Out in Theaters: DUMB AND DUMBER TO

November 13, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Dumb and Dumber To, Farrelly Brothers, Jeff Daniels, Jim Carrey, Laurie Holden, Out in Theaters, Rachel Melvin, Reviews, Rob Riggles, Steve Tom

Dumb and Dumberer To threatens – at multiple intersections – to sidestep its truly manic, childish comic sensibilities for a gargantuan black hole of doo-doo jokes. “Smell my finger” gags, “lock in the fart” physical comedy and even the dreaded diaper change all rear their ugly fecal heads throughout the film. It’s as if the Farrelly Brothers were contractually obligated (by Charmin perhaps?) to insert a poo-based beat every 20 minutes. Some of it is scoff-worthy, other segments, truly face-palming. But what is miraculous about this long-gestated Dumb and Dumber sequel is that between the farts (a sentence reserved only for the likes of this breed of low-brow comedy), there is comic gold. To borrow an age-old phrase, it totally redeems itself.

Coming a full two decades after the first installment, Dumb and Dumber To doesn’t miss a beat reestablishing its titular dullard duo. Having gone into a “full retard” coma after being turned down by the ravishingly ginger Mary Samsonite, Lloyd is a scraggly-haired (with frontal bowl cut still intact), diaper-clad, catheter-wearing potato. Harry, played by Emmy winner Jeff Daniels, makes routine visits to cheer the spirits of the now vegetablesque Lloyd.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know that his twenty year stay in a mental institute was all a gag to “get” Harry. Or at least that’s what Lloyd claims, shaking his head like a spring rider. But what make the first Dumb and Dumber stick is its venomous (and often under-appreciated) dark humor. In the first film, it wouldn’t be a far stretch to read Harry as a suicidal maniac on the brink of offing himself. If you wanted to, you could even make an argument that Lloyd (like Ferris Bueller) is little more than a figment of Harry’s crumbling imagination; a loony toon ghost of Christmas past (damn right the pun was intended). Taking this into account (the dark humor, not my baloney “Lloyd isn’t real” assertion), it could easily be understood that Lloyd did indeed suffer a mental break after his odds of being one in a million turned to dust in his palm. Grim, I know, but I think the idea that Lloyd is actually incarcerated at a mental institution adds weight to a story that often defies gravity and needs much more grounding. More likely, it’s just a comedy and I shouldn’t be thinking that hard about it.

When Dumb and Dumber struck theaters like a rubber chicken in the face, Jim Carrey was riding high on the success of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Mask. He was the comedy “it” boy de jour; a new face of physical extremism; the harbinger of buckshot, go-for-broke, face-morphing farce. It would appear that he would do anything for a laugh. He was willing to make the most annoying sound in the world. Willing to speak out of his butt. In the years since, he’s produced a number of other comic gold standards amongst offering a surprising amount of adroit dramatic performances. To see him step into the shoes of a bonafide moron again though is something truly special. In that bowl cut and chipped front tooth, Carrey is home and he couldn’t be more committed.

Daniels continues to play second fiddle but he really is the true numb nuts of the two; the dumber of the dumb. Lloyd could almost be described as a sadomasochistic sociopath. After all, he did rat out Harry to Seabass with the loyalty of Benedict Arnold Palmer. With Harry, there’s none of the depth of intention. He’s a fly by the seat of his pants breed of stupid. A kind of stupid that’s quick to anger and even quicker to blame. Lloyd and Harry both need to nestle their emotions in a bottle. Make no mistake, these are dark characters. They just so happen to find solace in soiled drawers and funny suits.

Where Dumb and Dumber To both succeeds and falls flat is in the script’s understanding of the true nature of their stupidity. When the dynamic two-o are by themselves, sharing a hotdog or explaining why Harry named his cat butthole (“Good name. Totally fits.”), they shine. When we move into the second act and more characters arrive that we’re supposed to care about, things become hairier and tend towards the hit-or-miss department. What makes Harry and Lloyd memorable is their general misunderstanding of the world around them – they’re more zoo animal than human – not their low IQ level and sexual misadventures.

If there’s one complaint that cannot be lobbed at the screenwriter committee (there are six credited writers) it’s that they don’t hold anything back. From old ladies private parts to finagling free booze, they throw every strand of comedy spaghetti at the wall and see what will stick. As Dumb/Dumber Dos loses steam in the second half, you can taste the jokes souring in a haze of lazy and uninspired old farts. But that doesn’t overwhelm the fact that there are many things to cherish: Carrey going tête-à-tête with a barking German Shepard, Harry’s new astronaut roommate (a celebrity cameo you’ll likely miss), Lloyd’s obsession with a certain picture. Farrellys and Co. do manage to sneak in some of the subtle (pronounced sub-tull) humor of missed pronunciation and cultural ignorance. They also plant Easter Egg references to the original with the delicacy of a giant holiday bunny. But whatever, I still laughed.

Amongst the new additions to the cast include a fair number of faces you won’t recognize by name alone. Rob Riggles (Anchorman) all but steps in for an ulcer-pill swallowing Mike Starr while the gorgeous and fairly affable Rachel Melvin plays is-she-or-isn’t-she offspring of Harry. Laurie Holden (The Walking Dead‘s deceased Andrea) is the vixen foil, Steve Tom as the genius Dr. Pinchlow, her body-weathered mark. That Harry and Lloyd eventually end up with a mysterious package that they must deliver across the country could be interpreted as either a throwback or lazy carbon-copying. I’m willing to contend a little bit of both.

So was the wait worth it? Yes and no. Clearly Carrey and Daniels held the keys to ignition on this one and they waited until they had the means to hold up the laugh factory. Twenty years on though is a long time to wait and the field of comedy has changed a lot (for better or worse). And though it’s far from perfect, they have achieved their ultimate goal: to make us laugh. It takes a rapist wit to pull off a comedy so recklessly dumb, derivative, harebrained and ultimately inspired and yet the Farrelly’s, Carrey and Daniels do it, even when they have to kind of drag their asses over the finish line.

