Movie Review: Ted 2

Ted 2
Directed by: Seth MacFarlane.
Written by: Seth MacFarlane & Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg (John), Seth MacFarlane (Ted), Amanda Seyfried (Samantha), Jessica Barth (Tami-Lynn), Giovanni Ribisi (Donny), Morgan Freeman (Patrick Meighan), Sam J. Jones (Sam Jones), Patrick Warburton (Guy), Michael Dorn (Rick), Bill Smitrovich (Frank), John Slattery (Shep Wild), Cocoa Brown (Joy), John Carroll Lynch (Tom Jessup), Ron Canada (Judge).

Seth MacFarlane’s original Ted – from 2012 – showed that the creator of Family Guy et al may actually have a career ahead of him making movies. By no means was Ted a great movie – but it was a legitimately funny one, and it also had more structure than anything MacFarlane had done before – his TV shows barely have plots, as he seems to have an “anything goes” policy, of throwing everything at the wall to see what will stick, and abandoning the plot altogether. Ted may have recycled a well-worn plot, adding a Teddy bear instead of a boneheaded idiot to play the best friend of the man who needs to grow up before he will be worthy of the woman he loves, but at least there was a plot – and it worked. MacFarlane’s follow-up film – last year’s A Million Ways to Die in the West – was a huge step backwards – as, like all of MacFarlane’s TV shows, it abandons any real attempt to have a plot, and instead replaces them with a series of jokes – most of them lame – which are strung together by a plot that barely seems to be there. With Ted 2, MacFarlane takes this another step in the wrong direction. Yes, there is a plot in Ted 2, but MacFarlane never takes it seriously. It’s just there so MacFarlane can hang a series of juvenile jokes from it – which would be fine if the jokes were funny, but they aren’t. Ted 2 is the very definition of a lazy sequel – the type of thing the makers do on autopilot, because there is apparently demand for it.

The plot of Ted 2 is all about Ted suing the government for his civil rights, when they decide that the talking, sentient Teddy Bear isn’t a person after all – denying his and his wife’s adoption application, annulling their marriage, getting him fired from his job, etc. There’s no money for a real lawyer – despite the fact that Ted is the world’s only talking Teddy Bear, he has somehow not parlayed that into any money – so they end up with recent law school grad Samantha Jackson (Amanda Seyfried) – who has someone made her way well into her 20s, and never heard of either Samuel L. Jackson or Rocky – but does smoke a lot of weed. This is great news for pothead Ted, and his pothead buddy John (Mark Wahlberg) – who is now divorced from Mila Kunis’ character from the first movie (which is probably the most realistic thing about this one) – who is with Ted and his lawyer every step of the way – way more than Ted’s wife – who for some reason is left at home every time they need to do anything funny.

Ted 2 does have some laughs in it – there are a lot of celebrity cameos, and most of them are pretty lame, but there is one by an actor using his “unique skill set” which had me laughing out loud more than any other time in the movie. But like seemingly every other joke in the movie, it’s essentially a throwaway gag, that doesn’t really need to be in the film itself. There are lots of other celebrity cameos, that go nowhere, as well as an endless string of jokes that many will (and have) considered to be racist or homophobic, and not without reason, although most of the jokes are so deliberately ridiculous, I had trouble taking them seriously – which is just as well.

The frustrating thing about MacFarlane is that there is talent there – quite of bit of it actually (I even liked his stint as Oscar host more than most), but he seems to take the path of least resistance every time out – making a lazy pop culture joke, or pushing the edges of good taste and political correctness to shock a laugh out of the audience, instead of taking his comedy to a deeper, more satisfying place. One of his heroes is clearly Mel Brooks – why else make a Western spoof when Brooks had already perfected it with Blazing Saddles – but at his best, Brooks’ film have something deeper to say than simply pointing and laughing at pop culture history. MacFarlane hasn’t gotten there – and perhaps he never will.
 

