Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (Part Three: It's Getting Better All the Time)

 Let's kick off this chapter of the "Great Recap of Twenty Fourteen" with the movie that went from being in every headline in December to being the punching bag of January: The Interview.

 I really do find it quite amusing that the negative reaction to the film seems to be based - at least, critically - on the fact that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's comedy about assassinating Kim Jong Un starring Rogen and Franco isn't a biting enough satire of the media or of politics. This, coupled with the somewhat ridiculous overreaction of everybody feeling like they need to see The Interview (because, y'know, 'Murica) emboldened the normally lazy Golden Raspberry Awards to stop just penciling in "Adam Sandler Movie" as their "Worst Picture" and to put The Interview right out front as their leading Razzie nominee. Why? Because people are still paying attention to The Interview, for reasons that are extremely fortuitous to Sony.

 Perhaps you buy into the conspiracy theory that Sony was worried nobody would see The Interview so they put together an outlandish and complicated "hacking" scheme to ensure everyone would want to see the newest Seth Rogen / Evan Goldberg movie. As conspiracy theories go, it's got some legs, because people I know for a fact would never go see Pineapple Express have said to me that they feel they have to see The Interview ('Murica!). The disappointment, I'm guessing, is all in the expectation, because The Interview is exactly what I expected when I saw the trailer and thought "eh, I'll probably rent it." At the time I was laboring under the illusion that Inherent Vice would make good on its promise to be in theatres "just in time for Christmas," so I didn't really give credence to making The Interview our annual Christmas outing.

 To be fair, we still didn't go see The Interview - we saw a movie you'll see much higher on this list - I watched it on demand on Christmas Eve. And, yup, it's a dumb comedy where Franco plays a borderline incompetent guy and Rogen is the straight man. It's a little too long, the beginning meanders way too much, but when it gets funny (shortly after Lizzy Caplan enters the film), things maintain a consistent clip of laughs until the rather violent ending. Trade out Lizzy Caplan's name with Danny McBride, and I think I just distilled Pineapple Express into a review. Or This is the End, which landed in a comparable position in last year's recap. I like them both, but they're not my favorite comedies, and like many entries in the post-Apatow Era, they all share certain pros and cons. There's an over-reliance on improvisation (find one of them that doesn't have a "Line-o-Rama" in the supplements), a ham fisted "we're friends but now we aren't but we will be again by the end" character arc, and a reliance on pop culture references over jokes. In Rogen and Goldberg's case, at least post-2009, this also includes the "wow, that escalated fast" move to extreme violence in the third act.

 This is not to say that The Interview doesn't work, because when it's firing on all cylinders, it's very funny. Don't think that I didn't laugh; I did, but I chuckled a lot, too. It was nice to see  seemingly pointless yet continued allusions to The Lord of the Rings pay off in a way I didn't even think about until Dave Skylark (Franco) points it out to Aaron Rapaport (Rogen) near the end. It almost offset the overdone "honeydick" jokes or Skylark's obsession about whether Kim Jong Un (Randall Park) has a butthole or not. Make no mistake about it, if there is bodily humor to be mined, Rogen and Goldberg found a way to write it into the script, including an appropriately timed shart during the titular event.  But this is not some scathing takedown of media obsession or a penetrating look into the myth of North Korea's leader. This is a dumb comedy that uses easy jokes with relatively good results, and says as much about the media as Rogen and Goldberg had to say about underage drinking, marijuana laws, or the Book of Revelations. And that's it. Not the worst movie of the year, and not anywhere near the best. If you liked Superbad, Pineapple Express, or This is the End, odds are you'll enjoy The Interview. If you didn't, I don't care how patriotic you're feeling, this is not going to be two hours well spent. In this case, track record says everything.

 While we're on the subject of "track record," you'll notice that Magic in the Moonlight follows Blue Jasmine in the "what's Woody Allen releasing this year?" filmography. If you've been keeping up with Allen, at least with respect to the movies he's making, you'll know that since his "return" to making movies people want to watch (let's start with Match Point), there's been a pattern of "really good to great one" followed by "pretty good one that you'll forget he made until someone brings it up." Like Scoop. Remember Scoop? It came out after Match Point, and is an amusing movie about Scarlett Johannson talking to a ghost and solving a murder mystery. It's okay if you only remembered Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the much better movie he made with Johannson and Penelope Cruz two year's later (I'm not sure anyone other than the Cap'n remembers Cassandra's Dream). After Vicky Cristina Barcelona came Whatever Works followed, the not very well regarded "Larry David as Woody Allen surrogate," which I liked a lot more than You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger. Midnight in Paris was followed by To Rome With Love, and so on. Ergo, Magic in the Moonlight is a perfectly pleasant, but at best is a trifle. That's not to say that a trifle can't be enjoyable on its own merits, particularly one whose stars are Colin Firth and Emma Stone.

 Magic in the Moonlight is another of Allen's "European" films, this one centered squarely in his favorite period: the roaring twenties. Wei Ling Soo (Firth), is probably not as well known by his given name, Stanley, but his "mystical magic of the Orient" still packs theaters. Stanley also fancies himself a renowned debunker of fraudulent "spiritualists," and when his old friend and fellow magician Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney) pays a visit, it quickly turns to Sophie Baker (Stone). Sophie and her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) have been making the rounds in France, providing advice from beyond the grave via the younger Baker's "gifts," and a family Howard is close to appear to be her next "mark"s, so to speak. Stanley can't resist the opportunity to expose her, but the unassuming Sophie may be more than he bargained for. In fact, she might even be the real deal...

 If there's something holding Magic in the Moonlight back from being more than just charming, it's that Stanley is, even to the end, an irredeemable egomaniac. When he's right, he lords it over other characters, but when he's wrong, he still finds a way to make it about magnanimous he is to admit he was mistaken (see the press conference he holds when he finally accepts Sophie as legitimate). It's a romantic comedy where you'd much rather Sophie end up with the "Baxter": the ukulele serenading wet blanket Brice Catlidge (Hamish Linklater), only because Stanley is so full of himself that he firmly believes he's doing Sophie a favor by suggesting they marry. It isn't, I suppose, that he's wrong, but he's so insufferable throughout the film that I scarcely felt like he deserved Sophie, a free spirit who loosens him up, only to make him less appealing. That said, much of the film looks marvelous, as Allen soaks in the French countryside and revels in the hot jazz, clothes, and cars of the era. Magic in the Moonlight is a fun movie to watch, but not one you'll be thinking about for long after. Then again, there's something to be said for well made fluff, even if the taste doesn't linger.

 On the more biting end of that spectrum, I would suppose, is Frank. I've already reviewed it, and depending on your taste for deliberately avant garde music or comedies with a serious dark side (and not always in a way that's funny), it may or may not be to your tastes. Michael Fassbender is something to see, however, acting for most of the movie from behind an oversized paper mache mask. Here's a snippet of the original review:

 "Were I you, I wouldn't go into Frank expecting a comedy, because while it is often funny (or at the very least, amusing), there's a dark undercurrent to the film. The original keyboardist isn't the only person involved in the band that gives up on living, and the contentious atmosphere never softens. While it's frequently an interesting movie to watch, Frank keeps you at a distance until the very end. The last scene brings about some sense of setting things right, but on its own terms, and in the meantime it's hard to find a character to sympathize with. Jon (Domhall Gleeson) transitions from affable to duplicitous not long after they arrive at the cabin, and the other chief option, Frank, is a mystery until late into the film."

 If you don't mind, I'd like to take a moment to address some films which would generally fall under the "kids' movies" umbrella. As you may or may not know, I am still a fan of much of it, but don't watch nearly as many as I used to. In fact, if we don't include the two-and-a-half I'm about to mention, you could argue that the only other children's movie I saw in 2014 was A Talking Cat?!?!?, and it's better that we not discuss that. Still, I did manage to catch Disney's first animated Marvel movie, one of their live action musicals, and a non-Disney movie that should, for all intents and purposes, just be a giant commercial. Surprisingly, then, it's The Lego Movie that I was the most pleased with.