So long as you’re willing to turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, you’ll realize it’s not the comedy itself that’s dulled. Rather, those of us raised on Jim Carrey one-liners have grown old and tired. Armpit farts just aren’t funny anymore (though I’m not convinced they ever were…) But dumb is as dumb does and the Farrellys do dumb like dumb needs to be done (write that in a John Deere letter three times.) I’m not quite willing to say that “I like it a lot” but I cannot deny the truckload of laughs it had me bellowing.

If you appreciated the original (and still find that it holds up today), you’ll find a lot to love in this sequel. Dumb though it may be, and offensively stuffed with toilet humor, there’s enough wit, more than enough commitment on the part of the actors and just enough new one-liners to give the Farrelly’s, and Jim Carrey’s comedy career, a new lease on life.

C+

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Out in Theaters: DUMB AND DUMBER TO

Out in Theaters: THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

November 13, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Benoît Delhomme, Charlie Cox, Eddie Redmayne, Emily Watson, James Marsh, Jinx Godfrey, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Simon McBurney, Steven Noble, The Theory of Everything

To take a man’s life and dilute it down to a 123-minute biography might not be quite as daunting a task as coming up with a singular formula that describes and unites all things in the universe but it is not without its challenges. James Marsh takes on these theoretical hurdles with the problem-solving gusto of a seasoned mathematician. He attacks from all angles: emotional, intellectual, spiritual and metaphysical; delivering a film that not only gets to the core of who Stephen Hawking is but gives equal credence to the unsung plight of wife Jane Hawking. With Marsh working the material with the finesse of a Swedish masseuse – adapted from Jane’s 2008 memoirs “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen” – into something both uproariously funny and endlessly emotional, The Theory of Everything is, like its subject, a film that defies the constructs to which it ought adhere. Like Hawking, Marsh has created a film that rises above the expectations placed on it and outlives its macabre sentencing. It is quite simply an emotional powerhouse; a near flawless example of a fine-tuned biopic boasting a performance for the ages; a stunning tour de force that overcomes its crowd-pleasing elements with earnest wit and genuine, hard-won emotionality.

Behind his quirked smile and mop of ginger-brown hair, young Hawkings is a goon and Eddie Redmayne plays him with the breezy charm of a Powerpuff before his infamous affliction strikes. Aloof and smarmy, his performance is one of spot-on precision; a testament to Redmayne’s emerging talent and ability to replicate a character with physical and emotional exactitude. Hawking is a Type-A smarty pants who doesn’t study but still aces the tests and all Redmayne needs to do is cock a wormy grin to communicate the limitless knowledge trapped within that scrawny frame. Part-Goofy and part-Einstein, he’s a goober of a scholar with a heart of gold and aspirations over the moon. And there lies Jane Wilde, a wily co-ed softly won over by Hawking’s gun show of braininess and obsessively chartered persistence. After all, one can only be asked to croquette so many times before they finally submit.

There’s a delightfully stagy homecoming ball that, while slightly hokey, showcases the humanity before the affliction; the affair preceding the infirmity; the courtship preceding all this trials and tribulations business. Hawking uneasily admitting he’s no dancer is both charming and heartbreaking – a winning equation graciously prescribed to most key junctions in the film. If Hawking’s arc is one into physical oblivion and intellectual transcendence, The Theory of Everything‘s is about overcoming hardship and finding peace in adversity.

But as the scene sets on Benoît Delhomme‘s magnificently sweltering starematography, Cinderella’s carriage turns to a pumpkin and Hawking is hit with the heavy news that he’s got less than two years to live. On the brink of his PhD and brimming with grand ideas screaming out to be proven, Hawking is a pitiable mark of the Maggie Fitzgerald degree. He’s a fighter with a flunkie body. Though Jane’s undying devotion to Hawking isn’t necessarily fleshed out in full pre-ALS diagnosis, Jane spends the rest of the movie convincing us of the earnestness of the near angelic gesture. This is after all a love story.

As acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking continues to hunt down his titular theory of everything, we’re given a glimpse into a kind of personal reactionary spiritualism that only peeks its head into the oeuvre of film every so often. There’s no “this is the way it is”, just a lot of “what ifs?” Hawking at first refutes the existence of God. At one point, he admits to Jane that He could be plausible. Later, he’s weary and generally indifferent. He’s a character who, though stubborn in his resolve and thrust for intellectual expansion, is never adamant about being “right.” And what could be a more important figure than a man willing to go to war with his own theories? In a time of steadfast absolutism, Hawking waged war with himself from an armchair. And then a wheelchair. A man both fundamentally hubristic and humbled, Hawking’s acute generosity of spirit paired with his occasional callousness towards those closest to him helps to make him such a scrumptiously compelling character.

It takes a skilled filmmaker to get the tear ducts working early and Marsh is so queued into fine tuning our emotional clock that he barely has to breathe to twist the knife in our side. Only thirty-odd minutes into the film, he pulls back the curtain on this whole diagnosis drama sans a lick of sentimentality and yet still beckons showers of sniffles. Hawking (understandably) throws a pity party, but Marsh never does. Flipping the formula on its head, he mines tragedy in humor, allowing the most heart-rending moments to play over beats drenched in legitimate dark comedy. Even past the ability to speak, Redmayne invites guffaws that you would never even expect to experience in a film about a handicapped physicist. This guy is going to sarcastically flip his head into an Academy Award nomination.

