns the earth-friendly Burt’s Bees. This film breathes these little ironies.)

But pity is not appropriate. Shavitz walked away from corporate wealth as a youth when he turned down the chance to run his family business, and walked away from prestige and fame in the Sixties when he quit his successful venture as a photo journalist to move to an abandoned barn in Upstate New York.

It’s hard to tell whether Shapiro is impatient with his subject, or whether he’s afraid the audience will be, but when the filmmaker can just settle down and let the cameras roll, you finally get a feel for who Burt Shavitz is. It’d be too patronizing and myopic to call his a simple life – I haven’t been to Taiwan, I never photographed Malcolm X, I never lost a multimillion dollar company, and none of that seems simple to me.

He isn’t simple, isn’t quaint, and is not likely to be what you expect. Except when he is.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

For Your Queue

Beautiful Losers for Your Queue

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Available today on DVD and Blu-Ray is the utterly unseen but stingingly lovely portrait of American poverty, The Motel Life. Boasting beautiful performances from Emile Hirsch, Dakota Fanning and, in particular, Stephen Dorff, this story of brothers, hope, and the bad choices that kick survival in the teeth is worth checking out.

Motel Life, at times, feels reminiscent  of Gus Van Zant’s 1989 tale of rambling cons and druggies Drugstore Cowboy. Spun from the haunted existence on the fringes, with dusty small towns and cheap motels, populated by broken people making poor decisions, Drugstore Cowboy is another breathtaking image of the fight to change your direction.

Outtakes

Countdown: The Best Sports Commentators on Film

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Oh glorious days! When was the last time we had a whole weekend of gorgeous weather? After eight straight months of snow, it was just awesome to make it through May without any icy accumulation – unless you count those hail storms from a couple weeks back. But that’s all over, and we had a whole weekend of sun for baseball (Clippers double header, Indians sweep!). Hell, even the Memorial golf tournament enjoyed perhaps the best weather in its history. It was like a whole weekend needed some kind of announcer to color commentate. It all put us in the mind of some of our favorite onscreen sports announcers.

5. Fred Willard, Jim Piddock: Best in Show (2000)

Christopher Guest’s drolly hilarious send up of dog culture gets, as is so often the case, splashes of lunacy from Fred Willard. In this case, his ignoramus color commentary during the Mayflower Kennel Dog Club Show opposite the perfectly dry Jim Paddock punctures the proceedings perfectly.

4. John C. McGinley: 42 (2013)

As famed sports announcer and voice of the Dodgers Red Barber, McGinley had big shoes to fill. His spot-on delivery added to the historical context 42 was hoping to articulate, and also pointed to Barber as an unflappable pro with a sense of humor and a fluid, soothing delivery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEBPl-OxklU

3. Gary Cole/Jason Bateman: Dodgeball (2004)

The Dodgeball straight man/color commentary duo of Cotton McKnight (Cole) and Pepper Brooks (Bateman) from ESPN 8: The Ocho brought that classic bout of titans the gravitas it deserved. Bateman’s as over-the-top as he has ever been in his career, and consummate pro Cole hits dead pan gold as the play by play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84cwztN3nms

2. Bob Uecker: Major League (1989)

If there is one thing that makes Major League a timeless classic (it is, too!), it’s Bob Uecker’s hilarious play by play announcer. Fed up, feisty and probably drunk, his Harry Doyle kept the film’s pace high and the laughs continuous.

1. Bill Murray: Caddyshack (1980)

‘It’s in the hole!” Proving that he can do anything at all, Bill  Murray puts tears in our eyes as assistant greenskeeper Carl Spackler, imagining his own Cinderella story of coming out of nowhere to win the Masters.

 

New In Theaters

Terrific Texas Trio

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Cold in July

by Hope Madden

Pulpy, seedy and hot with hidden dangers, Cold in July is that uniquely Southern crime drama that moseys at its own pace as it unveils its lurid details.

Michael C. Hall turns in his Dexter lab coat  in favor of a mullet and short-sleeved button down as Richard Dane, the Texan family man who startles a burglar and accidentally puts a bullet in his head.

Thus begins our investigation of Texan ideas of manhood.

Hailed a local hero, Dane is troubled by his own actions, but even more troubled when the dead boy’s ex-con father (a delightfully salty Sam Shepard) shows up looking for revenge.

Nothing’s as it seems in this twisty yarn that weaves through corruption, deception and the elusive honor in masculinity.

Here and in several other recent turns, Hall has proven a cagey character actor able to slip on the skin of wildly different characters and find an authentic human heartbeat. Shepard, a seasoned pro, also performs admirably, but both are routinely outshone by the sheer joyous swagger Don Johnson brings to his role as a flamboyant  Texas P.I.

With Johnson comes some much needed wry humor. His character’s entrance also alters the trajectory of the story, and while the film benefits from the change of course, it also never fully resolves the questions brought up during its first act.

Paternal anxiety fuels the sometimes questionable decisions made by the threesome, and the sordid, conspiracy-riddled mess they find themselves in is pure Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba  Ho-Tep!).