I give much of the credit for this to directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (22 Jump Street), who managed to take a film that should have just been shameless advertising (look at the title, for crying out loud) and make it a fun and often very funny movie that sneaks in some pathos at the end. It even tugged at the heartstrings of this crusty old Cap'n. A first rate voice cast doesn't hurt, and The Lego Movie boast Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Charlie Day, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, and tons of cameos from the likes of Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Jake Johnson, Cobie Smulders, Keegan-Michael Key, Jorma Taccone, Billy Dee Williams, and Jump Street alums Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum and Dave Franco. The writing is snappy, the plot is breathlessly paced, and the CGI convincingly replicates Lego. And I didn't even really want to buy Lego sets afterwards, which is good because I know how expensive they are.

 Oh, and of course there's the song. You know the one. About how conformity is awesome and everything is cool when you do what you're told. What? Am I changing the words or something? That seems like the gist of it. Anyway, you have it in your heads again, unless you haven't seen The Lego Movie, in which case you didn't know that song your friends' kids were singing was from The Lego Movie. So here, watch this.

 Like another Marvel film that came out this year, I hadn't really heard of the source material for Big Hero 6, but I feel I can't be blamed for that, as it comes from the same collective who brought the Disney Channel Ben 10 Alien something or other. No actual offense intended, but other than briefly encountering Ben 10 merchandise at a toy store, I have no connection whatsoever to it. This has little bearing on Big Hero 6, which is still a pretty entertaining movie despite following the "superhero / team origin story" to the letter.

 To wit: Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a young slacker with a gift for making robots, but his lack of direction worries his brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney). Tadashi takes his brother to the institute he studies at, one for young inventors like Go Go (Jamie Chung), Wasabi (Damon Wayans, Jr.), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), and Fred (T.J. Miller), under the tutelage of Professor Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell). Tadashi is working on Baymax (Scott Adsit), an inflatable robot designed to provide medical care, and Hiro decides to apply himself. Then, after an encounter with businessman Allister Krei (Alan Tudyk) at a convention ends in tragedy, Hiro loses his brother and finds solace in Baymax. They work together as a team to solve a murder mystery, there's betrayal, hurt feelings, and the surprise identity of the villain.

 And yet, despite the fact that you can guess exactly where Big Hero 6 is going every single step of the way, the film manages to be frequently amusing and engaging. Perhaps it's the jumbled near-future world of San Fransokyo, or the design of the characters as hero. Or maybe it's just Baymax, who is easily worth watching the film for. I can't attest to its originality or any novelty in storytelling, but sometimes when you do something familiar well enough, it can carry you through. Considering that one of my favorite movies of this year falls directly into that category, I can't therefore hold it against Big Hero 6, but it's middle-tier Disney / Pixar, and certainly not something I would choose over the likes of Wreck-It Ralph in the future.

 Serviceable is perhaps an unfair way to characterize Disney's Into the Woods, because it damns a perfectly fun Steven Sondheim adaptation with faint praise. I'm trying very hard to separate the film from the stage production, because while I understand the need for many of the changes, it doesn't make me miss the narrator's presence in the second "act" any less. What Rob Marshall (Chicago) chose to do instead makes sense in its own way, and creates a nice cyclical tone to the fairy tale presentation, but the film is decidedly less "meta" than its source. Still, everyone in the cast gives it their all (with the exception, perhaps, of a totally superfluous Johnny Depp cameo as the Big Bad Wolf, which amounts to "Johnny Depp with prosthetic whiskers") and it's always visually engaging. Meryl Streep might not be by Witch (that's staying with Bernadette Peters), but I can't act as though she doesn't do a fine job. James Corden and Emily Blunt make a fine pair as the Baker and his Wife, and Anna Kendrick is fitfully fretful as Cinderella being chased by her Prince Charming (Chris Pine, who I didn't realize could sing). MacKenzie Mauzy and Billy Magnussen make less of an impression as Rapunzel and her Prince, but it's more than compensated for by Daniel Huttlestone and Lilla Crawford as Jack and Little Red Riding Hood. It may not be my Into the Woods, but it's certainly a good starting point for younger audiences, even if Disney tried very hard to pretend it wasn't a musical in the advertising.

 Rather than repost my earlier Godzilla review (with bonus Godzilla on Monster Island coverage), I'll link to the original and include the following excerpt, in case you're fatigued from Into the Woods paragraph-ness:

 "But in all seriousness Godzilla 2014 is pretty good stuff. I give it some grief but generally speaking the monster fights at the end are worth the price of admission. I liked that Edwards decided to show most of the MUTO mayhem from the perspective of the people on the ground, where they lose sight of monsters in the dust or are falling from a carrier plane and can see part of Godzilla as the descend through the clouds. It's a good visual hook for the film and does convey the sense of carnage better than the obvious miniatures in Godzilla on Monster Island. Although those miniatures are pretty funny looking and are actually being smashed (or being burned with a flamethrower, in the case of tanks) I did chuckle every time Strathairn said "Godzilla," which wasn't nearly as often as I'd hoped.. In most ways, the newer film has the better budget and conveys the power and size of Godzilla better, but it also doesn't have Space Cockroaches."

Likewise, I'll provide you with the original review of Cheap Thrills, and tantalize you with this portion, wherein the Cap'n makes an unusual comparison to, uh, A Serbian Film:


"I'm intentionally not telling you how crazy things get because not knowing what's going to happen or how far down the rabbit hole [the characters] are willing to go is part of the fun of watching Cheap Thrills. Like Ti West's The House of the Devil, there is a sense early on that something bad is always about to happen, but [...] (r)ather than simply shoving our faces in the ugly side of humanity for 87 minutes, E.L. Katz makes sure there's also comedy peppered throughout [...] (there's a sequence of events late in the film involving a meat cleaver and an iron that shouldn't be as funny as it is, but a well disguised reveal makes the laughter more hearty).

 Black comedies are notoriously tricky to get right, but Katz threads the needle very well with Cheap Thrills, and does it without ever making what happens seem outside of the realm of possibility. Other than one challenge I can't imagine anyone have time to make up on the fly, everything in the film matches the verisimilitude with which it's presented, which is all the more impressive. Cheap Thrills is a great movie to watch with friends who don't mind a little twisted in their cinema, and you won't have to clean vomit up off of the floor (maybe). I don't think you can say the same about A Serbian Film, so I think I know which one I'd pick."

 And on that note, we'll make an uncomfortable left turn to discuss the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor I've long admired who left sooner than I'd like. If there's any upside (and really, there isn't), there were at least a few finished films in the can we could enjoy, and I saw two of the three this year: A Most Wanted Man and God's Pocket. (I'm going to have to watch the first two Hunger Games movies if I want to see his final films*).

 I knew about the former but not the latter, in large part because A Most Wanted Man comes from Anton Corbijn (Control, The American) and is based on a John le Carré (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Constant Gardener) novel, which would imply a stripped down narrative presented in a low key fashion. Which, in fact, it is, sometimes to its detriment. The film follows Günther Bachmann (Hoffman), a spy operating a small operation in Post 9/11 Hamburg, as he picks up on and tries to intercept Chechen refugee Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) who sneaks into Germany. The US and German authorities are interested in this undocumented Muslim, but Gunther's interest is piqued when it becomes clear he's not radicalized, but is looking to claim the fortune of his father, a Russian general.