Movie Review: Eden

Eden
Directed by: Mia Hansen-Løve.
Written by: Mia Hansen-Løve & Sven Hansen-Løve.
Starring: Félix de Givry (Paul Vallée), Pauline Etienne (Louise), Vincent Macaigne (Arnaud), Hugo Conzelmann (Stan), Zita Hanrot (Anaïs), Roman Kolinka (Cyril), Hugo Bienvenu (Quentin), Vincent Lacoste (Thomas Bangalter), Arnaud Azoulay (Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo), Laurent Cazanave (Nico (Respect)), Paul Spera (Guillaume (Respect), Arsinée Khanjian (La mère de Paul), Juliette Lamet (La soeur de Paul), Greta Gerwig (Julia), Léa Rougeron (Théodora), Laura Smet (Margot), Golshifteh Farahani (Yasmin), Brady Corbet (Larry).

It has to be suck to love something and be really, really bad it. Those sad souls on American Idol who have somehow convinced themselves that they have talent at singing, and talk about it as if it’s their whole lives really want it – they just have no skill, so they’ll never make it. It may actually be worse to be merely good at something you love – not great enough to truly become rich and famous doing it, but good enough that you can realistically fool yourself into thinking that if you just stick with it, that perhaps your break will come. They people who are terrible give up on their dreams fairly quickly – and find something else to do. Those other people – who are good, just not quite good enough can waste years. The Coen Brothers Inside Llewyn Davis – my favorite film of the last decade or so – was about a 1960s folk singer like that – really quite good, but when Bob Dylan makes an appearance late in the movie, you know that whatever he has that makes him a star, Llewyn doesn’t have it. And now Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, about two decades in the French electronic music scene, tells a similar story. Paul (Felix de Givry) starts the movie as a teenager – sneaking out of his mother’s house to go to raves, eventually starting his own duo playing “garage” music (yes, they explain what that means, no, I still don’t know) – and spends the next 20 years trying to make it work, and never quite getting there. They are successful enough that they make some money – they can tour, they bring in crowds at clubs, etc. But once in a while another duo – known as Daft Punk – enters the movie, and we see what real success looks like – and it isn’t what Paul and his partner have. But Paul keeps plugging away it – falling deeper in debt and drug addiction, playing to smaller crowds, losing more and more friends and girlfriends, etc.

The major difference between Eden and Inside Llewyn Davis – aside from the music, which couldn’t be much more different if it tried – is the structure of the two films. Like many of the Coen’s work, Inside Llewyn Davis is well structured and thought out – whereas Eden just kind of goes with the flow of the music, sometimes losing its way as it plays things loosey-goosey. There are a lot of scenes that probably could have been shortened here or there – or even cut, as things start to repeat. But then again, I think that’s sort of the point. Like Llewyn Davis however, Paul is more than a little bit of an asshole – although he remains a sympathetic one throughout. Paul is so wrapped up in his old world, he barely notices those around him – friends disappear for a while, returning with new husbands, wives or spouses, and for Paul it barely registers. Even his own partner ends up with a wife and son in one scene – and we realize we have no idea about his personal life, or what this music means to him. Does he know it should be little more than a hobby for them? Because Paul doesn’t – he’s too wrapped up in the drugs – that cause him to miss the music he apparently loves so much. As played by Felix de Givry, Paul is one of those self-involved assholes, you still have a soft spot for. He doesn’t do anything to be mean – he just doesn’t always think things through. Really the only other character who leaves much of an impact on the film is his long-time girlfriend Louise (Pauline Etienne), a beautiful short haired woman who eventually grows tired of Paul, even if she doesn’t stop loving him. Everyone else in the movie drifts in and out of focus depending on what Paul is doing.

The film is directed by Mia Hansen-Love – who delivers on the promise shown in her last two films, Father of My Children and Goodbye First Love. Yes, the film meanders at times – and probably could have used some more editing – but for the most part, I liked the way the film drifts from one scene to the next, as it loses track of time, much as Paul does. Hansen-Love wrote the film with her brother, who based Paul on himself, but the film doesn’t really romanticize his journey, or the time he spent lost in the haze of music and drugs. Eventually even he has to leave that, and enter the real world.

Movie Review: Creep

Creep
Directed by: Patrick Brice.
Written by: Patrick Brice & Mark Duplass.
Starring: Patrick Brice (Aaron), Mark Duplass (Josef).

