Out in Theaters: BEGIN AGAIN

July 2, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Adam Levine, Begin Again, Cee Lo Green, Hailee Steinfeld, John Carney, Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Mos Def, Out in Theaters, Reviews

Begin Again is the type of movie that comes with a set of instructions: Pre-heat oven to 400°. Mix divorce, heartbreak, success, failure and teen angst in a bowl while stirring in heavy doses of music. Cook for 104 minutes or until golden brown. Your film is now done and ready to enjoy!

What you see is what you get. Alcoholism is communicated via bottle: whiskey on the table and a beer in the fridge. You don’t get to witness any of the debilitation or struggle that comes with it. An empty drink is supposed to fill the gap. This is like journeying through South America and filming the mosquito bites. Or, you know, casting Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine as a pop star and covering all the tattoos.

Director/Writer John Carney is a good enough cook to blend his ingredients just right without getting into the complicated stuff. He knows when to flip the dish and what to stuff it with, and sometimes he’ll throw in a dash of spice to give it a kick. It may not turn out perfect, but he’s put enough love and time into it to make a good meal out of it.

Luckily for Carney, it’s hard to screw anything up when your main dish is a 5« serving of Mark Ruffalo. No, he’s not doing any detective work in Begin Again, save maybe gumshoeing his way into our hearts. Ruffalo is simply ‘Dan,’ a music producer who started his own record label from scratch alongside Saul (Mos Def)—Carney doesn’t bother to give any of his characters a last name. As good music gave way to pop and a divorce with his wife took its toll, Dan found the bottle and never took his lips from it. After an outburst in front of some high-profile customers, Saul cans Dan, who tries to take some paintings and employees with him. “This isn’t Jerry McGuire!” Saul says.

Actually, it kind of is. A beleaguered and stressed agent gets fired and starts over with a new philosophy and a new client. This time it’s Greta (Keira Knightley), a British singer-songwriter whose boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) gets caught up in his newfound fame and cheats on her, leaving her alone in New York City. She’s got a meek voice and some strong lyrics, but it takes a drunken Ruffalo to notice her talents. He tells her he’ll use his connections to get her a record deal. Soon they’re recording an entire album on New York streets with a full band provided by Cee Lo Green, Julliard and some random kids Ruffalo finds in an alleyway.

Ruffalo sets the beat. He’s endearing, keenly funny and he’s got one of those smiles that make you smile back. Carney’s given him something to do with his hands as he’s always got some booze tightly grasped. Mark’s drunk is a jolly one, more tipsy than dizzy. He’s the type who’ll wake up in a dumpster and giggle about it then start drinking again. It makes you wonder if he’s even acting. Ruffalo toes the line and he’s having fun with it. He’s the main source of comedy. You can’t help but want to grab a beer with him. But, his sober side shows a hidden tenderness, a latent passion. Hailee Steinfeld is strong as Ruffalo’s neglected daughter, and their father-daughter relationship makes for good moments.

Knightley’s the kick. She’s got a shy voice but a strong personality: she’s always wearing a confusing amount of fabric, which seems to fit the layers of depth she’s getting at in her role. Ruffalo and Knightley spend a night together in New York, dancing and sharing music on a CD player like old friends. Their relationship is so fun that you hope Carney doesn’t ruin it with romance. Her smart performance and Carney’s shrewd writing keep you guessing. Surprisingly, she’s even able to bring out the best from first-time film actor Adam Levine. In a fantastic break-up scene, Levine plays a song he’s written on the road. Knightley can tell it’s not for her; she slaps him across the face. When he smashes his glass of wine, Knightley’s the one that’s shattering.

Maroon 5’s head man is a strange case as he isn’t really acting so much as pretending. A pop star in real life, it’s difficult to look past Adam and see the ‘Dave.’ Carney gives him enough that he isn’t reaching: he’s calling upon real experience. Though he keeps up with the cast, it’s hard not to wonder why he was chosen for the role. You wouldn’t cast Peyton Manning in a football movie and call him Jim. Carney’s pushing suspension of belief too far.

Overall, it’s hard not to like what Carney’s cooked up here, though at times it gets uppity. There’s a lot of “it’s all about the music man!” thrown around, when the music is nothing you haven’t heard before. Instead of the songs, it’s the quirks—touches of comedy, theg dynamic between Ruffalo and Knightley, genuine performances from the whole cast—that get you tapping your feet right along with it.

With music and New York serving as backdrops, Begin Again is touching, funny and lively enough to merit a taste. Imaginative and different, it challenges what you would normally expect from a rom-com. Carney doesn’t overcook it, and there’s spice enough to defy expectations. I left the theater full. Maybe even a little too full.

B+

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Out in Theaters: TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

June 27, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Age of Extinction, Jack Raynor, Kelsey Grammer, Ken Watanbe, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Bay, Nicole Peltz, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Shia LaBeouf, Stanley Tucci, T.J. Miller, Transformers

Einstein said that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

You have to be insane to be a Minnesota Timberwolves fan. Heading into tonight’s NBA Draft, I was resolved for the worst, because you can expect nothing more from one of the worst professional franchises in sport, an organization that’s run like a penny-saving ma’ and pa’ store with Enron savvy.

This is a team that’s drafted a guy they vowed not to draft because they hadn’t planned for a scenario where they wouldn’t get the guy they wanted. This is a team that puts players they don’t want into a so-called “S Box.” This is a team that drafted a 21 year old player who turned out to be 26 years old. This is a team run by Flip Saunders, a GM/Owner who hired himself as coach and wrote down his draft pick on a sheet of paper like Kevin Costner in Draft Day. And yet, here I was thinking we could get it right this time around.

We ended up getting Zach LaVine, a Point Guard from UCLA who didn’t start this year and seems to have all the qualities that would make one good at being a gazelle, and none of the talent that lends to being an actually good basketball player. He responded to being drafted by banging his head on the table and saying “Fuck me,” then proceeded to call Minnesota a “great city.” This guy’s a gem.

Somehow, I expected something better from Transformers: Age of Extinction—something sane. Maybe because Director Michael Bay’s on his fourth installation in the franchise, maybe because Mark Wahlberg is starring in it, maybe because the girl that plays Wahlberg’s daughter, Nicola Peltz, is super hot. Instead, Bay’s two and a half hour robokkake elicits the same response as Zach LaVine: “fuck me.”

In Transformers: Age of Extinction, Bay spends his seemingly endless time pouring salt on the barren wounds left by Transformers 1, 2 and 3, but this time it’s with a smirksome eff you to the audience. Everything is turnt up past 11 in this $165 million film: the jean shorts shorter; the sweat sweatier; the muscles more rippling; the cars more decadent; and worst of all, the Transformers are souped up. Dinosaur. Transformers.

Thankfully, we don’t have to struggle through another Sam Witwicky slog because Shia LaBeouf and his head-sack are nowhere to be seen. This time, we’ve got Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) as a ripped inventor whose inventions don’t work. He fixes up neighbors’ old trash for cash and builds malfunctioning robots that explode and combust, like a guard dog that couldn’t guard Zach LaVine.