Gunther allows Issa to contact immigration lawyer Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), and through her, the bank where his inheritance is being kept. The manager, Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe), is resistant, but Günther convinces both of them that they can use Issa's money to definitively prove that Islamic philanthropist Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi) is funneling cash into terrorist cells. It's an uncomfortable bargain, but Tommy agrees, Annabel has no choice, and Issa is none the wiser. The only person who concerns Günther more than the German authorities is Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright), a representative from the CIA who is more than aware of his previous failure, the one that landed him in Hamburg, constantly begging for more time from the locals.

 After it becomes clear in A Most Wanted Man what Issa is really after, much of the tension tied up with the "post 9/11" setting drains away, and Corbijn's film becomes strictly a character study of a man who has been down on his luck too many times. It barely sustains itself, narratively, and like many Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the ending is decidedly anti-climactic. This is not to say it isn't satisfying or appropriate, or that it shouldn't be inevitable for Günther, but it does rob the film of a certain quality. I enjoyed watching A Most Wanted Man, but not quite as much as I'd hoped. Hoffman is fantastic: sullen, slouched over like a man who knows failure all too well, for whom even sitting up is laborious. Once you work out his accent, it's a real wonder to watch Hoffman work. Wright, Dafoe, and McAdams are also very good in not particularly showy roles. I wouldn't hesitate recommending A Most Wanted Man, but don't be surprised if you feel a bit like Günther when it's all over.

 God's Pocket doesn't stray much further from the concept of "loser noir," if we're talking strictly from a protagonist's point of view. The passion project of John Slattery (Mad Men), who adapted Peter Dexter's novel (with Alex Metcalf) and directed, it's tonally akin to a film like The Drop - which I'll be reviewing in a future part of this series. Hoffman again plays a man accustomed to being browbeaten, not merely for his lot in life, but because of where he's from. Or, to be more specific, where he's not from.

 Mickey Scarpato (Hoffman) lives in the small community of God's Pocket, Pennsylvania, but he's not from there. That's a problem, because the working class of God's Pocket only give any credence to people who grew up there, so while Mickey is married to local gal Jeanie (Christina Hendricks) and delivers meat (that might be stolen) to restaurants around town, he's not of them. He's just there, and if you really ask anybody, Mickey has his father-in-law to thank for the business in the first place. His stepson, Leon (Caleb Landy Jones), is a real piece of work, and when he mouths off one time too many at work, he ends up on the wrong side of the pipe. The workers tell the cops it was an accident, and Jeanie goes catatonic, convinced of foul play and delusional about her son.

 Money for the funeral is going to be tricky, and Mickey knows that Smilin' Jack Moran (Eddie Marsan) either gets his full payment, or else. (The "or else," by the way, turns out to be a cruel and darkly humorous turn late in the film.) His only real friend in town is Arthur Capezio (John Turturro), a small link in the mob chain that Mickey sometimes finds himself involved in. But things do not go so well for Mickey and Arthur, and the death of Leon draws the attention of local newspaper columnist and "man of the people" Richard Shellburn (Richard Jenkins). A barely functioning alcoholic, Shellburn can't resist Jeanie, and the shell-shocked housewife is easy prey for a guy two steps removed from greatness.

 The story comes colliding together over the course of a few days, between Leon's death and his funeral, and carries over just a bit to include Shellburn saying just a little too much about the people of God's Pocket. And then, for good measure, there's an amusing epilogue which may or may not be a happy ending. I had heard that people felt "cheated" that God's Pocket wasn't a dark comedy, which perhaps it was billed as, but instead a character study that grows increasingly desperate. Yes, there are some (mostly) morbidly funny parts, but Coen-esque is not how I'd characterize Slattery's film. That said, if you come in with expectations properly in check, you're really going to enjoy God's Pocket, even if you're just an outsider, like Mickey.

 Finally, I'd like to mention that while I get why so many people are raving about The Skeleton Twins, it seems to the Cap'n like the film gets along largely on the charisma of its leads: Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. Like St. Vincent, it's a story that's been told so many times that you can see the beats coming a mile away. Take two estranged siblings with a hinted at difficult childhood, reconnect after one or both attempt suicide, and drop the outsider sibling back hometown. There's a rekindling of a torrid love affair from long ago, a marriage that isn't as solid as it would appear, and maybe some other infidelity to boot. Hell, there's even a scene where the titular siblings are mad at each other, but overcome it and rekindle their bond by lip synching to Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," and you know how I feel about Starship.

 And yet, it's hard to deny that despite some rote, dare I say eye-rolling moments that seem to come along with every film like this from, I don't know, Garden State onward, The Skeleton Twins is worth seeing for Hader and Wiig. It isn't just that they're playing against type - this film just barely qualifies as "comedy" - but that their real life friendship from years together on SNL bleeds onto the screen, making it very believable to buy them as brother and sister. There's a moment in the dentist's office where Maggie (Wiig) works that feels like improvisation. Maggie and Milo (Hader) collapse into uncontrollable laughter, and it's a genuine moment that helps The Skeleton Twins overcome its more predictable tendencies.

 There are a few other good characters in the film: Luke Wilson plays Lance, Maggie's "how did they end up together husband," who despite his role in the story manages to come out as a decent, honest guy who tries to include Milo into their dynamic. Ty Burrell has the second most substantive role as Rich, Milo's former English teacher who has issues of his own, and whose relationship with his former student is a serious sticking point for Maggie. Of course, she has her own issues with monogamy, and the current object of her obsessive infidelity is Billy (Boyd Holbrook), her scuba instructor. Joanna Gleeson has a cameo as Maggie and Milo's mother, and it gives some hint into their dysfunctional family history. But by and large, this is Wiig and Hader's show, and they're certainly worth the price of admission. Bear in mind that The Skeleton Twins is often a very dark movie, one that addresses suicide frequently throughout the film, so don't expect to chuckle your way through the film. We're not talking Heathers, here. Actually, IMDB lists Frank as a "similar" film, and now that I think about it, that's appropriate.

 Next time we'll take a look at some of the bigger releases of 2014 that I was really looking forward to seeing, and maybe didn't end up being so thrilled with. They're ones I get asked about a lot, so we'll take a look and figure out the whys and hows soon...



 * This is not to say I won't or wouldn't have otherwise, just that I haven't seen them yet. People I know and whose opinions I generally trust have vouched for them. I just haven't gotten around to it, yet.

2013 Recap: Closer and Closer to the Top (Part Three)

 Continuing in the seemingly never-ending "Middle" section of the Recap-o-Rama-Rama, you'll be happy to know that Cap'n Howdy is finally getting to some horror movies. I didn't see a lot of the new horror movies this year, although I certainly will check out (in order of interest) You're Next, The Conjuring, Insidious Part 2, and The Lords of Salem at some point in the New Year. What I did see, I mostly enjoyed (Evil Dead aside), and will cover more thoroughly in just a moment. And some other stuff, but who am I kidding? This site is called Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium, and you came for the horror, so let me give it to you!

Found Footage, Zombies, Dolls, and Learning the Alphabet for the Last Time.

 One could suppose that if Warm Bodies was a zombie movie for teenage girls, then World War Z is a zombie movie for people who vaguely know the word "zombie" in popular culture. It's not even really a horror movie - more of an action / disaster hybrid with a redesigned third act that inches towards suspense but still ends up like a tamer 28 Days Later. And I watched the "unrated" version, for the record. I can only imagine how toothless World War Z must have been in theaters. Still, it has a scrappy, amiable charm for a big budgeted blockbuster studio "tent pole" movie.

 Based almost not at all on the book of the same name by Max Brooks, World War Z is the story of Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a retired UN investigator living with his family, until the zombie outbreak begins, that is. Then the Deputy Secretary General Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) brings him back in to travel around the world and see what caused the outbreak, from South Korea to Israel and eventually to a World Health Organization research center in Ireland. Separated from his family, and with continually dwindling support, Gerry finds that the zombie outbreak is capable of overcoming even the most fortified of cities, and unless they can find a cure, humanity is doomed.