The performance really is next level. He’s so good, he’s gorilla glue. Taking your eyes off his work for even a moment is impossible. You might as well be eyelidless Alex, you’re watching him so hard. Confined to a wheelchair for the later half of the film, we nevertheless view him through the filter of abject understanding. Without words, he’s able to communicate novels. It’s a testament to both Redmayne’s mighty take and Marsh’s voyeuristically watchful eye that once Hawking’s words turn into blinks and eventually into robotic responses, we never lose a dollop of interest in him as a character. Nor does he lose his bite as a comedian.

Matching Redmayne blow for blow is Felicity Jones, offering a performance that delivers nuance, pathos and barrels of complexity. Though no simple task to take on the mantle of Hawking, Redmayne’s task is clear cut. Jones on the other hand has an arguably more difficult mountain to climb; she must make Hawking’s counterpart as compelling and complex as a guy who wrote a best selling novel about f*cking time. I mean seriously, if the guy can make a theory about time (of all things) into a New York Times best seller, you better believe his woman is a certifiable magnet.

Each and every scene she flutters into and out of, Jones is a force to be reckoned with. She’s left to grapple with the plight of domesticity; to battle the oft ferocious tedium of raising a family single-handedly. Jones parries with Redmayne’s monstrous portrayal with bravado, providing a fulcrum point that grounds the extenuating circumstances of their extraordinary home life into something relatable and “normal.” He’s the scientist, she’s the soul. It’s her that makes everything relatable.

At one point, she explodes, “We’re not a normal family!” And while we know that she believes this sentiment to be true, her family – and her relationship with Stephen’s – was never defined by a conformity to society norms. From the get go, their romance was a harbinger of bucked normalcy. Not just anyone would marry a ticking time bomb. It’s upon her shoulders that the success of Theory rests and Jones handles her characters transformation with a kind of poetic ease that’s stoic and touching, motherly and equally sexual. She’s basically Imhotep the way she gains layers scene to scene. An Academy Award nomination is assuredly in store.

What’s possibly the biggest surprise of The Theory of Everything is just how winning every aspect of Marsh’s tale truly is. It functions on so many levels, attacking so many sectors of what we look for in a film. It’s futile to resist its supreme good taste.

Marsh spares us the gory details of how time actually works (new homework assignment: read “A (Brief) History of Time”) but thanks to adroit editing work from Jinx Godfrey, we’re never really worried about how it works. It just does. Add to that a nimble and whimsical score from Jóhann Jóhannsson (another nomination ought to be assured here) and nifty costume design from Steven Noble and you have a film whose technical aspects rival its visceral impact. There are bits and bobs that don’t measure up – grainy “camera footage”, underdeveloped secondary characters – but for a movie equally given to quirks, quacks and quarks, the bumbling never detracts from the charm. Marsh’s brief history of Hawkings is at once timely and timeless, matching intellect for emotion and absolutely thriving on two stunning performances. For all the accolades it’s destined to receive, The Theory of Everything is deserving.

A

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Out in Theaters: ROSEWATER

November 10, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Claire Foy, Dimitri Leonidas, Gael Garcia Bernal, Jon Stewart, Kim Bodnia, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Rosewater, Shohreh Aghdashloo

Jon Stewart‘s directorial cinematic debut is appropriately politically astute but throws his signature satirical edge out the window, resulting in a competently made, educationally sound – if not entirely entertaining – biopic. But such can be expected from a filmmaker who’s primary goal seems to be to shine a light into a dark place and report back on what he finds. That Rosewater lacks excitement in its followthrough is a misgiving worth forgiving in the face of strong performances and sound directorial spirit but you can’t help but wish the energy of the first half stretched through the later half’s long, tepid prison stay.

Longtime “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart tells the true story of Iranian-Canandian Maziar Bahari, a Newsweek political reporter falsely incarcerated in Iran’s Evin Prison for 118 days under suspicion of espionage. The story is told with care and precision by Stewart, making for an all around safe debut from a “reporter” noted more for his bitingly satirical comedy than his on-the-nose reporting. In all accounts, Stewart edifies us, relishing the minute details of the story and blowing them up into elements of larger import, but the material from which he’s working makes that process of expansion akin to blowing a 4×6 into a poster. He shots for specificity but loses it amongst an almost cliche prison tale.

The film opens on Bahari’s arrest, with a troop of Iranian policemen storming through his family house in Tehran and looting through his personal belongings like human paper shredders. From DVD bootlegs of The Sopranos to old Jazz records, these secretive Iranian officers are quick to label each and everything Bahari possesses as pornographic. When they discover a Maxim magazine, Bahari is willing to admit, “Ok, maybe that one is.” Soft chuckles ensue. The few instances of subtle humor are far from the side-splitting stuff of Stewart’s sharp “Daily Show” satire but even these moments are mistakenly few and far between. When held up against similar true life imprisonment stories, Rosewater can barely hold a candle to the type of enduring trauma of, say, Midnight Express and without a honed sense of political irony (perhaps Stewart’s most cherished aspect as a tv personality) it feels like it has too little of a personality of its own.

Going back in time to give more of an overview of the events that led to Bahari’s arrest, Stewart’s screenplay – based on Bahari’s memoirs “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival” -introduces us to a small platter of supporting characters that will invite minor shifts in the narrative to come. Bahari’s traditionalist and seeming nihilist mother Moloojoon (Shohreh Aghdashloo), personal driver and underground political activist Davood (Dimitri Leonidas) and wife Paolo (Claire Foy) each provide a different fulcrum point upon which Bahari’s mental state will balance while jailed; each representing one of the three elements that his book is named after. We see the pull of love, of honor, of survival all play on Bahari’s mind and can’t help but retreat from him slightly when he makes what some would deem the “cowardly” choice.

