Category: Reviews

Maleficent

Angelina Jolie is the only plausible actress to recreate Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” villainess

“You poor, simple fools, thinking you could defeat me. Me! The Mistress of All Evil!” – Maleficent, “Sleeping Beauty” (1959)

With her boastful, grandiose poise, her fiendish cackling and her hateful, sarcastic and sly mocking of her own minions, Maleficent is Disney’s truly great villain. She is the only one who could be seen as completely sadistic. Free of irony or humor, Disney created a movie monster capable of pure, well, maleficence.

And within just moments of Disney’s latest spinoff and CGI, live-action reboot/reimagining, “Maleficent” manages to erase all of the character’s iconography and bravura.  Continue reading “Maleficent”

The Great Beauty

Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar winning film is a colorful, witty and incisive look at high society.

Much like Jep Gambardella, the protagonist of the sumptuous Italian Oscar winner “The Great Beauty,” we’ve seen a lot of parties in the movies, and it’s getting harder to impress. The one Paolo Sorrentino throws at the start of “The Great Beauty” though is certainly electric. It comes immediately after a spiritual reverie of an opening with the camera gliding over Roman fountains as choir girls echo in the background, so the blaring EDM and affronting sexuality that come next definitely come as a shock.

But it is at this moment Sorrentino quite literally turns the movie on its head to show just how absolutely delirious, rich and brilliant this film is. The camera rotates upside down and the celebration rages on, the wealthy and privileged of the high society now as high as they can go with no sign of coming down.

“The Great Beauty” is a colorful, vibrant, intellectual and aloof treat, a Fellini for the 21st Century and art classic for the ages. And yet it is also a devastating, powerful piece of cinema, bold and brash in its style and incisive to the lifestyle it depicts. It could fit along with 2013’s “Gatsby”, “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Bling Ring” as a have-more movie, but Sorrentino goes farther by challenging the notion of having it all without ever having to bring us down. Continue reading “The Great Beauty”

Godzilla (2014)

Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla” remake is a slow and lumbering bore with very few ideas or memorable moments.

I already got my quota of ambiguously monstrous hulking CGI masses terrorizing humanity in “Noah”, thank you very much. Godzilla is a legacy movie monster more than fit to be trotted out today to comment on climate change or national defense, but if the new “Godzilla” will not even bother to be about something more than an oversized spectacle then why am I watching it?

Director Gareth Edwards’ film is as slow and lumbering as its giant hero. The dialogue is thick, the characters are thin and the action and story are plain boring. By removing any allegory, ideas or humor, nothing gets in the way of this being purely cathartic summer mayhem, but it leaves nothing that might be memorable. Continue reading “Godzilla (2014)”

Neighbors

“Neighbors” allows Seth Rogen and Zac Efron to be both snobs and slobs and gives Rose Byrne a great female comedic role.

The millennial generation is so maturing beyond their age that even their college comedies are about old people. “Neighbors” appeals to the generation that knows they have to grow up but isn’t quite sure how. And although it manages to out-raunch “Animal House” et. al., it feels mature, positive and enthusiastic about the future.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne have wonderful chemistry as new parents Mac and Kelly Radner. The movie opens with Mac literally narrating his excitement at having spontaneous sex with his wife in the middle of the day, only to be foiled by their precious baby daughter Stella smiling at them from across the room. This failed attempt perfectly echoes their dynamic, one in which they eagerly try to be great parents and fun, friendly people to their friends and neighbors but end up embarrassing and tiring themselves out at just how hard they try.

Rogen and Byrne are constantly talking over one another in sunny platitudes. Even when they’re swearing and upset they seem incapable of harm, and there’s a great moment when Mac says he’s going to buy a gun and end the life of his neighbors that is so far removed from their cheery demeanor that its almost adorably hilarious.

Mac and Kelly end up directing that anger at their new next door neighbors, the Delta Psi Fraternity and their ring leaders, frat President Teddy (Zac Efron) and VP Pete (Dave Franco). The guys are predictably loud and disturbing to their baby, but Teddy and the frat declare war when Mac breaks a promise Mac made at the Frat’s house warming party: “If we’re too loud, call us before you call the cops.” Continue reading “Neighbors”

The Raid 2

Director Gareth Evans opens up the possibilities of where his copiously violent action can go.

 

2012’s “The Raid: Redemption” was an exhilarating and exhausting bout of wall-to-wall, non-stop beat downs and kinetic action. A bad guy waited at the top of a giant gray apartment building, and it was up to the hero to murder everyone in his path up each floor and through each room. It was relentless, and arguably not a whole lot of fun.

“The Raid 2” is still relentless, and it’s still a grim, copiously bloody martial arts movie in which everyone will still end up murdered. But Director Gareth Evans has opened up the film’s possibilities and scope in fascinating ways. It’s an intense and no doubt excruciating movie experience, but it comes with more arresting visuals and a greater set of stakes. Continue reading “The Raid 2”

Frozen

“Frozen” is the best Disney movie in nearly two decades.

Disney has been trying to recapture the magic of their early ‘90s Golden Age for so long now that it didn’t seem like they had it in them. “Tangled” and its classic princess fairy tale has its ardent supporters, as does the hand-drawn animation and musical charm of “The Princess and the Frog.”