 World War Z is essentially a travelogue designed to show off various big action set pieces, which director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) does fairly well, and which Brad Pitt responds to with a reasonable sense of urgency. The zombies are sometimes people in makeup but are usually great swaths of CGI mayhem, particularly during the siege of Jerusalem. The movie makes an abrupt turn in the section in Ireland, due in large part because the delay in World War Z's release had everything to do with the third act not working, so they scrapped the original ending in Russia and went with a more sparse, claustrophobic ending. It works, although you can see loose threads of plot line in the film as a result - the main example is Matthew Fox's UN soldier who doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose other than to help move Gerry's family around, but who in the original version "takes" his wife and daughter as his own. Now it just seems like an oddly high profile casting choice for a minor role at best. Doctor Who fans already know the prescient casting of Peter Capaldi as the WHO Doctor (that IS how he appears in the credits).

 There's not really much else to say about the movie. I thought it was watchable, if mostly average. The story behind the movie is more interesting than the finished product. The survival bits near the beginning and towards the end are good, but have been done better before. All of the big action sequences are bombastic and if you like explosions and zombies and some degree of violence, the unrated cut is certainly worth your time. It's popcorn fare through and through, which is fine and dandy every now and then, but I can't imagine that I'd be all that enthused for World War Z 2.

 I already have some degree of coverage for V/H/S 2, Curse of Chucky, and The ABCs of Death, but it doesn't seem fair to have a section devoted to horror that only covers a movie that isn't really a horror movie, so let's talk about them some more, shall we? I saw The ABCs of Death at the Nevermore Film Festival, along with The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh and The Casebook of Eddie Brewer, both of which I'm pretty sure are movies from 2012 and don't count, but feel free to click the ABCs link to read about them. Rosalind Leigh is out on video now, and I'm not sure about Eddie Brewer, but I'll keep an eye out. Good independent horror is always worth checking out, especially when there are so many bad ones clogging the shelves. Or queue, or Redbox - whatever it is you modern kids use these days.

 Oh, right, I was talking about The ABCs of Death, which is now getting a sequel that I'm cautiously looking forward to. Not because I'm worried about quality, necessarily, but when I say there are things in the first anthology you can't un-see, I mean it. Not just in the "you literally saw it and can't un-see something you saw, dummy," but in the "great, I'm not going to be able to forget that, hard as I may try." Believe me, if I could go back in time and take a bathroom break during "L is for Libido" I would. Or "Pressure" or whatever "Z" was. Twenty six shorts films means there are some terrible ones mixed in with some genuinely inspired ones, and there are some truly bizarre entries (like "Fart" or the Harakiri one), and a surprising amount of toilet humor, probably more than one movie needed. If you're interested in the concept, the first film allowed people to vote for "T" and you can find many of them on Vimeo or YouTube. For The ABCs 2, the voting is for "M." So far I've seen some pretty interesting entries ("Masticate" might be my favorite) and they're fairly easy to find. If you'd rather wait for the movie to come out to see what wins, they should still be around afterwards.

 It's no secret that I like anthology horror films (that's probably a sentence I've written more times than I'd care to admit), and V/H/S 2 is a better one at what it sets out to do than The ABCs in construction, if not ambition. The more I think about it, the less it really has anything to do with "found footage," especially VHS tapes, as someone would have to go through extraordinary effort to edit most of the digital footage they "found" and then transfer it to a VCR in order to fit into the wraparound narrative's gimmick. I've heard that the WFUN Halloween Special does a better job of actually using the "VHS" conceit, but since I have not been able to watch it, I don't want to comment definitively. That said, I still think V/H/S 2 is an improvement in every way over the first film and will be keeping an eye out for successive entries into whatever you want to call this anthology format. Also, I need to get that special edition that has V/H/S 2 on VHS, just because.

 And Curse of Chucky. I've already gushed over it twice, because as mentioned with Furious Six last time, by the time you make it to six movies in a series, it's usually something terrible like Freddy's Dead, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, or Hellraiser: Hellseeker. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is the exception to that rule, and now it has some company with Curse of Chucky. (Sorry, I don't think I ever saw Children of the Corn 666 or, uh Puppet Master 6 if there is one. All of the Saw movies sucked, so it's not like VI was any better or worse, but I guess the whole "health insurance" thing was pretty dumb.) I think it would have had a pretty good shot in theaters, and I wish I had seen it with an audience, but DTV it was and the crowd at Horror Fest ate it up, so I can't complain too much. Let's just hope there isn't another eight year gap between Child's Play sequels.

Novel-less Adaptations

 Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine)'s The Place Beyond the Pines feels like his Great American Novel adaptation, but without a book to be based on. It's a sprawling, multi-generational story of small town America, of politics and crime and the sins of the father(s). At nearly two-and-a-half hours, it still feels shortened, as though there were threads of the story that were left out, chapters unvisited. While not altogether successful, the ambition to make such a dense story is nevertheless most impressive.

 The Place Beyond the Pines is broken up roughly into three sections: the first involves Luke (Ryan Gosling) a circus motorbike stuntman who decides to visit Romina (Eva Mendes) while in Schenectady. They hooked up the last time he was in town, and he figures maybe they can again, but when he arrives at her home unannounced, he discovers that he's the father of her infant son, Jason. Luke, despite being something of a drifter and generally shady character, immediately quits his job and decides to stay in town to help raise Jason, even though Romina is with Kofi (Mahershala Ali) and makes it clear that Luke isn't needed.

 The drifter ends up staying in the trailer of mechanic Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), who mentions he used to rob banks when Luke asks for work. The adrenaline junkie in Luke takes to robbing banks, and he uses the money to help Jason, despite Romina and Kofi's protests. When Luke turns violent, Robin abandons him and destroys his bike, giving the stuntman less to work with when he insists on robbing two banks in one day. While escaping on a faulty motorbike, Luke is pursued by Officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), with violent repercussions for both men.

 Without spoiling too much (because you really should see The Place Beyond the Pines), the focus of the film shifts from Gosling to Cooper as he navigates the Schenectady Police Department, corruption, and his own ambitions. We're introduced to his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne), his own infant son, A.J.,  his father, Jude Al Cross (Harris Yulin), fellow officers Scotty (Gabe Fazio) and Deluca (Ray Liotta), and District Attorney Bill Killcullen (Bruce Greenwood), and the ways that they intersect with his crisis of conscience following the encounter with Luke and his new reputation as "Hero Cop."

 The film then jumps ahead fifteen years and picks up with Cross running for New York Attorney General, when Jennifer drops off the teenage A.J. (Emory Cohen) with his father. Avery transfers A.J. to a Schenectady high school for his final year, and the drug enthusiast teen quickly seeks out the first kid who acts like him, the quiet Jason (Dane DeHaan). Neither know their histories are intertwined, but A.J.'s negative and bullying presence soon brings Jason more trouble than he wanted while at the same time introducing him to a father he never knew. Romina and Kofi are helpless bystanders as Jason realizes a whole piece of his history, of who he is, has been withheld from him, and the path to discovery takes some dark turns.

 The Place Beyond the Pines' success for you is going to hinge on how you feel about the somewhat abrupt transition between protagonists midway through the film. The Bradley Cooper section of the film is compelling, but not as immediately gripping as the early stretch with Gosling, and the Avery Cross "chapters" of the movie take a slow, but deliberate, change of pace in developing the characters. Things pick up again when we meet A.J. and Jason as teens and see that much of The Place Beyond the Pines has been building to their stories, but the middle stretch might be too jarring for some. I personally felt that the beginning and the end are more than enough to make up for it, and that the middle leaves something to be desired (Avery Cross simply isn't as interesting a character as a young cop), but in laying the groundwork for Jason's story, it's a necessary detour. It still feels like there are a number of unresolved issues from the middle section of the film that seem like setups which are never paid off. Maybe they were never meant to be addressed again, but it does feel like reading a book and seeing the movie that needs to drop some critical moments for the sake of time or narrative flow. The end result is epic, but simultaneously intimate, and a welcome change of pace from conventional storytelling.