As a screenwriter and director, Stewart wastes little time getting into the politics of the piece, allowing Bahari’s coverage of the controversial 2009 presidential election between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi to guide us towards a deeper understanding of an “old news” hot topic. Shortly after capturing stirring protest footage and releasing it to the world media under an anonymous title, Bahari is identified by the Iranian government and taken with extreme prejudice into the confides of military solitary confinement. It’s in this cell that we spend the later half of the film. While Bahari receives massive media coverage in the United States, with government officials as high up as then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding Bahari’s just return, he festers in the concrete belly of an Iranian prison. It’s here that his soul is tested and the film stagnates.

As Bahari, Gael Garcia Bernal creates a character worth caring for. Stacked with charisma, charm and intelligence, Bahari’s imprisonment is unequivocally wrong but Stewart’s real interest lies not in condemning but quantifying the how of it all. In such, the intrigue of the film lies in how Stewart deals with the two sides of this coin. On the other side of the equation is a man known only as “The Specialist” (Kim Bodnia) – later nicknamed “Rosewater” – an Iranian interrogator with limited understanding outside the Muslim political state stuck on the notion Bahari is an American spy who’s infiltrated Iran and plans to disseminate disquieting information.

When Bahari finally counters with details of the “vices” of the Western world – particularly the many pleasures of the massage parlor – Bodnia’s taken aback reaction again taps into Stewart’s comedic sensibilities and the film thrives. When Stewart dips into the metaphysical level and Bahari’s deceased father makes a number of wisdom-laden appearances, the film suffers. As for the whole reporter/spy vs. specialist/massage parlor obsessive, the chemistry between these two inherently opposing forces at one point threatens to become uncommonly personal but still never reaches into a realm beyond that which we’ve seen a number of times before.

Furthermore, the “brutality” to which Bahari is subjected isn’t a kind that necessarily works well on screen. His torture is one of relentless boredom and unfortunately, we laterally become a victim of this too. Seeing that Bahari’s incarceration and subsequent “brutal interrogation” falls squarely on the side of mental degradation and involves practically no physical harm makes for material that isn’t as necessarily as jarring or visceral as it seems to think it is. Please don’t take me incorrectly here, I have no doubt that rotting away in a jail cell for nearly four months would undoubtedly be torture. I just don’t find it necessarily compelling on film. You likely won’t either.

Thankfully, Bernal is up to the challenge and emotes wickedly even when blindfolded and pacing his calcified cage. Though Stewart’s screenplay often mistakes adversity for inherent drama, Bernal is there to make sure that his character’s arc is as rock solid as prison walls sealing him away from the world and his family. Though not the sinfully funny, culturally smarmy debut that one would hope for with Stewart mounting the director’s chair, Rosewater is a perfect History class film; an educational and well acted showcase of media tragedy ballooning into a thoughtful and humanizing story.

C

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Out in Theaters: BIG HERO 6

November 7, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alan Tudyk, Big Hero 6, Chris Williams, Damon Wayans Jr., Disney, Don Hall, Genesis Rodriguez, James Cromwell, Jamie Chung, Marvel, Maya Rudolph, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, T.J. Miller

In the past, I’ve been something of a bitch when it comes to animated movies. The Pixar classics are notorious for beating down my manliness and summoning up the tears – Up, Toy Story 3, even f*cking Ratatouille all got me going. Something about the to-the-bone earnest family connection gets this child of divorce waterworking. It’s clockwork. Minute 82 and I’m Niagara. The last animated movie to move me: How to Train Your Dragon 2. The Mom stuff. The Dad stuff! Whew. Color me teary.

In Big Hero 6, the tragic beats are there – dead parents (c’mon, it’s not a Disney movie without dead rentals), another family member who bites the dust in a ghastly explosion and, yup, a close friend and confidante who also eats the proverbial bullet. The kids in my audience gulped palpably and cried out in waves of concern.

But where was the lump in my throat? Had I grown too cold and calloused to experience my fair share of emotional woes? I felt like Palahniuk’s narrator stuffed into Bob’s meaty bosoms, post-Marla. What the eff was going on?! And then I realized, the fundamental issue was this was more Marvel movie than animated flick. The deaths were without meaning. The sacrifices just temporarily absences; a normative formula via disappearing act that’s taken hold in sequel culture. The offings were like watching Agent Coulson die in The Avengers (spoiler, whoops) or Sam Fury die in Cap 2 (whoops, more spoilers). You just don’t really care. Worse yet, you don’t believe it. This symptom of emotional weightlessness is part and parcel of the pricklinesslessness (not a word) that is the Marvel-verse. Everyone is safe, everything works out. If I had a nicket for every faked death in the MMU, I would have like a full quarter. This consequencelessness (also, not a word) leaves me cold and indifferent. With Big Hero 6, I laughed heartily, I generally enjoyed myself, but I never felt a single thing. Nor did I ever feel a sense of danger.

And that’s why I’m struggling to conjure up words to properly describe my experience with Big Hero 6. It was pretty good. It made me smile. But that’s kinda all one can really say. It’s a hearty head shake; a smiling nod. You can recommend it to just about anyone and they wouldn’t be offended by what they’ve seen. They’ll likely enjoy it quite a bit. It’s got plenty of funny moments to boot, the actions sequences are beautifully realized and colorfully captivating and there is a heart to it, it’s just more robotic than of flesh and blood. But once it’s all over (and with an inevitable load of sequels on the way) there’s really nothing to talk about; nothing that sticks with you.

The latest from Disney is adapted from an under-sung Marvel comic created by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau in 1998. The first collaboration between Marvel and Disney since Disney acquired Marvel almost five years back, Big Hero 6 tells the story of 13-year old Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter), a robo-tech genius taken to back alley bot battles. After a narrow escape from one black-market moonlighting or other, Hiro is seduced by older bro Tadashi to go legit and enroll in a prestigious engineering program promising to hone his robotic skills. Decidedly won over by Tadashi’s classmates, his state-of-the-art workspace, his just-finished invention and the winning Professor Calahan (James Cromwell), Hiro decides to win the science fair and earn a place among these up-and-coming science wiz-kids.