Creep is yet another low-budget, found footage horror film – which is just about the most overplayed genre there is right now – and yet, it still works. No, it doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it does play with it a little bit, and offers some moments that really are kind of scary – but mainly are just creepy. Yes, it kind of plays like co-writers and co-stars Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass just went into the woods one weekend and played around – and maybe they did – but the film (which Brice directed) that they came up with, works.

Brice stars as Aaron – a man with a video camera who answers a Craigslist ad offering $1,000 for someone to come up to the woods for one day, and help make a video. When Aaron gets there, he meets Josef (Duplass) – who may come on a little strong, but basically seems like an okay guy. The story he tells Aaron is heartbreaking – Josef has cancer, and only has a few months to live. His wife is pregnant with their first child, which he’ll never see growing up – so he wants to leave behind a video. This gets Aaron to go along with pretty much whatever Josef wants – even though it starts with Josef taking a bath, and gets weirder from there. During the course of the day, there become more warning signs that perhaps Josef isn’t quite who he says he is.

The movie makes good use of Duplass – who seems to specialize in these types of characters, who seem so outwardly nice, but are really huge assholes underneath that nice exterior. Duplass makes a good everyman – which is also why he’s so good at twisting that ever so slightly (at first) to show the darker side. I love how they shoot some scenes as well – with Duplass just showing up inside the frame the most unexpected moments, from seemingly out of nowhere. Likely the most talked about scene in the movie will be the one with no visuals at all – when Josef makes a stunning “confession” to Aaron, but first asks him to turn the camera off – but all he does is turn off the video, not the audio.

The movie ends up pretty much where you expect a movie of this sort to end up – but it does take a few interesting twists along the way. I certainly don’t believe that many people would do the things that are done in the final act of the movie – then again, the movie knows this, questions it, and explains it – but I did like how the movie didn’t quite go in the direction you think. Once you’ve stranded two people in the woods, you don’t normally let them out, and then keep on going – but Creep does.

In the end, Creep works on its own modest scale – and probably accomplished what it set out to do. Brice already has his follow-up film to Creep in theaters – The Overnight, which this film, which played the festival circuit last year, most likely helped to get made. No, Creep isn’t great – but it’s good enough.

Movie Review: The Gunman

The Gunman
Directed by: Pierre Morel   
Written by: Don MacPherson & Pete Travis & Sean Penn based on the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette.
Starring: Sean Penn (Terrier), Jasmine Trinca (Annie), Javier Bardem (Felix), Ray Winstone (Stanley), Mark Rylance (Cox), Idris Elba (Barnes), Peter Franzén (Reiniger), Billy Billingham (Reed), Daniel Adegboyega (Bryson), Ade Oyefeso (Eugene).

It’s easy to make fun of Liam Neesom – who became an unlikely action star around the time he turned 60. Over the past few years, he has made one silly action movie after another that utilize his “very specific skill set”. Most of them haven’t been very good – but there are a couple that have been. But as bad as these Neesom movies can get, they are all much better than The Gunman – in which Sean Penn tries to get in on the aging action star market that Neesom has pretty much cornered. Penn not only stars in The Gunman, he also produced and co-wrote it. He got Taken director Pierre Morrel to sign on to handle it. The film is as ridiculously plotted as anything Neesom does, but far worse for a very simple reason. It takes itself way too seriously. True, Neesom always appears serious, even in the most ridiculous of movies, but I think he’s in on the joke. Penn doesn’t seem to be.

Penn stars as Terrier – a mercenary living in the Congo, posing as a “security officer” and living with a doctor on a humanitarian effort, Annie (Jasmine Trinca). But Terrier and his team are called in to do a job – assassinate the new Mining Minister, who wants to crack down on foreign companies, which of course, would cost them money. Whoever takes the kill shot will have to leave the country immediately – and, of course, that ends up being Terrier. A few years go by, Terrier is still in love with Annie, but hasn’t seen her since he had to flee – and he is trying to make up for the sins of his past – returning to the Congo to be a humanitarian himself. But there are people after him there – who seem to know precisely who is he, and what he has done? Has someone talked? Terrier means to find out.