 There's no easy way to say this, but To the Wonder didn't really do anything for me. The Cap'n isn't alone in this, and apparently 2013 was the year of declaring that "The Emperor Has No Clothes" about Terrence Malick. Maybe it is possible to have too much of a good thing; up until 2005, when he released The New World, Malick made three films in three decades (Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line), which gave audiences plenty of time to anticipate his next film, to pore over the last one, and the mystique of the reclusive director grew. But since The New World, Malick has been on a tear (comparably speaking) releasing The Tree of Life in 2011, To the Wonder in 2013, and Knight of Cups later this year. That's four movies in nine years (with another one underway), and perhaps Malick hit a saturation point none of us knew was coming, or could come.

 Critics were split on To the Wonder, and audiences mostly seemed to reject it as "pretentious" (which is not a new pejorative for a Malick film) and "empty." His films have, at least since Days of Heaven, valued the experiential over narrative structure. He tends to introduce themes that ask "Big" questions, like "what should humans follow, the path of nature or grace?" and as Malick gets older, the characters in his films become less important than the cosmic issues. You have to take it or leave it, because I don't think we're ever going to get something like Badlands again - the characters in a Malick film are merely cyphers for him to work out philosophical issues. To the Wonder isn't really any different, in that regard. I think the problem was that, for once, I didn't really connect to the issues he was grappling with.

 That is, at least, one of the problems I had with To the Wonder, and it's a fundamental one that kept me from letting the film wash over me (as they usually do). I can understand grappling with doubts about love and faith, but they don't personally engage me in any way, so the visuals were all I had to hang on to. Coupled with this is the fact that I'm not sure Malick knew what he wanted to say with To the Wonder, other than to put the issue out there and repeat it over and over again. Father Quintana (Javier Bardem) only seems to exist in order to provide (subtitled) narration about God's absence from his life, and to ask how to find spiritual enlightenment again. His role in the story is perfunctory, as the emotional travails of Neil (Ben Affleck), Marina (Olga Kurylenko), and - very briefly - Jane (Rachel McAdams) eat up most of the film.

The plot is bare bones, even compared to The Tree of Life. I can boil down into three sentences: Neil and Marina meet in Paris, and she agrees to move back to Oklahoma with him, where he works. She has doubts and returns to Paris with her daughter, and in their absence Neil reconnects with Jane, a childhood friend. When Marina returns, they marry but struggle and seek assistance from Father Quintana, but is it already too late?

 By the way, I only know their names because of the credits, because if someone says them in the film, I missed it for every character. Affleck mentioned in an interview that Malick films with a script and dialogue for the actors, and then tends to remove most of it during editing, and increasingly relies on narration to bridge the imagery (Sean Penn indicated something similar while disparaging his diminished presence in The Tree of Life). Neil says almost nothing at all in the film - he's really there more for Marina and Jane to project onto, and Affleck has, undeservedly I think, been shouldered with much of the blame for its failure in execution. In truth, it's not really his fault - the film, in its finished form, is a meditation on the inability of Marina to connect to Neil juxtaposed with Quintana's spiritual crisis. Marina is, for all intents and purposes, the main character - it's her we hear speaking in narration (subtitled, this time from French), and when she leaves the story for a while, McAdams steps in as a surrogate lover, but it's not long. Affleck is understated, largely because it isn't his story. It's not his crisis to deal with - of the cyphers in the film, Neil is the one we're left with to project all of our doubts on.

  I can't decide if the reason that the visual fallback doesn't work is because this is the first time Malick isn't working at all in period. It's such an odd thing to get hung up on, but To the Wonder is the only film he's made that's set entirely in the present, and once Neil and Marina leave Paris, it settles into a very flat, somewhat drab Midwestern location. The open sky is always nice to look at, but there was only so much of Kurylenko twirling in the "magic hour" light that can sustain a movie, and the sterility of their home in America didn't help. I realize that's the point - comparing it to the Old World of Europe, but for the first time it didn't feel like that was enough. Being visually boring isn't something I ever thought I'd equate with Terrence Malick, but I did check the running time of the movie midway into the film which is the first time I've ever done that with one of his movies.

 So To the Wonder is the punching bag that naysayers have been waiting for, and I don't want to add any more fuel to the fire, but it didn't really do much for me. It's disappointing, but these things happen, unfortunately.

 In the absence of the critical acclaim for Terrence Malick, critics suddenly found themselves scrambling to name the director's heir apparent, and it seems they've settled on David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints. I can certainly see the appeal, as Lowery (who edited Shane Carruth's Upstream Color, a film you'll be hearing about before this recap is over) crafted a tale of Texas in the 1970s that's bound to remind viewers of Badlands. It opens with a title card that states "This Was Texas," and drops us right into the lives of Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara).

 We don't know much about them, other than Ruth helps Bob and his partner Freddy (Kentucker Audley) rob someone and make a getaway with police in hot pursuit. During the shootout at an abandoned Muldoon family farmhouse, Ruth shoots Office Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster) in the shoulder after Freddy is killed. Because Ruth is pregnant, Bob takes the blame for the shot and is sent to prison for 25 years. Four years later, Ruth is raising her daughter, Sylvie (Kennadie and Jacklynn Smith) with the help of Patrick and Skerritt (Keith Carradine), a man with ties to Bob and Freddy. That is, until Bob escapes, and everyone anticipates he'll make good on his promise to come back for Ruth...

 Ain't Them Bodies Saints is more narrative driven than anything Malick's ever done, but otherwise I can see the comparisons to Badlands. It's a lush, atmospheric film, one that slowly reveals information, leaving plenty of open-ended plot lines throughout the early stretches. Bob's letters to Ruth are read in narration (as well as Ruth's one response), and much of the latter half of Ain't Them Bodies Saints is conveyed visually rather than with dialogue. The title itself is something of a mantra, not meant to symbolize anything in particular, but to put you in the frame of mind to experience the film. Affleck, Mara, Foster, and particularly Carradine turn in great performances, as does Nate Parker as Sweetie, Bob's friend on the outside that helps him when he returns to Meridian to find Ruth.

 It's a fine film, and I look forward to seeing more from Lowery, although I'd hesitate to call him the next Terrence Malick. For one, I don't see that such a title is necessary for an emerging director, and may in fact be more burdensome than laudatory. Ain't Them Bodies Saints has everything it needs to stand up on its own without crowning the director as the successor to another director's legacy. Taken on its own terms, there's more than enough for you to enjoy Ain't Them Bodies Saints.

Apatow in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush (Or, a Tale of Two Apatows)

 It feels like there are three camps in the "Apatow Productions" industry: there's the Judd Apatow camp, which sort of ties things together but are mostly relationship based movies that go over two hours and have lots and lots of improv. Then there's the Adam McKay / Will Ferrel Gary Sanchez Productions / Funny or Die group, that focuses by an large on outlandish roles for Ferrell and company (Talladega Nights, Step Brothers). And then there's the Seth Rogen / Evan Goldberg camp, that brings us weird genre hybrids like Pineapple Express, Observe and Report, and Superbad. Sometimes they overlap and you'll see actors from one film in another of the camps (actually, more often than not, you will) but they seem to remain distinct entities unto themselves.

 As Apatow did not have a movie out this year, having released This is 40 in 2012, the Apatow Production brand fell into the capable hands of the Rogen and McKay camps to release two of the funnier movies I saw this year: This is the End and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (respectively). Until Anchorman 2, I don't think I'd laughed harder at anything all year than This is the End (although there's one other movie I'll get to next week that's pretty close). They're very different types of movies, and I won't pretend that blatant vulgarity is a large part of their appeal, but laugh I did, and repeatedly.

