The Good Dinosaur - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

‘The Good Dinosaur’ visually roars, but the story does not soar  

Director: Peter Sohn

Starring:  Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn, Anna Paquin, Sam Elliott, and Raymond Ochoa

“We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

A young and impressionable kid named Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) repeatedly tries - via his mother (Frances McDormand) and father’s (Jeffrey Wright) guidance – to make his mark in the world.   Regrettably, he continually falls short, but the problem is not his aim.  Fear – seemingly miles tall and wide – stands as the main obstacle in his path.  Of course overcoming one’s fears is a plot device used in cinema for a hundred years, and – for a change of pace - this movie is set millions of years ago to convey its messages and life lessons.

You see, Arlo is a well-intentioned, walking and talking dinosaur, and the gang at Pixar present a film with an interesting premise:  the asteroid which allegedly killed off the dinosaurs harmlessly flies by Earth instead.  Dinosaurs then evolve to be farmers and/or ranchers and roam the planet with their less advanced human counterparts.    Many of the movie’s opening scenes throw us into a state of pleasant confusion as a gentle Brontosaurus family tends to their corn farm in a warm valley which rests near the base of the Clawtooth Mountains.   They dig trenches, plant seeds and water their crops with great efficiency and care, and life seems wonderfully serene in the Quaternary Period.   During these nice moments, the audience also braces for conflict to arise, and it rests with Arlo’s internal, aforementioned struggle to make a difference or make his mark.

Disappointingly, the film turns into a one-note story in which Arlo becomes lost and needs to discover his inner strength to find his way back home.   We have seen these narratives before, and “The Lion King” did a much better job through intriguing side-characters, memorable music and increased tension with a nasty betrayal inside the family circle.   In “The Good Dinosaur”, Arlo is simply scared to try most anything, including feeding the chickens each morning, so the filmmakers set a low bar for the movie’s eventual conflict resolution.

The strength of the film is not Arlo’s internal strife, but the relationship between Brontosaurus and his new found human, a small boy named Spot (Jack Bright).   Director/co-writer Peter Sohn reverses expected roles as Spot – an orphan – acts, walks and howls like a dog and becomes Arlo’s trusty companion.   Many moments of whimsy and strange wonder appear on-screen as Spot runs on all fours, sniffs out various scents, growls, and brings his master various items to eat.   Sometimes the scenes generate genuine belly laughs, other times, they offer some head-tilting flashes of strange curiosity.   At one point when Spot stops to howl - because he misses his human family – we realize his behavior is 100 percent canine.

Arlo on the other hand sports a Gumby-like green hide and an almost equally Gumby-like pliability.   With Arlo’s limbs clumsily flopping along the rough terrain, he needs Spot’s “wilderness smarts” and nifty dog-like nimbleness to get out of various sticky situations.  Their relationship encounters some struggles, but the growth of their friendship entertains.   They meet some friends and foes along the way but - quite frankly - neither quite connect.   Some senses of bonding and danger appear on their travels, but, ultimately, because of the singularly and simply-focused goal of just getting back home, any appreciation of alliances or fights feel recycled and rehearsed.   Instead of the film drawing me into the adventure, I became distracted trying to figure out which movie stars were lending their voices.   I had to wait for the credits to find out Steve Zahn and Anna Paquin made appearances but found no trouble discerning Sam Elliott’s wonderfully distinctive cadence and pitch as a Tyrannosaurus rex named Butch.

I must say Pixar “penned” some amazing animated constructs of the period’s wilderness.   Some of the cartoon designs of rain, river rapids with waterfalls and evergreen trees littering the background truly astonish.   “The Good Dinosaur” is a spectacular picture from a purely visual perspective but does not aim high enough to make its mark.  (2.5/4 stars)

Secret in Their Eyes - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

‘Secret in Their Eyes’ retells an intriguing story but will not repeat an Oscar win  

Writer/Director:  Billy Ray

Starring:  Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts

“The Secret in Their Eyes” was Argentina’s 2009 entry to the 82^nd Academy Awards, and on Mar. 7, 2010, this film scored an upset over “The White Ribbon” and won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.   Not knowing anything about this movie at the time, I rightfully wanted to see it and, quite frankly, felt a bit cheated it was not yet available in U.S. theaters.

Fortunately, “The Secret in Their Eyes” opened at Harkins Camelview a month or two later, so I promptly zipped over to Scottsdale and experienced this highly-praised legal drama.   As the film ended, the credits rolled and the warm house lights began to light the dark movie theater, I did not know if I would see a better film that year.   As 2010 came to a close, “The Secret in Their Eyes” was, in fact, my #1 film of the year.

Five years later, Hollywood created an American version of this story starring A-list heavyweights Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts.   This 2015 film – which follows the overall narrative of the original - is a solid and intriguing remake with some darker tones, but it lacks some of the subtle nuances which made the 2009 movie much more human.

The setting is 2002 Los Angeles in the wake of 9/11, and anti-terror agencies find themselves on high alert for a potential next attack by Muslim extremists.   Searching for sleeper cells in any available corner of the city can surely breed unhealthy doses of paranoia.  For agents or officers like Jess (Roberts), she balances the stress of a life-and-death daily grind with a content and happy home life.   Very early in the film, however, a horrific and senseless crime shatters her family, and her close friend/colleague Ray (Ejiofor) becomes singularly focused to catch the man who did it.   Ray tries to elicit help from his new boss, a Harvard-educated lawyer named Claire (Kidman), to help, but political entanglements of a post-9/11 world make it much more complicated.

Meanwhile, Jess suffers with grief as Roberts delivers a convincing and heartbreaking performance of a woman attempting to cope with loss.  Roberts couples a stripped-down appearance – with unstyled hair and a skin tone resembling expired skim milk – with distinct undertones of rage and misery coursing through her veins and sometimes settling behind her exhausted eyes.   There is no question that Roberts delivers some of her best work of her career in this film.

All of the other lead actors offer good performances as writer/director Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips”, “The Hunger Games”) takes the characters and the audience on a story which continuously bounces between two time periods:  2002 and 2015.   Billy Ray skillfully transports us to the period when the abovementioned crime took place.  He also brings us to present day in which unsettled scores from 13 years prior still need to be resolved.   Sometimes, it is initially confusing which year we are observing, but then we notice Ray’s graying hair or Jess’ more haggard presence, and then we become settled.

The two time periods keep the audience challenged, but the material intrigues on its own.   Ray, Jess, Claire, and another agent named Bumpy (Dean Norris) try to find this unknown suspect through the use of detective elbow grease, perseverance and an unlikely clue: the look of one person’s eyes in a random photo.  “Secret in Their Eyes” not only refers to a look into a criminal’s “soul” but a glance from Ray as well.    Ray is in love with Claire, but he cannot keep much of a secret.      Unfortunately, secret or not, I did not see much chemistry between Ejiofor and Kidman, so any sexual tension with Ray and Claire did not translate on screen for me.  This may not be the fault of the actors, however, because the ever-present darkness of a post-9/11 state of mind truly erodes any cinematic mood for an office romance.   On the other hand, Ray and Claire did work well as a team to weave through legal and political entanglements in trying to bring in the key – and only – suspect, and that particular strain on their characters felt real.

Ultimately, “Secret in Their Eyes” tells an effective story of two ideas:  a victim’s reaction to a senseless act and the power that political machinery has over the average man or woman.   In both ways, the film succeeds and offers some lasting and haunting moments, but as mentioned earlier, the gloomier tone of the 2015 film does not bring the emotional impacts of its 2009 predecessor, which uses a gentler hand.  I will not make it a secret:  If you have to choose, see the 2009 film.   Then again, you cannot lose by watching the American adaption.  Just do not expect another Oscar upset in 2016.  (3/4 stars)

Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2 - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2  

Director: Francis Lawrence

Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Don’t go into Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2 expecting a warm welcome. It opens with a smash cut to a close-up of Jennifer Lawrence’s face, wounded and terrified. You can almost see the stretch marks on the edge of the frame where Hollywood’s greed tore the film in two.

See, the last film ended with Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence), perennial hero of the Hunger Games and recently crowned propaganda princess for a rebellion, getting choked out by her faux-boyfriend, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who was stung by a really angry bee during a torture session far, far away. Katniss licks her wounds, pulls herself back up, and off the movie goes as if another year hasn’t passed between the last film and this one. We’re older and wiser people, Hunger Games Colon Mockingjay Em Dash Part 2. And we see through your tricks, but oh nevermind here’s my money, take it all because a fool and his money are soon parted, especially in the world of young adult fiction, where single books get multiple films regardless of content.

Part 2 almost works better if you imagine Part 1 doesn’t exist. Because what happened in Part 1 — Katniss is whisked to safety from a dystopian government, she becomes the poster girl of a rebellion, and she questions her sanity amid total destruction — could have certainly been accomplished in a 30-minute deleted scene here in the finale. As we pick back up with Katniss, little has changed because it’s been like 2 minutes after the events of Part 1. The war trudges on, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) still taunts the rebels, and rebel leader Coin (Julianne Moore) is still a villain in disguise.

Katniss, though, has had enough and she vows to kill Snow, which sends her and a bunch of other rebels off into the battlefield, where Snow’s troops have hidden traps that are as ineffective as a box propped up with a stick on a string. They can be seen on a holographic scope, and someone has to practically walk up to them and wave, insert a quarter, do three Hail Marys and then not move for 30 seconds. The only trap that actually kills anyone is either wire-triggered oil or oil-triggered wire — I’m still not sure. There are also naked mole-zombies, who are unleashed in the sewers. I think these are cameos from the cave monsters in The Descent, although I didn’t see their names in the end credits.