There are few movies I can think of that waste as talented of an ensemble cast as The Gunman does. Penn, of course, who I don’t think I’ve ever seen look so bored and indifferent in a movie before (which is odd considering his roles as producer and writer with the film as well). True, Penn has been horribly bad in movies before – but normally, that’s because he goes wildly over the top (like say Gangster Squad) – but at least he’s trying. There’s also Javier Bardem – who seems to be trying to deliver the same performance here he did in Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor – but without the wicked dialogue – and ends up kind of embarrassing himself. At least Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance and Idris Elba don’t do that – they just pretty much don’t do anything at all.

The plot of the movie is by-the-numbers, sub-Bourne globe hopping action film. The use of Africa as backdrop is a little disappointing, since it’s clear the filmmakers don’t have any real intention of using it as anything more than just a backdrop – paying a little bit of lip service to the West exploiting the continent, and having an embarrassing scene where Penn tells his African assistant what a good person he is. From there, Terrier jumps to London and Barcelona and back to Africa again – although oddly everywhere looks the same as everywhere else. The finale – at a bullfight of all places – is one of the more ridiculous action set pieces in recent memory – but not ridiculous in an entertaining, “oh my god, did you just see that?”, kind of way, but rather in an eye roll, is this over yet, kind of way.

Director Pierre Morel seems to be on autopilot here. He’s certainly not the best director of action around – but in films like District B13, From Paris with Love and, yes, even Taken, he has at least shown some solid chops. Here, he doesn’t really do anything memorable – with dimly lit dramatic sequences, and poorly executed action ones. A film like this should, at the very least, never bore you – but this one almost put me to sleep.

Penn is a great actor – he has two Oscars after all, and deserves them – but in The Gunman he shows why he hasn’t done many of these types of action films before – he’s just not that good at them. Neesom is not as good as an actor as Sean Penn is – but he’s way better at this type of thing. Penn should leave these to him – and get back to doing what he does best.

Half Time Top 10: 2015

It’s actually been quite a good year for movies in 2015 so far – although not surprisingly, it’s been indie, foreign or documentaries that have been the best of the year so far. I still have quite a bit of catching up to do – as I always do at this time. Among the films I really want to see, and either missed haven’t opened yet in Canada, are: Timbuktu, Jauja, The Tribe, Heaven Knows What, About Elly, Hard to Be a God, Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, Girlhood, La Sapienza, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Saint Laurent, Eden, Buzzard, White God, Amour fou, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Ansalem, Gueros, Dope, Ned Rifle, Appropriate Behavior, Sunshine Superman, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, When Marnie Was There. And even this list is only cursory and incomplete. Still, thought, this has been a fine year – with lots of good movies to see if you’ve been paying attention.

A few of the films that could have made the list, but didn’t include: Approaching the Elephant (Amanda Wilder) is a truly fascinating documentary about an “alternative” school that allows students a voice in every decision made – and the problem that can happen when one of those students takes advantage of that situation, and threatens to ruin it for everyone else. Eden (Mia Hansen-Love) is an excellent film about a man drifting through his life, not quite realizing he’s wasting it. Gangs of Wasseypur (Anurag Kashyap) is a two part, more than five hour Indian gangster epic – a visceral, violent, enthralling movie, and one of the best kept secrets of the year so far. Paddington (Paul King) which was an absolute delight from start to finish – my three year old loved it – I think I loved it more. Red Army (Gabe Polsky) is the rarest of things – a wonderful hockey movie – and it’s also a fascinating documentary about the USSR in its waning days. ’71 (Yann Demange) is an expertly paced thriller, that is also politically smart. What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taiki Waititi) was an absolutely hilarious mockumentary about four vampires sharing a flat in New Zealand. While We’re Young (Noah Baumbach) veers off course in the final act, but overall is a funny, perceptive view of the generational divide. Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón) is a deliriously entertaining Argentinian film – a set of short stories, all of which revolve around violence and death, which basically concludes that all people, everywhere, are horrible.