He’s also an overprotective father of a gorgeous 17-year old (don’t worry I checked: she’s actually 19!) because he knocked up his wife when he was 17 and doesn’t want the same problems to befall his soon-to-be-graduated daughter. Turns out she’s hooking up with an incredibly handsome Irishman behind his back, Shane (Jack Raynor), who races cars for Red Bull. T.J. Miller (HBO’s Silicon Valley) is Wahlberg’s comic relief buddy who quickly gets burnt to a literal crisp and displayed on-screen as a carbonated trophy for a traumatic twenty seconds.

When Wahlberg finds an old rickety truck and discovers that it’s Autobot leader Optimus Prime in disguise (gasp!), the story starts to unfurl. The good Transformers who fought to save the world in Transformers 3: Revenge of the Bots are almost extinct as the government—headed by evil agent Harold Attinger (a bearded Kelsey Grammer)—tries to kill them all. Now there’s only five left.

In the mind-numbing two hours of battling and running and slow-moing and close-upping that follow, Wahlberg and friends team up with Optimus and his crew (notably John Goodman voicing a fat cigar-smoking Transformer and Ken Watanabe as a super-offensive NinjaBot) to ride some dinosaur Transformers and fight Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, a bomb called “The Seed,” a Transformer whose face is a huge gun, and some mechabot thing called Galvatron. None of this shit made any sense to me either.

MY FACE IS A GUN!!!

Granted, visually, this film is probably the most gorgeous thing that’s ever graced a silver screen. To his credit, Bay has perfected the Transformer graphics to the point that now he’s just playing with it like an infant with a toy chest of action figurines. Explosions boom in IMAX 3D. The cars, planes, alien ships and Transformers glimmer and shriek as they come apart and fit back together. The gun-head Transformer and the DinoBots are definitely the craziest, most preposterously incredible creations Bay has ever come up with. Bugattis and Ferraris flip and twist into robots. It’s astronomically cool.

Despite the glorious IMAX 3D monster that Bay’s created to top the box office charts for months, this flick reeks of #2. He’s trolling us now: Victoria Secret ads are blown up, US Banks are crushed under a Transformer’s boot, and Wahlberg stops in the middle of all the chaos to drink a Bud Light. There was even a quick intro before the movie where everyone involved just talked about how awesome Michael Bay is. Really, Age of Extinction is one big commercial, and the product placement made it seem like Transformers had accidentally wandered into a GQ photo-shoot and just decided to blow everything up.

Optimus Prime is awesome as usual, but there’s just so much crazy and absurd stuff happening to really get anything more than a headache. Plot points are brought up then completely dropped, like when Optimus is said to need repairing and then just magically repairs himself. Close-ups of actors were too jarring in 3D, and Bay too often forces the shots in. Though Tucci and Grammer are outstanding in their villain roles, it’s problematic when you find yourself hoping the good guys lose.

Though Mark Wahlberg is great at playing Mark Wahlberg, anything involving him, Peltz and Raynor is utter garbage. We’re subjected to almost three hours of “you can’t date boys until you’re 18” discourse that never ends. Peltz’s outfits get increasingly tighter, so much so that they look—as the country-folk say—painted on. Luckily she’s really hot, which distracts from how utterly annoying the overprotective Dad shtick gets. Otherwise, my main complaint comes with hotty racer Raynor: why couldn’t he be fat and nerdy and play League of Legends? Why do these guys always have to be way too good-looking?

Age of Extinction is just too long. It’s arduous work just watching because so many things are crammed in. This film could have been an hour long, and it might’ve been fantastic. Too often it dragged out unnecessary plot and confusing battles. There’s a Jaw-like wait just to see the DinoBots. Wahlberg amps up the Wahlberg, and seems to be made out of the same stuff as the Transformers.

At the end of the night, you wonder how you ever expected anything more. History repeats itself and so does Transformers, ad nauseam. One has to wonder if Flip’s “S Box” stands for “Shit Box.” If so, cram Age of Extinction in an S Box and never let it out.

D

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Talking with Bong Joon-Ho of SNOWPIERCER

June 25, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged Interviews, Memories of Murder, Park Joon-ho, Snowpiercer, South Korea, The Host

I’ve said it one times too many already but for the purpose of this article, it’s really worth reiterating again: I’m a big fan of South Korean film. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I jumped at the opportunity to interview Bong Joon-Ho, a great voice within the oeuvre of South Korean films and a leader of the movement to turn it into a world wide product. Snowpiercer, his latest hit, is an even bigger, bolder move than we saw from his countryman Park Chan-wook who went from directing the OG Oldboy to last year’s ravishing Stoker. Read More

Weekly Review 48: MEMORIES, DEAD, STAKELAND

June 21, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Day of the Dead, Memories of Murder, Reviews, Stakeland, Weekly Review

We’re back this week for Weekly Review in a week that’s admittedly all about TV. Game of Thrones wrapped up with a rather cinematic finale but felt a touch disappointing after the omission of a certain cliffhanger. But the real triumph is found in FX’s Fargo, which for all the many, many ways it could have failed miserably, has turned into perhaps the greatest mini-series event of all time. It’s a dark monument to long-form storytelling; 10 hours of rollicking perfection. If I were to assign a grade to the entire season, it would without a doubt be an A+. The acting from Martin Freeman, Allison Tomlan, Keith Carradine has been simply incredible and Billy Bob Thornton deserves every award there is for his menacing portrayal of the almost Biblical Lorne Malvo. If you haven’t yet seen the show, I implore you to do so.

Aside from that, this week held very few screenings for me aside from Clint Eastwood‘s Jersey Boys, which I thought was mildly amusing but mostly dull. I deliberately skipped out on Think Like a Man Too, probably because I watched About Last Night last week and was totally turned off by the genre. Obvious Child also screened but since I got a chance to catch that at SIFF (and thoroughly enjoyed it, you may recall), I skipped out on a second viewing.

And considering that it was pretty rainy all week, I was in a bit of a horror mood, as you’ll notice from the selection below. So have fun and dive into another installment of Weekly Review. Remember, feel free to add suggestions or requests for me to add to the list.

Memories of Murder (2005)

Through Bong Joon-ho‘s spectacles, the world is a grim canvas for violence, full of painful misgivings and poorly constructed, often faulty systems. Memories of Murder looks back at the dictatorship-defined 1980s of South Korea and an unsolved mass murder case polluted by torture, assumptions, and a corrupt system as a pair of detectives attempt to trudge through the mire and find truth. Murder is about morals going where the sun don’t shine and the corruptive souls of those with a gun and a badge. Though the frays are rarely invisible, Bong’s message shines loud and clear in this captivating, cleanly made sophomore feature. (B)

Day of the Dead (1985)

George Romero‘s third addition to his Dead series is an oddly thoughtful account of the humanity left behind in the apocalypse’s wake. It’s never actually scary and has an unexpectedly slim amount of Z-day encounters, but makes up for frights with some dial-moving FX – including some killer zombie slayings – and smooth monster movie ideology. No less, it’s still a significant addition to the oeuvre of horror movies, even when it does feel slight – especially considering the collective 30 year gap on either sides of other installments. But the domesticated zombie Bub is pretty much enough to glide by on, amiright? (C+)