That great (and often mediocre) purveyor of pulp wrote the source material that’s adapted here by director Jim Mickle and his creative partner, co-star Nick Damici.

The duo have honed a storytelling style that never ceases to compel, with previous efforts (Stake Land and We Are What We Are, in particular) worth seeking out. This effort takes too long to find its path and its pace, feeling in the end like two separate films sewn together. Questionable character motives don’t help matters. But, together with a gripping trio of performances, the filmmakers have crafted a potent, unwholesome little thriller.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

New In Theaters

No Badass is Safe

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Maleficent

by Hope Madden

Hey, thanks a lot Wicked.

For those of us who love a good villain for their terrifying villainy, the popularity of the stage musical Wicked has created a bit of a problem: the neutering of the greatest of the greats. Gregory Maguire started it when he gave the Wicked Witch of the West a political backstory that exposed her self-sacrifice and good nature.

Now Disney wants to turn their greatest and most terrifying villain, Sleeping Beauty‘s Maleficent, into another role model.

Bah!

I’ll give them this. They can cast a lead.

Angelina Jolie has always cut an imposing, otherworldly figure, and Maleficent’s horns and leather look right at home. She offers the chilly elegance, dry humor and shadowy grace needed to bring the animated evildoer to life.

Plus, she looks great. And the film looks great – we’d expect nothing less from first-time director, longtime visual effects and set design maestro Robert Stromberg. But it’s not enough to save the effort.

The truly talented Elle Fanning struggles in an anemically-written role while Sharlto Copley flails, saddled with a character whose descent into madness is articulated with little more than overacting.

The basis of the problem is a toothless script by Linda Woolverton. Less the girl-power theme that elevated Frozen (another Wicked rip off) and more a bitter pill about untrustworthy men, the film feels mean in all the wrong ways. Woolverton’s also littered the enchanted landscape with forgettable or annoying characters – the three pixies of Disney’s ’59 animated film devolve from adorable, amusing pips to annoying, useless caregivers.

Stromberg’s plodding pace helps little. He forever undercuts any tension he builds, and the film suffers immeasurably from lack of momentum.

He and Woolverton could have learned a lot from the flawed but watchable Snow White and the Huntsmen (2012), a film that sought to update the old fable with a larger focus on its great villain without de-fanging her bite. Instead, Maleficent takes the very strongest element of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale and weakens it.

Look out, Darth Vader. At the rate Hollywood is corrupting our great villains, you’ll be singing show tunes in no time.

 

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pgmFAOgm5E

Outtakes

Creature Feature Countdown

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Godzilla made a pretty impressive return last weekend, thanks mostly to director Gareth Edwards‘s ability to spectacularly realize monster fight chaos. The old reptile deserved it, really, having been hashed and rehashed in dozens of ways since his birth in 1954. It put us in the  mood for other great creature features, so here is a perusal of some of our modern favorites.

5. The Host (2006)

In 2006, Korea’s Joon-ho Bong took his own shot at the Godzilla fable. The sci-fi import The Host, which tells the tale of a giant mutant monster terrorizing Seoul, has all the thumbprints of the old Godzilla movies: military blunder, resultant angry monster, terrorized metropolis. The film’s often comedic tone gives it a quirky charm, but seriously diminishes its ability to frighten. Host does generate real, claustrophobic dread when it focuses on a missing child, though. Along with its endearing characters, well-paced plot, and excellent climax, it makes for a worthy creature feature offering.

4. King Kong (2005)

That’s right, we are dismissing the 1933 original and, obviously, the 1976 debacle in favor of Peter Jackson’s remarkable feat of intimacy and CGI. Andy Serkis offers a stunning heartbeat for the giant ape, and Naomi Watts performs better with a green screen than most actors do with flesh and blood colleagues. Even Jack Black proves his mettle in an effort that reminds audiences of the surprising universality of the old tale.

3. The Thing (1982)

Another reboot makes the list. In 1982, John Carpenter reconsidered the old SciFi standby The Thing from Another World from a Cold War terror into a claustrophobic, icy bloodbath. A beard-tastic team of scientists on expedition in the Arctic takes in a dog. The dog is not a dog, though. Not really. And soon, in an isolated wasteland offering barely enough interior room to hold all the facial hair, folks are getting jumpy because there’s no knowing who’s not really himself anymore.

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

2. Alien (1979)

After a vagina-hand-sucker-monster attaches itself to your face, it gestates inside you, then tears through your innards. Then it grows exponentially, hides a second set of teeth, and bleeds acid. How much cooler could this possibly be? Ridley Scott married haunted house tropes with SciFi creature feature scares to create maybe the greatest alien horror of all time.

1. Jaws (1975)

Thanks to a cantankerous mechanical shark and a relentlessly effective score, twentysomething Stephen Spielberg was able to create mounting dread like no one before him by relying on the audience’s imagination and showing little of his creature. It may have been partly unintentional, but the effect – along with maybe cinema’s greatest buddy threesome of Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss – created the most beloved, most influential creature feature of all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCjDa44S3kI

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

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

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9shXQwUdJRU