 

10. Phoenix (Christian Petzold)
Christian Petzold’s Phoenix is a very good movie, with an absolute stunner of an ending that raises the level of the whole movie. This German film is a take on Hitchcock’s Vertigo – with Nina Hoss delivering an excellent performance as a Jewish released from the camps in the days after WWII, and returning to Berlin. She wants to find her husband – despite the fact that he may well have been the one who turned her in. She has been scarred – literally – by the camps, and her husband doesn’t recognize her – but thinks she looks enough like his wife, who he says is dead, to fool some people – so he can get her money. She goes along with the ruse, hoping to eventually reveal the truth, and be welcomed back. The whole movie is handled with subtlety and intelligence – a slow burning tension that bubbles under the surface. Then, the final scene in the film happens, and your jaw hits the floor. No, one scene does not a masterpiece make – but it certainly raised my appreciation of what was already a very good film.

9. Love & Mercy (Bill Pohlad)

The biopic of the genius musician has become a tired clichéd – only occasionally resulting in a movie actually worthy of its subject. Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy, about Brian Wilson, is one of those films. The film shuttles back and forth between the 1960s – when Wilson stepped away from life on the road with the Beach Boys, to write and record his masterpiece Pet Sounds, and his mental issues start getting worse, and in the 1980s, when he is controlled by a doctor, until a new woman enters his life. John Cusack is excellent as the older Wilson – it takes a scene or two to get used to him in a very un-Cusack like role (not to mention, he looks nothing like Wilson, or the younger version of him in the film) – and Elizabeth Banks may be even better in this segment. But it’s Paul Dano, as the younger Wilson, who delivers what is probably the male performance of the year so far. His Wilson is a genius, of course, but an insecure one – one constantly teetering on the brink of a mental abyss he may not be able to come back from. Director Bill Pohlad – making his first film as a director in more than 20 years (he has produced some great ones though – 12 Years a Slave, The Tree of Life, Into the Wild, A Prairie Home Companion, Brokeback Mountain) brings a sensitivity to the direction, and the screenplay (co-written by Owen Moverman, who co-wrote Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, about Bob Dylan, and the best of the recent genius musician biopics), mainly avoids the clichés that often drag the genre down. The film takes chances throughout – and while they don’t always succeed, they do enough to make this a highlight of the year so far.

8. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)

Director Peter Strickland’s last film, Berberian Sound Studio, was an homage to the giallo horror films from Italy – that directly referenced the films it was playing around with, but also works on its own terms. It was not a masturbatory regurgitation of well-known tropes, but rather something deeper. The same is true of his follow-up – The Duke of Burgundy – whose opening looks precisely like a soft-core, European porn movie from the 1970s, and plays with the genre throughout in its story of a sadomasochistic lesbian relationship between two women – the older one (Sidse Babett Knudsen), appears to be in control, but really may not be, given how the younger woman (Ciara D’Anna) manipulates everything. The film is brilliantly well made – both in terms of its visual, and its meticulous sound design, genuinely erotic, and yet also deeper than the films it sends up. The film really is about the compromises we make in relationships, so no matter who you are, you may well find yourself genuinely moved by this film.

 7. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)

David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows joins the shortlist for the best horror films of the decade so far – with its brilliant premise of a presence stalking a teenage girl, who can only stop it by passing it on to someone – by having sex. The film plays with the tropes of the horror genre – which has always been moralistic about teenage sex – but goes further than just that, and has made a film of genuine ideas about growing up, wrapped up in a genuinely creepy, scary and disturbing horror film – and brilliantly constructed one at that, with its long takes. The only flaw with the film is a confused and confusing climax in a swimming pool – which really doesn’t work at all – but otherwise, this is top notch horror filmmaking – and like the best the genre has to offer, one of ideas as well as scares.

