American Ultra - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

American Ultra  

Director: Nima Nourizadeh

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Walton Goggins, Topher Grace, Jesse Eisenberg, Connie Britton

Runtime: 96 min

Rated: R

Release Date: 08/21/15

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume American Ultra is an ugly and soulless action-comedy with almost no comedy and enough action to render the plot gimmick of the point-blank headshot completely meaningless. It does do one thing right: it ends at a brisk, although still-too-long, 90 minutes.

I can’t say this spy ditty does much else right. All the things that make spy movies so endearing — spy gadgets, international travel, criminal intrigue, nefarious plots — never make an appearance here. Instead we get two grungy lovebirds in their podunk town as they get high and shoot people in the head, which caters to its two apparent demographics: ’90s-era stoners and John Wick fans. More on both those points later.

Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) works at a convenience store that apparently stays open as a form of charity to Mike and his sad existence. The store gets about three customers a day, which allows lots of time for Mike to roll joints at the register and pilfer from the chip aisle. When a government agent comes in and says what is essentially “abracadabra,” Mike’s repressed past as a covert superspy comes racing back to him so he can defend himself from laughably awful assassins who can’t plant a bomb on Mike’s Buick in the dead of night without being spotted. After committing what he thinks is cold-blooded murder, Mike calls his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) who arrives to survey the damage her wimp of a boyfriend has unleashed on two super agents. Once she arrives, the local police department shows up and it sets off a violent night of gunplay, explosions, cleaver hackings and government infiltration.

Mike and Phoebe, as screwed up as they are, are kinda sweet together. Eisenberg and Stewart, forever defined by Facebook and Twilight, are unsympathetic protagonists in almost everything they’re in, yet here they somehow seem just right for each other, even as American Ultra photographs them without even a vague hint of glamour — Stewart is a trailer-park princess with gritty hair and cheap makeup, and Eisenberg spends so much of the movie with his face drenched in tears, blood, sweat and snot that a product placement from Kleenex would have been appropriate and appreciated. I often wondered if Eisenberg’s long shaggy hair was only meant to hide the face of the stunt performer during the action scenes, including in bridge shootouts, a grocery store massacre and a rumble in some kind of porn dungeon bathed in banks of blacklights. There’s also a scene of Mike ricocheting a bullet off a frying pan, which is a neat trick that the film puts in the trailer in case you wanted to watch something else this weekend. Ultra is filled with an array of smaller characters played by actors who have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Connie Britton (TV’s Nashville) has a phone glued to her ear; Tony Hale (HBO’s Veep) is on the other end of those calls with dead jokes and meaningless subplots. The great Walton Goggins spends much of the film wheezing maniacally as one of the hitmen tasked with eliminating Mike. Bill Pullman shows up to prove to the world he’s still acting, and that’s pretty much it. John Leguizamo has one sad line (“Wanna drop some acid and go to the titty bar?”) and then he’s removed from the movie as if he received a call, turned to the film and said, “Go on without me.” All these side characters are trumped by the still-infantile Topher Grace, here playing a government stooge with an ax to grind … apparently against us. His loud sequences have about three times more dialogue than is needed, all of which Grace chews on like it’s bubblegum made from a pair of yoga pants.

Going back to an earlier point, Nima Nourizadah’s juvenile film is largely geared to two subsets of viewers: people who still watch Half Baked on a weekly basis, and people are have fetishized bullets entering and exiting heads. With regards to the first point, the stoner comedy is a dead genre. With marijuana legal in more and more places, weed culture is quickly being diluted by regular users. Gone are the days of “rolling a fatty” under a Bob Marley banner while Snoop Dogg or Cypress Hill bang out of a boombox. Pot and its many forms are used by grandmas with glaucoma, kids with seizures, and lots of healthy people, too, including lawyers, dentists, blue-collar types, soccer moms, and yes, even undercover spies. Stoners like Mike certainly still exist, but they look like lost relics from a different time and place.

As for the other point, the violence is just a stale copycat of so many other gunplay movies out today, including John Wick which turned the headshot into a celestial communion to the Church of the Second Amendment. That film has its fans, and it’s getting a sequel, but let me ask a serious question: how many is too many headshots? American Ultra doesn’t give it a serious thought, and instead it just apes Wick’s action with less stylization and less irony. Skip American Ultra. It’s a dismal film pretending to be a slightly less dismal film.

Straight Outta Compton - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Straight Outta Compton  

Director: F. Gary Gray

Starring: O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge, and Paul Giamatti

In 1988 the rap group N.W.A. released one of the groundbreaking hip-hop albums of all time. “Straight Outta Compton” was an album peaked with hostility, desperation, frustration, and profanity laced defiance, a calling card to a Los Angeles community dealing with poverty, violence, and racial profiling. The group started as five talented unknown artists who progressed into a dominating force in hip-hop music; featuring the collective of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince. Director F. Gary Gray, known for “Friday” and “The Italian Job”, directs this biopic of the group’s rise to fame and their ultimate aggressive separation into individual artists. The result is an exceptional film that portrays the story of talented and disgruntled young men who utilized words to reflect the emotions and experiences of their world, a group that would transform hip-hop music.

Andre “Dr. Dre” Young (Corey Hawkins) is a DJ for a local club, supporting his girlfriend and child while living in his mother’s house. Dr. Dre is utilizing music as a means of escape, a tool to support his family. Dr. Dre is the creative force behind the music, crafting a sound built on the shoulders of classic soul and R&B records. The voice for his sound arrives behind the crafted lyrics of O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), a young man who writes about the world outside his school bus or seen on the nightly news report with unabashed sincerity. Needing money to get the group off the ground, Dr. Dre enlists funding from a local drug dealer named Eric “Eazy-E” Wright, a charming hothead who could easily pull a gun as quick as he could make one crack a smile. These founding members, along with friends MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) would become N.W.A., the most controversial group in rap music.

The film opens with Eric “Eazy-E” Wright (Jason Mitchell) standing toe-to-toe with a drug dealer in a house filled with narcotics, weapons, and the kind of tension that defines the best kind of confrontations in gangster films. In a blink, a Los Angeles tank barrels through the front door and Eazy-E darts through the house and out a window narrowly escaping a fate that would have derailed the future success waiting for him. It’s an action sequence that has all the flair of gritty crime films but it also serves as a representation of N.W.A.’s rise to fame; a rise that maneuvered over obstacles and beyond walls, narrowly evading the grasp of the people that wanted to stop them.

We’ve seen this story before, the peaks and valleys of a music group that succeeded beyond the boundaries set before them. In this regard “Straight Outta Compton” is completely familiar and predictable. However, in the talented hands of director F. Gary Gray the story turns into something immersive and compelling; an extensive historical account that touches on all the milestones but also features specific insights purposefully composed for fans that followed the story of the group and the individuals that would eventual find success of their own. While some scenes may come off a little contrived during more dramatic aspects, like an outburst by Ice Cube in the Priority Records offices, the atmosphere of the environments, attitude of the actors, and placement of the music is always spot on. There is a great scene during the early production of an Eazy-E song called “Boyz-N-The-Hood” where the group struggles to make the song come together, it’s a heartfelt and comedic scene that displays the friendship that drove these young men to take a risk.

“Straight Outta Compton” goes even further, exploring the lives of these men later in their career, showing Dr. Dre make the choice to align with Suge Knight, watching Ice Cube writing the script that would eventually become the movie “Friday”, and seeing Eazy-E’s health fail after contracting HIV. The film is somewhat overly meticulous with the history, fans will be delighted with some of the subtleties and surprises placed throughout while others not familiar may find these moments distracting.

The acting is surprisingly good. Paul Giamatti, the veteran of the young group of actors, makes manager Jerry Heller somewhat of a mystery and O'Shea Jackson Jr.'s striking resemblance to his father's smirk and smile will make you feel like you've been put in a time machine. There are moments when the script lingers within scenes, this is the only time that you will notice the 147 minute running time that otherwise progresses with exceptional pacing.

There is an undeniable essence to this film, which becomes evident when you realize that Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Eazy-E’s former wife Tomica Wright were heavily involved in the production. “Straight Outta Compton” is a film that rides on the shoulders of the giants that are still influencing rap music today.

Monte’s Rating

4.25 out of 5.00

Straight Outta Compton - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“’Straight Outta Compton’ feels like a complete document of N.W.A’s reality” Director:  F. Gary Gray

Writers:  Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff

Distributor:  Universal Pictures

“Our art is a reflection of our reality.”

Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr., who is Ice Cube's son in real life), of the seminal rap band, N.W.A, utters these words in a press conference to defend his group’s “questionable-to-the-mainstream” lyrical content to a large collection of jumpy journalists.  His statement was exactly right, and director F. Gary Gray creates a glorious work of art of his own:  a completely captivating and Shakespearean story of five men from Compton, CA and their meteoric rise up the music charts in “Straight Outta Compton”.

In this 2 hour 27 minute chronicle, Gray introduces the audience to Ice Cube, Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Dj Yella (Neil Brown Jr.), and MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and their humble beginnings in a stressful environment in 1988 Compton.

Their reality was a place where gangs (like the Crenshaw Mafia) stop school buses and point guns at the heads of high school kids.

Their reality was a place where white police officers routinely provoke, harass and manhandle young black men for absolutely no reason.

Their reality, however, was also a place where Dr. Dre – sporting a stylish, opened buttoned Los Angeles Dodgers jersey – earns fifty dollars for DJing at a club.

Although his mom was not impressed, Dr. Dre proudly states, “It’s a start."

Dr. Dre’s talents are with writing music, and his friend Ice Cube is more than a bit of a poet.  Although music and lyrics are the basic ingredients for a song, they need money and studio time to actually make a record.