This is a silly world. It always has been. I appreciate the design and look of it, but it’s just too ridiculous to take serious, from the Nazi overtones to the bizarr-o fashion choice. The only thing we have grounding us amid the visual bonanza is Lawrence, who might be doing the best one-note performance of her career. In the first film, we saw her innocence shattered as she was thrown into a deadly reality competition. We saw her regain her composure, rattle the cages, rewrite all the rules of the game and come out the other side a fierce warrior. The other films have not seen as much growth, and here she is clearly playing a depressed soldier rattled by the loss of her friends and family. Her rebellious spirit comes out, but not enough times to see Katniss as something more than a wounded pawn on Snow-Coin’s battlefield.

It has momentum, though, especially in the final act, which plunges Katniss and Peeta deeper and deeper into Snow’s minefield of traps. Of course, if you’ve read the books, you know what happens next. Spoiler alert: Katniss is knocked out for the most important parts of the movie. This scene was mishandled in the book, and here that mishandling has been adapted to film. Why, why, why would anyone let so much plot happen off screen as the hero is unconcious? Imagine Luke Skywalker flying his X-Wing up to the Death Star and right before he banks into the trenches is knocked out. Cut to sick bay, where Han and Chewbacca congratulate him on their victory. That’s what happens here. And it’s idiotic.

What immediately follows that is handled much better, including a lovely coda with Katniss and Peeta amid the bombed-out ruins of their homes, but this film need to deviate from its source material in a major way, and it doesn’t, at least not where it counts.

Overall, though, the film ties up the events of the franchise nicely. And the characters are given proper closure. But in no way is this a model for how a franchise should be closed up. It needed to be three movies, not four. It certainly didn’t leave me hungry.

Brooklyn - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

‘Brooklyn’ never looked so beautiful  

Director:  John Crowley

Writer:  Nick Hornby (screenwriter), Colm Toibin (novel)

Starring:  Saoirse Ronan, Jim Broadbent, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson

“Brooklyn” – The recent and rampant rhetoric of deporting millions of illegal immigrants from the United States has certainly divided a nation.  Sure, a sizeable percentage of Americans agree with this idea, but we should also remember that the country is almost entirely composed of descendants of immigrants, both legal and illegal.    In the 19^th Century and the early portion of the 20^th, extreme disdain for Irish immigrants in the United States emerged as an ugly scene as well.    Director John Crowley’s “Brooklyn” is the story of a young Irish girl named Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) and her journey from County Wexford in Ireland to the bustling streets of New York City in the 1950s.  This film contains none of the previously mentioned ugliness and instead, is nothing short of beautiful.   In fact, “Brooklyn” is the most gorgeously-filmed movie I’ve seen so far this year.

In the beginning of the picture, life for Eilis is fine but not ideal nor beautiful.   Working in Miss Kelly’s general store, Eilis’s caustic and critical boss is particularly good at making certain customers and her employees feel small.    Not wanting to feel small any longer, Eilis turns her eyes on a big trip to America where Father Flood (Jim Broadbent) found her a place to live and a job at a posh department store called Bartocci’s.   These are modest beginnings, but they could become the foundation of bigger dreams.   Unfortunately, Eilis does not quite notice the figurative foundation, as she feels homesick for The Emerald Isle.

In fact, she mentions to Father Flood, “I wish that I could stop feeling that I want to be an Irish girl in Ireland.”

On the other hand, Crowley and screenwriter Nick Hornby weave plenty of light moments for Eilis in the form of good company in her boarding house and a potential love interest too.   The film’s biggest laughs and other moments of genuine warmth take place in Mrs. Kehoe’s boarding house.     Most scenes focus around the dinner table as Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters) inquires about Eilis’s (and the other girls’) day.   Each time at supper, the young ladies playfully tease each other about dresses, make-up secrets and potential suitors, while Mrs. Kehoe verbally drags them back in line with important nuggets of advice like, “Giddiness is the 8^th deadly sin.”

The writing in these scenes is particular strong and important to the overall story arc. While Eilis suffers from massive insecurity about being a stranger in a strange land, her boarding housemates could really sharpen their claws on her vulnerable, porcelain skin.  Thankfully, Hornby balances gentle scratches with emotional, warm figurative hugs from her new sisters.   These carefully crafted scenes truly bring pure cinematic delight and remind us why we love the movies.

In fact, since “Brooklyn” is set in the early 1950s, the overall tone captures the spirit of films from “yester decade”.     Although a curse word may have spoken, I didn’t remember one during the film’s entire 1 hour 51 minute runtime.   Everything from automobiles to hairstyles to clothing to a throwback soundtrack to talk of dances, the Brooklyn Dodgers, good manners, and bathing suits called bathing costumes, the film is a complete transport.    Helping this time machine trip are stunning uses of costume design with bright forest green overcoats and orange dresses, while sharp cinematography delights our palates with shiny blue skies, a busy metropolis and lush Irish landscapes.

Surely, Oscar nominations for Best Costume Design and Cinematography should find their way to “Brooklyn”, and the lighting -  from small, subtle glows in an Irish bedroom where sisters converse to ultra-hot sunlight pouring through a door from a dark Ellis Island checkpoint -  perfectly touches the screen.    Crowley took so much care with the movie’s visuals, the film’s beauty almost overshadows this grounded story about family.

Family and the all the emotions – responsibility, joy, guilt, heartbreak, difficult choices, understanding, and love – of this complicated “kinship entity” present themselves as the heart of Eilis’s travels, and ultimately, her heart needs to make a choice between two different lives in two different lands.    “A River Runs Through It” (1992) - a Scottish family’s story told through their love of fly fishing in Montana - is the closest comparison I can make to “Brooklyn”.   Although, the topography of the environments is vastly different, these two form distinct parallels with family and wading through one’s surroundings.  Both films are also beautiful, and in the case of “Brooklyn”, it is wonderful to tag the word “beautiful” to an immigrant story told in 2015.    (4/4 stars)

Love the Coopers - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

A crowded narrative makes it difficult to ‘Love the Coopers’  

Director:  Jessie Nelson

Writer:  Steven Rogers

Starring:  Diane Keaton, John Goodman, June Squibb, Marisa Tomei, Ed Helms, Alan Arkin, Olivia Wilde, and Amanda Seyfried

“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”

My father used to sing this classic Christmas song – seemingly – every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas while we were growing up.    True to form, my dad only knew the one line: It’s the most wonderful time of the year. He loved to repeat, so his singing – of one choice lyric of one song - became a daily staple of our lives (like it or not) for about 30 days in between the two holidays each and every year.

The most wonderful time of the year?  Well, that’s debatable, but that’s family.

In “Love the Coopers”, director Jessie Nelson (“I Am Sam”, “Corrina, Corrina”) packages a Christmas film, and the movie poster’s tagline states, “You Can’t Regift Family.”    This is a PG-13 Christmas movie, so the content is not for the entire family, but in many ways, the Coopers could represent any American household, because they are a bit dysfunctional.  In other words, they are human.

Many big name stars make up an impressive ensemble cast of humans in this movie, including Diane Keaton, John Goodman, June Squibb, Marisa Tomei, Ed Helms, Alan Arkin, Olivia Wilde, and Amanda Seyfried, and Nelson places their characters on a course for Christmas Eve dinner at Sam (Goodman) and Charlotte’s (Keaton) suburban Pittsburgh home.    The family dinner does not arrive until the film’s second act, and prior to this amazing-looking turkey meal – including all of the trimmings, table placings and household decorations which would make the CEO of Crate & Barrel blush with pride – we learn about the emotional damage each one of the Coopers is currently enduring.

The 30 year-old and perpetually single Eleanor (Wilde) cannot bear walking into the house without a boyfriend or a fiancé on her arm.     Bucky (Arkin) – who is a great-grandfather - feels abandoned because his crush, a 20 year-old waitress named Ruby (Seyfried), is moving to Hot Coffee, Mississippi.   (Yes, I know, this relationship and Ruby’s plans are bizarre.)  Charlotte’s sister Emma (Tomei) gets into some legal trouble.  Hank (Helms) loses his job and his children feel the effects of his divorce.  Speaking of marital problems, Sam and Charlotte are talking about splitting up as well.

Merry Christmas, right?

Well, the script tries to balance all of this strife with humor, of the conversational and slapstick kind.     Writer Steven Rogers certainly pens rich material for each of the characters.  He pairs up each Cooper with a person to converse with, and we learn lots of details about their lives and, of course, their problems.   By and large, I love colorful writing, but I have two major issues with the narrative in “Love the Coopers”.

First, the players’ stories are so dense and filled with so many piles of facts and elements of their lives, the characters feel inauthentic.   With small reveals like a career “peaking at 19”, a first romantic encounter with “My Sharona” playing in the background, not feeling good enough on a skating rink as a kid, and lending 67 movies to a trusted friend are repeatedly barreled down on the audience like we are standing on the side of a freeway as drivers blurt out anecdotes while blowing past us at 80 mph.   Certainly, one can relate to the individual tales of woe, and they do occasionally connect, but the overall blitzkrieg of verbal jabber is overwhelming.

Secondly, the aforementioned pairing of the characters created six different points of conflict and engagement, but, regrettably, I only found one remotely believable.   As an example, Emma gets herself arrested and while pleading her case – in the back of a police car – the officer (Anthony Mackie) willingly receives life counseling from her.   I must admit, a policeman has never stuffed me in the back seat of his car, but I am pretty certain I would not ask about his childhood relationship with his mother.   Normally, one has to suspend disbelief when watching a science fiction movie, but I found myself struggling and eventually giving up – in an “Oh Brother” moment - when the officer started opening up to his suspect’s “thoughtful” inquiry.