6. World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt)

I usually do not put shorts on my lists like this – in part, because I don’t see that many – but Don Hertzfeldt’s 17 minute, animated sci-fi film really is as brilliant as any feature I have seen so far this year – and packed with more ideas than almost all of them. The premise of the movie is that a young girl is visited by one of her future clones, who walks her through the future – which is a dark, horrifying place. The little girl has no idea of that though – she cannot comprehend what she is being told – but we do. The film is simultaneously hilarious, and disturbing –a genuinely moving exploration of what it means to be human, and what we are giving away. The animation – with Hertzfeldt’s trademarked stick figures, and a much more detailed background than he normally has, is brilliant. I rented the film from Vimeo – where you get to keep it for 30 days – and I have no idea how many times I watched the film in that month, but I still cannot wait to see it again. One of the great shorts I have ever seen – and if it doesn’t win the Animated Short Oscar this year, I’m going to be pissed.

 5. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (Brett Morgen)

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck is a documentary that is, admittedly, tailor made for me – a Nirvana fan from my teens on. Yet over the years I have seen many docs on Cobain, Nirvana and grunge, and none of them have been anywhere near as good as this one. Part of the reason for that is that director Brett Morgan has access to things no one has had before – home movies, audio recordings, journals and interviews with Cobain’s family, who haven’t given on camera interviews before. But a lot of it is the way Morgen himself assembles the footage. Like his episode of the ESPN show 30 for 30 (which may be the best one in a great series), where he assembled a montage of one very busy day in sports history to make larger points about news, sports and celebrity – Morgen does something similar here – making the film one big, haunting, heartbreaking montage. Yes, the movie runs out of steam a little towards the end – when we’re in more conventional territory – but not much. This is easily the best doc of the year so far.

4. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)

We’ve already had more than our share of action blockbusters this year – and to be fair to them, most have been at least moderately entertaining. But they all pale in comparison to Mad Max: Fury Road, which is the best, most bat-shit insane action movie to come along in quite some time. The film is almost all action from beginning to end – and yet, it finds time for a complex narrative, and character arcs that are told almost all through actions, both large and small. For a movie called Mad Max, you wouldn’t expect the best, most complicated character to be Charlize Theron’s Furiosa – but that you have it, it happened. The original Mad Max trilogy really only had one great film – the second one, The Road Warrior – but that was an action masterpiece. This is another one – and makes me really sad that director George Miller essentially abandoned the genre for 30 years. But he’s back now – and this movie is blockbuster filmmaking at its finest.

 3. Ex Machina (Alex Garland)

Alex Garland’s directorial debut Ex Machina is one of the best, smartest science fiction films in recent years. It is a small film – four characters, one location – a large house in the middle of nowhere – with great special effects, that are used sparingly, but with greatest results. The film is about a young programmer (Domnhall Gleeson) who is called by his eccentric, billionaire, genius boss (Oscar Isaac) to his secluded house to give a Turing test to robot he has created (Alicia Virkander). The film is tense, gradually ratcheting up the suspense as it moves along. It is also brilliantly acted – especially by Isaac and Virkander, the latter of which does a great job with a difficult role. The film is more than a sci-fi thriller however – it is a smart take on gender roles and misogyny. Like all great sci-fi, it is a film of ideas that enhance the plot – that uses special effects to enhance the story and not detract from it. Imagine that.

2. Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria reminded me of the Golden Age of European Art House films in the best way imaginable. The film stars Juliette Binoche as an aging actress, whose mentor has just died, and has now been offered a role in a revival of the play that made her a star in the first place – but instead of playing the young, ingénue, she’ll now be playing the older, more repressed character – which wreaks havoc on her psyche. Binoche is brilliant – she always is – but Kristen Stewart, as her assistant, who runs lines with her (playing the younger woman, of course, who in the play is also the older woman’s assistant) is perhaps even better. The film certainly calls to mind the work of Ingmar Bergman – although Assayas’ film has a lighter tone, and more comedic moments than much of Bergman’s work. It is also a film that touches on a lot of different things – including Stewart getting a chance to defend blockbuster filmmaking, which is not something you normally find in art house films. The film is meticulously put together, wonderfully written and amazingly well acted. Assayas has been a great director for a long time now – and this ranks among his very best films.