Set in the hyper-futuristic San Fransokyo, the superhero saga sees Hiro team up with medic-bot Baymax (Scott Adsit) and fellow students Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), GoGo Tomago (Jamie Chung) and Fred (T.J. Miller) to take down a mysterious super-villain who’s stolen Hiro’s next-gen microbots and has nothing short of evil intentions for them.

The script has a massive nine credits (!!!) to its name, which accounts for the rigidly structured and carefully manicured movements of Big Hero 6, but co-directors Don Hall and Chris Williams find ample opportunities to let the jokes waft from the otherwise stenchy grasp of formulaic mediocrity. The humor flows liberally from the emotionally stinted Baymax, a plushy bot who’s more Wall-E than Vision. From fist bumps to mixed colloquialisms, Baymax’s journey to figure out the human world – and the associated emotions that come with it – is flooded with moments of laughter and genuine warmth. Of the seis big heros, he’s the only one anyone’s going to be talking about exiting the theater. Trouble is, outside of this smiley Stay Puft marshmallow man, the film is inflated with flat characters and narrative breadcrumbs all leading to an overdone and overblown ending you could see from miles away without a super scanner. So while it is paint-by-numbers, the colors used are at least rather pretty.

Big Hero 6 is like a Nilla Wafer; yummy going down but nothing to write home about. It’s funny and entertaining in a bland, gingerbread kind of way. It’s the taste of the scrumptious substancelessness (not a word) that defines the Marvel cinematic universe now bleeding into Disney. I don’t doubt that you’ll like it, maybe even love it, but I challenge you to remember this movie five years down the line. You know, once the Avengers 4 is out.

C+

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Out in Theaters: INTERSTELLAR

November 4, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anne Hathaway, Casey Affleck, Christopher Nolan, Hans Zimmer, Interstellar, Jessica Chastain, Jonathan Nolan, Mackenzie Foy, Matthew McConaughey, Out in Theaters, Reviews 1 Comment

Don’t be fooled, Interstellar is no blockbuster. Nor is it the critical darling think piece so many expected it to be. It seems crafted to engulf the minds of the critical community in nit-picky debates about minute details; destined to conjure up various theories and interpretations (a la Inception) but I don’t see that happening. For all its loopholes, space travel and time relativity, it’s relatively straightforward. Almost shockingly so. That’s not to say that it doesn’t aim for something more; for something meant to transcend your usual theatrical experience. Christopher Nolan reaches for the stars. He comes up short.

There’s no battles, no aliens, no ticking time bomb. Interstellar‘s a film about blackness and bleakness; dust storms and global scarcity; destiny and family. A gun doesn’t once appear on the screen. There’s not even really a villain so much as an antagonist with a competing view of the greater good and a finer tuned sense of self-preservation. The villain is in a sense time itself. And Planet Earth. And dust.

At a critical juncture, Matthew McConaughey‘s Cooper convinces Anne Hathaway‘s Amelia that time is a precious resource. With a nearly three hour running time and a bulk of scenes this guy deems unnecessary, Nolan tends towards squandering said resource. Establishing shots are at first spent on Earth; Cooper’s a retired NASA pilot and now a farmer. His children Murph (Mackenzie Foy, later Jessica Chastain) and Tom (Timothée Chalamet, later Casey Affleck) have only known a world of ashes and dust. Crops around the world have become infected and extinct. Corn is the last consumable vestige of survival on Earth and its kernelly goodness is fast fading. But as time bends onward, the whole scarcity act is swallowed up by the impending doom of super blustery dust storms; the harbinger of phlegmy coughs; humankind’s asthmatic nemesis. The corn supply isn’t quite in top shape but there’s apparently enough to go around to serve meals of corn fritters, corn on the cob and corn bread. The classic corn triple play.

When a gravitational anomaly sends Cooper and Murph to a top secret NASA base, Cooper is recruited to man a mission into the intergalactic unknown in hopes of discovering new resources and, ultimately, salvation for humankind. About as little time is spent on the logistical rationale behind Cooper showing up and shipping off within what seems like a matter of days as it is on Professor Brand’s (Michael Caine) uncompromising over-reliance on this has-been pilot. It makes about as much sense as Rambo showing up on the White House’s doorstep and being asked to lead the president (who in this case is obviously 1997 Harrison Ford) to the front lines of an ISIS mass beheading assault. I mean it’d be cool and all but what?

Utterly enraptured by the poetry of Dylan Thomas, Brand is all about doing things the “ungentle” way. He’s so Thomas-esque, the man is basically rage against the machine. So after one (1) meeting with ol’ Cooper, Brand’s got him strapped into a (must have been) multi-billion dollar top-secret aircraft set on a world-saving mission. Because anything that’s roughly as logical as Armageddon is apparently good to go for screenwriter bros Christopher and Jonathan Nolan.

And this comes down to the main issue of Interstellar: the Nolan Bro’s screenplay. For a usually straight-laced, sober duo, their scribemanship here has a prevailing feeling of being one bong rip too deep. It’s hard – if not entirely impossible – to defend some of the Nolans’ more hokey moments – the “love connection” speech, obviously telegraphed dialogue, the debatable “fifth dimension” scene, that ending… – and it all winds up feeling like a mixture of trying too hard and not trying hard enough. It’s at once Nolan’s most shamelessly sentimental film, but also his most emotionally honest. Only when it tips into a wholly saccharine realm, it turns entirely unbecoming. Once those thematically iffy moments bind themselves to the finale and become inextricably germane to the larger themes at play, Interstellar shows itself for being a half-baked, if fully beautiful, failed experiment in synthesizing the inimitable success of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That’s because Interstellar is an exercise in blue balls. It keeps getting so close to giving us what we wants and then shies away at the last moment; revealing a much less sexy underbelly as it goes. It’s an intimate human voyage through time and space, beset with little to no set pieces and made picture perfect with a massive budget and technical wizards hammering out intergalactic spacescapes the likes of none other. The pieces are all right; the whole just doesn’t come together as it should. You can almost smell its desire to be something more. The sting of it letting you down is palpable as it closes up shop and that’s partially what makes it the laudable misfire it is.

