Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  

Starring Megan Fox, William Fichtner, Will Arnett and Johnny Knoxville

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

From Paramount Pictures

Rated PG-13

101 minutes

Releases on August 8th, 2014

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Late in the rebooted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie, the knife-bedazzled villain Shredder says, “Tonight I dine on turtle soup.” Funny, because that’s exactly what I was thinking.

In one of the most block-headed reboots to come out of Hollywood’s trendy Reboot-a-Thon, the Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles further perpetuates the principle of diminishing returns when it comes to re-imagining every design that was on your bed sheets when you were 7 years old. Recall how the original movies were silly fun and, yes, heaps full of stupid. Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman (Battle Los Angeles) vacuum all the color, visual gags and life from the franchise and supplant it with grit, haze and shadows.

No one is going to try and convince you the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise was quality cinema. It was early ’90s counterculture (“Cowabunga, dudes”) wrapped up in a blank check to the pizza industry. It was kitsch and camp, rubber-faced costumes and pre-X-Games skateboard stunts. It was the kind of movie that pre-teen You loved, but if you were to watch it today be kinda embarrassed about. But the movie had pluck, and the plot and characters made sense. (I can’t believe I’m defending those movies.)

In the reboot, the plot is about as subtle as stomping through rain puddles in a minefield. It opens on Megan Fox as a journalist — the movie’s first big joke. Fox is April O’Neil, a reporter at a New York City television station who says during a live broadcast, in Times Square no less, “Hey guys, I’m here in New York City …” Because all the viewers thought she was in Sheboygan, and she cleared that right up. The journalism stuff is all unintentionally hilarious, including a clueless editor played by Whoopi Goldberg, April’s fact-free brand of reporting, and poor Will Arnett who keeps using the phrase “put it to bed” totally unaware that it’s an actual news term that means the opposite of what he’s talking about.

April, the daughter of a dead scientist who experimented on turtles, gets a hunch about masked vigilantes trolling the Foot Clan, the city’s pesky paramilitary gang that operates in the shadows. She follows her make-believe leads until she finds the actual Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, hulking human-turtle hybrids with large prehistoric shells and color-coordinated masks. There is sword-swinging Leonardo (voiced by Johnny Knoxville), the leader; Raphael, the rebellious outcast; Michelangelo, the jokester and pizza fiend; and Donatello, the IT turtle who wears nerd glasses and a large headset array on his face.

The turtles are designed beefier and sturdier than the earlier movies. They’re given lots of sewer-scavenged accessories — a bamboo chestplate, recycled sunglasses, do-rags, shell necklaces and, because whatever, a rocket skateboard — that allow them a grittier fashion sense, albeit a homeless one. The four reptiles are also entirely CGI, giving them a creepy animated vibe. Making matters worse, none of the voice acting is convincing, or even memorable. They may be teens, but the turtles are voiced by gravel-voiced middle-aged men whose mothers couldn't pick their voices out in a vocal lineup.

Anyway, April and the turtles — and their rat leader, Splinter — team up to disassemble the Foot Clan and it’s shadowy leader, who you will never in a million years guess. (It’s William Fichtner and that was sarcasm.) Fichtner plays Eric Sacks, the Foot’s financier who only speaks in exposition-filled diatribes. He hatches a plot to gas all of Manhattan so he can sell everyone a poison antidote. Sacks, a name that is funnier the more I read it, is willing to kill a whole bunch of people so he can be “stupidly rich,” but he lives in a Bruce Wayne-sized mansion with helicopter pad, owns numerous multinational corporations and has the mayor on speed dial — his priorities are a little screwy.

Being that this is a Michael Bay movie, at some point a Transformer had to show up. This Transformer's name is Shredder. He’s a human ninja wrapped in a metal knife-suit that could easily be mistaken for one of Hasbro’s transforming robots. And like Bay’s Transformers, Shredder doesn't really have a form or shape, but rather metal tips and wings and appendages. Imagine taking a human shape and welding a junkyard to it … Shredder looks like that.

The film’s mush of gunfights and ninjutsu is appropriately idiotic — the only thing it inherited from the original series — and takes place in the turtle’s subterranean sewer plaza, high atop a skyscraper and skidding down the world’s longest mountain snow slide. There are hints of zaniness, though much of it feels like a rehash of the Transformers movies, now with more reptiles. Ninja Turtles might also have the worst photography of the year: much of the movie is foggy and dark, and the 3D doesn't brighten the mud. It also doesn't help that every camera gimmick is used, from shaky cam and its stepchild spinney cam to lens flares and haze filters. It’s as if Liebesman (let me repeat his credential here: Battle Los Angeles!!!) didn't want us to watch his movie at all, which is actually my recommendation.

Lastly, let me talk about Megan Fox. Critics sometimes joke about bad performances, and we’re prone to hyperbole, but I feel confident about this next sentence: acting doesn't get much worse than it does right here with Megan Fox. At one point she’s out-performed by a pizza box, and then tube of ooze, and then four CGI turtles who live in a tube made to funnel human excrement out of a city. We've know Fox was an awful actress for some time, but this confirms that she’s also a glutton for punishment. She spends much of the movie being thrown from one dangerous stunt to another, but the film always has time to admire her ass. “You’re a complicated chick,” Arnett’s character says as he drills holes through her jeans with his eyes. Fox had an epic falling-out with Bay during the Transformers movies, and supposedly she made nice to be cast here. If this is what happens when you apologize to Michael Bay, then he may never hear “I’m sorry” ever again.

So, who’s ready for that soup?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  

Starring Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Abby Elliott

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 101 minutes

Genre: Action-Adventure

Opens August 8th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles serves fans of the material but doesn’t get past the unnecessary nature of this story being told from the beginning once again. How many reiterations of the same origin story can an audience handle? These are admittedly fun characters that interact well together and have the ability to entertain when given the right comedic material. One of the central problems with this latest reboot, though, is its inability to balance the overly dramatic nature of its evildoers and the silly and comedic ways of the titular reptiles. In the middle of serious conversations, such one-liners as “Tonight, we dine on turtle soup,” and “Time to take a bite out of the Big Apple,” are delivered with no style. Having these lines delivered by villains who take themselves seriously often feels strange and tonally off, particularly with comedic talents like Will Arnett and Whoopi Goldberg providing solid humor alongside the main characters.

The film opens with a rushed origin story of the turtles and how they came to be. According to this latest incarnation, the titular protagonists and a rat named Splinter were test subjects of a drug that supposedly had the ability to combat various diseases. The leader of this test trial, Eric Sachs (William Fichtner), hoped to make the world a better place by using this to prevent the potentially widespread nature of various illnesses, but a fire led to the destruction of all of their work and the loss of every life except for his own. The animals and research were presumed to be lost in the mix. But the turtles are still alive, as Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael live in the sewers under New York City with the guidance of their father figure, Splinter. They are told to never move up to ground level for the world will not understand them, but the emergence of the Foot Clan and their theft of chemical weapons leads to their need to help the world.

The only person that knows of their existence, though, is April O’Neil (Megan Fox), a journalist who works with Vernon (Will Arnett), a goofy cameraman that aims to win her over one of these days if she’d just give him a chance. Their investigation of the clan leads them to the turtles, and they all band together to stop Shredder, the arch nemesis of the reptiles with a desire to destroy New York. The story is flimsy and ultimately familiar for those who have seen any other versions of the story. Minor changes occur for the human characters and there are surprising attempts to make a narrative out of those outlying stories. The problem lies within the fact that they don’t make a compelling narrative, and distract from what everyone wants to see: the talking, mutated, pizza-loving, karate-fighting turtles. The film understands the characters and their relationship with one another: Raphael failing to get along with the leadership position of Leonardo, Michelangelo constantly hitting on April and doing whatever he wants, and Donatello clearly being the smartest one in the group.

Yet I accept that my viewing experience is something that will not affect those who want to see TMNT. Fans of the series will thoroughly enjoy the film. It delivers the requisite thrills, fun action scenes, and comic banter that people have grown to love from the series. But for me, it remains mostly empty entertainment that is certainly lifted by the updated humor and manically controlled action scenes. Will Arnett is delightful in a comic sidekick role that basically asks him to get away with his normal schtick in a family-oriented film. Visually the turtles are beautifully rendered with motion capture, but the 3D is rather horrid looking, either due to the presentation I saw or simply a disregard for crafting depth-filled frames. Jonathan Liebesman directs here, best known for making films that go “Kaboom!” often and loudly. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of those films, paced haphazardly and tonally inconsistent but not as awful as it should be. It’s merely a forgettable end-of-summer extravaganza.

Into the Storm - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Into the Storm  

Starring Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Max Deacon, and Nathan Kress

Directed by Steven Quale

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 89 minutes

Genre: Action/Thriller

Opens August 8th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Into the Storm is a middling film that uses its spectacular special effects and sound design to distract from its bland, predictable narrative. Tornadoes will always look extraordinary no matter how they are presented; their sheer force is something that undoubtedly inspires awe to an outside observer, even though their destruction can lead to death and destroyed homes and families. The elements are ripe for environmental commentary and family drama. Yet they are presented on screen with no care for subtlety or inspiration, instead relying on familiar character tropes and plot points that never elevate the story past its admittedly intriguing premise. The film follows a group of storm chasers led by Pete (Matt Walsh), a determined man whose ultimate goal is to lead Titus (his tank of a storm-tracking vehicle) into the eye of a tornado. He is working on a storm documentary alongside Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies), a scientist who has spent three months away from her daughter and relies on numbers over instinct.

After four high school students die from a small tornado sweeping through Silverton, the documentarians decide to head to that town despite hearing about tornadoes potentially touching down in Riverside. A stormfront is approaching that looks ominous and ripe for the shots they need in their hunting. Allison’s insistence on Silverton having the meat of the action allows the story to connect with Donnie’s (Max Deacon). He’s a high school student who’s helping the vice principal/his father, Gary (Richard Armitage), shoot a time capsule documentary for the school. They are all preparing for graduation and Donnie has struggled to connect with his father after his mother died. He ends up skipping the graduation ceremony, electing for his brother (Nathan Kress) to shoot while Donnie runs off to help his crush, Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam Carey), on her project. Sure enough, she and Donnie get stuck while the storm blows through the area, disrupting the graduation and tearing apart the family once more.