Enter Eazy-E.

With his business know-how, he helps build that magical studio time bridge.  Add Dj Yella and MC Ren, and the group is complete.  N.W.A is born on Ruthless Records, and their frank talk of crime, racism, injustice, and frustration strikes a chord (pardon the pun) in Los Angeles and soon, the nation.

Along the way, Gray does a very nice job of showing the camaraderie between the band members and the joy they experience while creating music inside the studio and during thunderous performances in arenas.  The arena shows are highly produced, and the power of the actors’ recreated performances brings chills.  With their live concert stage supporting a barbed-wire fence and huge letters “N.W.A” plastered in red, these five men make a statement to the movie theatre and on-screen audiences alike, and we feel it to our core.

These guys are very likable, and with the film’s very clear “us vs. the system” tone, this audience member really hoped bandmate harmony would remain strong.  On the other hand, life harmonies sometimes fall flat, and the film reveals the squabbles and issues which created serious problems.  Ironically, with ever-present racism surrounding the N.W.A members, treating one another with equality would be the obvious choice, but money can pull apart even the closest of friends.  We also see the band’s allies might not have their best interest in mind as well.

Trust becomes an issue everywhere, and that is an unfortunate - but very real message - in the film.  Gray’s movie also does a meticulous job of documenting N.W.A’s journey and does so with humor, growth, success, and conflict.

This is a landmark band, and the movie seems to include every small, but important step on their ride.  This is mostly positive, but the film also includes actors playing other rap artists during these small steps, and their bit cameos felt like a celebrity checklist.  The look-alike actors’ small appearances took me out of the narrative, while I wanted the real focus to continue on N.W.A.  That’s a small criticism, however, because walking out of the movie, I felt like I was treated to a complete, historical and fascinating document of this band and a clear picture of their reality.    (3.5/4 stars)

The End of the Tour - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

The End of the Tour  

Starring Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Chlumsky, Ron Livingston, Mamie Gummer, and Joan Cusack

Directed by James Ponsoldt

Rated R

Run Time: 106 minutes

Genre: Drama

Opens August 7th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

James Ponsoldt has quickly evolved into one of the most mature American filmmakers of the 21^st century. After breaking out with his challenging romantic drama Smashed, he followed up with the teenage romance The Spectacular Now, which stands as one of the finest embodiments of the complex modernity of teenage romance. Now, he’s made another triumphant picture in the real-life story The End of the Tour, this time opting out of the romantic storyline in favor of a friendship forming between an artist and his observer. Jason Segel gives a performance that will undoubtedly restart his career, even though he didn’t need to do so. He had been an emphatically positive presence in most comedies over the past decade, but his evolution here playing the late David Foster Wallace is simply sublime. He plays the tortured artist as anything but a trope, making him a man both impressed and confused by the world around him. Jesse Eisenberg also continues his run as awkwardly career-driven characters here, proving that he has been typecast perfectly since The Social Network. Ponsoldt’s film is simple in its humor, complex in its drama, and altogether moving.

The film follows Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), a writer who has recently published his own novel but hasn’t found the success he so desires. One day, he discovers a newly published work called Infinite Jest, a 1000-page-plus epic that’s set in a dystopia involving themes like addiction and recovery, film theory, familial relationships, and advertising. It’s written by David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel), a man that Lipsky and his girlfriend, Sarah (Anna Chlumsky), idolize greatly. Lipsky aspires to learn from Wallace and sets out to interview him after much reluctance from his editor; after all, in all of their years of existence, the magazine had never interviewed an author. Lipsky ends up visiting Wallace on the last five days of his book tour, after which Wallace is both exhausted and left incredulous. They are initially apprehensive about getting to know each other, with Wallace keeping his secrets hidden while Lipsky tries to get both a good interview and make a strong friend. He doesn’t have many of the latter, and the fine line he must walk to bond with Wallace is vital for the success of both of those aspirations.

The delicate balance that Ponsoldt strikes between these characters being friends and merely serving one another to advance their careers is quite extraordinary. It’s one of the underlying themes that never loudly emerges outside of one scene that boils over in a car, a perfect setting for an argument between characters. It traps the tension and forces the moment to happen. Wallace is an altogether fascinating man, and makes for an even better film creation. As the story takes place in 1996, there’s a semblance of what happened to Wallace years before his suicide and what may have been culminating underneath his hippie exterior. There’s a very divided man on the inside: one that enjoys crazy action films but dislikes almost all television, one that complains about most musicians but has an immense infatuation with Alanis Morissette, and one that loves women dearly but has struggled with getting married and having kids. Segel downplays the brilliance of his work. As I was largely unfamiliar with Wallace before the film, he makes the mythic author a mere man with a troubled past and a future set up with numerous creative hurdles. To downsize a man that feels larger than life is a triumph.

But the power of the film lies within Ponsoldt’s directing and Marguiles' writing. Their scenes are often long and full of dialogue, as the characters probe one another and wait for the other to lower their guard. Both of the Davids in the story (for which the namesake is simply too fitting considering how connected the two of them grow over the film) are doing their jobs but need human affection. Their conversations demonstrate that, as they are mostly fluid and relatively unsure of their direction; by the conversations' conclusion, however, we leave each scene feeling rewarded. The two men are painted in portraits that feel altogether comforting and understanding, for we're not meant to idolize either person, but simply understand them. Wallace isn't shown as a helpless drug addict like some see, nor are there moments where his upbringing is questioned as to whether it led to his suicide. The world around him is simply changing, and he feels that people are less ambitious and unsure of how they want to spend their valuable time on Earth. Segel and his co-star Eisenberg capture that feeling perfectly, and make The End of the Tour one of the year's best films.

Ricki and The Flash - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Ricki and The Flash  

Director: Jonathan Demme

Starring: Meryl Streep, Mamie Gummer, Kevin Kline, Rick Springfield, Sebastian Stan, and Audra McDonald

Sony Pictures

102 Minutes

You know that cover band at the dive bar you use to go to back in the day? The better-than-average band that played all the classic rock hits just well enough to tell friends that the bar played good music. That band was Ricki and The Flash. Director Jonathan Demme and writer Diablo Cody examine Ricki, a female lead singer of a rock band who left her family to chase her dream of making it to the mainstage in Los Angeles. Meryl Streep stars and sings in “Ricki and the Flash” and provides a great performance that holds this lopsided and tepid film together from start to finish.

Ricki (Meryl Streep) is alive on the stage. Singing covers of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty with the kind of love for music that can be felt in the back row, or in Ricki’s case the booths in the back of the bar. Ricki’s love for music has led her to Los Angeles; she is an entertainer by night and grocery clerk by day struggling to make rent for her apartment and taking life one small step at a time. Though at one time Ricki was married and had three children, a life she abandoned to chase her dream. An unexpected phone call from her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) brings Ricki back to her uneasy family and closer to a life that will need her to pick up the pieces.

Jonathan Demme is a great film director, known most for “Silence of the Lambs” and “Philadelphia”, who has recently transitioned into more television and documentary work. Demme’s film catalog is painted through a plethora of genre and stories about people whose choices are never easy and sometimes never resolved but always a reflection of the world that has shaped them. You can feel many of these qualities trying to peak through in “Ricki and The Flash”, unfortunately the narrative never seems content to explore these different places. Ricki has lived a life marred by failure, though she masks many of her insecurities with life lesson quips amidst a smug attitude. You can sense in small moments that there is much more going on underneath the heavy makeup and zipped up leather jackets, a unexplored history that holds pertinent truths for her character. The people in the film are a mix of perspectives, the sacrificing and selfish views from parents, the angry and forgiving mentality of children, even very blatantly the division of the liberal verses conservative viewpoints displayed when Ricki stops to talk to her fans. These are stimulating ideas to explore when analyzing the dynamic of a broken family influenced by numerous societal elements. However, everything remains fairly superficial and the result is highly predictable.

What saves the film from faltering completely are the performances. Meryl Streep is great here, taking her character and giving her a rockstar personality capable of singing recognizable songs with her own distinguishable style and approach. Streep’s voice is raspy yet heartfelt. Mamie Gummer, Streep’s daughter in real life, portrays the rage and angst of a woman scorned by a terrible man, it’s over-the-top and subtle at the same time. Kevin Kline adds something nice to every scene here, giving his character the good-to-a-fault persona Kline has done many times before. While it’s familiar it’s also perfectly placed in this film, providing a supporting balance to the many stronger emotions on display.

“Ricki and The Flash” has some very good musical moments, completely owned by Meryl Streep. These song choices play to the narrative as much as formal dialog does between characters. It’s unfortunate that this detail wasn’t reflected throughout the narrative and composition of the characters. “Ricki and The Flash” is very much like the better-than-average cover band at the bar, you’ll appreciate that they don’t mess up any of the songs and tell your friends that you saw a good band playing at a dive bar.

Monte’s Rating

3.00 out of 5.00

Shaun the Sheep - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Shaun the Sheep – by Jeff Mitchell  

“Counting the ways ‘Shaun the Sheep’ is totally endearing”

Writers/Directors:  Mark Burton, Richard Starzak

Distributor:  StudioCanal

In the countryside village of Mossy Bottom, one particular sheep farm – at first glance - seems like an ordinary homestead.   At second glance, however, through the magic of stop-motion animation and the comedic gifts of Aardman Animations (the folks who brought “Wallace & Gromit” to the small and big screens), the animals at this farm are pretty special.