Seeing the film in one of seventy-one 70mm IMAX screening around the world imbued me with a great sense of privilege until I saw the actual picture. On Earth, it’s dusty. Grainy. Sometimes inexplicably unfocused. In space, it’s unreal. Otherworldly. Wormholes have never looked so sexy. The one hour of full-blown, in-your-face, pants-pissin’ IMAX shots does come around to save the day – justifying the costly asking price – though Hans Zimmer‘s theater-rumbling score often crosses the threshold into full blown audio assault if experienced in the large-picture, super-duper loud format. His low throbbing Gothic bass notes declare all out war on your eardrums as they crescendo and decrescendo. Turned down a notch lower, it’s one of the finest aspects of the film (a film that is more often than not a visual treat.) But like candy, the FX-heavy landscape doesn’t nourish a greater sense of thought-provoking reflection so much as sheer awe; nonetheless, it’s a thing to enjoy in all its savory nutritionlessness.

Nolan swings for the rafters and ends up splicing it just at the perfect angle where you can’t quite tell if it’s gonna be a home run or a foul ball. You hang in anticipation. And right at that moment of truth – in that prevailing reverent silence – the ball disappears into a wormhole. It’s hard to confirm whether Nolan’s latest is really an instance of Casey at Bat or, like 2001, his sci-fi opus will take years to fully digest, appreciate and understand. But I would tend towards the later not being the case. It is just heady and barely open-ended enough to stomach an argument for the other side. Though I’d have to likely also be offered corn bread.

The success and/or failure of Interstellar is hard to quantify. It’s grand and self-aggrandizing. It’s often more numb than it is smart. It’s a visual feast to behold with the emotional stakes to match. The talent both in front of and behind the camera (visual effects teams in particular) is rapturous and almost entirely engrossing. Though the “who’s who” of talent doesn’t ever pretend that Interstellar is a true actor’s film, McConaughey has a few scene where he dusts off his Oscar and lets it all hang out. When he does, hearts will break. But like a kid who ate too much candy and puked on a Picasso, Interstellar is only truly beautiful once you wipe all the muck off.

One thing seems certain: this will likely be the last time the studio system cuts Nolan a blank check to do with as he will. His directorial carte blanche will expire when it inevitably disappoints at the international box office. His license to kill will all but be revoked. It’s almost tragic but, time being a flat circle and all, it’s also inevitable. If only the Nolans bros had let Rust Cohle free to wax on time and stuff when they do decide to unleash their philosophical digressions. Apparently that’s just too much to ask.

With Interstellar, Nolan rages against the dying of the light, but like a theater minor without the proper know-how, he rages just a little too hard.

C+

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Out in Theaters: NIGHTCRAWLER

October 30, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Best of 2014, Bill Paxton, Dan Gilroy, Jake Gyllenhaal, James Newton Howard, Nightcrawler, Out in Theaters, Rene Russo, Reviews, Riz Ahmed

With a name as innocuous as Louis Bloom, you wouldn’t initially suspect the lead character of Nightcrawler to be so dangerous. But the virulent Lou is the kind of guy who dissolves into shadows; who feeds vampirically in the darkness. He’s not a villain so much as a force of nature. Silent but deadly. His politeness is alarming, starkly juxtaposed by the edgy vibration of his piercing, bulbous eyes. His word choice; precise as a bone saw. His demeanor; direct but detached. Like a drone. He’s a bug-eyed Terminator sans the metallic endoskeleton; a top-knotted Patrick Bateman without the 401K. In the role, Jake Gyllenhaal is angelic. He’s equally demonic. He’s perfect mopping up uncomfortable silences, guttural laughs and wry grins like a janitor in a milking cow factory.

Caught in the high beams of a night patrolman, Lou materializes from the shadows like an apparition. A ghoulish grin masking his face. He notes his trespassing is accidental. He also notes the pricy hunk of watch adorning the wrist of the Paul Blart eying him with petulant suspicion. The next scene, it’s Lou wearing the watch.

Throughout the film, Lou’s facial expressions percolate with a kind of serpentine other-worldliness. As if his tongue could dart from his mouth at any moment to nip at the night air. It doesn’t. He remains squarely within the realm of the human. No matter how inhumane he is. A testament to Dan Gilroy‘s narrow degree of restraint and Gyllenhaal’s tightrope-walking ability.

When we meet Lou, he’s a drifter; fencing fences and manhole covers. Begging for jobs with an armory of interview-friendly terminology and all the manicured motions of a “respectable” human being. At a car crash, he yanks his beatermobile to the shoulder to observe its burny grotesqueries and runs into Joe Loder, a TV news freelancer who roams the nights to capture domestic implosions on film. Loder (Bill Paxton) says the job is hell. The next scene, Lou has camera in tow, hunting down the next suburban calamity. It isn’t long before he’s whipping up his own crime scenes and hiring a slacky intern (Riz Ahmed).

In his junker motorcade of journalistic un-tegrity, Lou rips a hole through the banality of the LA night, hunting down the next big tragedy like a slobbering machine, manipulating it when need be and selling it off to the news producer running the graveyard shift, Nina (Rene Russo). Camcorders are his business cards. Bloody car crashes his boardrooms. Murdered families, the money shot coup de grâce to end a good night on.