The story feels jumbled together and coincidental, which only becomes further enhanced by the introduction of two idiots that like to do stupid things for the Internet. For some reason, these comedic sidekicks pop up in a strange subplot that never really meshes with the narrative; they cross over from time to time, but most of their scenes involve moronic behavior and annoying traits. I suppose Into the Storm has that type of story that doesn’t particularly care about characters, though. That’s understandable. Every time the story wanders into melodrama, the filmmakers go for spectacle and aim big. They certainly succeed, since the tornadoes are impressively rendered and interact seamlessly with the characters on screen. There’s a sense of urgency and genuine stakes when they are presented in the background or coming straight toward the protagonists. The sound effects, particularly in Dolby ATMOS, are stunning and enveloping.

Despite this desire to create a new-age disaster film, though, director Steven Quale never develops a singular voice behind the screen. The direction sporadically moves from cinematic lenses to handheld work, often insisting that the narrative feel more grounded in reality by providing teenagers or the film within the film’s camera crew following the action. The inherent problem with this is that cinematic views are far more engaging and pronounced. They can define a scene and give the viewer a sense of language and understanding for the full narrative. So why ruin that with shoddy camera work? The cast is well rounded, with Matt Walsh and Sarah Wayne Callies in particular taking advantage of their characters and providing the audience with some semblance of emotionally driven excitement. The story falls apart too quickly in its conclusion, though, attempting to sum up the perseverance of Americans in the face of danger. It’s a muddled message belonging in a far different film, preferably not one with a tornado on fire.

Production has wrapped and Zemeckis' latest has a title

TRISTAR ANNOUNCES TITLE AND WRAP OF PRODUCTION FOR “THE WALK”

3D / IMAX 3D CAPER FILM

DIRECTED BY ROBERT ZEMECKIS

STARRING JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT

BASED ON PHILIPPE PETIT’S BOOK “TO REACH THE CLOUDS”

Tomorrow Marks the 40th Anniversary of Petit’s August 7, 1974 Walk Between the Twin Towers

MONTRÉAL, Canada, August 6, 2014 – Principal photography has wrapped on the inaugural film from Tom Rothman’s TriStar Productions, now officially titled The Walk. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film is a true story based on Philippe Petit’s book “To Reach the Clouds,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the young dreamer who dared the impossible: an illegal wire walk between the World Trade Center towers. Zemeckis wrote the screenplay with Christopher Browne. Producers are Steve Starkey, Robert Zemeckis, and Jack Rapke. The film will be released on October 2, 2015.

Tomorrow, August 7, is the 40th anniversary of the astounding event, now being brought back to vivid life in the third act climax of the film.

Twelve people have walked on the moon, but only one man has ever, or will ever, walk in the immense void between the World Trade Center towers. Guided by his real-life mentor, Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), and aided by an unlikely band of international recruits, Petit and his gang overcome long odds, betrayals, dissension and countless close calls to conceive and execute their mad plan. Robert Zemeckis, the director of such marvels as Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Back to the Future, Polar Express, and Flight, again uses cutting edge technology in the service of an emotional, character-driven story. With innovative photorealistic techniques and IMAX 3D wizardry, The Walk is true big-screen cinema, a chance for moviegoers to viscerally experience the feeling of reaching the clouds. The film is a love letter to Paris and New York City in the 1970s, but most of all, to the Towers of the World Trade Center.

Also starring in the film are James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, Charlotte Le Bon, Clément Sibony and César Domboy.

The production’s creative team includes director of photography Dariusz Wolski, production designer Naomi Shohan, editor Jeremiah O’Driscoll, and costume designer Suttirat Larlarb. The composer is Alan Silvestri.

Moviegoers can follow the film on the official movie site at www.thewalkmovie.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheWalkMovie or on Twitter @TheWalkMovie.

Guardians of the Galaxy - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Guardians of the Galaxy  

Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and featuring the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel

Directed by James Gunn

From Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios

Rated PG-13

121 minutes

Guardians of the Galaxy

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

The best joke of the summer has no punchline, but the setup is priceless: “A human, a raccoon, a green woman, a tree and a man incapable of understanding metaphors walk into a bar …” If you really need a punchline, then stay tuned to Guardians of the Galaxy, and the sequel, and The Avengers sequel, and the racoon spin-off, and the TV show, and the reboot 15 years from now, and read the comic book, and then its reboot. But that punchline will come, eventually.

Ignore my condescension about Marvel’s franchise stretching — I really did enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy and its wackadoo cast of characters, who might not be as mighty as the Avengers, but are infinitely more interesting, funny and present. Even the raccoon, who nature tells us should be picking through the trash and clinging to human faces in Farrelly Brothers comedies, is a breath of fresh air blown over Marvel’s stable of increasingly stale comic characters. If you’ll recall, Captain America slept through his last adventure, Iron Man seemed bored, Hulk is a pyrotechnic afterthought, and Thor is a third-rate thespian in an explosion-filled Hamlet. I’ve grown tired of these emotionally wounded men and their faltering identities, which is probably why James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy feels so invigoratingly unconventional.

The movie is set in space as salvage captain and bounty hunter Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), aka Star-Lord, cruises through the galaxy looking for space junk to sell. When he finds a metallic sphere containing a piece of soul-sucking rock, he unleashes all kinds of problems that eventually unites him with green-skinned Gamora (Zoe Saldana), alien muscleman Drax (Dave Bautista), pint-sized Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Rocket’s tree friend Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), who only says “I am Groot,” yet Rocket understands him like Timmy with Lassie. Each character has their own personality and quirks, and I found myself cheering on all of them. None of the characters have superpowers, another refreshing tweak for a comic-movie, which means they have to get out of jams using ingenuity and teamwork.

Their teamwork shines during several high-octane action sequences in a space-prison, which they escape from without the help of a man’s prosthetic leg, and a Mos Eisley-like trading post built inside the decaying brain of a deceased space titan. The locations are something else. In the brain station, Star-Lord, Rocket and Gamora jump into mining pods to engage starfighters on the edge of space. The scene features something I’ve never seen before in a sci-fi movie: Star-Lord crashes through the hull of a fighter and uses his mining pod’s robot arms to fly the enemy ship. It’s a man piloting a ship piloting another ship, and it’s appropriately zany. Later we meet a man who can control a single metal arrow with a whistle — I wonder what the whistle does during a basketball game.

Our five heroes are fighting back against Gamora’s ex-partner, Ronan, who is trying to recover the all-powerful rock, one of five Infinity Gems, for his boss Thanos, a stone-faced villain whose throne is definitely not eco-friendly — even the armrests have little jetpacks on them to provide comfy forearm support. Thanos is the main villain, but he’s only here to tease future films, ones that will feature even more Infinity Gems and eventually the Infinity Gauntlet, which is some kind of no-limit credit card or something. I enjoyed this movie, but this sequel baiting is annoying. Fanboys might adore it all, but it all feels kind of icky and corporate the way Marvel has spread its storylines out across so many different mediums. Somewhere a marketing director is praying to a plaque that reads “synergy.”

All that aside, though, Guardians of the Galaxy is a whopper of a franchise starter. And not since the Hellboy franchise have I been this excited about a comic-movie. Guardians soars mostly because the characters are likable and funny. And because it has a different tempo than the other earth-bound comic movies. But mostly because it’s funny. Pratt, eternally Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation, is the right fit here as the smart-ass space jockey. He’s a big doofus, of course, but he’s also macho enough to carry the action, which is intensely orchestrated into gunfights, space races, laser battles and martial art spectacles. He has a gag about a blacklight in his dirty space cruiser that must have shot soda out of a dozen noses in the theater I saw it in. In another great line, he says he comes from Earth, “a planet of outlaws — Billy the Kid, Bonnie & Clyde, John Stamos.”

Television wrestler Dave Bautista’s Drax will also be a fan favorite. Drax speaks, hears and thinks in literal terms — metaphor and symbolism are beyond him. When a prison inmate threatens one of our guardians with the old knife-across-the-throat gesture, Drax seems perplexed: “I will not drag my finger across his throat … But I will kill him.” Later, it’s implied sarcastically that nothing goes over Drax’s head. His response: “Of course nothing goes over my head because I will catch it.”

Add into all this Bradley Cooper’s exasperated snickering, Vin Diesel’s octave-busting “I am Groot,” and the lovely Zoe Saldana all covered in green skin, and you have a wild, free-wheeling sci-fi flick with a stellar cast, some genuine laughs and a damned fine soundtrack of ’70s rock. I can’t ask for any more from Marvel.

Guardians of the Galaxy - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Guardians of the Galaxy  

Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, and the voices of Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper

Directed by James Gunn

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 121 minutes

Genre: Action-Adventure/Sci-Fi

Opens August 1st

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Guardians of the Galaxy is an irreverent, hilarious screwball comedy disguised as a superhero film. It's also a film about friendship and family, thrown into an action-adventure set in the outer stretches of space. While that makes the film sound like a convoluted mess, it's actually a celebration of cinematic farce and how a strange, crime-fighting pack of misfits come together to save the world. Acting as part of Marvel's Cinematic Universe, Guardians feels connected to previous efforts like The Avengers and Thor: The Dark World in terms of its otherworldly villains and nature. But strangely enough, Guardians is its own odd, singular entity in this connected world of superheroes. When a film contains a wise talking, genetically modified raccoon and a tree humanoid that are best friends, the story feels pretty damn original. Add onto that a twisted, satirical sense of humor and a great leading turn by Chris Pratt and Guardians turns into a magnificent beast.