A rooster holds a megaphone to wake up the barnyard animals each morning, a trusted dog enjoys his daily mug of coffee, a duck wheels and deals for big slices of bread, and the sheep seem to be very smart.   One sheep, Shaun (Justin Fletcher), is especially enterprising, and he conveys his ideas to his sheep buddies via a piece of chalk and a blackboard.    This is the setting of a very charming and highly entertaining feature film for everyone from 5 years old to 105.

According to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), “Shaun the Sheep” is a very popular television series with 81 episodes under its belt, but quite frankly, I did not know it existed, and this film was my first Shaun-experience.

The film’s script takes a unique approach, as none of the characters utter a single, decipherable word.   The animals speak, but in incoherent “animal-speak”, and the human characters mumble as well, but through the surrounding visuals and characters’ pliable expressions, the audience always knows the conveyed message.   That is just brilliant moviemaking, and the credit goes to Mark Burton and Richard Starzak who both wrote and directed the film.

In this story, Burton and Starzak show Mossy Bottom as fairly harmonious, but the daily grind of “farm work” feels monotonous to all the animals and the farmer alike.   One day, Shaun becomes inspired to “have a day off”, gets very creative with his chosen writing utensil and sketches out a plan for the animals to have a day of rest and relaxation.   When the farmer’s away, right?

Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances raise their mischievous heads, and his plans go sideways.

Actually, they rolling forward down a long and winding hill.   Now, it is up to Shaun to return the farm to normalcy, and his sheep friends help him on his big journey.

The story is simple enough, but the all of the big and small spaces in this world are incredibly rich with well-placed and detailed sight gags and lots of colorful characters.  First of all, the film’s main protagonists are the adorable and well-intentioned sheep.  With wide-opened eyes, they travel with a sweet naiveté in an unknown environment away from the farm, and their constant improvisation – with verbal squeaks and “baas” - in a (new-to-them) human-filled locale generates big laughs while the audience instantly develops an adoring rooting interest for them.

They meet some other polite animals with big personalities along the way, and every bit character brings a specific and memorable moment to the screen.   The supporting human characters – which include two golf-obsessed doctors, a self-centered celebrity and a greedy small business owner - stand out too, although they are not always completely polite.   The humans are not mean-spirited, but are simply “human” to hilarious and familiar effect, sans the main human antagonist.  He is a severe roadblock in Shaun’s path to success, and his heartless (and sometimes frightening) attitude is especially effective at raising the stakes and building real drama and tension in the film’s final act.

On the other hand, let’s not muddy the waters, “Shaun the Sheep” is a very smart, kind-hearted and most endearing picture.     With not an inch of big screen space wasted, the overabundance of hilarious visuals and plenty of warmth will generate 85 minutes of smile-inducing laughter and joy.    It’s the best animated film I’ve seen all year, and this leaves me with two questions:  Where can I watch Shaun’s television show, and how can I actually get to Mossy Bottom?   (3.5/4 stars)

Fantastic Four - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Fantastic Four  

Starring: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, Jodi Lyn Brockton, Chet Hanks, Owen Judge

Director:  Josh Trank

Rated: PG-13

Run Time:  100 minutes

Genre: Action/Adventure , SciFi/Fantasy

Release Date:  08/07/15

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

If there is ever a museum for bad movies — and let’s all agree there should be, and it would be great — then the bronze monument at the entrance should be of the Fantastic Four. The plaque at the base can read: “Four heroes. Four films. Three franchises. Each fantastically awful.”

Chalk it up to divine intervention, Murphy’s Law, Chaos Theory, karma, Marvel’s pride or whatever, the universe will simply not allow the Fantastic Four to flourish. The disastrous race to beat expiring movie rights doomed 1994’s straight-to-video cheap-o-rama version. In 2005, an updated and CGI-heavy reboot, and its woeful sequel with the Silver Surfer two years later, bombed in an entirely new way with its characters, who bickered and sniped at each other like spoiled children. And here we are once again with a new Fantastic Four, and all new ways to wreck a film in spectacular fashion.

Marvel, the comic book company that now makes interlocking movie mosaics, has had a long and powerful run at comic movies. So long and so powerful that some people — people like me — are praying, hoping, cheering for the company’s eventual failure in Hollywood, which might just loosen the grip that superhero movies have on the cinema it has hijacked. Fantastic Four might not be Marvel’s death knell, but it’s proof that Marvel isn’t bulletproof. So fire away!

Quantifying how bad this film is really very easy: it’s bad in almost every way. The actors are just atrocious, with dialogue that is forced and delivered in a drab monotone. The director, Chronicle helmer Josh Trank, is clearly out of his league with too many moving parts, an uneventful plot, a cast that is largely on screen to deliver meaningless exposition, and outdated, frankly embarrassing CGI. The pacing is off, with a long buildup to zero climax. The action choreography is uninspired and clunky. Even the score is dismal, its hollow notes punctuating the movie’s desperate failings. So little is done right that you can start to see why Trank, during the post-production of Fantastic Four, dropped out of the Star Wars spin-offs — that franchise might finally have its bearings, and Trank simply wasn’t cutting it.

We begin with Reed Richards, a little kid in grade school called up to give a presentation about what he wants to be when he grows up. He expresses a genuine interest in science and discovery and the teacher laughs him back to his seat, because teachers just humiliate their students into submission. This is the first scene, and already I was laughing at this movie unintentional awfulness. Later, Reed and his new friend, Ben, who lives in what can only be described as an orphanage at a junkyard, borrow an industrial strength power converter to test out a quantum transporter. After blacking out the neighborhood, the toy car they transport disappears and in its place is a handful of foreign-looking space rocks

Years later, Reed and Ben (now played by Miles Teller and Jamie Bell) are apparently in their early 20s and participating in a sixth-grade science fair. Even stranger still, super-secret government science contractors, including Sue Storm (Kate Mara), are trolling the little kids’ baking soda volcanoes and potato clocks for insight for their own experiments. When they see the quantum teleporter they kick Ben back to the junkyard and give Reed a full-ride scholarship to continue testing his device. Back at their lab, Reed meets Sue’s brother Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), some Fast & Furious reject who can weld, and Victor Von Doom, whose name indicates he will most certainly be the villain. Doom is a hacker, something we know because he sits brooding behind six computer monitors, one of them plays video games and the others have streams of code scrolling down all Matrix-like. Also, Doom doesn’t shave — he’s angsty.

The movie seems to be moving along at a decent clip, and then it just keeps on going, blissfully unaware that it’s on the wrong road entirely. As 10 minutes stretches to 20, then 30, then 45, Fantastic Four still has no plot, which is odd because this is the third franchise featuring this origin story, so we know what happens. It’s not a mystery: Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben are exposed to cosmic radiation and turn into mutant superheroes. It takes an agonizingly slow 45 minutes to get to the mysterious planet on the other side of the quantum teleporter. At the 55-minute mark the four finally get their powers, and only at the 90-minute mark do all of them share the same frame together as the Fantastic Four. The whole movie is 100 painful minutes long — only Marvel’s mercy saved us from more.

By the time Reed is a super-flexible Stretch Armstrong doll, Sue can turn invisible and create blue energy orbs, Johnny can fly and turn into a fireball, and Junkyard Ben is made of rocks, the film has already overstayed its welcome. Even worse, the actors have largely checked out, including the great Teller, so wonderful in last year’s Whiplash and here left to give impassioned pep talks with no passion or pep. He just lets the dialogue flop out of his mouth, especially in the anticlimactic finale where he pleads for unity among the four. “Alone we can’t beat him, but together we can,” he says in a voice meant for reading world news briefs on NPR. Mara has the regretful line, “I’m not going to be a tool,” and an early scene where she blurts out that she listens to music because of “pattern resolution.” Jordan and Bell have few lines, and maybe it’s best for them and their promising careers. The lines they do have reveal no depth to their characters or what they will be enduring.

The acting is just the worst, and the only excuse I have for these fine actors giving these awful performances is that maybe these were the performances Trank wanted. Or maybe the actors just turned it off once they realized the plot was a literal black hole. In any case, this is abysmal acting with no heart, no humanity, and certainly no payoff within Fantastic Four. It starts bad and only gets worse from there. When Doom’s black hole does open in the last 15 minutes, I was grateful that the first things sucked in were the Fantastic Four.

I suspect, as have others, that the reason the film has these abbreviated character storylines and why it takes so long to get going is because it’s building Fantastic Four’s world. The idea being that the universe is established here in this film, and then explored deeper in subsequent films, like Marvel’s Avengers universe. If that’s true, and I believe it is — proof: a Fantastic Four sequel was announced before this one was even released — then Marvel is the greatest risk to film since flammable film stock. The cinema has its troubles: writers are fleeing to TV, 3D is still a dastardly grift, and these abhorrent prequels, remakes and sequels will just never end. But these shared universes are going to ruin everything. That might sound like an overstatement, but Fantastic Four is a prime example of what happens to projects that focus on whole networks of films and not just the film at its feet. You end up getting an undercooked, overwritten piece of story filler that’s meant to take your money now, next summer and every summer after until it gets absorbed by one of Marvel’s other franchises.

This has to stop. And Fantastic Four’s epic failure is a step in the right direction.

A LEGO Brickumentary - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

A LEGO Brickumentary  

Starring: Jason Bateman Director: Kief Davidson, Daniel Junge Writers: Kief Davidson, Daniel Junge, Davis Coombe

Distributor: Radius Release Date: 07/31/15

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Here’s something your college economics book didn’t teach you: Make a great product. Sell it to to kids. Wait until the kids grow up and then start advertising it for you, for free. Marketing department? Who needs one when you have devoted followers.