Most unfortunately, this holiday movie feels completely manufactured and engineered rather than organically and genuinely composed.   Keaton is usually good – and (quite frankly) typecast – as the “has it all together” matriarch, and with an exceptional cast, “Love the Coopers” has the look of a solid holiday experience.    Along the way, we are treated to some wonderful sights of the season like dachshunds dressed in Christmas outfits, gingerbread men and women wearing thongs, 37 snow globes, and constant falling snow.   We also get some thoughtful insights into what makes us human and some very funny moments as well.  Squibb (“Nebraska”) is particularly hilarious as Aunt Fishy.   On the other hand, as a poorly-constructed, ham-handed plot device takes the audience to the movie’s third act and eventually towards the meaning of family, I was thinking back to much better Christmas movies.

Where is a fragile “French” leg lamp or Zuzu’s pedals when you need them?

How about some Christmas carolers?  Perhaps, some could swing by and sing the lyric “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” a few hundred times.  (2/4 stars)  

Spectre - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Spectre  

Director: Sam Mendes

Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci, and Léa Seydoux

148 minutes

Sony Pictures

Daniel Craig returns to the role of British spy James Bond for the fourth time in the twenty-fourth installment of the long running franchise. With director Sam Mendes taking the reins for the second time, previously crafting the exceptional “Skyfall”, the James Bond saga continues, this time with additional winks and nods to the past but still offering the usual structure of a new villain hell-bent on taking over the world amidst a bombardment of explosions and highly complicated maneuvers. In “Spectre” the excitement and action typified by the James Bond legacy is well intact, it starts with a “bang” and continues with even bigger “booms”. However at 148 minutes even the most extravagant setting and exciting action scene, which are prevalent here, can’t hide the lackluster and slow moving narrative that makes “Spectre” seem just like a typical spy film and not the spectacle that defines James Bond.

Bond (Daniel Craig) begins the film targeting a bad guy in one of the many exotic locales that will make appearances throughout the film. Followed in one long take through the streets, up an elevator, down a hall, and into a hotel room, the environment is established beautifully. An explosion annihilates a building and Bond barely escapes, but so does the bad guy. A chase ensues through crowded streets of people dressed in gorgeous Day of the Dead costumes and onto a helicopter. It’s a grand welcome to the beginning of the film. Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema shot “Spectre” on 35mm, establishing a nostalgic atmosphere that works for many of the scenes.

Everything settles into the usual 007 routines, M (Ralph Fiennes) doesn’t want Bond to ruffle any more feathers, Moneypenney (Naomie Harris) is still the strongest and most steadfast companion for Bond, and Q (Ben Whishaw) quickly introduces Bond to high-tech gadgets and a stunning new Aston Martin equipped with more than just the standard “bells and whistles”. Bond’s new mission involves tracking down a man who is part of a global crime syndicate, an important missing link for Bond’s past.

The villain this time around is Academy Award winning actor Christoph Waltz, who is a fine addition to the Bond legacy of evil geniuses. Waltz, with his distinctive accent and gleefully menacing smile, is an amusing combination of attributes from past Bond villains. The intimidating presence of Dave Bautista, who plays an assassin tasked with killing 007, also adds to the formidability of the operation, especially so when Bond scrappily squares off against the forceful foe aboard a train.

Daniel Craig has grown more comfortable since “Casino Royale”, playing Bond in each film with increased humanity, at one moment on the verge of losing a fistfight or losing control of his calculated emotions. In “Spectre” Bond is somewhat more laid-back, given moments to show emotional intensity but also the playful debonair style that Bond is known for. Mr. Craig does this all with ease.

These characters all play their roles to the best of their ability; unfortunately the issue with “Spectre” comes mostly from a rambling narrative that is overlong by almost 30 minutes and filled with confusing transitions about global terrorism, environmental catastrophes, and political conspiracies in an attempt to create some kind of intriguing puzzle that mostly feels like filler between the action scenes. Still the action is frequent and some of the scenes are very well composed; an airplane/SUV chase through snowy mountains and a car chase through the streets of Rome are especially fun.

“Spectre” tries to be more like the 007 of the past but it struggles to execute throughout mostly because Daniel Craig is a different kind of James Bond. Mr. Craig has been adamant about not playing this character again but that doesn’t mean the franchise will end. The next James Bond will have large shoes to fill as Mr. Craig helped compose a 007 that was more than just a nice suit with a license to kill.

Monte’s Rating

3.25 out of 5.00

Spectre - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Spectre  

Director: Sam Mendes

Starring: Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci, Andrew Scott

By Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

At a point late into Spectre, the new James Bond movie, a helicopter is going to crash and the pilot, some extra buckled into set on a green screen somewhere, yells the unfortunate sentence, “Brakes, brakes, brakes!”

Maybe there are brakes in helicopters, and maybe those brakes work in mid-air, and I’m sure every helicopter pilot reading this is going to tell me in exquisite detail that very thing, but in the meantime “Brakes, brakes, brakes” is a very dumb thing to find in this big-budget action extravaganza, which has an inordinately high number of dumb things going on.

There’s also, for example, a scene in which Bond decides that stealing a cargo jet is the best way to chase after three SUVs on a forested alpine mountain. Nevermind that the plane is much faster than the cars, can’t drive on the road like the cars, can’t stop like the cars, can’t turn like the cars and can’t be evacuated like a car, yet there Bond is taking a plane to a car chase. A Roger Moore Bond could have gotten away with this, as could have a Pierce Brosnan Bond, who once took a tank to a car chase (that turned into a train chase), but Daniel Craig Bond just looks silly as he strafes his landing gear through the snow to save the day, which leads me to this ultimate question: is this a new Jame Bond or an old James Bond?

The Craig series is straddling the fine line between the two, and that ain’t going to fly anymore, especially since Casino Royale set an unprecedented tone for Craig’s darker, more realistic turn. Quantum of Solace, while a critical misfire, maintained some of that raw energy. And Skyfall exemplified it. Now here’s Spectre, which wants so hard to be campy, goofy fun, but swears allegiance to Christopher Nolan’s brand of gritty brooding realism.

Spectre begins in Mexico City during a stunning Day of the Dead parade that could only exist at this level in a big-budget movie. It looks gorgeous with men in skeleton suits and women in corpse makeup. The film opens with a single take that bobs into and out of crowds, through the parade on the street, into grand lobbies and up to hotel rooms overlooking the festivities. It’s a marvelous shot that might be the best thing in the whole movie.

Bond kills some dudes and stops a terrorist event, but in the process he gets the Double-0 program sacked. (The guy doing the sacking is Andrew Scott, Moriarty from Sherlock.) Super spies just aren’t needed anymore … you know, with drones and all. But after he gets a video file with an urgent warning, Bond hightails it out of London to Italy to visit the dead dude he killed in the first scene. In Italy he discovers Spectre, an organization of supervillains who are set on destabilizing economies, governments, Facebook newsfeeds or whatever else these shadowy figures hate so much.

The real stinger here is who leads Spectre. I’ll tell you it’s a character played by Christoph Waltz in a performance that is bland and tasteless. Who he is and how Bond knows him is best left for you to figure out. A lot of people are angry about where this all leads, but let me remind you this franchise once went to space and fought with space lasers, so maybe we can forgive the implications of Spectre’s origins.

Spectre careens forward using clues that originated from some of the earlier Craig films. A man who appeared in several of those movies is here again, this time to tell us about his daughter, Dr. Swan (Léa Seydoux), who takes Bond to Rick’s Café Américaín, or a heartfelt knockoff, in Tangiers, where they almost have sex — rejection must feel very foreign to 007.

Much of the film is uneventful chases and fight scenes. A supercar chase in Rome feels more tedious than anything else, as if director Sam Mendes was required to have a car chase so he put it in begrudgingly — “Ian Fleming’s last will and testament stipulates a chase scene every 20 minutes,” a lawyer tells him on the set. A train brawl later is kind of cool, if only because it establishes a new Bond villain, Hinx (David Bautista). Following the weirdness of Oddjob and Jaws, Hinx has little silver shields on his thumbnails that he uses to gouge out eyeballs.

Back in the UK, M (Ralph Fiennes), Q (Ben Whishaw) and former spy/current secretary Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), are left reeling from all of Bond’s disasters. And all they can do is sit on their hands, because “the double-0 program is dead.” Ugh, these characters deserve better things to happen to them. For much of the movie, they simply wait for a phone calls with bated breath.

Meanwhile Bond is in North Africa, where surrenders his weapon and the upper hand just so he can hear the Spectre CEO lay it all out in a scene that is so stupid and clunky, I can’t even begin to imagine what it was supposed to look like. All this leads nowhere, either because it actually goes nowhere or because Mendes doesn’t have all the pieces to make it more meaningful. What started with bang, ends in a whimper and a sigh.

Let me go on record by saying I think Daniel Craig is a brilliant James Bond. He’s exactly what the franchise needed when he took on the role. But now the plots are getting a little thin, and he seems a little weary from it, especially here in Spectre. It made me realize something: Bonds aren’t replaced because they get older. They’re replaced because we tire of them. We get bored, and they no longer intrigue us, which is what I fear is happening here with Daniel Craig, who may or may not be telling his agent “brakes, brakes, brakes” on future Bond movies.

The Peanuts Movie - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

The Peanuts Movie  

Director: Steve Martino

Written by: Bryan Schulz and Charles M. Schulz

By Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Peanuts was always a lo-fi cartoon strip. It was minimalist and plain, in presentation and theme. It was so plain — a kinder word than “boring” — that many kids skipped over it and went to other strips in the funny pages. And then creator Charles Schulz died, and newspapers cut their funny pages, and then the newspapers went out of business. And Peanuts faded into our collective past, a relic of a kinder and gentler time.

So when a hi-fi Peanuts movie — 3D, CGI, surround sound — crosses movies screens in 2015, it feels like a betrayal to the old Peanuts, the one that existed in a different time and place, one far removed from the digital age. Of course, a little nostalgia never hurt anyone, which is good because if it did you’d likely leave The Peanuts Movie with a compound fracture.