The film opens with Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) as a young boy on Earth in the late 1980s, listening to a cassette titled "Awesome Mix Vol. 1." He waits outside of a hospital room when his father walks out to tell him that his mother wants to see him. A family stands around the cancer-ridden woman on the bed, who presents a final gift to her son before passing away. Peter, devastated that he didn't get to say goodbye properly, cries and runs outside, where he's lifted by a spaceship and leaves terrestrial Earth. This is Marvel's first cold open, making the story feel like its own narrative and displacing it entirely from the realm of superheroes like Iron Man and the Hulk. Peter acts as a space bandit when the narrative picks up later, traversing from planet to planet as Star Lord to claim various artifacts and sell them to the highest bidder. His most recent endeavor involves a highly protected orb that everyone in the galaxy seems to be after. So what does it contain?

Turns out it holds a mysterious gem known as an Infinity Stone, one of six in the universe that gives the holder a seemingly endless amount of energy and power. This is an important component of the Marvel comics, a pursuit led by Thanos, a character introduced in the credits of The Avengers. He was the force behind the attack on Earth and now the one guiding Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), a Kree who aims to destroy the planet of Xandar. Xandar is the planet where most of the core characters interact and the home of space-protecting NOVA, led by characters played by Glenn Close and John C. Reilly. There's a whole lot of plot going forward that I won't divulge, since it is a dense narrative full of many twists and side plots. As Quill goes to prison for attempting to steal the artifact, he meets up with Gamora (Zoe Saldana), an engineered soldier; Drax (Dave Bautista), a warrior aiming for vengeance; Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), a gun-wielding raccoon that loves the thrill of the moment; and Groot (voice of Vin Diesel), a slow-minded but emotionally thoughtful tree.

James Gunn's film relies entirely on the dynamic between those five misfits. They each have their quirks, with Peter being introduced as a womanizer and arrogant man and Drax as an attack-first, think-second individual that doesn't understand a lick of sarcasm or metaphors. Gamora is torn between her family divide and Rocket and Groot are outcasts in a world that doesn't accept them. The reason all of these character types work together is not only the screenplay put together by Gunn and Co., but also the lead performance from Chris Pratt. Peter is grounded in a level of emotion from the film's opening scene that pervades his every action for the rest of the film. Pratt embodies that perfectly, pushing down all of his emotions to the far reaches of his soul until they have to emerge. He's a hilarious actor, best known for his screwball work on Parks and Recreation, and he brings that creativity to the table here.

The comedy is developed visually and around the characters, attributing to the film's frantically controlled pace. There are many thrillingly staged scenes, with one in particular involving the intricate planning of their escape from prison only for the background to show Groot slowly preparing to mess everything up. Another one demonstrates the demented humor of Rocket, who insists that Peter go after others' personal items needed for various tasks when they aren't required at all, only existing for Rocket's amusement. Cooper is fantastic as the voice of Rocket, and Saldana is an underrated actress that makes Gamora a tragically flawed, likable, and strong female character. Visually the film is joyous, a saturated, densely-colored blast of spectacular special effects that utilizes 3D well, even if it remains inconsequential. Guardians of the Galaxy is unlike any other superhero film ever made, for it's a character-driven, narratively unhinged, extravagantly rendered explosion of creativity and wonder.

Get On Up - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Get On Up  

Starring Chadwick Boseman, Dan Aykroyd, Nelsan Ellis, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis

Directed by Tate Taylor

From Universal Pictures

Rated PG-13

138 minutes

Get On Up

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Like James Brown himself, Get On Up is a hot mess with a great soundtrack.

Not to speak ill of the dead — Brown died in 2006 — it’s just that the singer had some very public problems with drugs, alcohol and domestic violence. He was also a gifted showman, a riotous performer and a larger-than-life personality. Get On Up chronicles both sides of the Godfather of Soul’s life within a competing collection of scenes, time periods and themes cobbled together with little precision in Tate Taylor’s rudimentary bio-picture. Ray and Walk the Line this is not.

Holding the jumble together, though, is Chadwick Boseman as the irascible James Brown. We last saw Boseman in 42 playing Jackie Robinson, and here he again transcends the historical role to wear the many faces of James Brown, from his pampadour’d beginnings as a gospel-soul singer to his later performances with the jumpsuits and capes. Boseman’s Brown does something I wasn’t expecting, though I much appreciated: he breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience.

“James Brown touched everything, every record,” he says referencing himself in the third person during the opening scenes in a House of Cards-like breakaway from the action. “James Brown brings the super-heavy funk, you know it.” Boseman winks and cringes and stares back at us, channeling Brown in effective little snippets of the man’s persona. In one monologue spoken directly to us, he explains how he worked around payola and other radio tricks to get his music on the air and in concert halls.

The movie begins near the end, with Mr. Brown — everyone had to call him that — strolling into his office to find that someone has “hung a number two in muh toilet.” Needless to say, I didn’t expect this introduction. Brown walks out to his truck, grabs a shotgun and fires it into the ceiling accidentally. Sirens start screaming in the distance. Then the movie cuts to the golden years, when Brown had a private jet, fur coats and briefcases full of money.

But don’t settle in, because it jumps again, this time back to his childhood in rural Georgia, where his mother and father abandoned him first with each other, then with an aunt at a brothel. It’s the early 1940s, and we see a very young James working at the brothel hustling Army soldiers on leave into the red-lit hallways and the waiting girls. One morning he wanders through town and stops at a church, where he witnesses the congregation, and their rapturous preacher, dancing in an evangelical daze, as if possessed by God. The movie doesn’t say it bluntly, but it makes nudging suggestions: James Brown found success when he crossed sex and gospel.

After several time warps through Brown’s life, Get On Up starts feeling very gonzo and self-aware. The fact that it’s all in non-consecutive snippets adds to that general style and tone. Some viewers will see sloppy filmmaking — and there is evidence there to support that — but squint just a little and the structure looks like wild improvisation, the kind that made Brown so brilliant on a stage. I enjoyed the hectic jumping around, even if it makes the film disjointed and non-linear. It turns events into context-free episodes that reveal his true character, like the time Brown sings in the prison medical center, or clocks his wife in the face while wearing a Santa Claus suit, or when he berates and fines his band members for minor infractions, or when he hijacks a Little Richard show. In another mini episode, Brown is flown into Vietnam to entertain the troops. The plane takes enemy fire coming in, and an unfazed James is chatting with the tense pilots — “You can’t kill the funk.” Though they aren’t always linked, these scenes start to form the sum of Brown’s frenzied legacy.

Some of these sequences add up to larger themes, but many don’t. A Boston concert after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. is ready to explode into a riot, but Brown admonishes and then rallies his fans to preserve the peace. Later, Brown is in the studio recording children singing “Say it loud / I’m black and I’m proud.” Surely, race and the Civil Rights struggle will play a larger role in the context of Brown’s life, right? Wrong. Race is a dead end, even as Allison Janney (and others) turn up to say the N word, or as James and his first band, the Famous Flames, play to a “honky hoedown” of white faces on television.

Another dead end: Brown’s confusing personal life, which included drugs, alcohol, stints in jail, various women and lots of wacky appearances and mugshots. A great deal of time is spent with musical partner Bobby Byrd, who took more abuse than he was being paid to receive. Byrd is played by Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette from True Blood), who needs to be in more movies. Dan Aykroyd also turns up as Brown’s manager and promoter, while Octavia Spencer plays the madame at the brothel and Viola Davis plays his mother.

So let’s talk about the music — it’s amazing. All the hits are here as well as some deeper cuts, and to hear them loud on the big screen is just electrifying. The songs have momentum, too, including in that Little Richard sequence or when Brown counts it off and drops into that super-heavy funk. Boseman’s lip-syncing is frequently off, but he more than makes up for it in his fancy footwork, spins, twists, windmills and splits. It was exhausting just watching him.

Is that enough to get you into Get On Up? If you like James Brown’s music, then that’s more than enough.

Get On Up - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Get On Up  

Starring Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Dan Aykroyd

Directed by Tate Taylor

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 138 minutes

Genre: Biography/Drama

Opens August 1st

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Get on Up is inconsistently entertaining but never less than spectacularly acted thanks to the tremendous lead performance from Chadwick Boseman. Tate Taylor's film is a rocky exploration of the iconic singer James Brown's career and of the social unrest surrounding such a complicated, tragic man who wanted to bring the funk into everyone's lives. The film opens with Brown in his 60s, looking overwhelmed at all of his thoughts before going on stage. Then it goes to him in his 50s as he wields a gun in one of the places he owns, asking about a woman who went to the bathroom as if she ran the place. Following that, the film jumps to various moments in time, whether that be him in his 30s with his family being interviewed at a Reno airport, or him in his 20s with the Famous Flames trying to make it big. The story is much like Brown's manic, aggressive personality, in that it's excitingly all over the place.

The film chronologically looks at Brown's upbringing in the 1930s through 1950s in a pre-Civil Rights America, with his family coming from extreme poverty and being defined by a negligent mother and abusive father. Brown eventually gets abandoned by both parents and left under the care of Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer), a kind, brothel-operating woman that treats the young boy with respect and a stern hand. Eventually Brown gets arrested for attempting to steal a suit and is sentenced 5-13 years in jail, a horribly unfair charge that emphasizes the uncomfortably racist approach to lawmaking at the time. He's discovered as a musical talent by Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis), the leader of a religiously based singing group that helps Brown earn his way out of jail. They form together and eventually call themselves "The Famous Flames," with Brown leading the way as the dynamic, talented frontman.

Brown will make it big, that much is clear, but the rest of the band is left to fend for themselves. A troubled relationship grows between Brown and Byrd, with the latter feeling resentful and betrayed by Brown. The leading man grows aggressively powerful and stubborn, his arrogance far exceeding his appreciation for his opportunities. Boseman allows the character to fully flesh himself out, with the script showing his sense of humor, his abusive relationships, and his trouble with drug addiction all as matters of fact. Taylor uses a distinctly impactful technique that can often define a film's success when used: breaking the fourth wall. Boseman's Brown addresses the audience, usually explaining to them the backing behind his decisions. Yet there is a key moment when, after hitting his wife and yelling at her for wearing provocative clothing, he glances at the camera and acts ashamed of his actions. Should we sympathize with a man that we come to appreciate over the film, especially after such callous, repulsive actions?