The product in this case is LEGO, which is embracing its cultural zenith following last year’s LEGO Movie — an impending sequel is in the works — and now with a tell-all documentary about the Danish toy company. A LEGO Brickumentary, like the LEGO Movie, is a cheerful examination of all things LEGO, and it innocently blurs the line between entertainment and commerce. But really, says the film’s subtext, aren’t they one in the same?

It’s narrated by Jason Bateman, who plays a little astronaut minifig, or minifigure, who’s animated into the interludes of the film’s chapters that chronicle LEGO’s formation, its rise to prominence, a sudden downfall and then its eventual rise back up to be a $4-billion empire. Other toy companies, like Mattel and Hasbro, the films says, have different lines of toys, like Barbie and G.I. Joe, but LEGO makes only one line, building blocks. And it makes a lot of them, enough to give 100 bricks to every person on the planet.

The film spends equal time with LEGO product engineers and with its many fans, young and old. It’s remarkable how much the company stays in contact with its biggest collectors, and even goes as far to employ them in developing new designs and innovations. Many of its designers simply sit in rooms all day and build new sets, tweaking little details to tell stories and then pitch their sets as eventual products.

We learn all kinds of useless LEGO phrases: Clutch Power is the name given to the strength of the interlocking mechanism at LEGO’s core, AFOL is “adult fan of LEGO,” tubes and studs are the names of the major components of an average brick, and Mindstorms is the robotic line that users are hacking for their own purposes. The company found out about the hacking and instead of telling users to cease and desist, they encouraged them to discover and build new creations.

We meet an artist who uses LEGO bricks in his fine art, a designer who creates a successful architecture line of famous buildings, autistic children who enhance their learning with team-based LEGO projects, a man who creates LEGO guns because the company won’t, and the man who made every LEGO user a potential designer with his CUUSOO crowdsourcing site. One potential designer is an awkward man who creates a model of the Curiosity Mars rover, complete with the cantilever-style suspension of the famous robotic explorer.

In many scenes, adults are shown to be just as involved as children. These adults found LEGO as kids and never gave it up. They snap bricks together in zen-like states. That reassuring click of the bricks just feels right. I played with LEGOs as a kid, and I could relate to the sensation of snapping those famous bricks into place. NBA star Dwight Howard is a LEGO fan, as is South Park co-creator Matt Stone.

A LEGO Brickumentary rarely strays too far from LEGO’s corporate agenda, one of imagination, design and invention. A movie about Nike, for instance, would almost have to examine its labor practices in poor countries or else it would be seen as pandering to corporate interests. LEGO doesn’t seem to have skeletons like that worth digging up. The film does acknowledge severe corporate and brand negligence during the 1980s and ‘90s, when executives felt the all-powerful brick was obsolete and introduced an array of simpler, streamlined sets that stripped bare the core values of the company. The film doesn’t acknowledge the toymaker’s strong links to big oil — the toys are, after all, made of plastic — although that is something the company has only just begun to address.

All considering, this is a fair, if altogether toothless, examination of the company’s culture of creativity. If you played with LEGO, or have kids with LEGOs, there’s something for you here in this charming documentary.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation  

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, and Sean Harris

Paramount Pictures

132 Minutes

By Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Maybe you haven’t heard yet, but Tom Cruise did a big stunt for the new Mission: Impossible movie. Remind me to send you a link to the trailer. And the post-stunt interview. And the behind-the-scenes featurette. And all the articles. And blog posts. And pictures. And poster. Actually, if you’re willing to not ask about Scientology in any way, I think we can get Cruise himself to re-enact the stunt in your driveway.

The acrobatic performance, with Cruise’s spymaster Ethan Hunt clinging to the side of big transport plane as it taxis and takes off, was billed as a major piece of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. Turns out, it was just a marketing stunt. The scene, dropped into the first five minutes of the movie and left largely untethered to the rest of the plot, might be the most overhyped thing since Amazon’s disastrously unrewarding Prime Day.

But the scene, and its function as an innocuous jump-start to Rogue Nation, is revealing because it highlights a dangerous lean this franchise is making toward the James Bond franchise — all that’s missing from Cruise’s plane scene are those blaring horns and a silhouette firing a pistol into screen. One of Ethan Hunt’s endearing charms is that he clearly wasn’t James Bond. This, and so much more in Rogue Nation, feels like an abandonment of the franchise.

What irks me most about this lovably goofy spy caper is that it’s a cliché factory. Most action movies are, but this one hams it up under the guise of “serious espionage thriller,” as if it’s immune to sniper assassins blithely waltzing past security guards at the opera, or rubber masks that can flawlessly render wearers into anyone else in the film, or the umpteenth “impenetrable computer behind an impenetrable vault within an impenetrable fortress” gag. We get it already with the spy stuff! Rogue Nation begins in the bureaucracy of Washington, D.C. The director of the CIA (Alec Baldwin at his most Jack Donaghy) is lobbying congress to let the CIA absorb Hunt’s IMF branch — they’re no longer needed, he says. Hunt, meanwhile, is convinced that a group known as SPECTRE … oops, I mean the Syndicate, is plotting terrorist attacks around the world. The CIA, an organization that took us to war in Iraq on faulty intelligence, now suddenly balks at bombing, spying and eavesdropping on the Syndicate. The easier solution, inexplicably, is to disavow Hunt and make him the fugitive.

Off Hunt goes around the world, or at least to places that helped finance the film, in his race to track down a nefarious villain he has only seen through a smoky glass window. Along the way he meets Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), a British spy who is so entangled in the Syndicate that she has some kind of exclusive tenure. Every mission she’s on is bungled by her or Hunt, yet the Syndicate keeps welcoming her back with open arms for no other reason than the plot demands it.

The middle part of the film takes place in Morocco, where Hunt and Faust — and the remnants of IMF, including characters played by Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg — must break into an unbreakable place. These mid-movie heists are classic Mission: Impossible stunts, and this one is suitably silly inside a flooded liquid-cooled vault cylinder. Nevermind that no one — ever — has had this many redundant and needless security features. Of course, it’s not hackable from the outside, so Hunt has to go in and swap out a lo-fi cartridge inside the vault’s hi-fi wheel of death. It’s all preposterously dopey, but it’s hard not to smile at it all.

What follows are rote passages involving motorcycles, bad guys firing blindly around our heroes and a CGI car crash that might be the automobile version of that terrible CGI plane crash at the end of Air Force One. Seriously, this crash must have been uploaded into the film from a floppy disk — it looks old and outdated.

But Rogue Nation does have some light-hearted laughs, though, including a scene in which Hunt and one of the opera snipers silently fight on the overhead background lights during a performance. The lights lower and raise, like platforms in a video game. The sniper has a flute-rifle and it’s gloriously stupid and charming all at once. It’s also fun to watch Pegg and Renner spar with Cruise. There are more jokes this time around. There’s also more product placement, including an unforgivable Halo 5 scene that should be shot into space and what amounts to about 30 minutes of BMW commercials.

With James Bond tackling SPECTRE later this year, and that whole 007 franchise growing increasingly more serious in tone and structure, Mission: Impossible should try another approach entirely. We saw a shift in the franchise before, particularly from Part 2 to Part 3, and again moving into Part 4, Ghost Protocol, which found the right breakdown of fun/serious. Rogue Nation feels like a step back for a franchise that was slowly starting to figure it all out.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation  

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, and Sean Harris

Paramount Pictures

132 Minutes

The “Mission Impossible” television series started in 1966 and ran until 1973. In 1996 the film version of the series dropped into the summer box office melee under the guidance of film auteur Brian De Palma and spotlighted by the already established movie star Tom Cruise. The film was excellent. It was a mix of suspenseful espionage thriller and explosive high-action summer blockbuster fireworks, finely crafted to give audiences of the television show and those looking for a pure adrenaline rush something to see. Fast forward 19 years and the franchise is still holding strong, carried on the sturdy shoulders of Tom Cruise who continues to impress with a “do-it-yourself” quality of performance. “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” is a fun film to watch, it’s the closest return to the form established in the first film.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on the chase for a secret organization known as The Syndicate, a global terrorist cell of former special agents that play a crafty hand in controlling major catastrophes for their own sinister purpose. The head of this organization is an unknown mastermind who continues to be one step of Ethan and his team, who are operating as rogue agents. A disavowed British agent named Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) joins Ethan to dismantle The Syndicate.

Director Christopher McQuarrie guides “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” with confidence, minus a few moments when the pacing and tone shuffles randomly. Still, McQuarrie feels completely comfortable, controlling the big action set pieces and quieter suspenseful scenes with steady hands. Cruise, having worked with McQuarrie a few times already, gives another great performance that displays his undeniable charisma and complete dedication to giving the audience an experience. Like most of the “Mission Impossible” films, things move and operate within a formulaic structure that only somewhat changes from film to film. The change with “Rogue Nation” is that Ethan may have finally met his match with The Syndicate. The bad guys are always little worse than the last; it’s a familiar angle that films this far into an established franchise typically explore. While themes in the film are constantly recognizable and shifts in the narrative are expected, the keen audience can identify nuances in different characters and can usually feel the double-cross coming, the “Mission Impossible” films still have an undeniable quality largely attributed to Cruise and the dynamic established between the cast.

Cruise is known for being an active participant in the production process; here he again performs a breath taking stunt on the side of an airplane that accelerates and then takes off, it’s amazing to see. Simon Pegg is an important addition to the cast, a comedic character that adds a lighthearted touch to scenes and plays well off Cruise’s serious character. Sean Harris plays the antagonist with smirking glee; his performance is restrained and menacingly quiet. Rebecca Ferguson takes on the role of the femme fatale, she holds her own throughout offering a physical performance that outshines many of her male counterparts.