But now “Frozen” has done it. It’s not just big; it really is the biggest sensation to come out of the studio in near 20 years. And they’ve made it work because for once they’ve made a movie for the 21st Century. They made a movie not for the ‘90s kids but for the grown up ‘90s kids and the kids of the coming generation.

Yes, “Frozen” is big, beautiful, funny and cute, but it’s also quirky, awkward, progressive and dark. It’s everything a millennial kids classic should be.  Continue reading “Frozen”

Fading Gigolo

The thin premise of “Fading Gigolo” mines a surprising amount of depth and emotion, but it’s too distracted with its weird subplot and corny sex jokes.

It’s Woody Allen’s thing to be nebbishly uncomfortable, but he is so out of place in John Turturro’s comedy “Fading Gigolo” that even he can’t quite save it. Turturro’s script starts from a thin premise and manages to find a surprising amount of tenderness and emotion within, but it relies on plot contrivances and supporting players that simply don’t add up.

Allen plays Murray, and he comes to Turturro’s Fioravante with a simple idea: would you have a three-way for money? A “ménage”, he clarifies. This is one of those movies where old, fish-out-of-water men delicately giggle at every sexual word and idea as though they unexpectedly saw it in the Bible in Sunday School. And the bit gets tired fast when they start assuming their alter ego names Virgil and Danny Bongo.

They agree to do this on the basis of being strapped for cash, and the two of them together seem to have no trouble landing middle aged women in need of a pick-me-up. And that ultimately is what “Fading Gigolo” is about: providing women added confidence, care and attention.

Turturro does well to ensure there might be more behind each encounter than sex. In his first meeting with the wealthy and assertive Sharon Stone, there’s no sense that either would have any trouble performing, and yet Turturro finds the innocence in having two people experimenting and trying something new and potentially dangerous. They talk and timidly approach one another, suggesting this is like something out of high school, and the steady and calm Fioravante does something beautiful by sharing a slow dance with her first.

Continue reading “Fading Gigolo”

Mistaken for Strangers

Tom Berninger’s unusual rock-doc is hardly about The National at all but more about his own behind the scenes antics and volatile personality.

I first saw and discovered The National on their “High Violet” tour opening for Arcade Fire. Their music was deep, mournful, abstract and quietly intense (before becoming loudly intense), and you might suspect that Matt Berninger and company are really just brooding basket cases of emotion and darkness.

But at that show Berninger paused after a particularly riotous number and threw jellybeans into the audience. “Be sure to pick those up,” he said, “They each have a new MP3 track in them… by The Flaming Lips.” You don’t quite realize that they’re funny, quirky, aloof and more like their Midwestern selves than whatever you expect of a rock star.

The new rock-doc “Mistaken for Strangers” sheds light into this side of The National, but it does so by profiling the even bigger goofball behind the scenes, Director and Matt’s brother Tom Berninger. Though he resembles his tall, lanky and hipster brother Matt, Tom is shorter, fatter and has longer hair, and he could very well be portrayed in a movie by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

He’s made an oddball, meta and awkwardly funny documentary not unlike his own goofy personality. “Mistaken for Strangers” has more to do with Tom than the band itself, and in that way it gives us a more heartwarming portrait of The National than concert footage alone ever could.

Continue reading “Mistaken for Strangers”

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is the most bullet-ridden superhero movie ever made, and it has a strange assortment of politics embedded within.

Captain America is a hero of morals and integrity. He represents the American ideal not because of his politics but because of his values. And yet his presence in comics dating back to World War II has always had to contend with the American political sphere. What would be the implications if the values of America’s greatest hero no longer matched America’s behavior?

Marvel took an ambitious step by removing Captain America from his ’40s origin story and dropping him into the modern day. “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is a film in which Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) must now grapple with thorny, ripped from the headlines debates surrounding America’s defense spending, use of military drones and their technological dominion over our privacy.

It’s the first time a Marvel film has presented grave, real-world stakes. In one way, the modern setting makes “The Winter Soldier” feel hardly like a superhero movie at all, closer to a conspiracy thriller complete with modern weaponry and combat. But in another way, Directors Anthony and Joe Russo’s placement of the film well within the Marvel template and “Cinematic Universe” make the presentation of “The Winter Soldier’s” vague political ideas that much queasier.

Continue reading “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

Noah

Darren Aronofsky’s Bible adaptation is ambitious but is all over the place.

Randy “The Ram” in “The Wrestler” abused himself in the ring just so that he could feel anything. In the end he brought himself to the brink of his strength. Nina Sayers in “Black Swan” tortured her body to achieve perfection and beauty and ultimately found herself battling her psyche.

Darren Aronofsky’s protagonists are conflicted souls, testing their minds, morals and beliefs in pursuit of something nobler. The biblical story of Noah finds his faith in God pit against mankind, forced to choose between innocence, justice and love.

Or at least that’s Aronofsky’s version. “Noah” is Aronofsky’s ambitious interpretation of the Bible tale, and unlike the surreal grittiness found in his previous films, his mix of fantasy and portent is a paradoxical mess. It’s a movie about beauty in which the colors have been sapped from all traces of the Earth. It’s one of human decency in which mankind is depicted as ravenous, ugly, violent, carnivorous or worse, flavorless. It’s a morality tale in which the hero is less given a moral choice as he is driven to madness. It’s a movie about faith, miracles and spirituality, but ostensibly avoids religion or even the mention of the word “God”.

Continue reading “Noah”