Nina knows the business is blood sport. Local news is nothing but modern day gladiatorial work. She’s titillated by promises of gory plane crashes. B&E’s are her bee’s knees. She wets herself over triple homicides. Russo holds the performance together by the skin of her teeth, refusing to reveal weakness behind that modernized beehive and liberal thrashing of makeup. As the tension mounts between Lou and Nina, a new dynamic takes shape: one that’s uproariously creepy and carnally delicious. Watching Lou sic Nina is watching the hungry wolf lick his chops before he preys.

Piggybacking on my earlier Patrick Bateman comparison, Nightcrawler deals in a similar brand of corporate black humor as American Psycho, taking aim at the blanket sensationalization of news and, to a lesser degree, our woeful economic state. It’s wickedly funny in a deadpan, threatening kind of way – like Nick Nolte – with Gyllenhaal’s knockout performance informing the laughs like a conductor with a rosewood baton. He is the slaughterer of the lamb, we the vultures come to pick the bones. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll eat up the meaty sarcasm like roast beef on Christmas.

To see the transformation of the shmuck with the Wall Street name from lowly drifter to certifiable media mogul is enough reason to see the film, even though it drags along some basic fixer-uppers that stick out uncomfortably. James Newton Howard‘s score – the man responsible for music-ing such clunkers as Maleficent, Parkland, After Earth, Snow White and the Huntsman, Green Lantern, The Green Hornet, The Tourist and more – often feels out of place, as if it were teleported in from an entirely different movie from an entirely different genre. Howard was scoring a straight thriller as we watched a brutally dark comedy unfold. It’s never in junction with the piece so much as it detracts from it with blast after blast of heavy-handed straightforwardness and a tonal lack of understanding the subtle transformations of character. Were Trent Reznor or Cliff Martinez behind the music, it would have stood out that much more.

Further, the film lacks an entirely solid starting and finishing point. The meat in between is so tender, so perfect, but it kind of drifts in and drifts out without the slap in the face that I both wanted and expected. Come on, punch me. I can handle it. But I guess it makes metaphorical sense for a movie of this nature to creep in and creep out without warning. If not for those few minor miscalculations, Nightcrawler could have driven itself into a sheer state of perfection.

A nightcrawler, not to be confused with the blue Russian teleport from the X-Men comics, is a bottom feeder. A succubus. A drive by job with a camera. They find you in your weakest moments – battered, bloodied and broken – and display it for the world to see. There’s no scruples in the line of work; no lines. It’s a brawl. A exploitative, invasive, harrowing brawl. And the public eats it up like pigs at the stye. They feed on it like vampires. They need it. The supply and demand chain is self-fulfilling. The watchers become the watched. Karma’s a bitch. Nightcrawler finds its target audience like a lumpy tumor, poking it and prodding it with the precision of a surgeon. It’s often equally as brilliant. Lou likes to say that if you’re seeing him, it’s the worst day of your life. Quite the opposite can be said about this film.

A

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Out in Theaters: DEAR WHITE PEOPLE

October 24, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Dear White People, Justin Simien, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tessa Thompson, Tyler James Williams 1 Comment

My acting career started in a weird place. I played an aggressive racist in a yet-to-be-released film, Father Africa. It was an uncomfortable experience to say the least: calling an African-American “Mufasa” isn’t the most valiant way to get on-screen attention. But, I was a good racist. Great, even. They kept asking me: “Are you an asshole in real life?” Father Africa will likely be my only IMDb film credit until I start making my own. There’s something about bigoted soliloquies that unsettles. Somehow, I can sympathize with all the poor actors in Dear White People.

Hear Fighting People. Fear White People. Leer At White People. Jeer at White People. Sheer Spite People. Queer White People. Hate White People. All could have served as titles for director/screenwriter Justin Simien’s controversial first IMDb entry. Dear White People is a ‘be-yourself’ film in which no one acts like themselves.

The title is conveniently the first thing said in the film. Tessa Thompson hosts a college radio show at a fictitious Ivy-esque institution, “Winchester University.” She’s Samantha White, a mulatto civil rights activist who’s got a hateful bent against the white folk on campus. Her “Dear White People” segment involves various imperatives: stop doing this, stop saying that, stop being here. They’re not suggestions, they’re threats.

Though the story follows four main characters — two of which are ambiguous and pretty much useless to the plot as a whole — she’s the main figure here. Samantha becomes president of Parker-Armstrong (the all-black residential house at Winchester) after her modern Black Panther-esque stance gains favor among her peers. Racial tensions at Winchester have sparked various fights and vitriol is everywhere. Two sides emerge: black and white. Unfortunately, there’s not much gray area in between.

Simien’s film is a satire that inspires more gasps than laughs. The jokes are there, but the comfort isn’t. No one in this film is quite likable, almost everyone’s a full-blown racist and Dear White People is shameless in its depiction of modern-day bigotry. The film’s premise was inspired by a myriad of sorority and fraternity parties with hatefully offensive themes. So, pressure is constantly escalating until the whole thing explodes: the film’s crucial event is an “African-American” themed party hosted by white people in blackface obviously referencing events like those at the University of Florida in 2012.

Everyone acting in this movie must’ve had a very difficult time reconciling their words and actions. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my own skin, so out-of-touch with something I’ve seen on-screen. Simien’s objective is good, but his journey isn’t. White people, gay and straight alike, are slimy, petulant and morally disgusting. The African-Americans in the film are victims of constant, blatant prejudice and discrimination. Unfortunately, they too spray racism back at their offenders in retaliation. This is fictional depiction of real-life tragedy, and it’s just hard to bear.

Tyler James Williams is the lone bright spot in this darkness. He’s Lionel, a gay black kid who loves to write and doesn’t fit in anywhere. He’s too kind-hearted, gentle and intermediate among these type-A a-holes. Really, he’s the only character I felt was real, the only one I could relate to, the only one who wasn’t afraid to be himself. He’s berated by everyone for his sexuality and skin-color. At the end he’s struggling to bring everyone together.