“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” is an exciting addition to the franchise, committedly supported by the performance of Tom Cruise and the capable direction of Christopher McQuarrie. While some of the faults with this film will surely come to light after the credits role and the adrenaline stops pumping, during the film you’ll be too engrossed in all the fun that is happening on screen to even care.

Monte’s Rating

3.75 out of 5.00

Vacation - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Vacation  

Starring Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Chris Hemsworth, Leslie Mann, Chevy Chase, and Beverly D'Angelo

Directed by John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein

Rated R

Run Time: 99 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Opens July 29th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Vacation is a vapid experience. As the fifth film in the National Lampoon’s Vacation series, it feels remarkably devoid of familial connection and spirit; instead, it relies on cruelty and crudeness without a care for developing characters or an enduring narrative. There’s little creativity in its set pieces and jokes. I found myself laughing at pieces of shock humor without any substance to them, not necessarily meaning they’re funny so much as they begged me for a salacious response. I don’t find that kind of comedy rewarding, even if it is sporadically entertaining. When it comes to the summer of 2015, there have been more intelligent comedies with kinder spirits and more biting social observations: Spy was a relentless takedown of the hyper-masculine caper genre, while Trainwreck is a fiercely feminist effort that subverts the romantic comedy through deconstruction of character. Vacation, on the other hand, features puke and dick jokes as if they will never be allowed to use such expressions ever again. I’d like to think audiences know that better comedies are out there, both in terms of laughs-per-minute and intelligence.

The film focuses on Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), the son from the previous Vacation films that has grown into his own man. He doesn’t seem to respect himself, though, working as a second-class pilot for EconoAir as opposed to one of the big-name airlines. He’s constantly reminded of his shortcomings by a rival pilot (Office Space’s Ron Livingston), and feels emasculated because he cannot seem to make his family as happy as they should be. His wife, Deb (Christina Applegate), and his two sons are bored by their yearly trip to Michigan. So Rusty thinks up a plan that feels a little self-serving but could provide a lot of bonding: a visit to Wallee World, the theme park of old, that has new rides and promises to excite everyone. So they trek across the country and experience practically every bad thing imaginable, including a vicious truck driver and bad motel experiences. They also visit Clark (Chevy Chase) and company at their bed-and-breakfast, where they are up to their usual ways.

There’s this nagging sense of familiarity throughout the film that makes it predictable and uninvolving. I’m not sure whether it’s the underappreciated female characters in the film (where Debbie is not given an identifiable career or really any character traits outside of some weak “slutty college years” tropes) or simply the triteness of the jokes. One of the film’s biggest moments involves a visit to Rusty’s sister (Leslie Mann) and her hunky weatherman husband (Chris Hemsworth), and the jokes just don’t work because they are uninspired and routine. The couple makes out awkwardly in front of Rusty’s family, they make misogynistic jokes to take down Rusty’s sensitivity, and boast about how perfect their lives are. There should be some substance in these moments, but the characters are never more than cogs in the machine to move through comedic formula. Ed Helms is committed in the lead, but his role is unforgiving and asks him to make an ass of himself to intermittently funny results. There isn’t a joke in the film that one hasn’t heard before, and that’s only one of the film’s many problems. Vacation isn’t a necessary advancement of the franchise, a relic of comedy that’s lost its luster and fails to stand up to the heavyweights.

Irrational Man - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Irrational Man  

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, Jamie Blackley, and Meredith Hagner

Directed by Woody Allen

Rated R

Run Time: 94 minutes

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Opens July 24th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Irrational Man is a perfectly acceptable film from most filmmakers, but coming from Woody Allen, you expect something more intuitive and less redundant. The film, focusing on a man who faces an existential crisis but finds himself invigorated at the prospect of murdering someone, takes ideas from Allen's previous efforts and fuels a story driven by hubris of both the artist and its creation. Allen's characters here are rarely their own specimens. I cannot remember much in the way of backstory for these people, particularly the women, as they all revolve around Joaquin Phoenix's eccentric, manically depressed Abe, who feels like a caricature that has made up his past with ridiculous details. Sadly, that's Allen playing his character as an actual person in that vein. I've found Allen's efforts of late to be dwindling in quality since Midnight in Paris, as To Rome With Love wallowed in absurdity while Magic in the Moonlight had more laughs and twists as its logic waned. Here, though, Irrational Man is simply unfunny yet it ends on a punchline. Allen's film is a tonal mess twirling a web of questionable morality.

Here, we focus on the aforementioned Abe. He's a tormented philosophy professor that travels to Santa Barbara for a new teaching position over the summer. A man who makes getting drunk look elementary, Abe finds himself in a creative rut and a genuine existential crisis. His personal and professional life haven't lifted off in ages, with him stuck in the middle of writing a book and failing to have intimate encounters for the past year. He meets a fellow professor, Rita (Parker Posey), whose personal life is genuinely reprehensible as she openly wants to cheat on her vacationing husband in favor of the philosophy drunkard. But Abe seems to be infatuated with someone else: a far younger woman, a student named Jill (Emma Stone). She's entranced by Abe's laid-back and logic-fueled approach to life. One day, as their relationship grows stronger, they overhear a conversation about a woman whose terrible ex-husband may gain custody of her two kids because a judge is being paid off and morally corrupt. Something should be done, right? Well, Abe thinks just that, and looks into a way to murder the judge for the good of humanity.

Every Woody Allen film has to be read in a particular way considering the creative paths he continues to take. They emulate much of the personal ambiguity that has happened in the past decade of Allen's life, with questions regarding his romantic affairs with underage women. When films early in Allen's career like Manhattan dealt with these issues as a morally distinguished through-line, it worked. Now, it feels tired and uncomfortable. Joaquin Phoenix's performance is fine given the role that's provided, but he's mostly acting as a self-entitled man who effectively tricks those around him for much of the film into believing he's morally just. There's a particularly great conversation in the film that occurs late when Abe and Jill go through how someone could justify murder, even with the most supportive circumstances imaginable. It's riveting. Yet much of Allen's film involves characters talking to each other in a way that increases Abe's ego. The female characters are left on the sidelines and I cannot, for the life of me, remember anything personally about Jill. Emma Stone is a hell of a seductress, but her character is a shell of a female. That accurately describes Allen's films of late: shells of what they should be, even if they look and sound very convincing.

Paper Towns - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Paper Towns  

Starring Nat Wolff, Cara Delevingne, Halston Sage, Austin Abrams, and Justice Smith

Directed by Jake Schreier

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 109 minutes

Genre: Drama

Opens July 24th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

John Green's cinematic adaptations are starting to carve out a wonderful niche in mainstream cinema. After his challenging romance The Fault in Our Stars splashed gracefully onto the big screen last summer, his works began gaining steam in the business, with Paper Towns here and Looking for Alaska (directed by the talented Sarah Polley) eyeing a release in 2016. While many could easily see this as a cash-grab by Fox 2000 Pictures in hopes of propelling the momentum of Green's 2014 summer hit, they would be missing one key point: Green's books are nuanced works made for the big screen. His latest, Paper Towns, may not stray too far from conventions when it comes to its "finding yourself in your last year of high school" premise, but the characters here are beyond engaging, fragile, and real. They are simply people and treat others around them like they are people. It's rare to see a piece of mainstream film show young men that they should respect women, avoid putting them on a beauty pedestal, and engage with their minds. Paper Towns quietly evolves into a beautifully accomplished drama.

The film focuses on Quentin (Nat Wolff), better known as Q, who is in his last year of high school. He aims to go to Duke in the fall and is acutely focused on school. He has two best friends: Ben (Austin Abrams) and Radar (Justice Smith), both of whom have their own particular quirks. Ben tells fables about women that he's supposedly slept with while on vacations or in far-off lands, which everyone knows to be false, and his insecurity defines his high school life after one unfortunate incident made everyone mistakingly think he was a, how do you say, self-indulgent young man. Radar has a girlfriend, the only one of the bunch to do so, but his girlfriend has never seen the inside of his house. That's because his parents own the largest collection of...well, you'll have to see for yourself. Regardless, these characters never seem to be comfortable in their own bodies, at that awkward point in high school when everything feels weird and you want to move on. Sure enough, Q finds a source of happiness when his long-time neighbor and once-upon-a-time friend, Margo (Cara Delevingne), comes to his window late one night to exact revenge on her ex-boyfriend and friend. Then the next day, she disappears and cannot be found. Q and his friends, along with Margo's best friend, Lacey (Halston Sage), trek across the East Coast to find her.

The film's first half is far weaker than its second, most notably because it jumps into the action quickly without us having an idea of who the characters really are. Much of the opening moments are driven by Q's narration, where he tells us all about these characters but we never really get to see past their caricatures. Seeing is believing, and sure enough the second half of the film kicks off with a game-changing party and never looks back. One of the most nuanced characters in the film is Lacey, a smart, pretty girl who wants to be seen as something more than just her looks; she's going to Dartmouth, after all. She becomes a full-fledged person in the second half, particularly as self-proclaimed womanizer Ben starts to see her as more than eye-candy. We also get rare glimpses at uncomfortable jokes, particularly one involving a Confederate flag that feels relevant considering the dumbfounding support that some extreme Southerners have attempted to use in the past few months. But the message of the film is simple, straightforward, and beautiful: that young men often see young women as beautiful and jump to the conclusion that they love them, without knowing anything about them. These girls deserve respect and to be known, and director Jake Schreier with writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber let that be established. Paper Towns turns into a terrific film in its later moments because of its ideas, and that's refreshing.