Stakeland (2010)

After interviewing Jim Mickles for a second time, I thought it pertinent to catch up on some of his earlier filmography and let’s just say the man has made great leaps and bounds since this earlier work. Stakeland – a post-apocalyptic, vampire road trip movie – is not a bad film so much as it is derivative and without much visual personality. It falls in line with the aesthetic palette you see of direct to Redbox projects yet still contains some of the disturbing flair that Mickles has since expanded upon. To get the gist of it, imagine Zombieland without the humor. (C-)

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Out in Theaters: THE ROVER

June 19, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Australia, David Michôd, Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, The Rover

With Animal Kingdom, David Michôd proved that Australia had a place at the table when discussing great new cinematic voices globally (and all but introduced the world to Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton and Jackie Weaver). With The Rover, he’s taken the next step towards auteurship in a stripped-down, sand-blasted, shaggily-moraled, post-apocalyptic Western saga. In it, Robert Pattinson‘s star shines bright, offering the best performance of the year so far and one certainly worth of chatter come Oscar season. It’s magical enough that Michôd has culled a truly jaw-dropping performance from the oft reviled Twilight icon (who was also strong in Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis) but his minimalist take on what remains after society crumbles is a rawhide-tough slice of devastation pie. Read More

Out in Theaters: JERSEY BOYS

June 18, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Christopher Walken, Clint Eastwood, Jersey Boys, John Lloyd Young, Musicals, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Vincentazza

Clint Eastwood‘s latest biopic, Jersey Boys, paints Frankie Valli as some sort of falsetto-ing saint – an absentee father, yes, but a take-it-on-the-chin, bootstraps machismo with the voice of an angel and a bleeding heart for his down on their luck, criminally-inclined best buddies. And though the man has a range that reaches into the high soprano section like a eunuch in a Roman cathedral, this cloyingly old-fashion, family friendly biography follows the familiar conceit of rise-fall-rise that we’ve seen in many biopics of pop stars past. No matter how many high notes Valli hits and how hard the familiar musical numbers pop, it’s a tedious and long-winded encounter that fails to deviate from the course of previous entries into the genre.

Based on the Tony-Award winning jukebox musical of the same name, Jersey Boys sees a young Valli transform from a mop boy into a certifiable All Star and the many bumps in the road along the way. Now if you can only ignore the fact that the story begins with a 16-year old Frankie Valli (born Francesco Castelluccio, but I don’t think we have to get into why he slimmed down that clunker) being portrayed by a 38-year old, grown ass man (John Lloyd Young) then you’re probably off to a pretty good start.

The film begins amicably enough with a light-hearted heist-gone-wrong, window-dressed with an amusing visual gag and narrated in fourth-wall breaking virility by a slick-backed and vain Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza). In media res, DeVito retrospects on how Valli was essentially his creation and of course, he has the tale to convince us. Christopher Walken stops by as mob boss-lite Gyp DeCarlo and sheds some quick, unearned tears over Valli’s warbling descant. Keep up your exercises, he cautions, you’re gonna be a star some day.

Bing, bang, boom, lo and behold Castelluccio becomes Valli and The Four Lovers become The Four Seasons and start churning out poppy top charters like hot cakes at a Sunday morning Dennys. Still, no matter how many bitter berries are spread throughout the lives of Valli and his compatriots, the story still deals with their lives in a syrupy, surface-level manner. I will credit Jersey Boys for giving me a new found appreciation for Valli and The Four Seasons but I wouldn’t say that I actually understanding how these people operate.

The fact that none of the cast is particularly stirring doesn’t make it any better. There’s nothing especially poor about the performances that pepper the film so much as there’s hardly anything in them worthy of note. Considering that Young received an acting Tony for the very same performance on Broadway speaks largely to the contrast between what works on stage and on screen, as his Valli never feels like a living, breathing character so much as a stage version of a character. That’s not to say his portrayal of the pop icon is to blame for the shortcomings of the film as Eastwood’s troubled hand adapting it from one forum to another is the real issue at stake. Even during the high points (which surprisingly enough came during the songs for me), it’s easy to spot some janky lip-singing and the musical numbers reach a stasis when they drag on for too long or hit one right after another.

With all the high-pitched crooning and retro set pieces and costumery, Jersey Boys just feels like a dated effort, an breezy, over-the-plate adaptation of already beloved source material that fails to bring anything new to the table. Fault Eastwood’s more recent tendency to miss the forest for the trees or his inexplicable need to put young actors in old people’s makeup. To quote Murtaugh, I think he’s getting too old for this shit. As it stands, Jersey Boys is probably exactly the entertainment your grandma is looking for but may prove tiring for all once it snails over the two hour mark.

C-

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Weekly Review 47: ONCE, MARS!, FILTH, 2 DAYS, ABOUT

June 17, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged 2 Days in Paris, About Last Night, Filth, Mars Attacks!, Once, Reviews, Weekly Review

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I’ve visited this list but with SIFForty stuffing my mouth full of films like I’m Takeru Kobayashi at a hot dog eating contest, I didn’t have time to do anything outside of the magical land of the international film festival. But now that that’s over and done with for the year and I don’t feel the pressure of consuming screener after screener, we’ll return to the most irregular regular segment we’ve got here at Silver Screen Riot: Weekly Review.

Last week was quite honestly one of the best weeks of cinema of the past year with screenings of How to Train Your Dragon 2, Snowpiercer, 22 Jump Street and The Rover all clogging up my cinema pipes with their epic awesomeness. Seriously, not a miss amongst them. As for at home watches, there wasn’t much that I was bowled over by, save for an effort from the always lovely (but always grumpy) Julie Delpy.

Once (2006)

After seeing Once land amongst the 17 Most Universally Agreed Upon Movies of the past 11 years, I felt that I had to check it out. And for all the singing of songs, blushing indie charm, belted powerful ballads, and intentionally miffed emotional connections, I just have to admit that it wasn’t my bad. It’s not a movie so much as a mix tape of sappy love songs caught on lo-fi footage and bustled out for the masses. Had there been more of a story and less of, uh, singing, I think this really could have worked for me but as is, I quickly found myself bored and ready for the crooning to reach a caesura before I had a seizura.

C

Mars Attacks! (1996)

A gleefully ridiculous genre take on 1950s B-movies, Mars Attacks! is as absurd as having an exclamation point at the tail end of your title but packs just the right amount of senseless fun to engage us for its running time. From Jack Nicholson inexplicably pulling double duty as two completely unrelated characters to Pierce Brosnan getting probed by aliens, Tim Burton corrals an eclectic group together, giving us a strange view of how the end of the world would affect difference peoples and classes. But that cone-headed alien’s trot all but makes up for other misgivings.

C+

Filth (2014)

As powerful as James McAvoy‘s performance in Filth is, Jon S. Baird‘s film of the same name is nothing short of a tonal nightmare that – like McAvoy’s character – doesn’t know what it wants, or needs, to be. Danny Boyle knew how to take on Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) and his ironically black material but Baird gets things jumbled up quickly. It’s like he’s failed to properly parse the elements from each other; he’s mixed his reds in with his whites and ended up with a big heap of pink. Things only really start to heat up in the third act and when they do, they admittedly lean towards greatness, but without a solid foundation to rely on, even a finale this painful ends up feeling soggy and soft.