 It never really occurred to me, but there was a very good chance that This is the End could have been a disaster. For lowbrow comedy, it's strangely high concept: a group of well known comedy actors play versions of themselves in the middle of the apocalypse. Actually, save for a few people in the background of the party and at the convenience store, everybody in This is the End is playing themselves, or an exaggerated version of their on-screen "persona"'s. Having seen actual interviews with Danny McBride, it's pretty clear he's not just Kenny Powers, but the "Danny McBride" in This is the End is absolutely a variation on that. Seth Rogen is the amiable stoner, Jonah Hill is the eager to please guy, Craig Robinson is the unflappable man about town, and James Franco is the weirdo. Well, okay, the last one might not be an exaggeration at all, but the screenplay by Rogen and Goldberg takes most of its shots at the "lesser" films on Franco's resume.

 I haven't really seen enough of Jay Baruchel outside of supporting roles in other Judd Apatow productions to know how close his "Hollywood Outsider"personality is to real life, but beneath all of the dick jokes and nonstop profanity is the simple story of two friends who grew apart. It's really the only thing that holds together the otherwise episodic nature of This is the End. Beyond the story of Seth Rogen (Rogen) and Jay Baruchel (Baruchel) trying to figure out where their friendship in compared to the Hollywood lifestyle, the movie is mostly a series of set ups that put Hill, Rogen, Baruchel, Franco, McBride, and Robinson in bizarre situations.

 And don't get me wrong, it's all VERY funny while you're watching it, and afterwards to boot, but don't go in expecting some kind of sustained story. It's more like "okay, it's the apocalypse - what do they have to eat? what drugs will they do? what happens when they run out of water? hey, Emma Watson survived and wants to stay with the guys - who's going to screw that up?" Even the ending feels like, "well, how are we going to end this movie?" and the answer is with the Backstreet Boys, paying off something we didn't even realize was a set up from earlier in the movie.

 In the meantime, there's a lot of improvisation, lots of poking fun at themselves (particularly Franco, who in the movie saves memorabilia from all of his films, leading them to have the prop gun from Flyboys as their only weapon). The party at Franco's house (where the movie takes place) is loaded with cameos, many from Apatow veterans who meet horrible ends. Michael Cera makes the best impression playing the coked out asshole from hell that we all know he is, but my favorite might be Paul Rudd accidentally crushing a woman's skull with his foot when the apocalypse starts. And yes, that's exactly how that happens.

 For those of you looking for consistent and raucous laughter, This is the End is a guaranteed winner. It plays like gangbusters with a crowd, too.

 After the first trailer, I must admit that I was worried Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues was going to suck. The long in development sequel (that almost didn't happen) just didn't look very funny from the ads, and to be honest some of what I saw made me groan. "Oh no, not Ron Burgundy being accidentally racist at the dinner table..." Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about. Like the first film (which I saw on a whim, also assuming it would only be intermittently funny), it's even better than you could have expected.

 With that much time to work on it, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell found plenty of time to hone the screenplay to perfection, and with a cast that clicks so well together, the improv doesn't stick out at all amidst the actual story (there is, apparently, an alternate cut of the film that replaces every single joke with a different one being released on Blu-Ray). The callbacks to the first film are limited, but well placed, and the new cast members fit in like a glove.

 Since Anchorman 2 is still playing at the time I'm writing this and I highly recommend you go see it, I won't say too much about the plot. It involves the News Team joining GNN, the first 24 Hour News Network (run by a psychotic Australian millionaire), but Ron (Ferrell), Champ (David Koechner), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and Brick (Steve Carrell) aren't there to headline - no, that's for Jack Lime (James Marsden), the big time anchor. The Channel Five boys have the graveyard slot, and they decide to fill it with the news audiences want, not what they need, to the dismay of producer Freddie Shapp (Dylan Baker) and manager Linda Baker (Meagan Good). But it works!

 Make no mistake - Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues may be rated PG-13, but it's so close to an R that I would have sworn it was one. In fact, I had to look, because I thought it was an R. The "shit"'s fly almost as frequently as the non sequitur(s) do, and the film is loaded with sight gags you might not catch on the first viewing (and yes, I've seen it twice already). The use of a Simon and Garfunkel song near the end of the movie had me laughing so hard that I almost missed the subtitles from Baxter. Oh, and Kristen Wiig is a great addition as the love interest and only person dumber than Brick Tamland. The less I say about the "rumble" in this film, the better, because not knowing who's going to show up makes it even better, but I will say keep a close eye on the ghost of Stonewall Jackson...

 I'm not sure this is going to be as immediately quotable as the first film, but honestly I don't care. It's funny, and that's what is more important in a comedy. Not only did McKay and Ferrell not drop the ball, they carried it across the length of the field for a touchdown. Or do I mean "Whammy!"? Oh, and the bats... Oh, the bats. I'm trying hard not to spoil this movie for you, but when I think of it, there's so much that comes to mind.

 At any rate, both This is the End and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues have tremendous replay value, and I'm looking forward to watching both yet again in the coming year(s).

 We're very nearly done with the middle, and as you can see my enthusiasm is growing as things progress. If you think these are getting ecstatic, just wait until you see the "Best Of."

Retro Review: Drillbit Taylor

 (editor's note: The Cap'n realized there was a series of Blogorium posts from 2008 that never made the transition from our old stomping grounds to the new one. As a result, it seemed like a good idea to share some other reviews that had been otherwise "lost" over the past four years).


Let's talk about Juniorbad, which is what the clever title of a review for Drillbit Taylor should have. Fair or not, that's exactly what the movie is: a younger, less amusing version of Superbad written by Seth Rogen and produced by Judd Apatow.

    The only significant difference is that Owen Wilson is the title character, a homeless military deserter approached by three freshment to act as their bodyguard. See, in their first week at high school, a surprisingly crafty bully manages to fool both the principal and the children's parents into thinking he's the victim, while in the meanwhile he's trying to run them down in a car after school (I'm not making this up). Hence, the need for Drillbit Taylor to protect them.

    Everything else maps out pretty much the same way. There's the skinny nerd hero who kind of reminds you of Michael Cera, the fat kid surrogate for Jonah Hill, and the quirky shrimper wanna-be McLovin. This might be cute in its own right, except that Drillbit Taylor lacks just about everything Superbad had going for it. When you knock the age of the characters from seniors to freshmen, and accordingly cast pubescent kids working with a PG-13 script, it gets hard to go anywhere new.

    It's not that the kids aren't likeable, because half of the time they are. The other half of the time, the script shoehorns them into doing things that just don't make sense. Of course, when you're talking about a movie that stacks the odds against them so much that it get ridiculous, I'm not sure where my loyalties should lie. I am pretty sure I shouldn't have been rooting for the bully to just kill the kids, which I did on a few occasions.

    The problem is that Drillbit Taylor seems like the kind of movie that should precede Superbad, and not follow it. Remove Wilson from the equation and it makes sense that the three youngsters (Nate Hartley, Troy Gentle, and David Dorfman) would get over being bullied and become the ignored nerds we meet at the beginning of Superbad. That being said, the story just isn't very interesting in and of itself, which tends to render most of the film moot.

    You can find little moments of amusement in Drillbit Taylor, mostly coming from the adults who seem to be in a different film than the children. Director Steven Brill (Little Nicky) packs the movie with cameos from David Koechner, Cedric Yarborough, Lisa Lampanelli (playing herself), Adam Baldwin, Frank Whaley, Matt Besser, Beth Littleford, and Stephen Root. Danny McBride (Foot Fist Way, All the Real Girls) has the closest thing to a supporting role as one of Drillbit's homeless friends, but even he feels restrained by the "kid friendly" rating.