Pixels - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Pixels  

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad, and Brian Cox

Directed by Chris Columbus

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 105 minutes

Genre: "Comedy"

Opens July 24th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

The summer of 2015 has brought us some fantastic blockbusters, including Mad Max: Fury Road, Spy, and Inside Out. What they've shown us is that...well, not everyone can be winners. But perhaps more importantly, they've shown us that striking a balance between strong female and male characters can often make very good films great. Adam Sandler films, on the other hand, don't go for any of that developmental nonsense. Instead, they opt for that casually sexist, narratively unintelligible standard that Sandler has produced for the past decade through his gleefully oafish Happy Madison Productions. Pixels is standard and rudimentary for Sandler's schlock, not particularly awful like his self-indulgent Grown-Ups franchise or nearly as gross-out as That's My Boy. Yet it's still fundamentally terrible storytelling, with no redeemable characters as they are all routinely cruel and immature to one another. I just don't see how this film can appeal to anyone above a young child's mind. When there are comedies like Trainwreck out, this shouldn't even be considered an option.

Rather than describe the plot of the film, I'll describe the characters since that'll more accurately reflect the essence of Pixels. Adam Sandler plays Brenner, a man who finished in second place in a worldwide video game championship as a kid which seems to have ruined his life for the past thirty years. Now, he sets up technology in people's homes while also being friends with the President of the United States, played by Kevin James. He's apparently the man that followed President Barack Obama based on a line by The Token Black Guy™ at a point later in the film, although the time and place of the film itself isn't established so who really knows. He's a buffoon that somehow got elected president; perhaps, based on every other character here, it's because he's a genuinely good man. An idiot, but a good man. Josh Gad plays Ludlow, a conspiracy theorist who notices that aliens are coming to attack the world after receiving video game signals. He is seen screaming homophobic lines at soliders (in an attempt at being inspired that instead seems to confirm stereotypes and misogyny), yelling profusely at his grandmother, and yearning after a fictitious woman because his social skills are terrible.

Those are the heroes of the story. Did I forget to mention their sidekicks? There's First Lady Jane Cooper, played by the incredibly funny Jane Krakowski, and she's given a few lines to develop plot because her contract probably allotted it. Then there's Violet, played by Michelle Monaghan, who appears to be the only shred of a female character, until she is made weak and feeble despite being a high-ranking official in the military. So of course she must be saved by Brenner, a man incapable of doing most things not involving video games on his own. Now, we could account for the fact that the two of them riff like schoolhouse kids regarding being snobby and who has more power to show her development, but that elementary piece of debate only lasts...the entire first half of the film. Ugh. But how could I forget the most important sideshow: Eddie, played by Peter Dinklage, who is a ridiculous man that beat Brenner at his championship who now is in jail and demands stupid things upon his release. One of them is a threesome with Serena Williams and Martha Stewart, which is a weak joke that lasts the entire second half of the film.

Oh yeah, so the plot. Things blow up and Pac-Man, Centipede, Tetris, and Donkey Kong are some of the games that come into play. The film's biggest fault with these creations is that we are so familiar with how these games play out and all of their rules that there's no surprise when a "surprise" happens within the game. We know Pac-Man can eat the ghosts, so that's not an exciting twist. The action scenes look impressive in 3D, a rare feat for a thoroughly bland action film, but I never complained about the scenes being shot the way they did for the effects. For the story and overall aesthetic appeal, though, the scenes move too quickly and rarely get past their gratingly obvious comic appeal. The director here is Chris Columbus, best known for establishing the cinematic world of Harry Potter with the series' first two adaptations. I just don't see what he saw with this film. I suppose, like all Sandler properties, money spoke far louder than words. Actually, the words speak pretty loudly here. They're exclaimed and shoved in our faces.

Trainwreck - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Trainwreck  

Starring Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, LeBron James, Colin Quinn, John Cena, Tilda Swinton, and Brie Larson

Directed by Judd Apatow

Rated R

Run Time: 122 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Opens July 17th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Trainwreck is an emphatic statement to the world that Amy Schumer's comedic voice needs to be heard. She's advancing her form as she dives into romantic comedy fare, hellbent on subverting every standard. The film easily establishes both her and Bill Hader as some of the brightest actors in Hollywood. Both have been raised through the acting world on television comedies, with obvious reliances on stand-up fare: Schumer coming from her own Comedy Central starrer Inside Amy Schumer, and Hader from many years on NBC's long-standing Saturday Night Live. Together, they create one of the most oddball comedic romances in recent memory. The film, simply, is a romantic comedy with every single role reversed: Schumer playing the playboy that sleeps with anything that moves, Hader playing the sensitive, grounded, career-oriented lover, and LeBron James playing the concerned, emotionally-aware friend that wants what's best for their best friend. If that sounds weird, it plays out as anything but. Director Judd Apatow captures the world with his usual sensitive, observant touch, while Schumer's script sparks to life even as it drifts in its second half. The film's a hilarious blast that, despite conventional trappings, feels oddly refreshing and boldly insightful.

The story follows Amy (Amy Schumer), a commitment-phobe that has been trained since she was a child to believe that monogamy was not successful. Her father, Gordon (Colin Quinn), cheated on their mother, and playfully describes in the prologue of the film that his daughters would not want to play with the same doll for the rest of their life, so why should he have to metaphorically do the same? Now, Amy's life is unsurprisingly a bit of a mess. She's dating Steven (John Cena), a sensitive man that ultimately wants to marry Amy but doesn't realize she's been cheating on him consistently since they "didn't say they were exclusive." She writes at a magazine company that mostly produces complete and utter sleaze; her fellow workers include yes-woman and quasi-best friend Nikki (Vanessa Bayer) and Dianna (Tilda Swinton), her awful boss that prides herself on writing for an audience of every single human being. Amy gets assigned a project on a sports doctor that heals athletes' busted knees, something in which she has no interest since she hates sports. The doctor's name is Aaron (Bill Hader), and he takes care of plenty of major names, including LeBron James (playing himself), who remains a close friend. Amy's story grows more personal as she falls for Aaron, even if he doesn't fit her traditional mold of a man.

Trainwreck is anything but traditional. It's a subversive swirl of a film that makes every man sensitive and most of the women hard-nosed men-snatchers. There's something delightful in seeing relatively normal people presented on screen; instead of the woman always trying to show the man how to love, Aaron must settle Amy down before she effectively ruins her life by avoiding the one man she genuinely loves. Amy's not just emotionally a piece of work, but also a drunk and aggressive presence that hates feelings and making a family of her own. Her interactions with her sister, Kim (Brie Larson), exemplify that as Amy cannot stand her sweetheart of a stepson Allister (Evan Brinkman) and her doof of a husband Tom (fantastic stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia, whose film Sleepwalk with Me is an absolute delight). Yet we never really connect with Amy emotionally as her journey shows a stubbornness and thorough misunderstanding of the world around her. She plays the traditionally stuck-in-their-ways protagonist that pervades romantic comedies, and settles into that role with ease. An early scene has her tricking her partner for the night into some foreplay that ultimately stands as a selfish move before she fakes falling asleep. She's manipulative, often drunk, and somehow a joy to watch.

Bill Hader's presence cannot be understated. He's one of Hollywood's strongest talents, an everyday man that can play remarkably human characters. While I am not a huge fan of The Skeleton Twins, his performance there is deeply moving and resonates far beyond the story's wanderings. Here, he plays an established man with undoubted insecurities, and that makes him compelling. He's very funny and has a great back-and-forth chemistry with LeBron, who embodies his role terrifically. The basketball icon plays against type in every way: he's fiscally conservative, interested in Downton Abbey, self-conscious, emotionally nervous about his best friend, and so defiantly against everything the public sees about him. Apatow has a knack for filming big names and making them feel small and grounded; he does that here, often using a talking heads, centralized framing for most of the conversations that make these characters feel decidedly normal. Their problems feel real and universal. Schumer's writing is the driving force behind the film's impact. Supporting roles by Ezra Miller, Daniel Radcliffe, and Marisa Tomei round out a stellar cast with so many moving parts that it makes the film a complex, if uneven, feature.

And as I talk about these characters and their sensitivity, I've failed to mention one key thing: the film's absolutely hilarious. The interplay between Schumer and Hader allow for situational moments that either draw laughs from Schumer's narration, or the scenes' goofy set-ups. One of my favorite scenes in the film is a montage of their dating moments that ends in a shot that is identical in framing and (basically) lighting with Woody Allen's Manhattan. One of the great romances in cinema, the scene signifies a turning point in the relationship between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton's characters; here, it's used to showcase an act of public sex. Schumer just doesn't care about what is traditional or what is untouchable, as long as a joke can be made. The film's structure is strong in the first half, balancing jokes with exposition and allowing these characters to truly become their own. Yet it wanders far too much in its second half, becoming a disjointed comedy balancing too many storylines. The humor, however, remains aggressive and original throughout. Despite its faults, this is Apatow's most commercially accessible fare since Knocked Up, and Schumer's most poignant work across all of her platforms. Trainwreck is a surprisingly adept comedy, and stands as one of the strongest comedies of 2015.

Grade: ★★★★ (out of 5)

Trainwreck interview with Amy Schumer by Eric Forthun

I had the opportunity to sit down with comedian Amy Schumer, best known for her work on Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer, which just wrapped its third and final season. Her new film, Trainwreck, is hilarious and announces to the world that she’s the next great comedic star. I asked her some questions about the film’s festival response, her moments of comedic tightrope walking, and how working with Judd Apatow allowed her to realize the potential of film as a storytelling medium. Eric: How was premiering your film at South by Southwest and what did you think of the reaction?