Steve Martino’s faithful adaptation of Schulz’s characters is an earnest and heartfelt tribute to the original strip, which ran ubiquitously for decades in newspapers around the world. Yes, they’re updated with nifty computer rendering and cheerful color, but they maintain their original shape and jagged edges, from squiggles of hair to pencil swipes representing furrowed brows. The film is beautiful, but nothing that Schulz didn’t create first is implanted into this movie.

And when I say “faithful adaptation,” what I mean to say is, praise all that is holy, no one takes a selfie with an Apple smartphone or browses “the web” from their Lenovo malware machine or dances to a Katy Perry song with Katy wearing a yellow zig-zag bra made of frosted candy-filled bearclaws. The film takes place like it’s still 1958, and that might be its saving grace. No product placement, no Internet, no celebrity cameos. Just Peanuts.

You’ll recognize most everyone here: tomboy Peppermint Patty, curbside shrink Lucy, blanket-toting bestie Linus, pianist Schroeder, stinkball Pig-Pen and, of course, blockhead Charlie Brown, who is either the most hated kid in town or the most loved. In earlier decades, Charlie Brown was a lovable loser with a menagerie of personality quirks that are today identified as depression, anxiety and antisocial behavior. But remember, it’s 1958, so he’s really just a normal kid with oversized problems.

During an afternoon hockey game, Charlie and company watch as a new family moves into town. One of the family members is their age, the Little Red-Haired Girl. Charlie is smitten at first sight, and he begins to worship her from afar. At school they’re paired together, but he’s paralyzed with embarrassment and fear. There’s a school dance, a talent show, book reports, show and tell, snow days and all of the other scenarios you’d expect from a cartoon this old fashioned. Each new event is supposed to bring Charlie Brown closer to the Little Red-Haired Girl, but each one drives them further apart. “Good grief,” he says repeatedly.

Intercut inside all of this boy-meets-girl drama are Snoopy and Woodstock, who discover a typewriter and an old toy airplane. They begin hammering out a story that turns into a subplot involving Snoopy flying his dog house against the Red Baron during World War I. This is a thing that happened occasionally in Peanuts strips and TV specials, so just roll with it.

Everything you’d expect from a Peanuts movie is here, and right where it’s supposed to be. Lucy holds a football and pulls it away before Charlie kicks it, Linus has a conniption when he loses his blanket, Patty refers to Charlie as Chuck, Marcie refers to everyone as sir, Lucy gives advice from a booth on the sidewalk, Schroeder namedrops Beethoven, Woodstock flies around leaving little dotted lines in the sky … on and on, it’s all here. And again, that’s part of the film’s unmistakable charm. Chuck Brown dancing “Gangnam Style” would kill this, and it never happens, not even close. Reverence is paid to what Schulz did and how he did it.

Now, that doesn’t mean this should have been made, though. Not everything deserves a reboot, particularly the Peanuts, which is the product of another age and another time. We’ll never be in that place again, and it’s obvious watching this movie. But it does feel good to look back at it and smile.

Miss You Already - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

‘Miss You Already’ mixes tones but tells a memorable breast cancer story   

Director:   Catherine Hardwicke

Writer:  Morwenna Banks

Starring:  Toni Collette, Drew Barrymore

“It’s the closest to death I have ever been.  The chemotherapy takes you as far down into hell as you’ve ever, ever been.”  - Melissa Etheridge

“I laughed more in the hospital than I ever have in my life, making fun of all the weird things that were happening to me.”  - Christina Applegate

Both quotes from Etheridge and Applegate refer to their battles with breast cancer, a viciously cruel disease in which – according to www.breastcancer.org – 1 in 8 women will develop.   In the dramedy “Miss You Already”, director Catherine Hardwicke explores this dark topic through a lifelong friends-narrative, one friend with the disease and the other helps her manage.     As the movie opens, Jess (Drew Barrymore) has an altogether different life crisis and desperately wishes her best friend Milly (Toni Collette) is present.   Alas, no Milly, so Jess narrates a brief history of their relationship in an amusing look back, beginning in 1986.  As an audience, we feel quite up-to-date on their close bond of almost 30 years, as they kiss boys, party, have each other’s back, drink, and laugh a lot.   Jess and Milly might not be pristine choirgirls, but one admires the steady high notes of their strong friendship.

Now in their late 30s, Milly has the dream-family dynamic, complete with a loyal husband (Dominic Cooper), two kids and a successful career.  Although Jess is happily married (Paddy Considine), the blessing of children is still a dream.   Other than the stresses of everyday life – and the missing ingredient of kids on Jess and Jago’s (Considine) houseboat – these two couples enjoy a lovely harmony in London, until the fateful day when Milly’s doctor diagnoses her with breast cancer.

Hardwicke brings Jess, Milly’s family and us along on her emotionally and physically painful journey.   We see the horrid effects of chemotherapy – complete with on-screen vomit – and from there, the camera shows much worse.   Based upon the opening scene, the film feels like a long and slow death march.   Now granted, the narrative is not a certain death march, but it – especially given the movie’s title – seems like a probable one.     Collette is a talented and experienced actress, and she completely embraces the material.  Milly is not a particularly likable person, and Collette successfully presents a self-centered, egotistical and caustic human being who also happens to be in the fight of her life.

Screenwriter Morwenna Banks could have written a more congenial character, but the film’s focus is on the soup-to-nuts experience with breast cancer and the bond of friendship.   I imagine anyone suffering from - or knowing someone with – this disease can certainly relate to this frank storyline.    Hardwicke and Morwenna do not pull any punches, and Collette’s and Barrymore’s characters absorb several and sustained body blows.   Jess shares Milly’s pain and makes herself available at the drop of a hat (like a best friend should) for a hug, company or wild goose chase.  Trying to balance this “certain” road to a hopeless destiny, Morwenna throws in piles of humor and quick British wit to lighten the mood.   At times, Milly and Jess joke about cancer-related issues with wigs, barf bowls and giant needles but also refer back to their youth by reciting “Wuthering Heights” and drawing mustaches on models in magazines.

The problem is the humor feels like it goes too far and is inserted too often.   For instance, during a quiet moment when Milly and Jess profess their friendship-love for one another, they immediately give each other the (middle) finger.   I suppose old habits are hard to break, but it certainly broke a moment of compassion and tenderness, as the movie audience responded with a theatre filled with giggles.   Although the humorous moments generate laughs, it also works too well for a serious storyline.   Two recent films dealt with terminal diseases, and they handled humor differently or nearly removed it entirely, and the result was:  better packaged and received movies.

“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” arrived in theatres earlier in this year, and this film - about cancer - contains highly-effective and wonderfully-delivered places and spaces of humor, but it also needs to be serious for long periods of time.  Thankfully, the movie offers distinct barriers between scenes with comedy and others with somber undertones.  The script makes it easy to compartmentalize times to laugh versus times to shed tears.   These invisible barriers in “Miss You Already” are less distinct, and in some cases, non-existent, and the dichotomous tones unfortunately crowd many scenes with unwanted mixes of levity and sadness.

In 2014’s “You’re Not You”, Hilary Swank portrays a woman with Lou Gehrig’s disease, and that film contains less room for jokes.  The plot features Swank’s character’s long deterioration and emotes through the overwhelming captures of her challenging physical transformation.  Swank’s extraordinary performance brings an entirely new and valuable perspective of the disease.   Collette absolutely captures a similar bodily descent, and your heart goes out to Milly.   On the other hand, due to the focus on the ladies’ friendship and play with humor, the physical effects of Milly’s cancer do not overwhelm like “You’re Not You”.

Collette’s performance is heartfelt and memorable, and Milly and Jess’s friendship captures the roller coaster ride that relationships often take.   Jess deals with Milly’s egocentric “cancer bully” tactics and sometimes corrosive personality, but the spillover effect is:  the movie asks the audience to deal with Milly’s difficult behavior as well.   Rather than adding depth, the Jess/Milly arguments and frequent injections of comedy feel distracting.  This movie about breast cancer does work but not as much as it should.  On the other hand, “Miss You Already” does provide awareness in a much more effective fashion than simply wearing pink ever could.  Quite frankly, Melissa Etheridge’s and Christina Applegate’s aforementioned statements do resonate a bit more after watching this movie.  Perhaps, that’s all that matters.  (2.5/4 stars) 

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse  

Director: Christopher Landon

Starring: Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller, Joey Morgan, Sarah Dumont, Halston Sage, David Koechner, and Cloris Leachman

Zombies are everywhere. With the continued popularity of “The Walking Dead” television show, putting zombies in the living room on a weekly basis, this subgenre of horror is seemingly unstoppable. Thank early creator George A. Romero, director of the definitive zombie films “Night of the Living Dead”, “Dawn of the Dead”, and “Day of the Dead”, for making the lumbering hoards an intimidating and scary threat. However, there is another side to these films, a funnier and humorous side, which provides equal opportunity for a joke as it does for a gory scene. The zombie comedy has been done exceptionally well with films like “Shaun the Dead” and “Zombieland”, but amidst all the living dead saturation in entertainment these films are becoming more of a rehashed annoyance than a welcome indulgence. Though, just when horror fans may be thinking that the zombie comedy has been done to death, a film like “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” makes a splatter into theaters.

Ben (Tye Sheridan), Carter (Logan Miller), and Augie (Joey Morgan) are the only three members of a sorry excuse for a high school scout troop. Ben and Carter are hoping they will be able to ditch the uniforms after their final camp-out, an event to honor their friend Augie who is receiving a special badge. Ben and Carter are unexpectedly invited to a secret party by some upperclassmen but will need to ditch Augie in order to make the party. What the three boys are unaware of is that their night is about to be interrupted by the zombie apocalypse.