C-

2 Days in Paris (2007)

A smart subjugation of the romantic comedy genre, 2 Days in Paris sees Julie Delpy stepping into frequent collaborator Richard Linklater‘s shoes and approaching her film with his style of close quarters, unadulterated, matured grit. As her high maintenance American boyfriend, Adam Goldberg brings just the right measure of NYC chupatz to his fish-on-the-line routine, his increasing irk with her many encounters with exes is jealousy-ridden and yet sympathetic. Goldberg’s rocky relationship with Delpy – his bonafide meshugenah – drips the truth of a weathered relationship.

B+

About Last Night (2014)

A lazy, customary, cliched rom-com whose only twists and turns are that it takes exactly the twists and turns we expect it to make up this rom-com of rom-coms. Every once in a long while, Kevin Hart will crack a joke worth laughing at but About Last Night is a largely joyless affair, another tired relationship reckoning that’ll have you glad you don’t date anyone resembling these cardboard characters or deal with their laugh-tracked, sitcom problems. When Hart is your best asset, you can smell trouble a brewing and this is a movie where three out of four characters and unthinkably noxious. For my money, I’d rather spend two hours doing laundry than with these characters.

D

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Out in Theaters: SNOWPIERCER

June 16, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bong Joon Ho, Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Snowpiercer, South Korea, Tilda Swinton 2 Comments

Global climate change threatens the way of life as we know it (just ask Bill Nye for proof of that.) But not every ailment has an ointment as not every disaster has a solution. Snowpiercer examines a world where a fix-all mechanism for global warming has gone horrible awry and left the world as we know it in frosty tatters, where the only few survivors occupy a train that hasn’t stopped circling the planet for 17 years. It’s a bleak glance into a natural disaster the scope of which we can forecast but not prevent but the true terror lies not in the world outside the train, but the social order which takes hold within it. It’s a distinctly international story (with a cast that’s one gay guy shy of a Benetton ad) about standing up for what’s right and blowing shit up when it refuses to nudge. Rife with sociopolitical commentary and brimming with one-of-a-kind world-building, South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho looked like the perfect guy to take on a thinking man’s actioner of this breed. After all, who else would have dared to end this movie like he did? Read More

Out in Theaters: 22 JUMP STREET

June 12, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged 22 Jump Street, Amber Stevens, Best of 2014, Channing Tatum, Comedy, Ice Cube, Jillian Bell, Jonah Hill, Nick Offerman, Out in Theaters, Peter Stormare, Reviews

A truly great comedy movie requires three things: pitch-perfect chemistry between its charismatic stars, a treasure trove of visual gags (preferably sans dongs, ball sacks, and/or fecal matter) and a waterfall of jokes that feel rightly organic; ad-libbed zingers that don’t come across like sweat-shop products whittled down by mouth-breathing jurors in some distant focus-lab. Overstuffed with these three golden characteristics, 22 Jump Street has all the makings of a comedy classic. A healthy improvement over the original, this higher budgeted follow-up chiefly takes on sequels and bromance in a deeply meta and surprisingly charming manner. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller‘s saucy avenue for comedy is aptly winking and righteously unbarred, stirring up just the right amount of chagrin for the platitudes of (notoriously lame) studio sequels. In acknowledging the shortcomings of what their product could have been, Lord and Miller’s film is transcendent. It’s smart, funny and flowing with in-jokes for industry insiders and casual filmgoers as well. It’s a comedy for movie lovers by movie lovers and joke for joke, the funniest movie of the year. Further, it’s one that will likely remain in the “best of” comedy conversation for years to come.

The table is set with a playful “Previous on 21 One Jump Street” recap that doubles as an homage to the original Johnny Depp-lead television program while still providing a brief summation of the first film for people like me who haven’t seen it in a number of years. We reacquaint with odd couple cops Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) as they’re about to intercept a drug deal, or so they think. A hilariously off Mexican gangster impersonation follows and hijinks quickly sour with Schmidt receiving hickey by octopus and Jenko strung up from the heels.

Even though they majorly biff their first outing, these two flunky street cops soon find that the higher ups have them squarely in their sights. After the success of their first “mission”, the Mr. Money Bags on top are gambling even more on Schmidt and Jenko this time around. They’re dished out more money to throw around but expect an even greater degree of success. “You need to do things exactly as you did last time,” Nick Offerman‘s mustache of a Deputy Chief commands. The only way to achieve success after all is to play it safe. As the film pitches this very concept, the bastions of this artfully devious script do all they can to switch hit and deliver much meatier blow for it.

Screenwriters’ Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel and Rodney Rothman‘s gumming is a devilishly obvious allusion to the studio system’s tight grip on franchising – whose “creativity” is more in tune with reproduction by assembly line than true originality – with third wall breaking so mightily pronounced that Hill and Tatum all but stare directly into the camera. But the irreverence of the entire cast and crew is deeply comic. Its seven layers of meta has sarcasm running so deep that their pot shots come fast and loose. Tatum essentially acknowledges how bottomed out White House Down was just as they later acknowledge how easy it would be to milk this franchise for all its worth. Also with a higher budget, we get things like Ice Cube‘s Ice Cube office. That’s right, Ice Cube has an office shaped like a cube of ice.

Schmidt and Jenko make their way to their next assignment, investigating a hybrid drug called WHYPHY (pronounced wifi and standing for Work Hard? Yes, Play Hard? Yes) at a local community college. While there, the two best buddies/partners begin to tear in different directions as Tatum and his bulbous throwing arm fall into the frat bro crowd, leaving Schmidt to find sentimental solace in gallons of ice cream and Friends re-runs and the artsy, fartsy community.

As far as ying and yang go, Hill’s wounded fay routine synchs perfectly with Tatum’s prom king duncemanship. As a college football announcer says (however not about their two characters) “They’re two peas in a pod.” Their comic timing is perfect as it their oddball dichotomy of character. Tatum’s cob-webbed thought process is blunted by Hill’s smart aleck ways and Lord and Miller find many opportunities to exploit their differences in hilarious and oft-kilter ways. Even if some of the laughs are expected, the amount of them will catch you off guard. It’s a non-stop flight of guffaws, a bullet train of side-splitters. Also, be sure to stick around for the credits which will likely have you rolling on the floor.

With their tongues planted deeply in cheek, Lord and Miller bring the same slapstick routine that defined The Lego Movie to this more adult adventure and it’s nothing short of a riot-fest to watch them peel back the many layers of this joke onion. But licking your way to the creamy center, one might be surprised to find some real heart buried amongst the awkward and yet sweet relationship between Hill and Tatum. While their matching at first looked like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster, in 22 Jump Street, they really are two peas in one hell of a funny pod.