Amy: Dream come true. Beyond dream come true. I’m getting choked up thinking about it right now. I was sitting next to my sister. We had seen some test screenings, and people had enjoyed it, but…people were applauding, missing the punchlines. It was one of the best nights of my life. Missing the punchlines is a great ass problem to have. (laughs) I’ve had roles in movies, but this is beyond fun.

E: What was the biggest problem in moving from television to film, in terms of writing and acting?

A: I filmed the third season of the show after the movie, and that was a lot different. I got a trailer, even if it was just like a port-a-potty with a bench in it. But Judd [Apatow] creates such a familial vibe on set, it wasn’t overwhelming. I wanted to set the vibe around the set. Everyone was going to joke with each other, and if Frank the boom mic had his crack showing I’d put a pencil in it. On the show, the cast and crew were so close with each other. On a film set, people are there for so long that you really miss them when they’re gone. On Vanessa Bayer’s last day, I realized, “Oh, I’m not going to see you for 14 hours each day for this week?” And on my TV show I’d see people once a day, so it’s different.

E: One of my favorite scenes in the movie is a bedroom moment with John Cena. The red-band trailer had some different dialogue and takes…did that scene just have a free flow to it?

A: That scene was written, and with every scene I worked hard on the script to ensure that every “uh” was included. But in the moment, we just see what happens. LeBron was amazing, but John Cena just brought things out of nowhere. When he starts speaking Mandarin, that’s all him. I was laughing so hard, at a certain point I felt like I was going to be cut out of the scene. He’s an endless array of jokes. In the movie theater scene later, it wasn’t scripted that his threats were really gay, but it just started happening that way. He wasn’t scripted with that arsenal of weird shit to say.

E: You mention LeBron, and he’s really funny in the movie. Was the role written for him or just a random big-name athlete?

A: It was totally written for him, but thinking that we would get another great athlete instead. And then, Judd and Bill met with LeBron and he was down to do it. He was the biggest pleasure in the world. He was so funny and we would whisper, “Do you think we could make a Cleveland joke?” We were ready for him to turn on us but he was down for whatever. Athletes acting can be so uncomfortable…like Shaq or Brett Favre in There’s Something About Mary. That’s the joke (to be uncomfortable), but it doesn’t work as well.

E: Speaking of celebrity roles, where did the Daniel Radcliffe dog-walker movie-within-the-movie come from?

A: I came up with this dog-walker concept where there were from the wrong side of the tracks, and it could’ve been whoever. I initially wrote it for Daniel or Joaquin Phoenix, someone with no business being in this movie. We thought after we shot it that maybe we wouldn’t use it, but we had Daniel and Marisa Tomei, so we had to use it. I hope that wasn’t too distracting since we shot it and it was ridiculous. It was basically making fun of movies. People were so confused seeing Daniel smoking cigarettes with all of those dogs outside of Bryant Park while we were shooting.

E: One thing I noticed that must be intentional is that the film feels like it’s a traditional romantic comedy with every single role reversed in terms of gender. The men are the sensitive ones are, you’re the womanizer. What’s the basis for that?

A: Most of the men in my life are very sensitive, more than me. I’m not like…I did the math yesterday, and I’ve slept with like 25 people. I don’t know if that’s typical or not for a girl. I mean, I’m 33, so yearly that’s not bad. It’s just been my experience. I wanted to make sure this role was clear. I experienced Samantha on Sex and the City as mentally ill, and I think a lot of times when guys try to write a female comedy they’ll write the “slut” role, and when a friend of mine would act like that I’d want to take her to the hospital. I really wanted to make sure this girl was preserved as a human being, and…I’ve spread myself too thin at times for unhealthy reasons. And everyone wants love. As for the male roles, it was funny for LeBron James to be really invested in his friend’s relationships. There was this whole part of the movie that was cut out, the first scene of the movie: me talking to Jon Glazer in the office. And I said, “Men don’t hurt women, women hurt men.” And then he said, “I’ve been hurt by every woman I ever met.” It’s just that idea that there’s a stigma but there are a lot of really sensitive guys. It’s not a male-female thing.

E: Obviously you wrote from personal experience. How much would you say is autobiographical?

A: Forty percent? Some of the things were straight up. One time I was really high, and my boyfriend saw an email exchange with a guy where we were getting into each other, and I had just smoked pot. He wanted to talk about it and I just wouldn’t have it. My dad and my relationship with my sister are there…I was falling in love when I wrote this movie, too. I never had that revolving door in Manhattan where I was fucking non-stop, but yeah.

E: What was the best joke that got cut from the film?

A: There’s two that come to mind right away. One joke was in my dad’s snow globe collection, where one of them was made and in the script, but it was from Auschwitz. “They make those there?” But they told us no. And then I had a joke with my sister when she’s pregnant, where I asked her if she was going to keep it, and she’s like, “No one aborts their second child.” And I said that they do it in China and they’re doing a lot better than us. But China’s the biggest market for film so they wouldn’t let it happen. And there was one line that I miss which was on the Staten Island Ferry between me and a guy. I was smoking pot and looking around and this man was staring at me, so I said, “Oh, are you proud of every moment of your life, sir?” Which I think is a good tag for what this movie is about.

E: There’s a particular dance sequence near the end of the film that’s hysterical. What type of work went into choreographing that?

A: That was Judd’s pitch to do that dance. I just wanted to come out and be a mascot and dive into something. I’m not a dancer. I went to the dance auditions and the choreographer would walk us through it, and they’d have it and it’d be the best you’d ever seen. Three months, every single weekend, two hours Saturday and Sunday…working with the choreographer. Just to get it. We did some takes where I did the dance really well, and some where I mess up the whole time. And the editors chose the combination. But it was really hard! Every weekend.

E: Judd Apatow directed here and you wrote, but do you ever want to write and direct a film?

A: I don’t think I’d ever want to direct something I was in. I directed scenes in my TV show that I’m not in very much. But I cannot imagine directing something. I really like it, though. I would love to direct something I’m not in.

E: What did Judd bring to the film that changed the final product?

A: So much. He’s a genius, for real. I’ve never written a movie and he understands the balance of things. “Okay, we can’t have the audience sad for that long, and we haven’t seen this guy for a while, and here we need a scene where we see the two of them like never before.” He just understands what people want to see. I’m thinking of things in the budget I’m used to working in: I think the scene could be in a recreation center, and then he says, “What if it’s at the [Madison Square] Garden?” And I’m like, “What garden?” He created an environment where we all feel free to play and also he directed me in a way that I felt safe yet very vulnerable. I went further with things than I thought I could. I lucked out. Jesus Christ.

Trainwreck opens nationwide on Friday, July 17th. 

Ant-Man - Move Review by Michael Clawson

Ant-Man  

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lily, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, and Michael Peña

Disney/Marvel

115 Minutes

Ant-Man as a stand-alone film would be a nearly perfect summer superhero movie. It has a likeable hero, an appropriately evil villain, jokes, a love story, sidekicks, a sage old mentor, a train sequence (something every movie can benefit from) and a suit that allows a man to shrink to the size of a grain of salt.

But Ant-Man is not a stand-alone movie. It’s a Marvel movie, which means it must give shout-outs to the Avengers, to Captain America, to the incoming Spider-Man, to other films and other franchises. When a character whistles “It’s a Small World,” is that because the movie is about shrinking people or because Marvel is owned by Disney? At some point the “Marvel Universe” ends and greedy corporate synergy begins, and that’s when this mostly witty movie turns into a footnote in a sub-paragraph of the third appendix of the next Avengers movie, itself a slave to the decades-long Infinity Gauntlet storyline. This might sound blissfully orgasmic to fans of Marvel movies, but it’s maddening for me. I like movies to have beginnings, middles and ends — they should be at least mostly self-contained, even sequels. Ant-Man is like a jigsaw puzzle with all the edge pieces removed: the completed picture tells a full story, but those jagged edges are made to click into other films, other characters, other franchises. And where does that leave Ant-Man? Borderless. This increasingly cantankerous ranting is becoming a weekly tradition for me as I slog through another, and another, and another superhero movie. I’ll do it again in the rebooted Fantastic Four very soon. In any case, here we are with Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man, a movie about a man who can shrink down to the size of termites and fleas and ticks. Oh, and ants. The man in the shrinking costume is Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and he has an opening scene with Tony Stark’s father and a young lady in old-lady makeup — Agent Carter on ABC, check your local listings. “The suit is too dangerous, and the only way you’ll get it is if I’m dead,” Pym tells them.

Decades later, Pym’s technology has been discovered by a power-hungry tech corporation, which has a CEO that personally liquefies his critics if they dare speak their minds. Pym, too old to don the shrinking suit to fight him, sets a trap for a master thief, someone perfect for the new Ant-Man. He catches Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who ingeniously uses superglue, a metal ring and some packing tape to break through a fingerprint lock. When Scott puts the suit on for the first time he thinks it a motorcycle outfit, but then he fidgets with the buttons and whoosh, down he goes to the size of a bug. He braves a tsunami in a bathtub, stomping feet and a spinning record in a dance club, and narrowly misses being sucked up into a vacuum. The suit comes with other perks, including an earpiece that allows him to speak to four different species of ants, which comes in handy at picnics.

This is all pretty straightforward superhero movie stuff. It doesn’t deviate too far from any of the formulas established by Spider-Man, Iron Man or Batman. It benefits greatly from Rudd, though, who is genuinely charming and funny as he clobbers his way through Pym’s nemesis. One of the great early scenes shows us how Scott learns of Pym’s heist frame-up: the camera swoops into a wine-tasting event, a gangster grill-out and a softball game as rumors and tips are exchanged from one criminal to another. The film also benefits greatly from Michael Peña as Scott’s waffle-making best friend, who sums up an entire heist explanation with “We’re gonna steal some shit.”