That's one of the striking questions that the film handles unevenly. One thing it handles perfectly? The music. Oh, the music. Chapters throughout the film are mostly named after his hit songs, with each one usually being shown in its entirety as a tremendous combination of music and dancing. That's where Boseman's performance comes together, since he appears to be a talented singer and dancer that perfectly fits Brown's style. He almost makes us forget about his personal issues when he dominates that stage. Taylor's film uses the music to coordinate with social issues, however sporadically effective they may be: Brown performing in Vietnam for black soldiers; the death of Martin Luther King Jr. coming a day before a concert in Boston; and Brown singing in a holiday sweater surrounded by, what he calls, a "hunky hoedown." The film tackles race issues head on and never relents.

The supporting performances are well-intentioned, but some fall flat due to the narrative's inability to close out certain stories. Viola Davis's turn as Brown's mother starts strong when she is seen as a trapped woman who finally escapes a tumultuous household, but she becomes defined by her negligence and becomes a woman viewed as opportunistic rather than loving. It's an effective role when used to understand Brown's loneliness and destruction of personal relationships, but not for her as a mother. Dan Aykroyd is particularly strong as a father figure who likes Brown and becomes his record producer. And Ellis is fantastic in an understated role, one that asks him to sell the feeling of betrayal with a stoic nature. Yet the film will always come back to Boseman, the dominating, luminous force behind the Godfather of Soul. He's magnetic and dynamic, with every moment he's on screen feeling authentic and like a true embodiment. Get on Up isn't a fully formed feature, but it's backed by a great lead performance that articulates music's importance on the public and their culture.

Mood Indigo - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Mood Indigo  

Starring Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh, and Omar Sy

Directed by Michel Gondry

Rated NR

Run Time: 94 minutes

Genre: Drama/Fantasy

Mood Indigo

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Part quirky comedy, part Salvador Dalí surrealist fantasy, part Dr. Seuss dreamscape, Mood Indigo is probably best described by its scenarios, which are oddly fascinating, not to mention utterly baffling:

• A man takes a bath in purple water. When he's done he uses a power tool to drill through the bottom of the tub and the ceiling of the tenant below him. The grape-colored water drains through the holes into a flower pot, which then instantly sprouts a full-grown flower.

• Eels peek out of a kitchen faucet until a chef can grab them and prepare the squirmy little creatures for dinner. After dinner is prepared, the dishes spin and dance around the prep table until they can be carried to a wavy wooden dinner table with roller skates on the legs.

• Rows of typists frantically hammering on typewriters being moved down the line on conveyor belts. The text they're typing seems to be the thoughts and actions of the main character, who later, inexplicably, takes a job in the facility that likely represents his own brain.

• A device called a pianocktail works like mechanized bartender attached to a piano. As the keys are played — minor keys for more nostalgic drinks, major keys for more optimistic drinks — a little train carrying a glass circles the piano adding ingredients to the musically derived cocktail.

• A man uses a Rubik's Cube as a day planner. When asked about a day later in the week, he twists the sides until they line up for the day he's planning.

• When characters shake hands, their entire hands rotate at the wrist several revolutions.

• At a party someone brings out "oven-baked snacks," which are flaky pastries individually baked in miniature ovens.

• The bride and groom at a wedding are determined by an obstacle course involving boxcar racers with cross-shaped wheels. And the preacher arrives by parachuting out of an iron rocket that circles the inside of the church's cathedral.

• At an office building, a man passes a memo by crumpling it up, loading it into a large revolver and firing it into a tube that snakes through the building.

• When someone dies and their family can't afford a proper funeral, workers come to the house and remove the body by throwing the casket out the window. It's taken to the cemetery not by hearse, but by a delivery truck that belches smoke and soot.

• Two characters ride in a street-side amusement attraction, a fiberglass cloud hoisted up by a giant crane that can reach across all of France.

• A tiny mouse, played by a man in rodent costume, wanders throughout many scenes, including inside the kitchen, where he silently fetches items for the chef.

The french movie is certainly eccentric, and I've only scratched the surface on its odd scenes. It’s directed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, because of course it is. Although it sounds too arty and symbolic for a plot, it does have one: Colin (Romain Duris) meets and falls in love with Chloé (Audrey Tautou, Amélie), named after his favorite Duke Ellington song. Deep into their relationship, she develops a water lily in her lung that cripples her and requires Colin to jump into gear to save her life.

Mood Indigo starts out pleasant enough, but doom and dread slowly creep into the whimsical mixture. This turn is gradual at first as the music switches keys and grows more ominous, then the shots get slow and steadier, and finally the color is sucked from the frame until the film ends in black and white. I wasn't ready for the sudden depression, but then again I wasn't ready for any of it.

While unique and visually fascinating, the film is hollow and lacks humanity and compassion. This is not the first time Gondry has out-dreamed his vision — recall the sad disappointment of Be Kind Rewind — but it's likely to be his most ambitiously visual picture, which is its own reward, great film or not.

Mood Indigo - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Mood Indigo  

Starring Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh, and Omar Sy

Directed by Michel Gondry

Rated NR

Run Time: 94 minutes

Genre: Drama/Fantasy

Opens August 1st

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Mood Indigo is a bubbly film of imagination and surrealism, a zany creation from the mind of Michel Gondry. He's a breathtaking filmmaker that can capture the wondrous and quiet moments of everyday life, mixing them together in a cluster of contorted mise-en-scene and emotionally backed characters. It's remarkable. His most famous work, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is one of the great films of the 2000s, and here he creates a similarly realized tale of love and the heartbreak inherent with such an emotion. The film centers on Colin (Romain Duris), a wealthy, inventive bachelor that lives in a strange apartment in France. A tiny mouse man maneuvers around his house at whim while Colin's hired chef, Nicholas (Omar Sy), cooks meals for him, teaches him how to dance, and basically acts as a surrogate friend. Colin has crafted various appliances, like the pianocktail, a piano that brews a specific liquor based on your note selection.

His best friend, Chick (Gad Elmaleh), tells him about this new woman he just met, insisting she's not American because Colin cannot stand them. Sure enough, she is, as Colin follows Chick to a party for his friend's dog. At this gathering he meets Chloé (Audrey Tautou), a beautiful young woman that finds all of Colin's miscues endearing. She connects with him intellectually and they strike up a conversation that leads to a date. They ride around in a crane-controlled cloud and begin to fall in love. What a strange set-up for a narrative. But the film's first half is mostly built around this sense of world building, creating an environment that looks remarkably similar to our notions of reality but takes a few liberties with physics and chemistry. Gondry's film lacks conventional sense in its first half in terms of the external environment, yet the most important foundation remains: strong characters.

Colin is a driven man dedicated to living happily with Chloé. She falls sick and he does whatever it takes to save her life, investing in odd medical practices and taking up a cumbersome, laborious job to earn extra money to provide for her. He's never worked a day in his life, always relying on what can only be described as a hefty inheritance that allows him to live without worry. Chloé never seems to hold a job either, and this establishes a sense of immaturity and irrationality in the characters. Gondry does something unique with the script and allows for the story to focus entirely on emotion in its second half. By setting up these characters and making them imperfect, he allows the audience to relate to their love and see how it grows. The film is not easy on these central characters, demonstrating unrest in Chick and his girlfriend while emphasizing the hopelessness of Colin as his wife withers away before his eyes. At times, the film acts as a sly, indirect metaphor for the effects of cancer, and that resonates strongly.

What works remarkably about Mood Indigo is how visual representation advances the story and uniquely engages the characters. There's subtlety throughout most of the feature due to the rapidly changing visual landscape and language. Take, for instance, the transformation in color scheme that transpires over the narrative. Once Chloé falls sick, the film relies on dark textures and confined spaces, avoiding sweeping outside shots and jump cuts that the first half grandly emphasized. The last fifteen minutes have a simple change that works vastly for the narrative and the way love affects an individual. The performances are affectionate and nuanced, with Duris in particular showcasing Colin's inner turmoil with composure and subtlety. Tautou is always an enjoyable presence on screen, and she commands the film's second half as the story utilizes her full potential. But perhaps most importantly, if all of these strange quirks haven't convinced you, I'll say this: there's nothing else out in cinemas like Mood Indigo, and that alone makes it worth seeing.

Magic in the Moonlight - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Magic in the Moonlight  

Starring Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Jacki Weaver, Eileen Atkins, Simon McBurney, and Marcia Gay Harden

Directed by Woody Allen

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 97 minutes

Genre: Comedy/Romance

Opens August 1st

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Magic in the Moonlight is minor Woody Allen fare, but that still amounts to an engaging, charming work filled with eccentric characters and hopeless romance. Much of Allen’s films over the past decade have been disregarded, particularly those laced between his best features. He has this natural ability to write characters out of ideas and craft them into a representative form of himself on screen: the skeptics, the religious, the zany, the manipulative, sometimes all mixed together into a strange collection of character traits. A character in the film goes on about Colin Firth’s central character of Stanley, talking about how arrogant and pessimistic he can be, only for the audience to realize that it isn’t so much an analysis of character as it is an admittance by Allen of his own self. That makes his work singular and identifiable, even if works like this most recent adventure never feel like his most observant, focused efforts.

The film centers on Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), one of the most celebrated magicians of his age. He performs on stage as Chinese artist Wei Ling Soo, having women, audience members, and even elephants disappear in front of everyone’s eyes. Some believe it’s real, but Stanley knows like many others that it’s all a show. There is no such thing as magic, and his friend, Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), agrees with him wholeheartedly. As a fellow magician, he approaches Stanley to let him know that something is stumping him like nothing else ever has: a self-proclaimed psychic is sprawling the French countryside, convincing wealthy families of her powers and taking their money. Her name is Sophie Baker (Emma Stone), traveling with her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), and she appears flawless when performing her acts. It truly seems like she is a gifted medium with the ability to tell things about people they would’ve never realized themselves.