A-

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40 Film Reviews for SIFForty

June 9, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Film Festivals, Reviews, SIFF, SIFF 2014, SIFForty 1 Comment

Some said it couldn’t be done but goddamnit, I did it. 40 films single-handedly seen by this one naive film critic. I’ve all but overdosed on cinema. I’m obese on art films. I’m constipated by having seen films from the US, the UK, Spain, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Norway, Australia, Hong Kong, Chile, South Korea, Canada, France, Ireland, South Africa, Greece, and Poland; my pipes all clogged by the sheer amount of celluloid spun out in movie after movie. The short of it: it was a haul.

Nonetheless, SIFForty held riches to be discovered, films both foreign and domestic that I’m a better person for having seen. Amongst the truly excellent: 10,000 KM, The Skeleton Twins, The One I Love, The Internet’s Own Boy, Venus in Furs, Frank, In Order of Disappearance, The Trip to Italy, Night Moves, Intuders, Happy Christmas and To Kill a Man. Each packing a throttling punch that has lingered with me and joins the ranks of some of the best cinema of the year. On the other side of the film, SIFForty also packed saddle-bags brimming with cinematic turds including some of the worst movies I’ve seen this year; true wretches whose sitting through is an experience in pennant masochism. From the ungodly awful Firestorm to the wrecklessly hopeless Standing Aside Watching, the defunct Leading Lady to the clueless Willow Creek, they were just so, so bad. But all are topped by They Came Together – a rom-com spoof of the lowest breed – and Another – a pathetically made B-movie. Please people, don’t bother with these films.

As for the rest, feel free to dive right in and swim in the waters of 40 micro-reviews. Bask in the glory of knowing what to look forward to and the keen knowledge that you’ll know what to avoid. An article 40 days in the making, welcome to 40 for SIFForty.

Fight Church

dir. Daniel Junge, Bryan Storkel (USA)

Christians may preach turning the cheek but this bunch is all about turning said cheek to a bloody pulp. Following a group of otherwise devout pastors who prove their devotion to Him cage-style, Daniel Junge and Bryan Storkel‘s documentary offers a peek into a fascinating world that you would have never suspected exists but fails to cement a sense of imminent purpose beyond surface-level intrigue. Probably would work better as a short than full length doc. (C)

Hellion

dir. Kat Candler star. Aaron Paul, Josh Wiggins, Juliette Lewis (USA)

Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) stars as newly widowed father Hollis to exuberant (in a fire-starting sort of way) sons Jacob (off-to-a-strong-start newcomer Josh Wiggins) and younger, innocent but corruptible Wes. Ships turns towards rocky shoals as the pitfalls of young fraternity sail towards bleak recompense and ultimate tragedy. There’s enough heartbreak in Kat Candler‘s cheerless drama to go around and soulful performances to match, with this dusty no-man’s land of bum-fuck wherever offering a poignant peek into the languor of plain’s living, with all its scuzzy fruitlessness and paths towards damnation. (C+)

JIMI: All is By My Side

dir. John Ridley star. Andre 3000, Imogen Poots, Hayley Atwell, Burn Gorman, Ruth Negga (UK)

A thoughtful mess but a mess nonetheless with Andre 300 laying down an unexpectedly solid turn as the pre-Woodstock Hendrix. His take feels closer to imitation than anything but it’s certainly outside the customary league of rappers-turned-actors one might expect. Director/writer John Ridley paints a picture of un-famous (and slightly infamous) Jimi with a rounded view, giving us a glimpse of a performer who few knew and may not have even known himself, but the faulty editing seeks to sabotage the movie at every turn. (C)

Zip Zap and the Marble Gang

dir. Oskar Santos star. Javier Gutiérrez, Raúl Rivas, Daniel Cerezo, Claudia Vega, Fran García, Marcos Ruiz (Spain)

Familiar even in a foreign language (it’s Spanish), this child-lead romp is formulaic but still largely charmed. The premise follows a group of social outcasts who band together at a tortuous summer school to reclaim the lost treasure of the school’s misunderstood founder. It’s kinship to Goonies and Harry Potter means a readily consumable family feature but it lacks the magic and awe-striking wonder of a great adventure movie. (C)

Cannibal (Caníbal)

dir. Manuel Martín Cuenca star. Antonio de la Torre, Olimpia Melinte, Delphine Tempels (Spain)

Carlos leads a double life: one as an upstanding citizen/fashion-forward tailor, the other as a connoisseur of human flesh. When the sister of one of his victims nervously rolls into town, Carlos accidentally becomes coiled with her search and discovers a new range of emotions: ones that don’t start and end in his stomach. Manuel Martín Cuenca‘s slow building and deliberate pacing adds depth to Antonio de la Torre‘s somber shade of monster but his film, though unflinching, still lacks a central tension: of exposure, imprisonment, or worse. (C)

The Double

dir. Richard Ayoade star. Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Noah Taylor (UK)

If Terry Gilliam had made Fight Club, it probably would have looked a lot like Richard Ayoade‘s The Double. Set in a steampunk dystopian tomorrowland, Jesse Eisenberg lays down august double duty, first as Simon James, a meek, nay spineless, employee in a dungy, Orwellian basement cubicle maze. When James Simon, his carbon copy in the looks department but his exact social opposite – James is an exceedingly debonair social-climber – moves in, Simon’s small world is irrevocably jolted. Grubby set design and hallucinatory foley work, set against the motif of closing doors and characteristic-less cultural nowhere, aid Ayoade’s prevailing sense of cautious pessimism in this thrilling, darkly comedic romp. (B-)

Another

dir. Jason Bognacki star. Ana Paula Redding, Leone Sergio Bognacki, David Landry, Maria Olsen (USA)

Cheap-looking even by independent movie standards, this cultish schlock stars some of the worst performances this side of day time cable (Ana Paula Redding, *shutters*). With acting this ham-fisted and downright embarrassing, watching Another is an exercise is intelligence bludgeoning. Jason Bognacki‘s direction is comprised of shaky cam after-FX and inexplicably fuzziness that clouds our view of the “horror” onscreen, as if he’d taken cues from a pirated Bourne DVD. It’s a sad pile of crud that should be walked out on; a joker’s stain on SIFF’s lineup. (F)

Time Lapse

dir. Bradley King star. Danielle Panabaker, Matt O’Leary, George Finn, Amin Joseph, Jason Spisak (USA)

Bradley King‘s mildly thought-provoking indie sci-fi swims around in the lazy river that is time. But Time Lapse – which sees a camera that takes pictures 24-hours in the future – is undercut by weak performances across the board. There’s a provocative allure to King’s examination of determinism versus free will at play but they’re never mined to satisfactory results. Instead, the real marvel of his deux ex machina is left to dry out like reagent on a Polaroid. For a movie that’s all about time, it’s only partially worthy of yours. (C)

Half of a Yellow Sun

dir. Bibi Bandele star. Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Boyega, Anika Noni Rose (Nigeria, UK)

Half of a Yellow Sun features strong performances from Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejioforj but after the first hour, it unexplainably loses momentum, and curls into a deep sag in the later third act. A love square between two Nigerian sisters schooled in England, who are dead set on becoming arbiters of social change, occupies the forefront of this saga that also sees the Nigerian civil war ripping their world to shreads, and subsequent creation and deconstruction of Biafra. Occassionally powerful but unsatisfying in structure. (C+)