The first few minutes of the film don’t especially help the familiar genre appeal. The introduction is overly predictable, even a bit lackluster, but it establishes a small but visually stimulating reason to stick around…the use of gore. Though the scene is one of small enticement it’s enough to keep you from writing the film off. And still, even after this tedious introduction, the film takes some time before it finally finds its rhythm.

What ultimately gets the film moving is the cast of characters, a relative set of unknown actors with the exception of Tye Sheridan who shined in last years “Mud” and “Joe”. The camaraderie of the teenage boys and the raunchy high school comedy motifs work great throughout; Tye Sheridan has a natural, laid-back quality that makes it easy to connect with his character Ben while Logan Miller provides many of the quick witted one-liners with stinging effect as the sex obsessed Carter. Joey Morgan is also good as Augie; he plays the emotional anchor of the group, dealing with the loss of a family member and, at moments, the loss of his only two friends. Another bright spot is Sarah Dumont who plays a cocktail waitress tagging along with the scouts. Ms. Dumont provides a confident sexuality to the character, one that intimidates the boys but provides her with opportunities to display her tough characteristics.

“Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” is one of the better zombie comedy films this year. While it may not compare exceptionally well to the films that have come before it, for fans of coarse and crude humor and juicy amounts of bursting blood; this will be a film that will surely entertain.

Monte’s Rating

3.00 out of 5.00

Our Brand is Crisis - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

The political film ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’ inexplicably mixes messages  

Director:  David Gordon Green

Starring:  Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Joaquim de Almeida, Ann Dowd

“Politics have no relation to morals.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

I suppose if one polled the American people, a vast majority – these days - would probably agree with Machiavelli’s statement.   If this perception on politics is, in fact, reality, then imagine the corrupt, behind-the-scenes street fight it takes to actually get elected into office.    Dirty tricks, coercion, guerrilla marketing, and lies might only be the tip of this crooked iceberg.   Political campaigns are about one thing, winning.  In “Our Brand Is Crisis”, a Bolivian presidential candidate (Joaquim de Almeida) is behind by 28 points, so, in other words, he is in dire need of immediate help.

His team reaches out to a long-time political strategist (Sandra Bullock), and this former wonderkid is in seclusion after losing some tough races.   Jane (Bullock) lives in an isolated cabin under peaceful but snowy conditions.  She gets crafty by making ceramic bowls and gets healthy by avoiding cigarettes and alcohol.  Although Jane is not necessarily happy, she is calm, and for right now, serenity is more important than contentment.   Soon, however, Nell (Ann Dowd) and Ben (Anthony Mackie) convince her to get back into the game, pull some rabbits out of her hat and get their struggling candidate, Castillo (de Almeida), elected president.

Director David Gordon Green’s (“Pineapple Express”, “Snow Angels”) movie sets up like a biting, sarcastic and dark comedy.

Jane tries to wake up her campaign-muscles in a foreign land against a very familiar opponent, her old nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton).  Candy, of course, is the key strategist backing the leading presidential candidate, Rivera (Louis Arcella).   This enticing canvas of soiled gamesmanship - between two formidable foes under an unfamiliar backdrop - has some key elements of intriguing cinema.

Bullock really shines here.   For instance, Jane runs into major physical issues due to Bolivia’s high altitude, and Bullock plays into these under-the-weather elements to great comedic effect.   She is supposed to be a brilliant strategist, but Jane is checked out due to her lack of excitement over Castillo’s chances and her sudden illness, and Green captures some hilarious sequences.   Despite Castillo’s political stature, Jane is the most important person in the room, and the camera loves her.  As an audience, we cannot take our eyes off of Jane due to the previously-mentioned humor and her wildly sharp intellect.  She rattles off quotes from Muhammad Ali or Warren Beatty like an active Gatling gun sitting on a hilltop, and we hang on every word.

Unfortunately, the film falls off the rails in a few areas, and one of them ironically is due to the main focus on Jane.   Jane’s main antagonists are Candy, Rivera and Castillo.   Green rightfully focuses his time on Jane’s mind games which grind up the Candy/Rivera team and ensure Castillo plays ball with her decisions.    On the other hand, the film never gives much (or any) insight into what Candy, Rivera and Castillo are thinking.   Any worthwhile movie hero deserves an equally formidable “villain”, and the film only presents Jane’s side to the political back and forth.   Candy and Rivera deliver their shots and Castillo presents resistance, but the screenplay does not reveal their internal strategies, conversations or thoughts.   We usually (if not always) see the shots fired and received from Jane’s perspective, and this effect makes the film much less interesting.

The movie does hold an effective, uncivil discourse between Candy and Jane, and it tracks Castillo’s logical rise and Rivera’s fall in the polls.  Come the final debate and Election Day, the sparks should fly.   Inexplicably, this movie’s targeted crescendo is delivered with the enthusiasm of a paper boy on autopilot during a random weekday route.

“Our Brand Is Crisis” builds up sizable dramatic tension, but then shrugs its shoulders during the moment of “truth”.   It is a real letdown.  Even worse, rather than carrying through its effectual sarcastic tone, the movie turns sanctimonious.    The film’s dichotomous tones do not fit nor work, as the original, cynical feel bewilderingly becomes self-righteous.

Regrettably, I was left wondering what this movie really wanted to be.  Well, at least the film does not make an immoral mistake.  Just a baffling one.   (2/4 stars)

Room - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Room  

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Sean Bridges, Joan Allen, and William H. Macy

Young children can make the most simple and meaningless objects come to creative life, their imagination transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary. At the core of Lenny Abrahamson’s film “Room”, based off the critically acclaimed novel by Emma Donaghue, is a story about the relationship between a mother and child. It also happens to be about a horrendous seven-year long kidnapping. Though the surprise is that at moments the terrible crime being portrayed on screen, in a tiny single room, takes a back seat to a heartfelt and sincere portrayal of a child encapsulated in a one-room world with his mother. For the child the room holds every memory and is the definition of safety and love. For the mother the room holds the exact opposite sentiments, her only reason for living being the child she is trying to save. “Room” is filled with moments of gut-wrenching emotion, it’s a terrifying captivity tale, a profound example of resilience and survival, and displays the bond of codependency that exists between a mother and child.

Jack (Jacob Tremblay) is celebrating his 5^th birthday with Ma (Brie Larson). Their little family lives in a little shed, the victims of a kidnapping by a sexual predator nicknamed Old Nick (Sean Bridges). The two live a life within four walls; every moment of the day is lived through the illumination of a singular skylight. Ma smiles for Jack through the lingering pain of a life taken from her seven years prior. Jack’s lively imagination and Ma’s unwavering love keeps Jack from realizing that anything is out of the ordinary. After an altercation with Old Nick, Ma devises a plan to escape which leads to Jack’s harrowing journey into a world he has never seen. The narrative at numerous times in the film is constructed from Jack’s point of view. We see the familiar world through his eyes, but also the changing world once the film moves away from the imprisonment. Jack often refers to this living place simply as “room”, almost as if it were a person instead of a place; it’s a poignant narrative touch. We also see the changing character of Ma, a kidnapped mother forced to build a life in seclusion with her child and then as a post-traumatic suffering survivor dealing with the world she once knew, a world still messy and complicated.

Lenny Abrahamson directs “Room” confidently throughout, painting a world that is at one moment a simple and minuscule process and then opening into broad and complicated form. The camera utilizes close-up framing of objects to make the world seem larger than it is, but also to display the grandeur of Jack’s imagination. When Jack makes the escape, wrapped in a rug with only a circular viewpoint to see glimpses of the new world, the camera is in constant motion and changing focus, a correlation to how Jack is processing the new world in its startling brightness. Unfortunately this amusing technique only lasts for a few quick moments, the world that Jack is experiencing is quickly substituted for standard dramatic elements. Seven years in captivity changes everything, while the world remains new for Jack, Ma is thrust back into a life that has been damaged by the tragic event. While this offers an interesting perspective for Ma, the character is somewhat glazed over in the end.

Still, Brie Larson is simply fantastic. An impressive leading performance that is heartbreakingly subdued yet in other moments filled with undeniable passion. Jacob Tremblay gives the film its life; his performance is filled with energy and a sensibility that can only be defined as pure. Together the two actors have incredible chemistry. Ms. Larson and Mr. Tremblay are a primary reason to see this film.

“Room” is a very good film with even better performances. The film handles subject matter that can be difficult to watch at times but the narrative consistently displays the strength of the characters and the resiliency to show that a “home” is wherever love exists, even if it’s in the confinement of four walls.

Monte’s Rating

4.00 out of 5.00

Rock the Kasbah - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Rock the Kasbah  

Director: Barry Levinson

Starring: Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Leem Lubany, Arian Moayed, Scott Caan, and Danny McBride

100 Min

Open Road Films

The title for director Barry Levinson’s new film “Rock the Kasbah” will make music fans recall the similarly titled song by “The Clash” off their 1982 album “Combat Rock”, an album that split critics but found commercial success for the beloved punk-rock band. The film “Rock the Kasbah” may unfortunately split many viewers as well. Barry Levinson has an impressive catalog of films under his near forty-year career and with a cast of exceptional actors, “Rock the Kasbah” moves in the right directions in the first few minutes. But even the charisma of Bill Murray can’t hold up the many flaws that continuously hamper the progression of this film.

Richie Vance (Bill Murray) is a rock n’ roll talent manager on his final hurrah, with his final remaining act (Zooey Deschanel), on a USO tour in Afghanistan. Things take a bad turn when Richie’s client leaves him stranded in Kabul without any money or a passport.  Richie begins to look for any method that could get him back to America, options that involve dealings with weapons suppliers (Scott Caan and Danny McBride) and negotiations with a prostitute (Kate Hudson). Just when things can’t get much worse Richie stumbles upon a young woman with a beautiful voice from a small village.