1. Inside Out (Pete Docter)

After a few down years for Pixar, they have returned with one of the very best films they have ever made. The film is also without a doubt the most daring film they have made – taking place entirely inside the head of an 11 year old girl, with her emotions being the main characters – with the ultimate message being that sometimes it’s okay to be sad – in fact, you need to be sad at times. This is a complex idea for a children’s movie – and yet Pixar was able to pull it off brilliantly, in a movie that works on one level for kids and another for adults. Like all Pixar films, it trusts it audience to be able to handle more mature material – material that challenges them, and can indeed make you sad. I’m not ashamed to admit that the movie made me cry – a lot – and not just because of Bing Bong (although, yes, Bing Bong destroyed me). All of this probably makes Inside Out sound depressing or serious – and it isn’t. It’s still a joyous and hilarious – as well as brilliantly animated. This has been a strong year so far for movies – but even saying that, Inside Out is far and away the best movie I have seen so far this year.

Movie Review: '71

‘71
Directed by: Yann Demange.
Written by: Gregory Burke.
Starring: Jack O'Connell (Gary Hook), Sam Reid (Lt. Armitage), Paul Anderson (Sergeant Leslie Lewis), Sean Harris (Captain Sandy Browning), Richard Dormer (Eamon), Killian Scott (Quinn).

Yann Demange’s ’71 is an excellent war time thriller, set during the “troubles” in Ireland in 1971 – which was the year before the most violent year this conflict saw. The film follows one British soldier – as he goes in with his unit to serve a simple search warrant, and ends up getting trapped in the city by himself. There are multiple factions involved – some want to kill him, some want to save him, and there are undercover agents who may want to do either, or both, at any one time. The remarkable thing about ’71 is how it keeps all of this straight, with very little in the way of exposition. The screenplay, by Geoffrey Burke, provides us with just enough information, before heading off in another direction at breakneck speed. The result is an exciting film – but also one that takes a confusing situation, and shows us the chaos that caused it, without becoming mired in it.

The film opens with a training montage of Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell – last seen in Unbroken, but much better here and in Starred Up), a young British soldier, from a poor background. He and his fellow soldiers are training in the woods, with camouflage and traditional war tactics – basically everything they do NOT need when their unit gets assigned to help out the police in Belfast. Their commanding officer (Sam Reid) is inexperienced and naïve – and has no idea what is about to come crashing down on them. Then again, to be fair, no one really does. They head out on a routine mission, and things quickly turn sour – with the local populace starting to throw rocks, and threatening to riot – and Hook and another soldier soon find themselves alone in the chaos. When the other solider is shot, Hook takes off – and thus begins a long night when his life is in constant danger.

The film is directed by first time filmmaker Yann Demange, who shows an expert sense of pacing and action from the start of his career. Early in the film, the constant, shaky, handheld camera work made me worry that the film would be yet another sub-Paul Greengrass (if you’re generous, Michael Bay is you’re not) thriller – but it’s anything but. Even in those early scenes, with the shaky camera work, Demange favors longer takes rather than rapid fire editing to place us inside the action. The effect is certainly chaotic, but also clear eyed – so we actually understand what is going on. As the movie progresses, we get fewer of these types of shaky camera work – as Demange changes his style for whatever set piece he is currently working on.

The resulting film is exciting and tense in part, but also intelligent. There are so many different factions – all of whom may be ready to kill one another at any given time, and many also willing to team up at others – and yet the film never loses the audience in the details. It is crystal clear at any one moment what precisely is going on – and where the biggest danger to Hook is coming from.

The film also works as an anti-war film. Most of the characters in the film – and all of the ones that truly risk their lives – are young men, who do not really understand the fight they are becoming involved in. Hook has no real clue what he’s doing, or why he’s doing it – and he may well have more in common – economically anyway - with those who want to kill him, than those who want to save him.

There have been a lot of movies about the “troubles” over the years – some very sympathetic to the IRA, some, not so much. ’71 is not really either here – it looks at a situation that was about ready to explode, and finds more than enough blame to go around. And then it wraps it up in an entertaining, expertly made package.

Movie Review: Get Hard

Get Hard
Directed by: Etan Cohen.
Written by: Jay Martel & Ian Roberts and Etan Cohen and Adam McKay.
Starring: Will Ferrell (James), Kevin Hart (Darnell), Craig T. Nelson (Martin), Alison Brie (Alissa), Edwina Findley Dickerson (Rita), Ariana Neal (Makayla), Erick Chavarria (Cecelio), T.I. (Russell), Paul Ben-Victor (Gayle).