Mirage Men

dir. John Lundberg, Roland Denning, Kypros Kyprianou, Mark Pilkington (UK)

An engaging info-fest that posits a.) aliens exist b.) the US government funded a mild to large-scale disinformation campaign to intentionally mislead UFO researchers. Richard Doty, the former Air Force largely responsible for feeding falsified documents to UFO “expert” Paul Bennewitz – until he snapped into full blown psychosis – comes forward and is our (somewhat unreliable) guide through the proceedings. The triple directing team captures a wide range of testimony on the subject but barely have any video to play with, making Mirage Men a disappointingly “tell, don’t show” experience. (C)

The Trip to Italy

dir. Michael Winterbottom star. Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan, Marta Barrio (UK)

Rob Brydon and Steven Coogan leave foggy, fried North England behind for the breathtaking Italian coast where they wine, dine, and goof their way through a dream trip (one that inspires deep pangs of jealousy from this critic). The naturalistic hyper-reality they craft thrives on the weathered chemistry between the two stars. Their old-as-they-are relationship paves the way for improvisation prowess so organic its feels more like second natural than performance. More impressions, absolutely stunning vistas, Alanis Morissette’s croon, lazily waxing on life and pasta, pasta, pasta gives intrepid life to The Trip to Italy. (B)

Starred Up

dir. Jack Mackenzie star. Jack O’Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend (UK)

A violent and volatile teen, Eric Love, enters a maximum security English prison where the wrong word or glance can end with a cut throat. Rather than submit to his surroundings, Eric thrashes like a caged animal; an unpredictable bombshell armed to blow. Rupert Friend, Ben Mendelsohn and David Ajala ably fill out the supporting cast but it’s star Jack O’Connell who burns brightest; his portrayal of Eric is unblinking and – even behind such thick callous – heartily tragic. While some plot threads are left dangling, the potent performances and probing examination of dehumanizing prison ethos makes Starred Up more than a worthy trip to hell and back. (B-)

Difret

dir. Zeresenay Berhane Mehari star. Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere (Ethiopia)

Difret, or Ethiopia Kidnap Weddings: SVU, beams a chilling political reality where tradition clashes with human rights, courts with all-male elder tribunals. A young girl, Hirut, is kidnapped by a gaggle of men on horseback, locked up and raped before escaping and killing the captor intent on marrying her. Difret, which loosely translates to “raped”, then sees a politic system condemning this child to death and the human rights lawyer who come to her aid. The performances impress but Mehari’s amateur hand leaves much to be desired in the directing department. Hirut’s story will have you up in arms but the story is disappointingly one-sided. (C)

The Fault in Our Stars

dir. Josh Boone star. Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Willem Dafoe, Laura Dern (USA)

Charmed performances can’t overcome the schmaltzy, melodramatic cancer porn that is The Fault in Our Stars. Pegged as a weepy drama, Josh Boone‘s film is ready to serve up tragedy by the ladle-full. Willem Dafoe stops by for a show-stopping scene but it’s Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort who keep us grounded in this otherwise-borrowed Walk To Remember path. It is however decidedly better than its leads’ previous project: Divergent. Stars is not outright bad so much as fundamentally flawed. (C-)

The Skeleton Twins

dir. Craig Robinson star. Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson, Ty Burrell (USA)

Bill Hader just had his coming out party. He may not be gay, but he’s a star. The Skeleton Twins is unabashedly entertaining; a darkly comic, tactfully told dramedy that probes the darkest of places with the funniest of people. Kristen Wiig and Luke Wilson join Hader to round out a cast of unsung heroes taking the spotlight, each firmly on their mark and spontaneously hilarious throughout. For a film that circles suicide, it is the funniest of the year (so far) and the cast’s effortless deadpan will have you in absolute, ROFL stitches. (A-)

In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten)

dir. Hans Petter Moland star. Stellan Skarsgård, Kristofer Hivju, Bruno Ganz, Peter Andersson (Norway)

Kraftidioten (or In Order of Disappearance) is a Norwegian black comedy that sees a snowplow man/upstanding citizen take justice into his own hands after his son is wrongfully murdered. Featuring a standout performance from the multilingual Stellan Skarsgård, this wintry take on everyman vengeance mixes doses of bleak internal battles in with blood-stained snow and murderous vegans for a darkly satisfying product, further improved by ponderous cinematography and unexpected giggles. Even though the second act loses the adroit pacing of the first, it all adds up to something sickly sweet. (B+)

Willow Creek

dir. Bob Goldthwait star. Alexie Gilmore, Bryce Johnson (USA)

There’s a really strong long-form scene in the midst of Willow Creek, much filler surrounding it and a wholly unsatisfying and unintelligible ending. What ought to be provocatively minimalism isn’t as this lo-fi horror borrows heavily from the book of Blair Witch, but without the novelty of being there first, Bob Goldthwait has little to add to the genre. More padding than substance, Willow Creek is overstuffed with the kind of fruitless scenes that make found footage so grating and lethargic and is only worthwhile for diehard horror/Sasquatch fans. (D+)

Mystery Road

dir. Ivan Sen star. Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving, Ryan Kwanten, Tama Walton (Australia)

Ivan Sen‘s painterly cinematography, marked by brilliant orange sunrises and sweeping casts into endless flatlands, sets the tone for this Australian thinker’s thriller. With a Coen Bros meets Sergio Leone feel to it, Mystery Road is pretty much No Outback for Young Aborigine Ladies, a dark drama that manages to sneak muted undercurrents of racial aggression amongst its larger themes of derelict duty and parental responsibility. Restrained performances from Aaron Pederson and the like set against a manic Hugo Weaving makes for a nice dichotomy of character in a film well worth your time. (B-)

Firestorm (Fung Bou)

dir. Alen Yuen star. Chen Yao, Ka Tung Lam, Andy Lau, Michael Wong (Hong Kong)

Senselessly expensive – especially by Hong Kong standards – overly-stylized and utterly meaningless, Firestorm is a high-gloss crime actioner that throws the kitchen sink in each of its tactless proceedings. With as many explosions as budgetarily possible and a hero who’s more Robocop than anything resembling a living breathing human, this flunky action movie is derivative, laughable and ceaselessly dumb – a combo that actually works in its favor a small fraction of the time. Nevertheless, it should be actively avoided. (D)

10,000 KM

dir. Carlos Marques-Marcet star. Natalia Tena, David Verdaguer (Spain)

Anyone who’s lived through a long distance relationship will find alarming truth in 10,000KM, a bittersweet romance stunningly directed by Carlos Marques-Marcet and brilliantly acted by Natalia Tena (Game of Thrones) and David Verdaguer. In truly all accords, it’s a phenomenal film; real, honest, emotional and poised to hit the nerve of lovers living through the e-generation. How people helplessly grow apart with distance is approached from nearly every angle to create an unfathomable experience so intimate, personal and gutting that you’ll be as wrecked as the star-crossed lovers when all is said and done. (A)

Obvious Child

dir. Gillian Robespierre star. Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann, Gabe Liedman (USA)