Stanley knows this is all fake. It has to be since it goes against his rational approach to life. He’s a man of science, as he attests, insisting that religion and the afterlife are archaic thoughts that Nietzsche would put to shame. Yet as Stanley observes Sophie and sees the way that she genuinely reads people’s traits and seemingly communicates with the dead, he begins to doubt himself and his belief system. His pessimism knows no bounds, along with his stubbornness to acknowledge that he could very well be wrong about everything. Firth plays the role wonderfully, embodying more than the usual, neurotic Allen type and becoming his own force. He’s a disgruntled, sad man at his core, but he externalizes all of his doubts onto others and makes them feel foolish when he is the one falling apart. His rationality is challenged by the fundamental idea of irrationality having a part in this world. It feels like a topic that applies personally to Allen.

Stone provides Sophie with an observant, mystic quality that transforms the film into something compelling. This is far from Allen’s most original work; it’s effectively a romantic comedy disguised as a drama with slight mystery. Sophie and Stanley naturally fall in love, but the last thirty minutes pack enough twists and turns to rightfully keep the audience on their toes. Eileen Atkins also provides a delightful touch as Stanley’s aunt, acting as the force of spiritual nature behind his changing mind and showing him that not everything has to make sense to change a person’s life. If something gives a person’s life meaning, does it have to be the most rational thing in the world? Great discoveries have emerged from wonky beliefs and ideas, so irrational thoughts can provide the most rational people with some emotional grounding if needed.

Magic in the Moonlight is not a dense film; there’s too much fluff and repetition in the film’s middle act to become one of Allen’s finer works. Comparisons to recent efforts like Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine will abound but they aren’t fair. Those are not only some of Allen’s best films from the past decade, but some of the best efforts of his long career. Moonlight is its own strange entity, backed by strong performances from the core group of (mostly) character actors. Firth and Stone don’t necessarily have romantic chemistry, but they don’t need that for the film to work. It’s not based on their romance, since it needs that tension and uncomfortable balance to emphasize their reciprocated doubt. Where the story goes wrong is when it becomes too serious about its characters and their endeavors; a hokey illusion that Stanley fails to teach Howard has a brilliant payoff in the conclusion. Moonlight shines when its eccentric, zany nature is on display, not its predictable romantic core.

Lucy - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Lucy  

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi and Amr Waked

Directed by Luc Besson

From EuropaCorp and Universal Pictures

Rated R

90 minutes

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Lucy begins in two very odd places: on a microscopic stage with several splitting cells doing a glowing mambo, and 3 million years ago as a shaggy cavewoman sips water from a river. What happens next is a science thriller so bananas that to explain it thoroughly would require lectures from Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson, with visual annotations from John Woo, Quentin Tarantino and Terrence Malick. And possibly drugs.

The film is directed by Luc Besson, whose films have wavered in quality over the years, but his command of the language of film has always been impeccably fluent and precise. Recall the immediacy of La Femme Nikita or the rhythmic editing of shots and music in Léon. His plots don’t always find their marks, but the journeys they provide are rarely boring. And here he might have outdone himself with a sci-fi flick so dementedly high-minded that it will draw serious comparisons to Malick’s Tree of Life, or maybe just a version re-edited with more kung-fu, gunfights and enough spacey cracked-out science theories to make Bill Nye’s bowtie twirl.

Lucy is bonkers. It’s settings include Taiwan, France and the Eagle Nebula — seriously. Its weapons include guns, knives and inky brain matter. The title character speaks dialogue usually said between bags of Funyuns, but here she is entirely genuine when she says, “I can feel space, gravity, the rotation of the earth, my own brain … I remember the sound of my bones growing.” The film ends when a character is literally absorbed into the space-time fabric of the universe. “Bonkers” doesn’t seem to cover it all in this case.

All this cosmo-nuttiness is caused by a synthetic drug ingested by Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), a party girl caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The crystallized blue drug, when consumed in just the right way, allows the brain to access more and faster computing power in the firing synapses of the mind. Humans use no more than 10 percent of their brains. Dolphins use 20 percent and that extra 10 percent gives them the ability of echolocation. So, the movie reasons, just think of what would happen if humans could go to 20, or 50 or even 100 percent. Lucy pushes that envelope until she becomes a god. And Besson’s movie is her Genesis.

But before it gets all theoretical and trippy, especially in its final 20 minutes, Lucy is a rather straightforward action thriller. Lucy is told to deliver a metal case to drug kingpin Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi from the original Old Boy), whose consideration of human life is negligible. The scene is perfect Besson: Lucy is handcuffed to the case and told, through a telephone interpreter, that she must open it. But before she pops the lid, Mr. Jang and his crew of henchmen all stand behind armored shields, never a good sign. Later, Lucy has the drugs sewn into her belly for smuggling abroad. The plan is going smooth until a wayward kick from a handler dislodges the drugs and sets Lucy on her metaphysical journey through all of Einstein’s theories.

But before she goes all omnipresent, some smaller things happen: she gains the ability to distort and manipulate matter, control other humans and also distort time. She can also see electrical and magnetic fields, which provides a beautiful visual: Lucy plucking electric strings that are the wireless signals for all of Paris. Her new powers of perception allow for a spirited wrong-way chase through France. She can also see inside bodies and minds, change her hair style the way most people refresh their browser windows, and make guns disintegrate in the hands of her enemies. What does your brain capacity have to do with manipulating matter in this manner? I have no clue, but Lucy is a believer so just roll with it.

The movie is slickly edited and shot, and Besson throws in all kinds of inserts, time lapses, B-roll and nature footage to prove his points. When Lucy is in danger, we see two cheetahs eyeing a stray antelope, or a mouse circling a mousetrap. A reference to sex cuts to a shots of animals getting it on. When Lucy begins “colonizing her brain,” the entire universe unfolds before her with animation, space imagery and even more time-lapse shots. This will be the most famous scene in the movie — equivalent to the Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey — as Lucy swipes her hand in front of her, like she’s using God’s iPad, and time creeps backward to the 1960s, then the 1800s and then quicker until the continents mash together, the dinosaur-killing comets are sucked back into space and matter sinks into lava-spewing volcanoes. But as if that weren’t enough, we zip into space to witness black holes, the birth of the galaxy, the Big Bang and what might be the first particle of anything ever. Ambitious? Lucy has everything. Literally everything.

That being said, Lucy is still awkwardly paced. Some of the action is anti-climactic, and much of the non-action just kinda sits there with nothing to do. The ending, which I adored, is so obscure that some audience members would likely rage-quit out of the theater if the movie didn’t abruptly evaporate into the ether. Oh and Morgan Freeman’s in it doing everything you’d expect a Morgan Freeman cardboard cutout to do. I wanted him to have a larger role. Johansson is fun, though. She’s grown more familiar with high-octane action flicks, and here she seems to be having fun, even as the camera seems to hover over her universe-filled eyeballs.

Besson deserves a lot of the credit for Lucy’s audacious ideas. He walked to the edge of the galaxy to fish out this bizarre action-science hybrid. I’m grateful that movies like this are made, even if their ideas are as nutty as a Baby Ruth. And about that zaniness: yeah, it’s all bogus, but surrender your brain at the door. Or at least 90 percent of it.

Lucy - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Lucy  

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, and Min-sik Choi

Directed by Luc Besson

Rated R

Run Time: 89 minutes

Genre: Action/Sci-Fi

Opens July 25th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

As human beings, we use roughly ten percent of our brain’s capacity. The only mammal more advanced than that is the dolphin, which can use twenty percent of its brain and scan the oceans with sonar more powerful than anything created by man. So what could happen if a human had the ability to access 100% of their brain capacity? That’s the central premise of Lucy, Luc Besson’s absurd film revolving around a drug smuggling ordeal leading to a manic force in the form of a badass Scarlett Johansson. How far the film extends the central theme of the story is remarkable, growing increasingly incredulous and ridiculous to the point of nonsensicality. If the story focused on Johansson’s titular character actually turning into a dolphin when her brain hits 20%, the film would feel the same tonally and conceptually. But to start the story, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is studying in Taiwan and with her boyfriend Richard, who’s involved with shady deals. He’s been paid $1,000 to take a briefcase to a businessman, no questions asked.

Lucy is sent as his “surrogate,” handcuffed to the locked case not knowing what could possibly be inside. Inside the building, armed men sense something is wrong, grab her, and take her to Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi). He’s a ruthless man that kills without remorse and has riot shields on hand in case things ever go south. You know how businessmen can be. Lucy, trapped and powerless, opens the case on Jang’s instruction and finds four bags of a blue powder. It’s a synthetic drug called CPH-4, based on the chemical released within a pregnant woman’s body that gives the baby the power to grow bones and form itself. CPH-4 isn’t a sexy name, though, since they want to sell the drugs on the streets in countries like Germany, France, Italy, and the United States. In order to do so, they need to smuggle the drugs across half of the world, and the only way to do that quickly is through people. Lucy is knocked out and prepared to board a plane before she is beaten by her captors, releasing the drug in her system through the bag in her abdomen.

She gains the ability to read minds, control matter, time, and space, and basically do everything you can possibly imagine. The biggest problem with a premise like this is that there is innately no external conflict for a character as almighty as Lucy. The film, then, should internalize the conflict in order to maximize the empathy from the audience toward the characters. But Besson’s film focuses on the sizzling action and pizazz that comes from a woman who can kick ass and have the powers of a god. That may sound riveting, but it becomes exhausting and monotonous when the action looks particularly hokey and contrived. These are scenes that have been achieved far better and creatively in films like The Matrix and even other Besson films like Taken and The Fifth Element. There’s a car chase at the beginning of the film’s third act that is exciting and tense, but once again, it becomes rudimentary when the audience knows that Lucy will obviously survive since she understands how everything in the world works.