At what point do jokes cross the line between being about racism and actually being racist. At what point do jokes cross the line between being about homophobia, and actually being homophobic? I’m not sure I – or anyone really – knows where precisely that line gets drawn, but I am also pretty sure that Get Hard crosses both of them multiple times. But perhaps it just seems that way because most of the jokes themselves weren’t actually funny, and it’s easier to get offended by humor that doesn’t make you laugh. Whatever the truth is, I didn’t laugh very much during Get Hard despite the fact that both of its stars – Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart – are in fact very funny in general. The whole premise of the movie though is basically that Ferrell is afraid of being raped in prison by black men, so he has to learn to protect himself in the 30 days he has left on the outside. I suppose one could argue that the object of ridicule in Get Hard is not actually black, homosexual rapists – but rather Ferrell’s white fear of them, based on the stereotypes of them that he believes, as well as Hart, who despite the fact that he is black, also has a lot of stereotypes in his head. He only knows slightly more about what to expect in prison than Ferrell does – but acts as his guide anyway – meaning that it’s really the blind leading the blind. Perhaps that is even true. Still though – Get Hard does leave a bad taste in your mouth.

In the film, Ferrell stars as James King – a financial big shot, who makes a lot of money working for his future father-in-law Martin (Craig T. Nelson). Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, he is arrested and charged with embezzlement and other financial crimes (the filmmakers could have watched an episode or two of American Greed to give some sort of basis in reality for the crimes, which they are so vague on that it is impossible to tell exactly what James has been charged with – just that it angers a lot of people). Martin insists he’ll help James – who proclaims his innocence - but he still gets 10 years in San Quentin, from a judge who wants to make an example out of a financial criminal (the film’s biggest piece of fantasy). The judge also gives him 30 days to “get his affairs in order” before the sentence starts. James ends up hiring Darnell (Kevin Hart) – who works in the parking garage of his work – to teach him how to survive in prison – as he just assumes that a black man Darnell’s age has been in prison (to give James a little credit, Darnell does make a couple comments to give James a slight idea, that he then just takes and runs with it).

The bulk of the movie is really about these two idiots “preparing” James for life as a prison bitch. Darnell, who really has no more idea than James what prison will be like, seems to base everything off of old episodes of Oz and prison stereotypes – which is something that even James seems completely unfamiliar with. Eventually, Darnell will bring in some real “experts” to help – and things spiral out of control.

Ferrell and Hart can be funny – Ferrell in movies, and Hart mainly in his stand-up routines (I haven’t seen many of Hart’s movies, but think he could be funny in the right role – but don’t think he’s found it yet). Here though, they don’t quite work together. Ferrell is at his best playing idiots – and he plays James as if he’s an idiot, although the screenplay never really settles on whether he is or not. For the most part, he certainly seems like one – not only for the way he casually assumes Darnell is a felon, or how he doesn’t realize who is really behind the scam (the best moment in the film is when Darnell figures that out in about half a second) – but then again, he’s also portrayed as some sort of financial genius, and overall just a sweet, naïve guy. The movie misses an opportunity to truly make a biting comedy about the 1%, by going so soft on him. As for Hart, well, he’s basically playing himself – or at least his stand-up persona, but the writers of the movie don’t him the type of material he needs to make it work. The rest of the cast is barely in the movie, and seem on autopilot. It’s very disappointing for instance to cast a comedic actress as talented as Alison Brie (as Ferrell’s fiancée), and then just use her a sex object in lingerie for one scene, and then basically jettison her character.

 

Get Hard is a comedy that is based on stereotypes, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lots of comedies are based on those, but the best ones subvert those stereotypes – which I think is the intention of Get Hard – but the film never comes close to meeting those intentions. Is Get Hard offensive? Yes, but mainly that’s because it’s lazy, and doesn’t really try to do anything with a subject that could have made a great comedy. And also because, above all, it’s just not funny.