Williams is soft-spoken but his performance in this movie is as loud as his massive afro. He’s stuck in the middle of an argument that refuses to include him. His sexuality ostracizes him from the African-American community, and his skin color from the whites. He responds by writing, getting his word out there the only way people might hear it. He grounds the film as it risks ballooning into chaos. As such, he’s a welcome sweet to the surrounding sour. I found myself wishing the film were just about him rather than the loud mouths that drown him out.

Dear White People is an important film. Simien deserves credit for taking this challenge head-on. Maybe his movie wasn’t a good one, but it asked the right questions and called for legitimate answers. Racism is real and it’s still everywhere. Dear White People sprays it like a fire hose. Unfortunately, it’s just as narrow.

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Out in Theaters: THE HEART MACHINE

October 23, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged John Gallagher Jr., Kate Lyn Sheil, Out in Theaters, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2014, The Heart Machine, Zachary Wigon

Would you fall in love in the wild, wild west of romance that is online dating? What if you believe that your betrothed were living in a foreign country only to discover that they are instead a mere stone’s throw away? Would you get jealous? Angry? Violent? Director and writer Zachary Wigon provides his surreptitious take on the ‘romance as app’ generation in what can only be described as a wry, 21st century romantic thriller in the superb The Heart Machine.

Virginia and Cody live in a world where people, and by extension potential lovers, are available at the press of a button. It’s how they found each other in the first place. Exactly which medium connects the two starred-crossed lovers isn’t important. It’s some ChatRoulette/Match.com hybrid where interests are complimented, and people are summed up in bite-sized, infographic widgets. Everyone becomes a Buzzfeed list. On paper, Cody and Virginia are a perfect match, another successful e-copulation born of algorithms and personality profiling. The ying fills in the yang, the yang fills in the ying.

In their very first Skype conversation, things appear to be going well. Their laughs are easy and genuine, their chemistry awash in the emotional distancing and persona creation that only the internet allows. Through the peephole of their computer cameras, they seem to cook up something of a fondness for each other. In the moment of signing off though, Virginia pulls a rabbit from her hat, revealing that she’s living abroad in Germany and won’t return for six months. Not to Cody’s knowledge, she’s totally lying. It’s an instinctual move on Virgina’s behalf, distancing herself from potential emotional attachment, a helpless response to likely adoration. To him, her strange behavior that surrounds this geographical farce should have been a tell-tale sign to back off, but that’s only what we can expect from an emotionally cognizant and mentally furnished partner.

But you can smell the stink of desperation off Cody, a dopey but genial type played to ambiguous perfection by John Gallagher Jr. From the first scene, he’s suspicious of Virginia’s tall tale but has so little going on in his life that he can’t help but get snagged by in its rabbit hole. Gallagher is great as the discerning cuckold, cryptic in his intent and often impossible to get a read on. His is the kind of smiley face that could be hiding a cold blooded serial killer.

No matter his intention, Cody never comes off as the irascible type, even when what becomes a full-blown investigation drives himself towards the deep end. There’s moments where we don’t know if when they finally meet he’s going to hug Virginia or stab her and the not knowing is most of the fun. Instead of confronting her about it (like a normal person would), Cody escapes into a fantasy of himself, letting this new persona of a ragged sleuth take the wheel. As an outdated, wannabe noir detective, he’s inefficient but tenacious. He’s the J.J. Gittes of Brooklyn. But his femme fatale may be the end of him.

Virginia (Kate Lyn Sheil) is a salacious soul, a libertine of the new sexual frontier who uses her iPhone like a map to genital gold. Letting it guide her to new and uncharted carnal encounters like a treasure hunter, she comes across as cold and heartless. But while Wigon originally only wrote her as a small part to Cody’s larger quest, her final place in the film is much more substantial and rounded. A lascivious side is accented by her bookwormish other half; the art enthusiast and glory hole hussy all wrapped into one complicated young enchantress. Wigon may pass judgement on her at first, but goes on to attempt to truly understand her. The Heart Machine is not Wigon’s damnation of feminine guile so much as Shiel giving a masterclass on it.

Since the inception of apps literally designed to track down horny people in the closest possible vicinity, the world of relationships increasingly invokes a compartmentalization of love and sex. To have the two worlds wrapped in one risks too much, it dangles too much to lose. To Virginia, sex is a physical act, love the pick me up after your shotgun lover doesn’t want to cuddle. The Heart Machine is about world’s colliding, about the harlot losing her mask and the beau his sanity. It’s a bittersweet game of cat and mouse that brings a much needed 21st century update to the romance thriller and will keep you on the edge of your seat and thoroughly entrenched in the characters. While the internet makes promises of covert encounters, anonymity only works when you keep your circles separate. The question is: Are you secret, are you safe?

B+

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Out in Theaters: OUIJA

October 23, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Douglas Smith, Juliet Snowden, Lin Shaye, Olivia Cooke, Oujia, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Stiles White 1 Comment

Movies based on board games come packed with expectations of shittiness. Hasbro teamed up with Universal just a few years back for the monumentally floppish Battleship. Even with Peter Berg at the helm and a budget that ballooned over 200 million dollars, tanking critical response and disinterested audiences sunk Battleship. The lackies at the Hasbro Studios (which I still can’t believe actually exists) returned to the drawing board to scheme up their next monstrosity. To my, and many like me’s, chagrin, the Has-bros made a smart move. They decided to proceed with a no-name cast, micro-budgeted horror adaptation, because the horror audience en masse isn’t known for being the discerning bunch and so might as well stick it to ’em. The result is Oujia, a puked up mess of uninspired drivel. Read More