The central idea, quite simply, turns out boring. The film attempts to elaborate on the internal battle for Lucy losing touch with humanity but fails to communicate that strongly enough to the audience. She cries when calling her mother despite no longer feeling physical pain and she kisses a man before saying that he acts as a reminder. Of either her past emotional self, or the need for the story to have a love interest. Johansson plays these elements fine enough even if the film’s first thirty minutes ask her to overact to the point of cheesiness. She’s the only acting force behind the film, so her character being thinly sketched makes the audience wonder why exactly they are watching a film centered on her. What’s worse is that the film creates wonky rules based around real-world physics and reality that makes the premise even more implausible and frustrating. Since we don’t understand Lucy as a person and all of her capabilities, the film can make up everything as it goes along. I suppose if I had the mental capacity of Lucy herself, I would be able to understand all of the film’s absurdity and mindlessness.

I Origins - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

I Origins  

Starring Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, and Steven Yeun

Directed by Mike Cahill

Rated R

Run Time: 107 minutes

Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi

Opens July 25th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Mike Cahill is one of the most ambitious filmmakers in the business. His debut feature, Another Earth, was a riveting, thought-provoking science fiction drama that utilized an ingenious premise and emphasized tortured central characters looking to better themselves. That film also starred the glowing, powerful Brit Marling, who has worked on terrific features like Sound of My Voice, Arbitrage, and The East over the past couple years. Their latest collaboration, I Origins, is an uneven, strangely compelling film that far exceeds its own ambition. It’s a film measured by its central character’s stubbornness and resilience toward finding scientific answers in a world that acts in callous, mysterious ways. That man is Ian (Michael Pitt), who studied as a molecular biologist for his doctorate. He loves the idea of human eyes acting as not only true signifiers of self due to their originality, but also as a way to disprove religious believers who insist that there is a Creator who individually makes every human being.

His work focuses on the development of irises over the millennia and the transformation from eye-less organisms to the most sophisticated form of sight on this planet. He coordinates with his lab partner, Karen (Brit Marling), a fledgling student that aims to unravel the mysteries of the universe alongside Ian. She’s a loyal, intelligent woman that is equally as stubborn and introverted as Ian can be, hiding her emotions and letting science dictate her days. Ian’s obsession with eyes, however, leaves Karen doing most of the work while he tracks down a girl he met at a party that fascinated him. She had gorgeous eyes that made him idolize her, and a strange encounter with the number 11 leads him to discovering her work as a model. He finds out her name is Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), and they immediately rekindle their love and get married.

The story then moves to Ian discovering that his child may have irises similar to a recently deceased man in Idaho, only then for him to realize that Sofi may indeed have the same eyes as a young girl in India. It cannot be true. As his friend Kenny (Steven Yeun) says, “That’s scientifically impossible.” No logic points to irises being repeated over time, unless that establishes some sort of connection with the mind and soul. Karen even asks at one point if the eyes act as a window to the soul, something that she would’ve previously thought implausible but now grows steadily realistic. The dichotomy between science and religion has been tackled more appropriately in better films, like Robert Zemeckis’s underappreciated classic Contact. There, Jodie Foster’s character experiences what can only be deemed a spiritual encounter in a wormhole since no one else saw what she did. Here, the film uses simplistic notions of both religion and science undermining the other, only to realize they can work together.

The performances at the heart of the film elevate the jumpy, haphazard material. Michael Pitt is a quiet, formidable force in every role he takes, providing a gravitas to the most middling scenes. He acts well alongside Brit Marling, a wonderful presence that makes the most of what becomes a small, supporting role after a strong introduction. Astrid Berges-Frisbey is marvelous as Sofi, giving the character a dramatic heft despite minimal development. She acts as more of an idea rather than an entity herself, but she assumes an occasionally thankless role with tact. Cahill’s film asks for intimacy to draw out the tension in the script. This mostly means that the romance between characters takes up the meat of the story and that the intrigue of the central idea falls to the wayside. It’s a shame since there are philosophically strong questions to be asked in a new way from his ideas. He’s a talented, bright presence behind the screen, and even if I Origins fails to fully achieve its ambition, it’s an inconsistently noble effort.

Interview with Gabriel Iglesias and The Fluffy Movie by Jeff Mitchell

Gabriel Iglesias talks about “The Fluffy Movie”, his life and cake  

By Jeff Mitchell

Stand-up comedian extraordinaire Gabriel Iglesias flew into Phoenix to promote his new concert film, “The Fluffy Movie”.  The Phoenix Film Society, along with some other film critics, enjoyed a warm conversation with the man to discuss his new stand-up concert movie, his start in the comedy business, his favorite on-stage character, and his favorite type of cake!   “The Fluffy Movie” opens in theaters on July 25.

Q:  What is your favorite memory of making this movie?

GI:  The opening segment.  There’s a little vignette at the beginning that tells a story about how my mom and dad met, how I came to be “The Fluffy Kid” and what inspired my dream of becoming a comic.  That was very important for me.  If I chance to do a movie, I was going to tell that story up front and make it as authentic as I could.

Q: We all know you love cake, so what is your favorite type of cake?  

GI: I’m so tired of chocolate cake.  I’m so burned out from that.  I’m doing a routine right now where I’m facing the repercussions of my comedy, and I’m realizing things I talked about in the past are starting to haunt me really bad now.  Cake being one of them, because I’m Type 2 diabetic.

Now, I have to be careful with sugar, but people still bring me a ton of cake because of one joke I did in 1998.  Imagine it’s been your birthday every single day since 1998, and you have three friends.  All three of those friends give you chocolate cake.  I get between 20 and 40 cakes every week, and people wonder why I’m diabetic.   It’s a lot of cake.  Everywhere I go, there’s cake.  People tell me I should have asked for cash.

Q:  Or Transformers, right? 

GI:  Again, that’s part of the whole thing.  I said my son loves Transformers. I go on tour, and I get over 350 Transformers toys to give to my son.  We had a tour bus, and the whole bay in the back was just filled with all of these Transformers toys.  When I got home during Christmas, we just stuffed them all in the closet.  My son opens the door and freaks out when he sees all these toys. I let him keep 15, and the rest we donated to an orphanage called, Hillside.

Oh, my favorite cake?  I have to say, key lime pie.  It is not exactly a cake.  If I had to pick a cake, I’d go cheesecake.

Q:  What is your favorite joke?

GI:  The first joke I’ve ever told on stage.  I was 10.

I went up on stage, and said, “Why did the chicken cross the road?  To check out the chicks.”

I was a genius at 10.  Try telling that at 21, and you look hacky and stupid.   That was the only joke I’ve ever told.  Everything since has been character voices, doing impressions or just telling stories.

Also, I did a school talent show, and the crowd was just into it.

Afterwards, everybody was coming up to me, and I thought, “I like this attention!”

It was positive.  Everybody was happy.  Everyone wanted to put their arms around me.  It was just an incredible feeling.  There’s no job that can compare.   It was a nice warm feeling, and you can’t wait to go back up on stage.

Q:   I understand - before comedy - you had a job at a phone company.  Was it an easy decision to take a chance at comedy or was it difficult because you are giving up your financial security?

GI:  I was 19 or 20 years-old, and I was working for a company called LA Cellular, and eventually, they became AT&T.  I was selling phones in a store called Home Base, which later became Lowe’s.   I was being paid very well. I was single. I had no kids and no responsibilities.  I was probably pulling in about $5,000 / month plus benefits.    My mom was very happy, and then I tried comedy.   Next thing you know, I was doing comedy at night, working during the day and sleeping very little in the middle.   I was burning the candle at both ends, and I was calling in sick a lot.  I was using up all my vacation time to do stand-up, and eventually, it all ran out.

So, I made a choice. Do I slow down with the comedy, or do I give up the security?  I gave it up.  I figured I saved up enough money, and all I needed - in my head - was $600/month.  So, I felt I was covered for a while.  I ran through it (the money) so quick.  I got evicted from my apartment.  I wound up sleeping on my brother’s balcony for a summer.    My sister found out I was sleeping on my brother’s balcony, so she asked me to move in with her.

I rode her couch for a about a year until I finally started making enough money to contribute.  Eventually, it just clicked, and then Boom!  I started paying the rent.  I moved out and got myself a place in Burbank. Comedy Central gave me my first special.  I bought a Hummer before I bought a house, and then I bought a house.  Every year, everything doubled.  The work was doubling. The money was doubling. The popularity was doubling, and it just kept going and going, and now, here we are!

Q:  Since you’ve done voice-over acting and film acting, which one do you prefer?  

GI:  Voice acting, all day!   Honestly, I really don’t like acting.  I don’t enjoy it.  What I do like is going to a movie theatre and seeing my face on a poster.  I like seeing my name on a poster.  That is cool.  When I did “Haunted House 2”, I went with my kid to the movies.

I stopped by the poster and said, “Mmm...I wonder who is on that poster?”

That’s the cool part.  The working?  Showing up on the set at 6:00am and memorizing the script.  They change it on you at the last second, and then the director yells at you.   Other times, the set can be great!  In “Haunted House 2” with Marlon Wayans, we shot the film in four weeks.  That was a very fast shoot, and I liked that.  That was cool.  Plus, Marlon allowed me to be creative and have fun with it.  Other movies? Not so much.

Voice-over films?  I can knock out a whole voice-over movie in one day.  One day! You walk in, they hand you a script, and you don’t have to memorize anything.

They might say, “Would you like an omelet?”

Everybody is really nice.  The director is right there, and every other word out of his mouth is “Great!  Gimme some more of this!  That’s what I’m saying!  Wonderful!”

So, you’re happy.  I love voice-over work.

Q:   What’s your advice to someone who wants to a comedian and doesn’t think it is feasible?

GI:  Anything is possible as long as you’re focused, determined and you really want to do it.  With comedy, there are a lot of people who say they “want it.”