The Ant-Man powers are especially nifty, if only because we get to see giant versions of things, including a fight on a Thomas the Tank Engine toy. The film explains that the suit allows Ant-Man to shrink to the size of an ant, but he still punches like a 200-pound man. Ok, whatever — it works, though.

The movie loses focus after Scott has to break into the Avengers headquarters to steal something largely inconsequential to the plot. In the screening I was at, the Marvel fans (mostly everyone) reacted to this scene about the same way as Elvis fans at Graceland. I mostly rolled my eyes because I knew what the scene was: Marvel shamefully cross-promoting a yet-to-be-made future movie with a C-list superhero during Ant-Man. The arrogance of that is just astonishing, and it makes the film pander as a marketing hack.

But what do I know? I’m just a guy who wants to watch a movie, just a single movie, without being told about another one, a better one, that’s in the pipeline.

Ant-Man - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Ant-Man  

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lily, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, and Michael Peña

Disney/Marvel

115 Minutes

Ants can be highly determined insects with the right motivation, and they can move an exceptional amount of weight in relation to their tiny size. It’s not surprising that Stan Lee would utilize these informative features of the formidable creatures as the source for another superhero. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded their reach beyond the well-known heroes, bringing in characters to accommodate the ever-expansive world that is being built. With “Ant-Man”, directed by Peyton Reed, the Marvel world of heroes saturates the story of the minuscule hero throughout, offering name drops and cameos from other properties. Still, amidst some of the clunky narrative pieces, “Ant-Man” is fun to watch, one of the better recent superhero offerings.

Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is a brilliant scientist who created a substance that when utilized with a specially built suit will shrink the person wearing it into ant-sized form while also increasing strength. Dr. Pym, wanting to keep the secret of the substance from falling into the wrong hands, hides his creation. A former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), has dedicated his life to recreating Dr. Pym’s invention and he is getting closer to finding success. Wanting to thwart the progress of Cross, who is shopping the technology as the ultimate military weapon, Dr. Pym enlists a former thief named Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to don the suit to protect the future.

There is an ingrained formulaic structure that superhero films fall into too often, a Saturday morning cartoon that puts the hero into tumultuous situations that are devoid of danger. Yes it has happened that some of the secondary characters in these comic book films don’t survive, an emotional tool for the narrative, but the hero is most often safe. “Ant-Man” falls and leaps over some of these trappings, and for much of the film the result is positive and enjoyable. Peyton Reed, who took over directing duties after Edgar Wright left amid creative conflicts, moves the film swiftly through the set-up origin with Dr. Pym and into the bulk of the conflict with Scott Lang. There is a quirky and cartoonish atmosphere throughout much of the film, whether the interruptions in action sequences that feels wholly attributed to the style of Edgar Wright or the narrative comedic breaks that undercut many of the dramatic scenes. The tone of the film is never set too serious but this isn’t reflected in the crafting of the Ant-Man character, which takes the superhero completely serious. This helps in making the Ant-Man and his associated abilities feel more significant than silly.

Paul Rudd plays some of the spotlight with his usual smirky charisma, though this characteristic is underutilized and severely hurt when the Ant-Man costume is put on. Rudd is simply overshadowed by the mask but is offered one great scene in the Ant-Man uniform where he verbally and physically spares with another Marvel superhero. The supporting roles are better; Michael Douglas is good as the ornery Dr. Pym and Evangeline Lily, playing Dr. Pym’s daughter Hope, fits nicely into the mixture of Rudd’s comedy and Douglas’ straightforwardness. The best of the group is Ant-Man’s thieving sidekicks, played by Michael Peña, T.I., and David Dastmalchian, who offer the best laughs of the film.

“Ant-Man” has an unusual quality of feeling too big and too small at different moments, which makes some of the film feel uneven. More-often-than-not the film succeeds in making this comic book world interesting; whether transferring from minuscule mayhem amidst enlarged everyday environments right into a normal perspective that registers as minor, overlooked disturbances, breaks up the typical action monotony these comic book films embrace. “Ant-Man” may be one of the smaller, lesser know heroes in the Marvel universe, but this film makes it feel just like one of the heavyweights.

Monte’s Rating

3.75 out of 5.00

Amy - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Amy  

Directed by Asif Kapadia

Rated R

Run Time: 128 minutes

Genre: Documentary

Opens July 10th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

If I asked the majority of the public who Amy Winehouse was, they'd say she was that British artist who had that song about rehab and died of a drug overdose. Yet that only scratches the surface of the deeply troubled artist. Asif Kapadia's Amy is the year's best film because it exposes the truth behind her life and the way that the public and media destroyed her self. She wasn't ready for the spotlight, and it ruined her. The film moves like a traditional narrative but retains the intimacy of a personal documentary, making it a brilliantly structured film that aims for atypical storytelling for an atypical singer. There are no talking heads heaping praise onto the gone-too-soon crooner, nor are there endless scenes celebrating her talents and realizing that we lost someone special. Rather, the film shows the public the horrors of Amy's life: her battle with bulimia, her drug use starting in her early teenage years, and her substance abuse that grew out of control when she became a major star. Amy is a Shakespearan tragedy told with poignancy and tinged with regret.

The story chronicles Amy's life up until her death, starting with archival footage from her pre-teen and teenage years. She's seen as a vocally gifted, shy, and reserved girl. The film puts a smart twist on the way that we are told this narrative, though, as talking heads disappear while family and friends fill in any gaps and inform us of what extends beyond the childhood lens. Amy struggled with eating disorders when she was a young girl, scarfing down all of her food at dinner before throwing it all back up later that night. She also got involved with drugs at a particularly young age; in this case, marijuana indeed was a bridge drug that led her to cocaine and, at her death bed, heroin. Director Kapadia's film explores drug use as a means of escaping reality, even including alcohol in that mix since Amy was notorious for turning up to events drunk. Amy used and abused for a variety of reasons: she was psychologically troubled from her upbringing, she didn't seem to connect with most of the outside world and their tastes in music, and she fell apart in the aggressive public spotlight once she hit it big with her album Back to Black.

It's rare for a film to depict the paparazzi as manipulative and downright volatile when it comes to the treatment of celebrities, yet here it strikes a far greater cord with the audience. Kapadia, through his brilliant lens of humanism, has created a human being out of the usually larger-than-life Amy Winehouse; we never really see her as this huge starlet like so much of the world did. She was a low-key lounge singer that never even fathomed performing in front of tens of thousands of people, nor was she psychologically ready for such an endeavor. We see her as a person thrown into a deep pool of sharks without any means of escape. In Amy's tragic case, her only way of escaping the madness was through a return to drug use. The story occasionally explores her family's perspective, but the majority of the insight comes from her previous boyfriends and friends from a young age. One tragically notes that, upon Amy's amazing Grammy night where she won Record of the Year, Amy told her, "This is so boring when I'm sober." Amy's life was beyond troubled, and Kapadia's lens never relents. It crafts a story that shows the way her music extended deeply into her soul and showed us who she really was. And to Amy, I posthumously say this: we understand you.

Minions - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Minions  

Director: Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Geoffrey Rush, and Steve Carell

91 Minutes

Universal Pictures

A minion needs a master but does the master really need a minion? In the case of the giggling, goofy product of the “Despicable Me” franchise, the master may want to steer clear of this disaster inducing group of faithful minions. Focusing on the babbling yellow miscreants, who were a comedic surprise from the first two films, was an obvious choice and the creative team behind “Minions” understand exactly what this film is suppose to be, quickly squeezing in the silly quality of humor these small characters are known for into early scenes. However these minions need a master and when the film moves into this purpose the laughs become harder to find and the product becomes repetitious.

The Minions have always been around, scouring the world for the most devious and dastardly villain to serve. Though keeping a master is a lot harder than the Minions expected, and throughout the ages, as the film portrays, they have aided quite a few.  The Minions find themselves without a villain to follow and retreat to a snowy cave waiting for their next opportunity. They wait, and wait, and wait. Three minions named Kevin, Stuart, and Bob decide to find their next master, leading them to a convention for villains in Orlando and into won servitude with Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock). The big caper for Scarlett and her minions…the Queen’s crown.

The film establishes a clever introduction assisted by the narrating voice of Geoffrey Rush who gives a David Attenborough “Planet Earth” inspired voiceover of how the Minions came to be. Through an ingenious combination of a few funny short sequences, the film establishes the history of the Minions, leading them to the 1960’s. These short sequences become somewhat of a familiar theme throughout the film, one that disregards the balance of the narrative in favor of moments that don’t always offer assisting qualities. While some of these moments are actually quite amusing, like a journey through New York City or a walk through a convention floor filled with baddies, it unfortunately runs out of steam once new characters are introduced.

The cast of voice actors here are interesting. Sandra Bullock voices Scarlett Overkill, a super villain dressed with artillery-laden layers and a mean penchant for wanting to be a princess. Michael Keaton and Alison Janney also make a nice combination as a husband and wife crime family, stick-up masks and rocket launchers in tow. To assist these talented voices are equally talented musicians featured on the classic rock loaded soundtrack, which also includes a few renditions from the Minions.

Fans of the “Despicable Me” franchise know exactly what to expect with this film, a mix of mischief, mayhem, and silliness. The charming qualities in “Minions” are bound to delight fans even if the story that accompanies isn’t very good. While the adults may lose interest, the children at the screening I attended never stopped laughing, that should be more than enough reason for a summer sequel or two in years to come.

Monte’s Rating

2.50 out of 5.00