The Reel World

Between Jason Bateman (Office Space and Horrible Bosses) and Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids and Mike and Molly), whose career seems to be most on fire right now?  The idea of these two pairing would at first glance appear to be comic gold.  Instead the result is a road trip film that had me asking if it were over yet. When we first meet Sandy Patterson (Bateman), he’s just your average businessman trying to support his family.  With a new baby on the way, more money is just what he could use, and when he discovers the only people getting bonuses are his superiors, this rubs him the wrong way, and rightfully so.  So when he’s given an offer to leave the company to work for another company and get a substantial raise, the decision is a no brainer.

Too bad in Winter Park, Florida, Diana (McCarthy) has stolen Patterson’s identity and has gone on a spending spree, running up credit cards and ruining Patterson’s credit.  Things manage to get worse after Diana is arrested under Patterson’s name and in the process has a warrant sent out for Patterson.  Despite everything Diana manages to do, the film never seems to want us to dislike her, but instead they tried to make her just as sympathetic as Sandy.  If that were my only problem with the film, I’d just blow it off and just remind myself, “it’s only a movie”, but instead the film is a bit of a train wreck.

Steven Soderbergh has had a one-of-a-kind career. And if the director is to be believed, that filmmaking career comes to a close with Side Effects. (At least theatrically speaking; his Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, is scheduled to air on HBO later this year.) Soderbergh may have best exemplified the idea of making “One for Me, One for Them.” (Even if the director firmly disagrees with this notion.) The theory dictates his “One for Them” flicks usually had the word Ocean’s in the title and helped fund his micro-budgeted, “One for Me” experimental films. After all, Ocean’s Thirteen also describes the number of people who saw Bubble or The Girlfriend Experience.

In recent years, the Oscar-winning director (he picked up a statue for Traffic) has turned his detached, genre-bending eye to star-studded ensemble pieces like Contagion and Haywire. (Not to mention the stud-studded hit Magic Mike.) Side Effects fits neatly into this same mold.

“This is a corpse infected with the plague. It is uncaring, unfeeling.”

When it comes to the overwhelming majority of zombie fiction, it’s all about brains. (Or rather, BRAAAINS!!!) It’s what the undead hunger for, and a well-placed headshot is usually the only way to kill them (again). And that doesn’t even cover the popular device of using the walking dead as an allegory for an increasingly mindless society. Warm Bodies stands out because it’s more concerned with an entirely different bodily organ. Based on Isaac Marion’s popular novel of the same name, the zombie romantic comedy deals directly with matters of the heart.

It's hard to imagine that Sylvester Stallone and Walter Hill never crossed paths for an action movie in the early days of their careers. Both have established themselves as staples in the action movie genre, and they dominated the 1970's and 1980's. It seems like a dream come true that the actor and director have finally joined forces. Unfortunately, some dreams are actually nightmares, and if Bullet To The Head is any indication, the two stars would have been better off had they remained unaligned.

The story is based on the French graphic novel Du Plomb Dans La Tete by Alexis Nolent. I have never seen the book, so it would not be possible for me to compare the two. Here the story involves hitman James Bobo (Stallone). He's on a hit with his partner Louis (Seda). Things go smoothly until James decides not to kill a hooker witness. Is he going soft? Not really. It turns out the two have been set up by their boss Marcus Baptiste (Slater) who has sent another killer, Keegan (Momoa) to get rid of the team. James gets away, and now he wants to find out who set him up and killed his partner.

Hansel and Gretel, everyone has heard of this fairy tale, right? The Brothers Grimm tale about a brother and sister lost in the woods who come across a house made of candy. They go inside and are soon captured by a witch who goes about stuffing them with candy to fatten them up to be slaughtered. Somehow the cunning pair manages to escape their shackles, and while the witch is distracted with the oven, they push her into the oven and destroy her. We have all heard the tale, but what happen afterwards?  Did they go back home, or did they live out their days in the witch’s house? Clearly I’m not the only one to wonder what happen to this pair of siblings, and now thanks to Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, and the folks at the Paramount and MGM, we have our answer.

Fast forward many years later (as the film doesn’t give a specific number of years that have gone by), Hansel and Gretel have grown up to become famous and equally dangerous witch hunters. When the town of Augsburg is plagued by witches who have been abducting the town’s children, the incompetent Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare, Prison Break) and a mob of townspeople are in the process of condemning a local woman to be burned at the stake without any evidence of guilt. The mayor in an attempt to calm the panic of the townspeople has brought in Hansel (Jeremy Renner, The Avengers) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton, Prince of Persia).

"You don't want to take the silver, you take the lead".