I have these conversations with guys, and they say, “Oh, I want to be a comic more than anything!”

I tell them, “I’m never home.  I miss birthdays.  I miss holidays.  I miss anniversaries.  I miss special moments.  I’m not always there for important times, because I’m out on the road trying to make people laugh.  I give up my privacy. I give up the ability to walk somewhere and relax.”

You know what?  That’s what I signed up for.   There are more pros than cons, and obviously, financially, it’s an amazing thing.  I don’t worry about bills, but then again, Uncle Sam gets me a lot harder than he gets most people.   I have very nice cars.  I never get to drive them, because I’m never home.  I see a lot of nice hotels, but I never really get to enjoy the cities, because I have to be on a plane the next day.    I eat a lot of junk food, because that’s what’s usually available at 1:00am when I’m all done working.

I’m talking to these guys, and I go, “Listen, if you really want to do it Man, you’ve just got to be prepared to give everything up.   Your goal should be, I just want to make people laugh.  If you are ok just doing that, then I say, go for it!”

Q:  You have so many characters in your standup.  Do you have a favorite you like to portray?  

GI:  The Girl Voice.  Anytime I do the Girl Voice, it always throws people off.  They don’t expect this 300 lb. Mexican guy to go, “Oh my God!!”

It catches people so off-guard. It’s awesome.

Q:   Where is your favorite place to perform outside the U.S.? 

GI:   Australia.  I love Australia.  First of all, everyone is so nice.   The people are down to Earth, and they like having fun with you.  Their sense of humor is so twisted, and they love it when you push the envelope.  One of the craziest compliments came from a guy in Australia.

He said, “You are the funniest bloody c**t I’ve ever seen.”

That is actually a compliment over there.

The promoter said, “Yea, it don’t get better than that!”

I’m like, “Ok. Alright.  He could have just said you’re funny, but no.”

The food is amazing, and the people are amazing.  The way of life is very relaxed and chill.  They come out in droves. I do arenas in Australia.  Love Australia, and Oslo, Norway was amazing. Who would have thought?  A Mexican in Norway.

Boyhood - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Boyhood  

Starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater, and Marco Perella

Directed by Richard Linklater

Rated R

Run Time: 166 minutes

Genre: Drama

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is a tremendous achievement in filmmaking, one of the most intimate studies of childhood I’ve seen. The film, shot since 2002, centers on Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a 6-year old boy at the beginning of the film who ages over the years to be an 18-year old adult by the film’s conclusion. Chronicling his trouble in a divorced home, he lives with his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), and sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), as the former attempts to find a stable home for her children without a father. Their birth father, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), is a fun-loving man who cannot take responsibility for his actions. He takes his children out to ballgames, spoils them to no end, and frustrates both the mother and the children over the years with his consistently inconsistent dependency. Mason deals with the ramifications of his actions throughout the years, seeing his family split into two distinct universes and handling that divide as many children of divorce do in the changing landscape of the family. He must handle two parents, two lives, and two sets of emotion.

The film has earned its distinction as one where the actors mature on screen in sync with their characters. That cannot be true enough. Hawke and Arquette look young and vibrant in the beginning and matured and stable by the conclusion, with Hawke growing cleaner, grayer facial hair in the film’s second half. Arquette’s Olivia lives through multiple heartbreaking marriages that not only devastate her children, but her hopes at achieving success in her personal life and career. The turmoil weighs on her younger-looking face in the film’s beginning moments and takes its form near the end. Time is marked in the film by a unique identifier: the 2000s are mostly marked by the greatest hits of the era. Coldplay’s “Yellow” opens the film as it shines a light on Mason’s world awakening to us, while tunes like “Soak Up the Sun” and “Crazy” remind us of the strange divides we had in popular music. They also properly define the changing years and tell the audience that, yes, these characters are genuinely aging in front of us, even if that’s incredulous in every way. It’s simply unprecedented and awe-inspiring to see it captured on screen.

Ellar Coltrane is the film’s guiding light, the marker that gives us a pulse on the film’s magic. He sprouts from a young, wide-eyed boy to a complicated, compulsive teenager over the film’s 165 minute running time. This is a dense, deeply felt feature that thematically weaves through Mason’s life. Coltrane explores the nature of a boy growing up and the mixed emotions that they face: how can a woman love an abusive drunk of a husband and let him treat her children like garbage? How can a boy love a girl and deal with her moving away to another college while trying to maintain their relationship? How can Mason know whether to drink beer at a younger age without a father figure there to guide him in the right direction? Coltrane is not a perfect actor, but he doesn’t have to be. His character is full of imperfections due to the innate nature of growing up; there’s an unpredictability to the way life works particularly at a young age. Therefore his actions and feelings never need to be enacted in the way film language usually articulates. He’s allowed to be confused and insecure with the way he feels and acts because that’s the breadth of this story.

Linklater remains one of the great humanistic voices in modern film, having tackled the greatest romance in the history of the movies with the Before trilogy and mixing independent and mainstream films throughout his career with ease. What he’s able to do here and done before is address the most relatable issues in life as if they are new and perfectly adjusted to the characters. He has Mason deal with peer pressure and bullying with single scenes, Olivia handle the struggle of children growing up in a broken home along with spouses and their drinking problems, and Mason Sr. spending time with children that he rarely sees and an immaturity that constantly nags at him. The film progresses methodically at its own whim and ebbs and flows with the mysterious path that life takes us down. These characters transform before our eyes physically and figuratively, growing into better, stronger individuals. Every character introduced as a central force gets an impactful arc.

The reason Boyhood is such a towering, beautiful, articulate feature is partially due to my connection with the story and its themes. I grew up with Mason, seeing people plant signs for President Obama and hearing music transform for a new generation. There was hope and optimism, frustration and pessimism, and every other emotion that grows from a tumultuous country that still remains one of the greatest in the world. The film is a celebration of American life and independence, a fierce evocation of the endless ability for change and betterment. I love every element of Linklater’s vision, using his traditional long takes during conversations while using different digital and film lenses throughout the feature to show the way the world has changed, both in front of and behind the screen. It’s something that shouldn’t have been accomplished: these actors were not linked by money but by their emotional connection the story and its importance. Boyhood is a masterpiece that will be celebrated for years to come. It’s the best film of 2014 thus far.

Hellion - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Hellion  

Starring Josh Wiggins, Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis and Deke Garner

Directed by Kat Candler

From IFC Films

Rated R

94 minutes

Metalhead kids devour their way through Hellion

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

The adage of “boys will be boys” only stretches so far until it breaks. And then there’s Hellion, which takes the saying out back and beats it with rusty fence posts until it’s whimpering in the Texas mud.

Yeesh, these boys. The movie opens and they’re relentlessly smashing a pickup truck with hammers and pipes in the parking lot of a high school football game. One kid climbs on the hood to pulverize the windshield. Another kid lights a fire in the front seat. They’re like piranha devouring a Christmas ham.

We’ve seen teens do worse things in movies. Remember Kids, or when Anne Hathaway rolled dice to see how many gang bangers she had to sleep with in Havok. A generation of daughters won’t be let out of their bedrooms by their overprotective fathers because of that scene. But the Hellion kids are 13 years old, with baby fat still on their cheeks and action figures still on their dressers, and there they go lighting fires, starting fights and pulling revolvers during home invasions. Something tells me a long grounding isn’t going to correct this behavior.

Hellion follows Jacob (Josh Wiggins) as he pals around with his little crew of metalheads as they break the law, ride dirtbikes and generally terrorize their neighborhood in sudden violent outbursts. Jacob lets his kid brother, the tiny tyke Wes, hang around with him and his buddies, even as their caustic influence starts to seep into Wes’ little noggin. In an early sequence, Jacob won’t let Wes look at a porn magazine, but in the next scene Wes is being forced to commit arson as a form of gang initiation — priorities are all over the place.

Jacob is screwed up mostly because his dad, Hollis (Aaron Paul), is a deadbeat drunk, whose only expression of emotion comes when he drops flowers by the intersection where his wife was killed in a car accident. Hollis hardly registers when cops bring Jacob home in handcuffs, or when a social worker takes Wes out of the home to live with his aunt Pam (Juliette Lewis). Eventually, though, Hollis does start giving a damn, but it may be too late for his children, who are pushing away from him faster in their downward spirals.

The writing, persuasively realistic in tone and mediocrity, is uneven and frustrating because the film lurks forward without any motivation. At times Hellion feels like a slice-of-life documentary, which gives it an authentic feel but little narrative arc. I could have used a few less shots of the boys just sitting around, or wandering the streets on their bikes. And Hollis apparently doesn’t have a job, which means he can sit around and hammer stuff all day with no progress to show for it.

The children are convincing (and also terrifyingly cold) and so is Paul, who doesn’t show as much range as he did on Breaking Bad, though he does have a heartbreaking scene in a pizza joint that will crush your soul. It is interesting how the film ponders Lewis’s Pam: she’s the only character with her act together, yet the film frames her like a villain, the child-stealing homewrecker. And I adore Lewis. Somewhere, perhaps in different interplanetary dimension, Juliette Lewis is a beloved national treasure.

Hellion tries overly hard to convince us it has some kind of metal cred. The tweens wear genre-clashing T-shirts of Skeletonwitch, Slayer and Pig Destroyer and have circle pits in their living rooms to vintage Metallica songs — and the film features a Transformers-level of product placement for the band The Sword — but the effect seems to be an exact response to Spender Susser’s equally headbanging delinquent-teen drama Hesher. I initially disliked Hesher when it came out, but the film’s subversive nihilist streak has won me over after several viewings. It worked because the metal soundtrack was great, but also because the film had an emotional payoff. Hellion can’t say the same with its more realistic, but abysmally more depressing, final moments.

In the end, Hellion just dishes out too much turmoil, so much that it starts to shove you away. That’s not to say the acting or the directing, by newcomer Kat Candler, aren’t stellar, because they are. It’s just the film is too loud, too scattered and a little too gritty.