It’s seems highly unlikely that anything could go wrong with a film when Bill Murray sings “Smoke on the Water” the only way Bill Murray could sing “ Smoke on the Water”. But it unfortunately happens here. There is a lot of material being promoted and employed through the narrative; an aging agent desperate to live up to the hype he is selling, depictions of a conflict-ridden territory, commentary on culture and tradition, all wrapped up in a comedy that tries to balance between being superficial and profound. There are subtle moments when some of these elements work but they are usually undermined by poorly executed comedy or misguided character motivations.

The sliver of a saving grace comes from the cast that is talented enough to keep things interesting even when it looks like they are just going through the motions. If you put the camera on Bill Murray long enough and let him talk his way through a scene you are bound to find gold sooner or later. And in some scenes this is the case, look no further than the deadpan patience and panic seen in the backseat of a convertible on the night streets of Kabul with the energetic gun suppliers Scott Caan and Danny McBride. There isn’t enough done in this direction, or in any other direction for that matter, instead everything is proposed but never followed through. Making an appearance as well is Bruce Willis who plays the role he’s been portraying for some time now, basically John McClane from the “Die Hard” series reinterpreted older and grumpier.

“Rock The Kasbah” never finds its pacing but instead trudges in one direction and then in another until the neatly, emotionally forced ending. The film garners a few laughs, mostly because it keeps a misguided humorous undertone throughout. The unfortunate result of “Rock the Kasbah” is less classic rock and more forgettable pop.

Monte’s Rating

2.00 out of 5.00

Bone Tomahawk - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

‘Bone Tomahawk’ tosses an exceptional, gritty and gory western onto big and small screens  

Writer/director:  S. Craig Zahler

Starring:  Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins, Patrick Wilson, and Matthew Fox

During a time just after the U.S. Civil War, “Bone Tomahawk” presents the small western town of Bright Hope as a peaceful community.   Well, peaceful is a relative term.  Small municipalities on the American frontier in the 19^th Century were anything but peaceful.  This was the Wild West, and the land bled violence.  In this respect, Bright Hope is no different than any other place during that era.

It is a place where Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) will shout - to an unknown person hiding in a barn - “If you don’t say who you are, I’ll shoot you dead.”

It is a place where the drinks from the local saloon, The Learned Goat, will make you feel “like a tree fell on you.”  If it is not the alcohol, a mysterious gunfighter could shoot you down in a blink of an eye.

Soon, however, a few of its residents will face a formidable group of people who will terrify the most rugged fragments of their souls.  In writer/director S. Craig Zahler’s exceptional debut feature film, four brave men cross a desolate landscape for days to rescue two townsfolk and a drifter from a frightening community of cannibalistic cave dwellers.   Zahler certainly weaves a distinct twist on the American western by adding the aforementioned antagonists.  Some moments in the picture clearly feel, look and sound like horror, but about 90 percent of the film successfully plays like a western, and at times, a sensational one.

The picture depicts a violent, primeval tone right away as the camera focuses its opening shot on the face of a sleeping stranger as someone grabs his throat and uses a large, dullish knife to dig, cut and slash into it.  From the get-go, one knows this movie will earn its R-rating.   This event and another ugly sequence eventually lead this someone - a murderous thief named Purvis (David Arquette) - to Bright Hope, and he unknowingly leads a small band of cannibals with him.  The group of outsiders kidnap Purvis and two others, so Sheriff Hunt (Russell), his deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), an insensitive gunfighter (Matthew Fox), and a cowboy (Patrick Wilson) head out on a “suicidal” rescue mission.

The film places a key life obstacle in their way (which I will not reveal) as well as plenty of problems from Mother Nature on this doomed trip, and although the movie carries an undertone of dread, Zahler’s brilliant writing offers lots of humor, which provides intermittent bouts of relief for the audience.  For example, Jenkins’ Chicory steals several scenes, and every on-screen minute with him is a joy.  Chicory, an elderly deputy who leans on his sheriff to do most of the thinkin’, constantly babbles, asks obvious questions and uses inappropriate comments.  When Brooder (Fox) calls him an imbecile, Chicory responds by claiming his wife called him that particular label for years.

Many of the scenes in Bright Hope (prior to the big ride) also contain moments of levity.  For instance, The Learned Goat’s piano player charges three cents per song, but three songs will cost a dime.  When Brooder asks why the upcharge for three songs, this rural pianist says that he gets tired when playing three.  The script is laced with both subtle and blatant humor, and they add a richness to the story and a sense of comfort with these characters.

The four characters - admittedly - are one-dimensional within their respective silos of expertise, but together they form a terrific team.   Their underdog role is obvious, but through their verbal jousting and forced bonding due to unenviable circumstances, these talented actors let their characters gel as a unit, and we, the audience, are thankful.

I am also thankful that Zahler took much care in capturing the right concoction of sights and sounds on the open range.  With no population centers between “Here” and “There”, the film truly portrays a clear sense of vulnerability due to the raw and unforgiving terrain.  Death by outlaws, opposing tribes, the heat, scarcity of water, and/or four-legged or no-legged (snakes) critters are all possible on the way to fight an unknown group of cannibals, and long brutal shots in the beating sun and cold spaces in stark darkness do not furnish warm, fuzzy feelings.

From a sound-perspective, silence surrounds these four in the great outdoors, and many times we only hear the crunching of desert plants underfoot, the clogging of hoofs or the crackling of campfires.   With most of the film captured in the wild, these specific moments – which break the silence - do not appear by happened circumstance but are completely purposeful.

Be warned:  As the many ways “Bone Tomahawk” offers welcomed western traditions, the ultimate fight with the cannibals defies convention.  Although these scenes are short-lived, they are grotesque and beyond brutal.   One specific 20-second, monstrous visual has unfortunately seared into my brain for all of eternity.  (Help!) Undoubtedly, the last 30 minutes of this picture are not for the weak of heart and/or stomach, and quite frankly, some moments are more than unnecessary.   On the other hand, the film’s celebration of the American western and its unique, gory turn leave a lasting cinematic experience.   Bright Hope might be typical and ordinary, but “Bone Tomahawk” is not.  (3.5/4 stars)

“Bone Tomahawk” opens at AMC Deer Valley (and is available on iTunes and VOD) on Oct. 23.

The Last Witch Hunter - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“’The Last Witch Hunter’ adds good ingredients but undercooks the brew”  

Director:  Breck Eisner

Starring:  Vin Diesel, Michael Caine, Elijah Wood, Rose Leslie

“The Last Witch Hunter” - Within the first 10 minutes of this Vin Diesel action-picture, a warrior from the 13^th Century named Kaulder (Diesel) wields a sword that is also lit on fire while battling a terribly-mean and heavily-scarred witch.  Yes, his sword is lit on fire.  Ultimately, this entertaining, medieval fight – for reasons I will not give away - left our hero immortal.   Fast-forward 800 years, and Kaulder – now comfortably living in The Big Apple in 2015 – spends his working hours extinguishing witches’ spells, but not necessarily extinguishing the witches themselves.   A truce between witches and humans was made, and now, Kaulder catches the sorceresses (and sorcerers) who are acting badly and turns them over to a governing body called the Witch Council.  The witches are then imprisoned, which makes Kaulder the Last Witch Bounty Hunter, rather than the Last Witch Hunter, but hey, plain old “Hunter” sounds better, right?

Director Breck Eisner has a history with horror (“The Crazies” (2010)) and adventure (“Sahara” (2005)) films, and in “The Last Witch Hunter” he combines both genres.  Although the film offers an intriguing premise – as a gifted, eight hundred-year-old being opposes modern-day necromancers – the film’s execution falls victim to clunky storytelling and editing.  Fortunately, the filmmakers did not edit out a key supporting player, Dolan 36^th (Michael Caine).  Dolan 36th is the 36^th person to assist Kaulder over the years, and he is the Witch Hunter’s handler, confessor and friend.   Caine plays a solid confidant to Kaulder, and very quickly, the comparison between Dolan 36^th and his portrayal of Alfred from Christopher Nolan’s recent Batman pictures becomes impossible to ignore.   Whenever Caine appears on screen, he seems to give instant credibility to the movie, and he is joined by Elijah Wood and Rose Leslie, who play two sidekicks, like Robin and Batgirl.

As Kaulder attempts to save humanity from an immortal witch, all of the actors do a very good job of putting their best feet forward to play convincing and likable roles, but unfortunately the story’s construction has two left feet.     First of all, the film sets up a world where witches live among humans in peace and offers a pseudo-“Men in Black” vibe, but other than one curious scene in a pastry shop – in which you really do not want to know the ingredients – it never really explores this intriguing plot point.   The audience never gets to meet a plethora of unusual characters that the movie initially promises, and instead, sees a few glimpses of magic, such as a group of rotten crabapples pretending to be gummy bears.

Speaking of broken promises, the Witch Council has jailed hundreds or thousands of witches over 800 years or so, but we never really see them either.   Eisner does show us a “batcave” in which they are imprisoned, but we see exactly zero caged green ladies with pointy hats.    Instead, Kaulder plays detective towards clues we really do not understand, makes a new witch friend (Leslie) with whom he suddenly bonds with like magic (pardon the pun), casually talks about how he will save Dolan 36^th, and attempts to kill an immortal witch in the movie’s final act.

How exactly does one kill an immortal witch?