He always told us he'd be back. After spending some years in the real world in the California governor's mansion, Arnold Schwarzenegger is indeed back...back in the reel world where he belongs. And if The Last Stand is any indication, it appears Arnie hasn't missed a beat. In fact, he's showing a bit of maturity in his acting that I honestly never would have believed possible back in the early days. Here Arnie's more Dirty Harry than Terminator. Throw in a little modern Spaghetti Western and more than a little help from Korean director Jee-woon Kim and you have a pretty tasty treat. It might not be all that nutritional or filling, but as guilty pleasures go, you can do a lot worse than The Last Stand.

Sometimes a movie comes along that simply has so much to say that two hours simply isn’t enough to flesh it out to its full potential.  Broken City is a film that is filled with many great characters and story threads that needed more than just the 109-minute running time to tie everything all together.  Broken City is more than just a film about a private eye trying to take down a corrupt mayor.  Every character involved has something to gain from winning an upcoming election and even more to lose depending on the results.  The same can be said about any election.

The film opens up with Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) standing over the body of a suspect he’s shot down.  Though the charges are dropped, Taggart is asked to leave the force; this is a decision not taken lightly, but Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) insists the resignation needs to happen for the city and that he’ll be in debt to Taggart.  Jumping ahead seven years, Taggart is now a private eye and is in debt.  Financially, things are not looking good for Billy until he gets a call from the mayor’s office.

“I want to talk to you about the war for the soul of Los Angeles.”

This could easily describe the current rivalry between the surging L.A. Clippers and the geriatric Los Angeles Lakers, but Gangster Squad has slightly weightier matters on its mind. The stylish 1940s and 50s cops and crooks saga wants to tell a story about corruption and violent men unable — or unwilling — to turn off their capacity for hurting others. Instead, the film winds up being a somewhat shallow 21st century gloss on The Untouchables. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

This is the time of the year when everyone is giving their lists for the best films and televisions shows for 2012. It's become almost the "in" thing to do, and we've resisted following such a trend here. The lists are always going to be very subjective and have very little value except a little stirring of the pot. If pressed I could tell you what I thought were the best movies I've seen in 2012. Right now I'm going to tell you about a movie that would top my list of worst films I've seen in 2012. That distinction belongs to Promised Land. I hate films that are pretentious or preach. This does both and doesn't even grant me the courtesy of pretending it's entertaining at the same time. The story is about as predictable as a race between a Ferrari and a sautéed snail. Steve Butler (Damon) and his long-time partner Sue Thomason (McDormand) are the best at what they do. What they do is represent a natural gas company, and they go into untapped towns and buy fracking rights from land owners. The duo is known for getting the rights and getting them cheap. It's all part of a familiar song and dance. The cash-poor landowners are reeled in with the promise of life-changing money. Of course, what really lies in their future is the eventual destruction of their town. They are welcomed with open arms until an old scientist now teaching high school science (Holbrook) brings up some disturbing questions. Matters get worse when Dustin Noble (Krasinski) rolls into town claiming to represent an environmental group that Butler's never heard of before. The visit becomes confrontational, and the town is divided on the issue. Some still welcome the reps, while others want to run them out of town.

The story is certainly an interesting one even if it's been played out too many times before. Promised Land comes with some twists and turns that I'm sure the filmmakers thought were clever and serve a necessary social function. There's no question that the process of fracking has risks and is quite controversial. The film might have accomplished what it set out to do, which was to take a stand on the issue. Unfortunately, everyone here decides to overplay the hand, and the result is such a blatant message that all of the environmental messages are dulled by the attempt. Damon's character has the kind if epiphany moment that borders on the absurd. It comes from nowhere at all, and Damon just doesn't exhibit the acting chops here to bridge the credulity gap. There is another twist which would spoil the film more than the filmmakers have already done. But let me assure you that there are more than enough absolutely crazy plot twists here to make any reasonable audience groan.

There is a difference between calling something the “best” and calling it your “favorite”.  For instance when I look back at the films I’ve seen over the course of the year, I can say Django Unchained is my favorite film of the year that I enjoyed immensely, but I don’t believe I can say it is the best film of the year.  Will Django be a film to live on for decades and be hailed a classic in the annals of film history?  It’s too soon to even suggest such notions, but what I can say is that the film was a hell of a good time. 

Taking place in a pre-civil war era Dr. King Shultz (Christoph Waltz), a former dentist turned bounty hunter, is looking for a group of slave traders who have a slave in their possession who can help identify a group of men known as the Brittle brothers.  The slave in question is none other than Django (Jamie Foxx).  Seeing this slave is the only man who can identify the brothers, Shultz makes the decision to purchase Django from the traders, but this is a Quentin Tarantino film, and you know it can’t be that simple.  The scene sets the tone for the rest of the film, delivering crackerjack dialog followed by explosions of intense violence.