Gaby Hoffman is dumped, fired and knocked up in the short span of a few weeks. As a stand-up comedian, she takes to the brick-walled stage to bear her scruffy soul to the captive audience of the club she frequents, armed with uncouth non-sequitors and filthy vaginal humor that’ll have some men (and even women) squirming in their seats. Hoffman’s decidedly feminist brand of humor is not unlike the highly trending small-chick-in-the-big-city of HBO’s Girls and its offspring, but her erratic raunch keeps affairs airy and laugh-heavy. (B-)

To Kill a Man (Matar a un hombre)

dir. Alejandro Fernández Almendras star. Daniel Antivilo, Daniel Candia, Ariel Mateluna, Alejandra Yañez (Chile)

Kubrickian in style and score – with hauntingly symmetrical shots and eerie, creeping soundscapes – To Kill a Man is grippingly adept at manufacturing tension. When a neighborhood terror won’t leave his family alone, feeble everyman Jorge must weigh the social and psychological consequences of taking matters into his own hands. Almendras’ understated film is a thoughtful and poetic piece, achieved slowly and with great care, that never skimps on honest emotional reflection to get to the heart of this chilling true tale. (B+)

Night Moves

dir. Kelly Reichardt star. Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard, Alia Shawkat (USA)

A quiet, moody thriller that sees a band of three ecoterrorists – though I don’t think they’d take to that moniker – plot to take out a dam and the consequences that follow. At times appearing overindulgent in its environmentalist mindset, the well-defined classical three-act structure unravels into an open-ended nightmare that has destroyed its own political prejudices by the time the credits rolls. Night Moves is The East meets Taxi Driver with Jesse Eisenberg offering a haunted lead performance amidst a welcome return to form for the elder Fanning. (B)

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

dir. Brian Knappenberger (USA)

An excellent documentary focused on Aaron Swartz, an internet whizkid who gave key notes speeches along Harvard professors at only 12 before ending his own life at 25. Knappenberger’s stirring doc amounts to a serious indictment of a disharmonious America that values corporations over citizens and censorship over progress. In a society domineered by dishonesty and boundless enterprising, Swartz’s quest for something more amounts to a unwavering picture of corruption in our country’s prix-fixe adage of “be the best you can be.” (B+)

Canopy

dir. Aaron Wilson star. Khan Chittenden, Mo Tzu-Yi (Australia)

An aggressively tedious concept film that sees an Australian pilot attempting to survive when shot down over enemy lines in 1942 Singapore. A total lack of momentum makes Canopy an aggravating, if not admirably shot, experience in positively bland, thanklessly simplistic filmmaking. The chirping sound design is like a setting on an Oasis Dream Machine (albeit interrupted by blips of gunfire) and coupled with the fact that the film is essentially dialogue free, Canopy is a snooze fest; a stressed cacophony of too little, too late. Though Aaron Wilson tries to put you into the midst of things, he’s more likely to put you to sleep. (D+)

Intruders

dir. Non Young-seok star. Jun Suk-ho, Oh Tae-kyung (South Korea)

With a title that works on many levels, Intruders is a Hitchcockian thriller by way of South Korea. A screenwriter tries to find recluse in a snowy off-the-beaten-path village but winds up with far more than he bargained for in this strange, exciting thrill ride. Though there are some technical snags – mostly born of budgetary constraints (Non Young-seok sorely needed a better indoor camera) – the festering story is a novelty of old and new, East meets West and with its nail-biting final act, will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat until the closing moments. (B)

The Babadook

dir. Jennifer Kent star. Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney (Australia)

An eerie children’s pop-up book warns that once you’ve seen the Babadook, you’ll wish you were dead. Thankfully, that’s not true of the film itself. This Australian ghost tale circles the real life impossibility of single parent child-rearing in a film that’s part Home Alone and part The Shining. Babadook is a frugal little haunter that makes smart use of its minimalist means and wrings a borderline outstanding (or at least compelling unselfconscious) performance from its young actor, Noah Wiseman. (C+)

Happy Christmas

dir. Joe Swanberg star. Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg (USA)

Joe Swanberg returns to his meandering, improvisational ways in a comedy/drama about a new family unit celebrating their second Christmas, which is promptly crashed by recently dumped and perennially immature sister Jenny. Jenny (the irresistibly lovable Anna Kendrick) is a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pant’s kinda girl and Kendrick’s hopelessly awkward antics marry perfectly to Swanberg’s trackless filmmaking. His wandering style allows this grounded story of family fuck-ups to highlight the little things in life (babies cackling and dogs chewin’ on bones) and is a fully worthy successor to last year’s borderline commercial Drinking Buddies. (B)

Frank

dir. Leonard Abrahams star. Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy (UK)

With a big, fake head and a Jim Morrison-like access to lyrical poetry, Frank (Michael Fassbender) is as talented as he is prophetic, and potentially disturbed. Joe (Domhnall Gleeson), a talentless hack of a musician, wants to take advantage of Frank’s art; to transform it into a social media-friendly commodity. As Frank attempts to find his magnus opus, Joe dopily tries to package and sell it; a searing metaphor for Gen-X self-inflation en masse. Efficiently experimental, at times sermonist, and always outlandish, Frank is a powerful meditation on mental disease, commercialism and art, and all the brightly lit areas where they intersect. Frank also proves Fassbender can act like no other through a Papier Mâché helmet. (B)

The Grand Seduction

dir. Don McKellar star. Brendan Gleeson, Taylor Kitsch, Gordon Pinsent, Matt Watts (Canada)

This delightfully moonstruck feature boasts Brendan Gleeson‘s comedian muscles and Taylor Kitsch‘s shtick (which, yes, is an anagram of Kitsch) for being the likable bad boy (Dr. Bad Boy here.) When their once-proud fishing harbor dries up, Murray’s (Gleeson) only way to ween the town off the welfare checks is to secure a doctor in order to legitimize a bid for an oil repurposing facility. To do so, he and the town’s people unite to spy on Kitsch’s Dr. Lewis, transforming the town around them into Lewis’s own personal fantasyland. The gimmick is cute (without being too syrupy) and at times touching, reminiscent in tone to last year’s equally cheery/droll Philomena, and is an easy recommendation for the masses of moms and pops looking for a feel-gooder. (B-)

Venus in Fur (La Vénus à la fourrure)

dir. Roman Polanski star. Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric (France)

As much a showcase for its two authoritative leads as it is an illustration of the power of theater, Venus in Fur continues Roman Polanski‘s streak of adapting plays in fearlessly simple terms. While Carnage felt a little forced in its translation to the screen, Furs works wonderfully and the adroit performances matched with the clever subjugation of gender roles present in David Ives‘s drama gives this pre-turn-of-the-century, play-within-a-play, dominatrix tale one to not soon forget. (B+)

Gold

dir. Niall Heer star. Maisie Williams, James Nesbitt, David Wilmont, Kerry Condon (Ireland)

An ironically named film – even Silver or Bronze would seem somewhat an overstatement – Gold sends up the sports movie by mixing heavy themes and messy family drama amidst the quest for first place. Abbie (Game of Throne‘s Maisie Williams) is pressured by her (adoptive) father Frank, a mustache of a PE teacher, to win win win, so turns to performance enhancing drugs to improve her times, just as her real dad, Ray, enters the picture for the first time in 12 years. While it’s nice to see Williams in a leading role (and she’s never the problem), the resolution comes up short, as does some of the connective tissue getting us from point A to point B. As such, Gold is a film with high aspirations that only periodically hits its mark. (C)