If you asked yourself that question, you are not alone.   That’s what I clearly wondered and said out loud in a packed, but confused movie theatre.    With good performances placed in an undercooked brew, “The Last Witch Hunter” - unfortunately - doesn’t create enough magic.  The movie, however, is not a complete waste of time.   Hey, there is a sword, and it is lit on fire!  (2/4 stars)

Interview with the Director of Room by Jeff Mitchell

Interview - Lenny Abrahamson, the director of “Room” (2015)   

In director Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room”, he tells the story of a young mother (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old son (Jacob Tremblay) who reside in a very cramped, one-room space.   The movie initially presents the circumstances of their odd living situation as a confusing puzzle, but eventually, the secrets of “the room” are revealed.   Lenny chatted with the Phoenix Film Festival – in an engaging discussion - about his new movie, the relationship with Brie and Jacob and their characters’ connections.  There is one spoiler which came up during the last question of the interview, but I will warn you ahead of time.  “Room” won the People’s Choice Award at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, and it opens on Oct. 23.

PFF:  The film did a masterful job of slowly revealing the secrets of the room.  It certainly is a mystery at first, so how important was it to present one day in the room – specifically Jack’s (Tremblay) birthday – as an initial setup?

LA:  Very important.  The big part of the first phase of the film is that first day, because I wanted to gradually show the audience the full extent of the situation, and that took one 24-hour period.  You get the entire routine, and it was also important for the reveal to be slow because I wanted the information to flow to the audience as it flows for Jack.  The room is a place of routine, safety and comfortableness with his mother.  It’s all he knows.  (I am) just tracking their lives “naively” as a filmmaker.   I am a huge fan of an implied filmmaker who tries to understand, rather than desperately project a whole series of experiences that are prepackaged.  That’s pretty much how I did it. 

PFF: I appreciated the contrast between Ma and Jack.  There were differences in a many areas, but the two which stood out to me

were resiliency and optimism, because of their different life experiences.   When do you think we lose resiliency and optimism as adults?    Do you think Ma lost them prior to her situation in the room?   

LA: That’s a really interesting question.  That’s not one I’ve heard before, but it is really at the heart of the film.   “Room” is about a relationship, so I can particularly talk about each of them in relation to the other, but in this situation, the mother has two definite faces.  She has the face that she turns towards Jack, which is reassuring, which is fun and one which tells him all the time that nothing is wrong and everything is okay, and then you have the face when he is not looking at her.  You feel what she is really going through.  

We all do that with our kids.   We create a bubble around them, we are warm and we are as optimistic as we can be, even when stuff is going wrong in our lives.  I think what is fascinating is that bubble is never complete.   I think, very quickly, kids do sense the shadows in their parents’ lives.   It is a slow process of the demythologization of moving to the reality, the complexity and the shadowiness of the adult world.  I think Ma was probably this pretty ordinary teenager.   Very self-centered, still not really a full-adult, but I think in a way, her development is arrested when she goes into that place (the room).   

PFF:  One of the pleasures of the film is Jack’s narration, as he explains the way he sees the world.  What lessons can adults take by looking at life through a kid’s eyes? 

LA:  I think the main thing is he is not aware that he is missing anything, and that allows him to make the absolute most out of the small amount of stuff that he has.   I think we learn something as parents from this, which is we obsess about our children’s lives.  We want them to do all of these extracurricular activities, we obsess whether they are watching too much TV, whether they have enough music lessons, and all this stuff that we get into as parents, and most of which has very little bearing.  Mostly it’s just about providing them with love and a sense of safety, and kids can do the rest with very, very minimal resources. 

I think for adults as well, we fantasize ourselves into ideal other lives all the time.  This film says to you, “Well, there is probably a tremendous amount (of goodness) in the life you’re leading.   If you just calm down and take a look at it, it is wonderful.”  I think that’s a good thing to keep in mind. 

PFF:  Brie and Jacob shared plenty of on-screen, mom/son chemistry.  How did they spend time together prior to shooting? 

LA:  We did get them together for – in film terms – a lot of time.   We had three weeks before we started shooting with both of them together.  Some of that time was taken up with wardrobe settings and wig-work, but the bulk of the time – certainly the first week – was just hanging out.  All of us (hung out), so Jake (Jacob) wouldn’t feel pressure to form a friendship with this person.   He’s a smart kid, and he knew this was the person with whom he would be acting with for quite a long time.  

We just went out for pizza, and we all sat around together.  He gradually started asking Brie questions.   What her favorite “Star Wars” character is?  Does she prefer dogs or cats?   He gradually just started opening himself up to her, and she’s such a warm person.  It was lovely to watch the bond form.  Once they were comfortable, then I brought them onto the set.  They made some crafts together (and the crafts were included in the movie), so Jake would have a connection to them.  

PFF:  (SPOILER) A significant portion of the film takes place in one room, but I found myself paying attention to other rooms in the movie.    Did you deliberately film the movie - in such a way - so the audience would compare and contrast other rooms with the room, or am I just reading into it?  

LA:   No, you are right.  For example, a lot of thought went into the hospital room, because I thought of various ways to play it.  Some places, some locations (we looked at) were nursing homes, where it would be possible for the characters to go.  These were a little bit brown, a little bit dull, and I thought that’s one way to go:  to say we are in this amazing world, but – you know what – it is just less interesting than the one we left (the room).  

In the end, we went for something which was highly different and highly charged and somehow spoke of a space that Jack thought the world was, like a “2001” interior.   Once you make a film like this, every place you go to is significant, so you cannot not think about it.   The vertical white bars in the living room were just this fascinating little metaphor for imprisonment, so absolutely, we did think about it.   Never have I thought so hard about locations.  Every aspect of this film was so charged, because the story itself is so charged.  

Steve Jobs - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“A well-designed ‘Steve Jobs’ leaves the audience wanting a future release”  

Director:  Danny Boyle

Writer:  Aaron Sorkin

Starring:  Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels

“Musicians play their instruments.  I play the orchestra.”

Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) gives this answer to fellow Apple founder Steve Wozniak’s (Seth Rogen) cynically-asked question:  What do you do?

We do know: Jobs and Apple orchestrated a revolution in the way human beings - in 2015 - work, socialize, shop, cultivate information, make decisions, and live.    Oh, I forgot to mention the way we listen to music too, among a laundry list of other specific activities.

The vast reach of Jobs’ impact is incalculable, so constructing a biopic on the man seems nothing short of a daunting and puzzling task.   Where to start?  What to cover?   How do you tell the man’s life story inside of two hours of screen time?   Enter cinematic heavyweights, director Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting” (1996), “127 Hours” (2010), “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008)) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network” (2010), “Moneyball” (2011), “A Few Good Men” (1992)) to solve the dilemma.  Sorkin especially is a well-chosen person for this job with his previous work on contemporary and complex social phenomenons like Facebook and modern baseball statistics, and also with politics and the media in television’s “The West Wing” (1999-2006) and “The Newsroom” (2012-2014).

Both men succeed in constructing a film about Jobs which not only gathers and presents frank insight into how he thinks and interacts with his closest confidants, but the picture also entertains and provides authentic drama.

Construction is the key word, as Sorkin takes a sizable amount of risk by structuring the movie in an unexpected way.   I do not wish to reveal – and spoil the surprise of - how the foundation of a 2 hour and 2 minute film supports a razor sharp and highly-charged script in which Jobs verbally jousts with a collection of players like Wozniak, Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), technical guru Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and marketing director Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet).

This A+ cast beautifully choreographs their characters’ 98 mph verbal volleys around intricate office politics and power plays with natural ease.

Rogen’s Wozniak jealously marvels at Jobs’ visionary charisma, while he wishes for a tiny fraction of his fame.

Daniels’ Sculley stands atop the corporate pyramid and dances the “idea machine-waltz” with Jobs at lofty philosophical and political levels.

Stuhlbarg’s Hertzfeld plays the brilliant engineering-type who deals with Jobs’ eccentric and, sometimes, unrealistic demands, and Winslet’s Hoffman is Jobs’ most trusted ally while always giving him cold and hard facts, whether he wants to hear them or not.

These relationships - portrayed in the film – seem to form a clear picture of the man.

Of course, Fassbender exists in the extreme center, offers a fearless dive as Jobs and delivers a masterful performance with intensity, thoughtfulness and depth which humanizes the mythology of one of the great visionaries within the last 100 years.   There is a moment in the picture when Jobs states that the two most important events of the 20^th Century are:  when the Allies won the war and the launch of the Mac personal computer in 1984.    Well, I cannot agree with that statement, but Jobs surely reached elevated historical status with Apple’s creations over the last 10 years.

There is much responsibility on the shoulders of Sorkin and Boyle when presenting such an important on-screen biography.   The film’s spirit seems spot on, but on the other hand, due to its narrative choices (which I, again, will not reveal), it also – unfortunately - feels incomplete.    Now, within the confines of the movie’s structure, it does satisfy.   “Steve Jobs” does tie the loose ends that the plot pulls on throughout the film’s runtime and offers a satisfying amount of emotion with one particular character (which I did not previously mention for a reason).   As the movie ends, however, it does not feel that we – as an audience – received enough.    Too much of his life felt left on the cutting room floor or not written at all.

As the credits rolled, I had more questions that I wanted answered and hoped for a message – in bold white text on a black movie screen - which said:  “STEVE JOBS PART II” COMING SOON!

No such luck.

Well, I suppose when a highly-skilled orchestra ends an inspiring two-hour performance, one is left with wanting more.   (3.5/4 stars) 

Bridge of Spies - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Bridge of Spies  

Starring: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Scott Shepherd, Amy Ryan, Sebastian Koch, Alan Alda

Director: Steven Spielberg

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

In the 1950s Americans lost their collective minds looking for communists. Many innocent people were caught up in the “red scare” and Joseph McCarthy’s televised witch hunt. Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies is not about one of the innocent victims of the era, but an actual communist, a spy sent from the Soviet Union to steal American secrets in the event of — gulp — nuclear armageddon.

The Cold War does not have the sweeping appeal of World War II, or its tanks and soldiers blasting away at each other on panoramic battlefields, but it’s stories are just as revealing about the soaring heights (and plunging depths) of humanity, and the morality of a silent warfare that turned American against American.