    Perhaps it's the PG-13. Maybe it's just the feeling of "been done, and better at that". All I know is that Drillbit Taylor is at best a middle of the road, watered down version of a much funnier movie. And I watched the "Unrated" version.

Geek Tuesday... for some reason.

 New release Tuesdays are usually a grab bag of fun new titles, back catalog releases / upgrades, and every now and then a out-of-left-field cult curveball. For a film geek, it's fun to scour "new release" lists to see what's coming out, so I can only imagine heads were exploding (Scanners style) this past Tuesday. Three extremely "geek friendly" DVDs / Blu-Rays dropped, each of which had a mixed reaction and not amazing box office numbers along for the ride. I've seen two of them, but not the other one (yet): Paul, Your Highness, and Super.


 If you haven't been following the Blogorium for long (and the Cap'n welcomes new arrivals), each film comes from a particular pedigree of nerd fandom: Paul is the "two geeks pick up an alien in the desert" film written by and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), is directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), and also features Jason Bateman (Arrested Development), Sigourney Weaver (Alien), Seth Rogen (Pineapple Express), Jo Lo Truglio (The State), Kristen Wiig, and Bill Hader (both SNL). The film begins at the San Diego Comic Con and is packed with references to other geeky alien movies. I generally enjoyed Paul, but the film doesn't really pick up until Wiig's arrival in the film, mostly because Paul isn't so much of a character as he is Seth Rogen before she enters the narrative.


 Your Highness is David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, George Washington)'s much anticipated follow-up to Pineapple Express, the film that moved Green from "indie filmmaker" to "mainstream sellout" in some eyes, but to many of us was a logical preamble to Eastbound and Down. Your Highness re-teamed Green with Danny McBride and James Franco along with Natalie Portman (Leon: The Professional), Justin Theroux (Mulholland Dr), Zooey Deschanel (500 Days of Summer), and was an ode to the sword and sorcery fantasy genre that was omnipresent in the 1980s. I must admit that other than Conan the Barbarian, I was never that into the whole movement, and only one website really seemed very excited about Your Highness when the film actually came out, so I skipped out on it. It's not highly regarded by critics or audiences, and when I couldn't make a $1.50 Theatre showing, it seemed best to let the film slide. I will give it a shot some time soon, because I do trust the creative team.



 Super splits critics right down the middle: James Gunn (who wrote Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake and directed the amazing Slither) took a very Troma-esque approach to the "super hero in the real world" subgenre (see: Kick-Ass, Defendor, Special, Paper Man, and a few others I'm forgetting), starring Rainn Wilson (The Office), Ellen Page (Juno), Kevin Bacon (Hollow Man), Michael Rooker (Slither), Nathan Fillion (Serenity) and very briefly, Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks). It's a twisted, at times extremely violent and crude film, and as many people hate it as love it. I have the feeling that some of that comes from the influence of Lloyd Kaufman's Troma Films, where Gunn cut his teeth - there are parts of Super that feel like they've been directly lifted from The Toxic Avenger, and if Troma team releases aren't your thing, Super might not be either. However, if you even liked Slither, you should check out Super.

 It was odd to see all of them coming out on the same day, draining the wallets of geeks who can't be bothered to sit in a movie theatre anymore, because they share roughly the same history: lots of buzz preceding their release, mixed reviews, and moderate to tepid audience attendance. I don't know about Your Highness, but Super and Paul will probably have a long life on video because they appeal to the shut-in's and cast-out's that do, well, what I'm doing right now. Gee, I wonder if I have Paul and Super sitting on the table across the room? Maybe, but what are they sitting under? Bet you won't guess that one!

 (Hint: It's not Your Highness.)

  It is fair to point out that despite their lack of box office busting prowess, none of the discs appear to be bare-bones. This may be a sign that studios are aware that the geek demographic is willing to pay a little bit more for a high quality, high definition experience as long as the movie is packed to the gills with bonus content (Universal is very good at this, and while Paul isn't as loaded as, say, Scott Pilgrim with extra features, it's a better lineup than say, Paramount's True Grit Blu-Ray).

 Why all three on the same day? I don't really know, but maybe we ought not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it's an opportunity to kick back with some friends, some brewskis, and enjoy a laid back August weekend.




Hollow Man is what you guys think of when you hear "Kevin Bacon", right? Or maybe Death Sentence? Oh, and Michael Rooker has been in a lot more than just Slither, but Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer ate up too much space and I'm sure as hell not going to use Mallrats.

Blogorium Review: Paul

I must admit I felt a twinge of sadistic glee reading online reviews of Greg Mottola's Paul when the film finally made its way to theatres two weeks ago (it opened in the United Kingdom last month): "geek" friendly sites were falling all over themselves trying to find nice ways to pad the disappointment of what seemed to be a great idea: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost write a movie about two geeks that run into an alien while touring famous "UFO" landmarks, and then star in the film with Seth Rogen as the alien, directed by the man who made Superbad. The phrases "feel good geek movie" and "hard to pin down tonally" didn't help trailers that already made Paul look less than appealing, so in a cruel way, I felt vindicated in not wanting to see the film.

But clearly I did see Paul, or this review would be happening on Friday (check the date) and probably masking another review, like last year*. Standing on the other side of the film, I understand the reviews attempts to soften high expectations from its target audience, but I think that many critics didn't quite set their disclaimers up in the right way. Paul is actually a pretty good movie, but you have to wait a little while before that's clear.

Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg), a comic book artist, and his best friend Clive Gollings (Nick Frost), a science fiction writer, have made the pilgrimage from the UK to the San Diego Comic Con, the geek mecca. They've also rented an RV in order to travel the Southwest in search of major alien landmarks (Area 51, Roswell, The Black Mailbox), but when a car whips around them and crashes on the road, they unwittingly become accomplices in the escape plan of Paul (Seth Rogen), an alien trying to get home after a long stint as prisoner of the United States government. On the lam, they inadvertently pick up Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a fundamentalist Christian that believes Earth is only 4,000 years old. Pursued by Agent Zoyle (Jason Bateman) and two junior agents, Haggard (Bill Hader) and O'Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio), who work for the mysterious "Big Guy," as well as Ruth's father Moses Buggs (John Carroll Lynch), our unwitting heroes race to return Paul to a rendezvous point before it's too late...

The film's biggest problem is that the introduction of Paul doesn't really work. That Seth Rogen plays Paul isn't the issue: it's that Paul IS Seth Rogen for the first fifteen minutes or so that we see him. Rather, Paul is the same kind of character type that Rogen gravitates towards, and his introduction in the film is more distracting than effective. It doesn't help that many of the jokes involving Paul rely heavily on vulgarity (anal probing, alien nudity) or obvious nods to other "first contact" films - to this I have to disperse the blame evenly between Pegg and Frost's script and Rogen's delivery, neither of which help Paul find its way early on.

Frost and Pegg do a fine job of setting up the world of the film (as do Bateman, Hader, and Lo Truglio) but Paul seems "off" in the character dynamic. Part of it is the wildly uneven comic tone, including a running joke about whether Graeme and Clive are gay that doesn't go anywhere. It's not something I can really pinpoint in one scene, but the film doesn't regain its footing until Kristen Wiig's character is introduced; suddenly the interpersonal relationships make a little more sense, Paul moves into the background (somewhat) or at least isn't the load bearer for comedy in the film. Wiig's understated delivery actually helps settle down Rogen's over-the-top delivery as Paul, and the way the says "because of his blasphemous theories" was the first big laugh I had in the film (the second really big one was the discovery of Agent Zoyle's first name).