Leading Lady

dir. Henk Pretorius star. Gil Bellows, Katie McGrath, Brumilda van Rensburg, Bok van Blerk, Eduan van Jaarsveldt (South Africa)

NOTE: Last year I missed Fanie Fourie’s Lobola which, to my surprise, went on to win the SIFF Audience Award, so my anticipation of Leading Lady (and its inclusion as a shot in the dark pick on my 25 Must Sees of SIFForty list) was mostly to see what director Henk Pretorius had in store. What I witnessed has shaken my faith in foreign film. Frequent abysmal acting populates this cliche fish-out-of-water saga of a precocious actress who heads to South Africa to research a role – a place distressingly drawn as the land of the noble savage (the phrase “adorably primitive” is thrown in). Utterly suffocated by upbeat musical cues, this is the movie equivalent of going to Africa for a week, building a shanty library and believing you’ve reached spiritual enlightenment. It’s racist, sexist, and xenophobic on top of its even worse offensive of being boring, predictable and just all around stupid. (D-)

Tom at the Farm

dir. Xavier Dolan star. Xavier Dolan, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Lise Roy, Évelyne Brochu, Manuel Tadros (Canada)

A psychosexual genre flick that sees Dolan use his ferociously queer eye for something that doesn’t entirely add up to the tense and sexy (in a masochistic, bondagey kinda way) picture he’s trying to paint. Tom’s a gay Canadian man grieving his lover’s death but unable to tell the family of the man he’s lost the truth of their relationship. Whilst visiting, Tom falls under the spell of his would-be brother-in-law’s threatening ways, unconscious of his growing Stockholm Syndrome. But the transformation that plays out feels too forced for something that ought to be more organic and free-range. (C+)

Grand Central

dir. Rebecca Ziotowski star. Tahar Rahim, Lea Seydoux (France)

Rebecca Ziotowski spells out a slow-moving tale of woebegone happenstance in Grand Central; an economical, downbeat drama in which unskilled worker Gary (Tahar Rahim) lands a job at a nuclear power plant and begins an affair with Karole (Léa Seydoux), one of his co-workers and wife of his superior. The downtrodden narrative shows an unseen side of middle class drudgery and features stinging performances from the abundantly talented cast but its overtly contemplative movement makes Grand a stuffy and borderline pretentious experience. (C-)

The One I Love

dir. Charlie McDowell star. Mark Duplass, Elizabeth Moss, Ted Danson (USA)

Like stepping into a long-form Twilight Zone episode, The One I Love explores whether we would trade out our loved ones for more idyllic versions. Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss occupy the entirety of the film (with a brief appearance from Ted Danson) with palpable magnetism, fleshing out two sides of the same coin: the bumbing and the suave; the bitchy and the demure. The mechanisms are left intentionally vague so that our focus is left on the characters, and not the how or the why of it all. This thirty little indie film might not fix easily into a box but that’s what makes it all the more special. (B+)

Standing Aside Watching (Na Kathesai Kai Na Koitas)

dir. Giorgos Servetas star. Marina Symeou, Marianthi Pantelopoulou, Nikos Georgakis (Greece)

This Greek pseudo-tragedy thinks it blends elements of feminism in a bowl of misogyny but winds up a fallen soufflé of smut; a concoction of hopelessness and gray scenery that reads snuff film. Just when you think the film might barrel into a satisfying direction of minxy revenge, Servetas’ film succumbs to more violence against women and more senseless sentences carried out by the meat-headed minds of men. An unpleasant and dark experience not worthy of embarking on. (D)

How to Train Your Dragon 2

dir. Dean DuBlois star. Jay Baruchel, Gerald Butler, Cate Blanchett, Craig Robinson, Djimon Hounsou (USA)

Soaring nearly as high as its predecessor, How to Train Your Dragon 2 represents the best that animation has to offer. With Roger Deakins serving as a visual consultant, the film looks goddamn brilliant with Dreamworks ushering in a new gold standard for animated features in era of post-Pixar brilliance. And while most (if not all) of the comic beats fall on deaf ears (and ought to have been cut entirely), Dragon’s heart is so big and worn so proudly on its sleeve that you’ll have to be a monster to not erupt in tears on multiple occasions in this undeniably excellent yarn on a man’s maturing relationship with his beast. (A)

Life Feels Good (Chce Sie Zyc)

dir. Maciej Pieprzyca star. Dawid Ogrodnik, Dorota Kolak, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Helena Sujecka (Poland)

Taking a page from the book of My Left Foot, Life Feels Good explores similar territory as a young man suffering from cerebral palsy tries, but fails, to communicate with the world. While Left Foot showed the immeasurable progress of a boy once thought to be a dullard, Life Feels Good is more about the institutional fallacies that circle mental disorders; the metaphysical prison that is disability juxtaposed against the physical prison that is a mental hospital. In Dawid Ogrodnik‘s stirring, wordless performance, we feel just how tortuous being trapped inside yourself would be and how damning the world around you can be. (B-)

They Came Together

dir. David Wain star. Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Cobie Smulders, Bill Hader (USA)

Don’t get me wrong, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd make for a charming duo. Nevertheless They Came Together is a rom-com spoof in the same witless vein of Jason Friedman and Aaron Seltzer (The Starving Games, Meet the Spartans). Accordingly, it’s somewhat shocking to see Wet Hot American Summer‘s David Wain attached as director and helmer of this jokeless torpedo. His lambasting efforts are futile, his hammy parody a complete wash. While Wain’s conceit appears to be grounded in an attempt to skewer the genre instead of merely recreating pop cultural references, it works like a montage of dead baby jokes and there’s ultimately nothing differentiating this from Scary Movie 6, Epic Movie or Vampires Suck. They Came Together joins the great American tradition of not knowing comedy from an asshole. (F)

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To break it down by grades (from best to worst):

10,000 KM (A)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (A)
The Skeleton Twins (A-)
The One I Love (B+)
The Internet’s Own Boy (B+)
Venus in Furs (B+)
In Order of Disappearance (B+)
To Kill a Man (B+)
Frank (B)
The Trip to Italy (B)
Night Moves (B)
Intruders (B)
Happy Christmas (B)
Obvious Child (B-)
Starred Up (B-)
The Grand Seduction (B-)
Mystery Road (B-)
The Double (B-)
Life Feels Good (B-)
The Babadook (C+)
Tom at the Farm (C+)
Hellion (C+)
Half of a Yellow Sun (C+)
Cannibal (C)
Time Lapse (C)
Zip Zap and the Marble Gang (C)
Fight Church (C)
JIMI: All is By My Side (C)
Gold (C)
Mirage Men (C)
Difret (C)
The Fault in Our Stars (C-)
Grand Central (C-)
Canopy (D+)
Willow Creek (D+)
Firestorm (D)
Standing Aside Watching (D)
Leading Lady (D-)
They Came Together (F)
Another (F)