In 1957, the United States government reached out to attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks), an insurance lawyer in Brooklyn. They asked him to take the case of Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a KGB infiltrator caught spying for the Soviets. They have Abel dead to rights, but they need a talented lawyer to defend him rigorously to keep up appearances that, indeed, America is a bastion of democratic, Constitutionally sound values and principles. Donovan agrees and is quickly stonewalled by a biased judges, a kangaroo court, an overzealous prosecuting attorney and a pitchfork-wielding public that sees Commies in its soup.

Presented as a legal procedural, the early segments of Bridge of Spies are expertly choreographed and fascinatingly presented. Here’s Donovan, doing Uncle Sam a favor, being spied on by Uncle Sam. Hanks, at his most feisty, has a great sequence with a CIA agent, who asks Donovan to violate attorney-client privilege by revealing what Abel actually did for the Soviets. The lawyer bristles at the request, and pounces. “Don’t nod at me and smile you son of a bitch,” Donovan tells the American spy. It’s wickedly fun, and Hanks hits all the right notes to get the audience on Donovan’s side, regardless of what his client has been accused.

In a concurrent sequence of events, four young pilots are being briefed on a new mission, one that will take them 70,000 feet up over Soviet Russia in a U2 spy plane. Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is one of the pilots, and on his first flight encounters the loving embrace of Mother Russia. Powers and Abel quickly find themselves as pawns in a political game of chess that has global stakes. The players in the game are proxies, stand-ins who don’t have official status: for the Soviets it’s several communist-friendly power players, and for the Americans it’s Donovan, a pudgy Brooklyn insurance attorney whose wife thinks he’s fishing in England.

If you know history, you know what happens next, and it’s fascinating stuff, particularly when Donovan heads to East Germany to negotiate with his counterparts on the other side of the still-forming Berlin Wall. These scenes on the other side of the Iron Curtain are photographed in gloom, with cold colors and chilly concrete. The setting must have felt hopeless for Donovan, who’s robbed by a street gang, jailed by border guards and tactically outmaneuvered by an array of communist bureaucrats with conflicting of agendas.

Spielberg is known for his big movies — Raiders, Jaws, Saving Private Ryan — but I would argue that his smaller character-driven pictures show just as much mastery of the medium as the blockbusters. Here he tells a story about a man fighting for American ideals that America itself doesn't want to be bothered with. Hanks is terrific — when is he not? Rylance as the Soviet spy Abel is especially electric. He has a refrain that appears frequently, “Will that help?” You don’t seem worried about the death penalty, Donovan tells him in court. “Will that help?” Abel is a curious character, one that Rylance wraps in mystery and self sacrifice. Few actors can keep pace with Hanks, but Rylance does, and with apparent ease.

Mostly, though, Bridge of Spies is a collection of tiny victories: the lighting is nuanced and effective, the camera work is modestly unassuming, the sets and locations invoke the paranoia of the time and place, and the small details of East German life, such as an indoor hallway for bicycle messengers, gives the film its unique cinematic identity.

Spielberg makes too few movies, and it’s movies like Bridge of Spies that makes me yearn for more.

99 Homes - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“The foreclosure film ‘99 Homes’ serves stressful theatre”  

Writer/director:  Ramin Bahrani

Starring:  Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern

A bank foreclosing on a family’s home is a stressful nightmare for the household members in question.  Not keeping up on mortgage payments, waiting for dreaded phone calls and staring at eviction notices plastered on one’s door is quite the opposite of dreams coming true.    Even worse, the actual eviction – in which a real estate broker with two police officers suddenly appear at the front door and instruct the (now) former homeowners that they have two minutes to gather their belongings and leave the premises – is beyond gut-wrenching.

This is the early premise of “99 Homes”, and over the course of the 1 hour 52 minute film, it takes the audience on an even more traumatic ride.    Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) – a 30-something roofer who struggles to make ends meet in a difficult job market – is thrown out, along with his mom (Laura Dern) and son, of his modest Orlando home by Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) in the aforementioned life event.    With shoddy credit and nowhere to turn except an equally shoddy motel, the Nash family begrudgingly accepts their new fate in a 500 square-foot room in a noisy and less than desirable area of town.

With no job prospects and his financial hole growing by the day, Dennis makes the truly unthinkable choice of working for Rick to make ends meet, which, quite frankly, feels like an inmate on death row making best friends with his executioner in the afterlife.

Writer/director Ramin Bahrani does not pull, but yanks on our empathy strings, as he portrays a man in desperate need of immediate solutions, but, unfortunately, only one ugly one appears in his narrow view of the world.    While Bahrani sends Dennis on a questionable new career, he also presents a frank and brutal picture of the real estate business during the recent housing collapse.   According to Rick, in a world of winners and losers, America is about bailing out and celebrating the winners, and he intends – using legal and illegal methods – on financially keeping his victorious standing in a sick market.

The filmmakers perfectly casted Shannon as Carver.   He has a knack for playing off-center, caustic characters, and with Rick’s morally bankrupt (pardon the pun) persona mixed with a bit of sociopath, Shannon plays a fearsome and distrustful on-screen villain.   For example, when a random foreclosed homeowner takes his own life, Rick nonchalantly shrugs, “I can’t bring him back to life.”

For Rick, he simply is a vulture praying on the dead carcasses in any Orlando subdivision and insists he owns the moral high-ground, because he did not create the problem.   For Garfield, this is his first film role since he lost his Spidey-suit in “The Amazing Spider-Man” series, but he clearly has a bright future ahead.   He is highly-effective in delivering nearly two-hours of Dennis’s self-doubt, anguish and pain, and it leads with the film’s first 10-15 minutes when the camera is transfixed on his face.  His character feels completely powerless inside his own home and then standing outside of it, and we feel it too.

Bahrani makes other smart decisions by featuring timely close-ups of Dennis’s mom, son and Rick, as the actors and director work in concert to present the lambs experiencing the slaughter at the hands of the Big Bad Wolf.    “99 Homes” is a nerve-racking story which kept this critic’s palms sweating for almost two hours, and the end result works as an emotional, although also unpleasant, movie experience.

With Dennis making three key mistakes down this inexplicable road, Bahrani spins a yarn that seems destined for doom.   “99 Homes” reminds me of 1998’s “A Simple Plan” where the leads make one terrible decision, and it snowballs into an avalanche of tension with an apparent date with ugly destiny.   With a great script, elevated performances and Dennis’s simple – but wrong-headed – plan, the film creates havoc on our sensibilities about a time – in the not too distant past – that made very little sense.  (3/4 stars)

He Named Me Malala - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“He Named Me Malala” features an extraordinary woman in a less-than-perfect documentary  

Director:  Davis Guggenheim

Starring:  Malala Yousafzai, Ziauddin Yousafzai

To say that Malala Yousafzai is an extraordinary person is an understatement.    For speaking out in support of Pakistani girls’ rights to an adequate education, the Taliban shot her in the head when she was only 15 years-old.   She survived the murderous attempt, continued to speak out for girls and won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at the tender age of 17.   When asked if she was angry at the man who fired a bullet into her head, she responded, “Not one atom (in her entire body).”

This individual truly is one in a billion, and in the documentary “He Named Me Malala”, director Davis Guggenheim tells her amazing story by exploring the origins of her resiliency while also capturing frank discussions with her family.   Some of the film’s best moments are when Guggenheim focuses his camera on Malala’s home life in the Yousafzai family’s new household in England.  The audience sees Malala playing card games and laughing with her younger brothers around the house.   She also begrudgingly talks about boys in the same way that the average American teenage girl might refer to boy bands on the front pages of “Tiger Beat”, and all of these scenes truly enforce the fact that Malala is still just a kid.

At the same time, she speaks as a woman way beyond her 18 years.  She opens our eyes as she explains that a significant percentage of Pakistani women grow up illiterate, and her father – Ziauddin – mentions that their 300 year-old family tree did not contain one female name.  Not one.  That is until he proudly added Malala to it.  Guggenheim shows her father’s eye-opening influence as a driving force behind Malala’s progressive beliefs.

The film, however, does not stay put too long, and unfortunately, this is a significant problem.   The movie’s flow feels very choppy and disorganized, as it constantly jumps between shots of Malala’s home life, video footage of her in Kenya or Syria providing support for women, meeting with various world renowned leaders (including President Obama and Hillary Clinton), cute photographs of her as a child, and reenactments via animation.   A documentary does not need to follow a completely linear flow – like the recent docs “Amy” (2015) and “Senna” (2010) - but “He Named Me Malala” follows no such pattern.     The result is not exactly a confusing film, but a frustrating one.

The aforesaid animation is another distraction.   When a documentarian wants to explain past events without possessing the basic visual footage, he or she can film interviews in which the interviewees converse about them.  The filmmaker can also shoot reenactments, show still photos or offer animation.   Animation can be an effective tool, but Guggenheim takes too much liberty.    At first, the animation engages.   For example, one animated sequence explains the origins of Malala’s name, and it takes a spirited and celebratory tone.   In another scene, the film creates good feelings, as it plays out the happiness of Malala’s birth.   A little animation can go a long way, but the film repeatedly dives – throughout the entire 1 hour 27 minute runtime - into one “cartoonish” moment after another, and very quickly the technique becomes tiresome.

The picture also misses an opportunity to interview various political leaders about Malala’s impact on the world community.   We see the aforementioned footage with government heads of state or important organizations standing with Malala, but I do not recall one sit-down on-camera interview with one.    The consolation (and, admittedly, it is a very good one) is we do get to hear Malala’s feelings, believes and also her struggles with her injuries straight from the woman herself.   Malala has heaps of thoughtful discourse for a world stage, and this film provides a terrific platform.   Sitting through “He Named Me Malala”, I cherished those moments.  I only wish the movie’s structure and technical choices lived up to the woman featured in the title.  (2/4 stars)