Wish I Was Here - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Wish I Was Here  

Starring Zach Braff, Kate Hudson, Josh Gad, Mandy Patinkin, Jim Parsons, and Ashley Greene

Directed by Zach Braff

Rated R

Run Time: 106 minutes

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Empathy is a rare achievement in film, something that needs to be hard-earned and justified in the framework of the narrative. Wish I Was Here makes the audience care about its characters because of their importance to the film’s emotional core. The story rarely wanders away from the paths of the characters, only occasionally meandering down paths that feel a bit unfocused in terms of their breadth and reach. Zach Braff’s film is a bit easy on its characters, too, particularly its central character played by the aforementioned writer-director, but the supporting crew rounds out a film that touches on love, life, death, and the struggles of living toward one’s dream. It’s never a fully cohesive film, but it works because of those themes and the way they tie together in a joyous celebration of life. Even in the wake of loss, love and living life to its fullest must persist.

The film centers on Aidan (Zach Braff), a married actor with two kids struggling to survive in an economically trying time. His wife, Sarah (Kate Hudson), works in an office making all of the money for the family while Aidan struggles to find acting gigs around Los Angeles. Their kids, Tucker (Pierce Gagnon) and Grace (Joey King), attend a Jewish private school because of the money their grandfather, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin), puts toward their education. When Gabe’s cancer comes back from remission, he decides to put his money toward alternative treatment instead of funding the kids’ education. This puts Aidan in a troubled state, causing him to start homeschooling the kids while trying to find sustainable work. His brother, Noah (Josh Gad), is no help with any of us, a genius that lives in a trailer that his mother gave him before she died. Him and Aidan deal with constant torment from their father who seems disappointed in everything they do.

Life is difficult. That seems to be the gist of Braff’s work over the years, articulating that in different ways by emphasizing the nature of death and the way that life has an aimless nature to it all. Inherently that shouldn’t work in a narrative film since there needs to be a driving thematic force reinforced by surrounding subplots and ideas. Aimlessness doesn’t work that well with that concept. But somehow Braff pulls it off as writer, director, and actor, proving capable on all fronts by showcasing the tumultuous and haphazard way we live life on a day-to-day basis. There’s a scene that shows the way that Braff links ideas, with him discussing his wife’s work and how much she seems to love it, and then cutting to her disgruntled at work and dealing with borderline sexual harassment from a cubicle partner. Nothing is as good or as happy as anyone seems to make it.

The performances are sublime and the dialogue thought-provoking. Braff creates an urgency around his character and his hope to reform his life; unfortunately, he doesn’t follow through impactfully to make the character fully change. Patinkin and Hudson are exceptional in their roles. Gabe is a complex character with regrets and a sadness about how much he feels he has failed his family; Patinkin is an expert at these roles and excels. Hudson is a surprisingly strong, subtle force that creates her own strength from providing guidance for a family when the father doesn’t seem to be taking full initiative. The child actors, particularly Joey King, are marvelous. The film’s writing never fully brings together every idea, but tackles death with emotional heft and gravitas. The most important thing about Wish I Was Here is that it’s a compassionate film about compassionate characters. It’s far from perfect, but it cares. That’s rare in today’s cinema, and its ambition is impressive through all of its faults.

Sex Tape - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Sex Tape   

Starring Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe, and Jack Black

Directed by Jake Kasdan

Rated R

Run Time: 94 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Sex Tape is mostly tame and harmless, a promising film with two likable comedians that fails to flourish in its second half. Modern comedies often attempt to tackle raunchy premises because quieter laughers usually go unnoticed in today’s landscape. A film about a sex tape is pretty much as loud of a concept as possible. For that reason, Sex Tape should be far funnier than it ends up being, mostly digressing into awkward conversations that depend on long pauses and physical humor that grows tiresome by the conclusion. Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz have both achieved success over the past decade in mainstream comedies; the former has Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man while the latter has Bad Teacher and The Other Woman. Yet here, their combination cannot seem to shape a coherently funny story. It’s simply that a shocking premise fails to produce laughs alone and needs a hilarious set of characters and jokes to accompany the plot.

The film centers on Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel), a married couple with kids that misses the spontaneity of their earlier days. They no longer have sex like they used to, they are preoccupied with their jobs, and they can’t seem to balance their everyday life to make sure they find happiness. Their kids often remind them of their unrest, with their daughter jokingly asking Jay about the point of life only to follow it up by saying that him and mom are unhappy. Annie is caught up with selling her “mommy blog” to a company run by Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), and on her way home from a meeting decides to get a night alone with Jay. She sends the kids off with their grandmother while the married couple hopes to rekindle their passionate fire. But they fail and fail again, until Annie thinks of a seemingly ingenious idea: how about they film themselves having sex? They do it and, thanks to Jay’s music job that involves him syncing gifted iPads to his own to provide them with his playlists, the video goes out to their friends.

The rest of the film involves their exploits to erase the video from everyone’s devices. It mostly hinges on their ignorance to how technology works in today’s age. They fail to understand what a remote wipe is, how videos can be copied, and how videos are uploaded to servers. To nitpick the film’s thin premise is trivial, though, since Sex Tape doesn’t exist to provide a realistic plot. Instead, it aims to provide the audience with set pieces that embrace the absurdity of these characters and their actions. On that part, it delivers fairly well in the film’s first half. They visit their friends Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper) who are celebrating their 12th anniversary and join them on their adventures. This leads to Annie visiting Hank’s house, which might be the finest moment in the film. Rob Lowe’s performance is ridiculous and hilarious, a man with a very strange Disney obsession and a hankering for the days of old. More specifically, the days of recreational cocaine use.

The film is funniest, as most are, when its comedy gets specific and unique. The problem with most of the film is the broadness of the second half, with the vague exception of a strange comedic cameo in the final moments that provides an inconsistently amusing bit. The product placement grates on the material, too, with Apple playing a hefty role in many of the film’s scenes. But Segel and Diaz are talented, enjoyable comedians that make the most of the material. As it runs a bit thin in the set-up for their sexual frustrations, they bring out the humor in the strangeness of it all. The supporting cast is game and varied, with Corddry remaining one of the most consistently hard-working supporting actors in comedy today. Yet Jake Kasdan’s film cannot help but fall into the traditional traps of mediocre comedies: it fails to engage past its thin premise and falls flat in delivering a compelling story. It’s mostly weak in humor and sporadic with its jokes. Sex Tape is likable and somewhat amusing, but ultimately uneven and tepid in its laughs.

The Purge:Anarchy - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

The Purge: Anarchy  

Starring Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, and Michael K. Williams

Directed by James DeMonaco

Rated R

Run Time: 103 minutes

Genre: Action/Horror/Thriller

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

The Purge: Anarchy is either one of the most absurd, fascist films ever made or a vapid, gruesome piece of filmmaking. I think it’s the latter, but the filmmakers certainly make an argument for the former. What we are given is a sequel to a film that squandered its seemingly ingenious premise surrounding a futuristic America: that for 12 hours each year, every crime is legal (including murder). This allows for the country to prosper economically, socially, and financially. Except for the poor, of course, who are the targets of these purges headed by the wealthy aiming to create some sort of population control. This latest feature in the twisted world of the Purge focuses on multiple arcs: a couple (Zach GIlford and Kiele Sanchez) driving home as their car breaks down right before the Purge commences; a former sergeant (Frank Grillo) who aims to get revenge on the man who killed his son; and a mother (Carmen Ejogo) and daughter (Zoë Soul) who wait in their locked-up apartment as assailants break into their complex. The mother and daughter are working class, their father is dying, and they are struggling to survive in many ways.

All of their stories intersect. Not naturally, but because the story demands it and doesn’t care to explain how a city as big as Los Angeles can allow for all of these people to cross paths so neatly. The biggest problem? These characters, however engaging they sound on paper, are pointless. The story wants to explore the depravity of Americans, using these humanoid-like protagonists as a means of looking at the way we would act if given the ability to senselessly kill without punishment. That involves a man mowing down people with a mini-gun mounted in the back of a semi-truck and rich people paying exorbitant sums of money to hunt individuals or kill them with machetes. There’s a really strange obsession with murder by big knife here. The characters encounter many of these violent moments, meaning they should add up to a big revelation, either developing the central protagonists or providing the audience with a new idea about this world. But that seems a bit too logical.

The film is one of those rare breeds that consistently tells the audience that it’s making commentary on issues when in reality it’s all smoke and mirrors. Writer-director James DeMonaco took authorial duties in the first film and this latest feature, but there’s nothing that signifies a singular vision here. The direction is muddled and inconsistent in its jumps from naturalistic close-ups to haphazard action shots. The sound in the theater had substantial problems for most of the film’s opening moments, but that couldn’t disguise the discordant exchanges of dialogue between every character. It’s clunky and formulaic without a care for deepening characters or letting the audience learn from visualization. Instead, everything must be explained! The filmmakers working here, including mega-producer Jason Blum (famous for the Paranormal Activity films, amongst many other horror films of late), have created a product that delivers lowest-common denominator storytelling, deriving elements from insanity and incomprehension rather than development.

There’s something to be said about the manner in which homelessness, poverty, and government control are treated in The Purge: Anarchy, if only to demonstrate the failed attempts at mixing commentary and satire. I admire a major film that attempts to articulate something about societal issues. Yet the film demonstrates that America is full of have and have nots and that the haves are grotesque pigs while the have nots are lost causes. The main character of the sergeant, played by the competent Frank Grillo (who really tries his best with terrible material), gets redemption when realizing that participating in the Purge is part of the problem, but none of that is shown on screen. That’s storytelling 101. And Michael K. Williams pops up as Carmelo Jones, an enlightened extremist that aims to stand against the NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America). He’s ridiculous. Which makes me think that maybe the film is merely here to act as a spoof of social commentary itself and satirize the very nature of the narrative. And then, as the credit sequence rolls, a dubstep remix of “God Bless America” begins. How poetic.