Paul throws so many "geek" references at the wall that I can't possibly mention all of them, but not only can you expect several nods to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Star Trek, Predator, Mac and Me, The X-Files, E.T., and Aliens (the last two prominently featuring people involved in the films), but there's also Clive and Graeme's conversing in Klingon, a Wilhelm scream, two separate Indiana Jones references, a Back to the Future joke, a redneck bar version of the Cantina from A New Hope, and a clever way for Pegg and Frost to address a question raised in Shaun of the Dead (hint: it involves dogs).

Early in the film, the references seem more forced, which doesn't help the struggling first act to find its footing. That's also coupled with the bulk of the cameos in the film, including Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Jeffrey Tambor, and (KINDA SPOILER) the voice of Steven Spielberg - part of a scene that's so obvious I wish it hadn't made the final cut. Reviews seemed to think it was a big deal not to reveal that Sigourney Weaver was the mysterious voice that Agent Zoyle is talking to, but if that's the case then why can you clearly hear her in the trailer? I didn't think that was supposed to be such a surprise, to be honest, unless you've never heard her speak before.

Because I feel you're probably thinking that I didn't like Paul, it's important to mention that despite the bumpy first half, I found myself really engaged by the midpoint and actually rather enjoyed the film by the end. If the first section of the film is trying too hard, once the film finds its footing, Paul is actually quite good and something I wouldn't hesitate recommending. I would warn you that it isn't that the film is uneven or that the "geekery" comes hard and fast (to be fair, half of the characters in the film really don't get the whole "Comic-Con thing" and that there's a running joke involving no one knowing any of the books Tambour's character wrote), but that the film is so front loaded that you might be tempted to tune out.

Don't. Stick around until Kristen Wiig shows up, and Paul improves tremendously. The chemistry within the cast finally "clicks," the jokes shift in direction (including a push towards ridiculous bursts of vulgarity, many coming from Ruth's inexperience with cursing), and the evolution of Bill Hader's Haggard from loser to obsessed psychopath is worth the price of admission. Jason Bateman is pretty fantastic playing the "straight man" role; Pegg, Frost, Lo Truglio and Wiig are all great, and when Rogen settles down it's easier to tolerate Paul as a character. By the time that Blythe Danner appears as the adult version of a child we meet early in the film, I was completely on board with the film.

Paul is a better movie at the end than the beginning, which I suppose is a shame, because if it had the consistency in the first half that it does in the second, then it could be something really special. As it is, it's pretty good, a three-and-a-half star out of five kind of movie; you'll have a good time, and will probably rent it and watch it on TV, but won't run out to buy it in a few months. Then again, it is nice to see a movie that tries to entertain and mostly succeeds when far worse movies can't be bothered to do either week in and week out.



* You didn't really think I watched New Moon, did you?

Blogorium Review: Observe and Report

One of the reasons I retroactively dropped the Joe preview into Trailer Sunday is that Observe and Report is continually being compared to films that like and Taxi Driver. There's a genre in the mid-seventies about the psychotic/suicidal anti-hero that was a byproduct of increasingly violent Late Film Noir (D.O.A., Ace in the Hole, and Kiss Me Deadly). Observe and Report is clearly borrowing from this tradition, down to a well placed joke based on Travis Bickle's Taxi Driver montage, but I think there's something else going on here.

For starters, Observe and Report is the logical "next step" for Jody Hill. After The Foot Fist Way and Eastbound and Down, he's developed a knack for sociopaths with delusions of grandeur. While all three are comedies, they get increasingly darker. The final three episodes of Eastbound and Down turned out to be a nice bridge to Observe and Report, and it's probably for the best that the show aired before Report came out, because this may be the most uncomfortable laughter you can squeeze out of an audience.

Here's where the difference is between Observe and Report, Hill's other projects, and the "anti-hero" genre: I like Kenny Powers. I liked Fred Simmons. Yes, they were assholes and they treated people like shit, but underneath all of that, they were insecure dorks who had one thing they were good at. I even like Travis Bickle, despite all of the awkwardness and delusions. Travis Bickle is adrift, looking for a purpose to direct himself towards. Instead he lets his seething disgust and anger simmer, and when he can't successfully eliminate a politician, he settles for a pimp.

Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), on the other hand, I could not find myself rooting for. Ronnie is an appallingly dangerous sociopath, one who has access to power and a knack for violence that does no one in the film good. Even when he uses his brutality for good and abuses Nell (Collette Wolfe)'s boss to make him stop treating her like shit (a rare use of Patton Oswalt as the bad guy), it's in a bullying and clearly unethical way. He even has to ask Nell to pretend "I was never here". And that's the nice thing he does. Otherwise, he's relentlessly unlikeable, racist, and homophobic. Not unlike Joe Curran or Travis Bickle.

Ronnie is the head of Mall Security, and wields that position as though he was God's gift to the mall. This is par the course for a Jody Hill film, but the difference is that there's no real comeuppance for Ronnie at any point. Every time the universe proves him wrong, he bludgeons his way into winning again, including a shockingly violent finale involving a mall flasher. I really wasn't sure what to make of Ronnie graphically breaking someone's arm halfway into an 86 minute movie, but Observe and Report packs a lot of psychotic into a short span.

I'm not troubled that Ronnie wins (by his standards, and to be honest by the standards of just about every other character), although it is a break from the "anti-hero" label the film so frequently is likened to. For example, Travis Bickle somehow doesn't die in his charge of violence, and is regarded in small ways as a "folk hero", but you can tell at the end of Taxi Driver that the madness is still lurking behind those eyes. It's the last shot, for crying out loud.

Ronnie Barnhardt is rewarded for being an unlikeable, dangerous thug in a way that probably makes him more like Jack Bauer than Travis Bickle. Without spoiling too much, unlike Kenny Powers or Fred Simmons, Ronnie gets exactly what he wants with none of the consequences of his actions because his way solves all of the problems that matter.

Despite not really knowing how I feel about Ronnie, I think that Seth Rogen was very good in a totally different kind of role than we're used to. Anna Faris is good, if a bit one dimensional, as the object of Ronnie's affections. She's not interested, but he does manage to get her drunk and drugged up enough that there's a debatable rape scene in the film. Ray Liotta is great playing a variation on the "perplexed actual hero" role, and does it in a way that you really feel bad he has to suffer Ronnie's presence.

The other mall cops (Michael Peña, Jesse Plemons, and John and Matt Yuan) each have their moment to shine, particularly Peña, who gets the best of the film's montages and gets some surprising character development. Because of the way Observe and Report is designed, it actually caught me off guard that Hill was developing Wolfe's Nell as a legitimate love interest for Ronnie and not simply another subject in his kingdom, but the pay off is sweet. Aziz Ansari and Danny McBride both get good cameos, as does Patton Oswalt, all ending in the wrath of Ronnie Barnhardt.

Technically speaking, Hill stepped up his game for Observe and Report. There's some great camerawork, use of editing, and slow motion in the film. His use of music is clever and unexpected, and I think Observe and Report is a very well made film. The story moves out of the constraints you're expecting almost immediately, and goes in directions I did not see coming, which is a sign of good film-making. For a movie that's as short as Observe and Report is, I never felt like I was being short changed as an audience member.

So should you watch Observe and Report? If you like Eastbound and Down, and particularly if you really liked The Foot Fist Way, then yes. I skew it in that direction because for all its depravities, Eastbound and Down is actually friendlier for most audiences than The Foot Fist Way is. There's something to the comparisons to psychotic "antihero" films, so if you're a fan of that sub-genre, it's also worth looking into. Most people just aren't going to understand why they should watch Observe and Report, and to be honest, the movie is not at all for them. If you read this review and said "who would watch a movie about this guy?", then steer clear. You will not enjoy the film. The comedy comes in strange places and will no doubt only push you further away.

For those of you who fall in the former category, I highly recommend Observe and Report. It's a step forward for Jody Hill, and I look forward to whatever he has planned next.