Movie Review: The DUFF

The DUFF
Directed by: Ari Sandel .
Written by: Josh A. Cagan based on the novel by Kody Keplinger.
Starring: Mae Whitman (Bianca Piper), Robbie Amell (Wesley 'Wes' Rush), Bella Thorne (Madison Morgan), Bianca A. Santos (Casey Cordero), Skyler Samuels  (Jessica 'Jess' Harris), Romany Malco (Principal Buchanan), Nick Eversman (Toby Tucker), Chris Wylde (Mr. Filmore), Ken Jeong (Mr. Arthur), Allison Janney (Dottie).

If there’s any justice in the world, than Mae Whitman will become a movie star. All throughout The DUFF, she is lovable, funny, adorable, smart and engaging – which is a real accomplishment considering the film itself is yet another slightly warmed over teen movie that never even attempts to be the least bit original. The film is forgettable – Whitman is not.

In the film Whitman stars as Bianca, a high school senior who is slightly quirky – which to a movie like this, means she likes horror movies, and dresses in flannel. Her two best friends are gorgeous and popular, and Bianca isn’t either, although everyone seems to like her. Her next door neighbor Wes (Robbie Amell) – who is the captain of the football team, and her former childhood best friend, informs her that she is their DUFF – Designed Ugly Fat Friend – the approachable one in the group that guys feel comfortable around, and use to get to know her hotter friends. She had no idea that is how people see her – and she’s pissed – even though Wes explains that it’s just an expression – you don’t actually need to be fat or ugly to be a DUFF – which is good, since Whitman should be no one’s idea of ugly or fat. She is determined to become popular – she has a crush on another boy – and strikes a deal with Wes – she’ll help him pass science, and keep his football scholarship – and he’ll help her become more than a DUFF.

The movie reminded me of She’s All That – that forgettable ‘90s teen comedy in which Freddie Prinze Jr. turns the utterly gorgeous Rachel Leigh Cook into a prom queen – and realizes, well after everyone in the audience does – that he’s really in love with her. The same thing happens in The DUFF – Bianca and Wes clearly belong together – especially when compared to his bitch of a girlfriend (Bella Thorn) and the lunkhead Bianca likes, but of course, the pair of them do not realize it until the final scenes – at a dance, naturally.

Whitman is really the only reason to see The DUFF. She carries the entire movie, and keeps it from becoming a painful experience. But even Whitman isn’t good enough to save the movie, which hits every note you expect from the outset, and does so in the least interesting way possible. True, the film isn’t as bad as most teen comedies, but it wasn’t long into the movie before all hope of the film becoming the next Mean Girls was fruitless. The film is content to be as bland and inoffensive as possible. It proves Whitman should be a star – which makes it worthwhile – although next time, I hope she gets a movie that is up to her level.

Movie Review: Results

Results
Directed by: Andrew Bujalski.
Written by: Andrew Bujalski.
Starring: Guy Pearce (Trevor), Cobie Smulders (Kat), Kevin Corrigan (Danny), Giovanni Ribisi (Paul), Brooklyn Decker (Erin), Anthony Michael Hall (Grigory).

The characters in Results have a very hard time articulating their feelings to each other. They are, in many ways, stuck in a traditional romantic comedy – but while in most other films in the genre, I get annoyed when the movie insists on keeping the couple who are obviously perfect for each other apart for the entire movie – usually by artificial means that only a screenwriter could find plausible – but in Results, the fact that the characters have trouble expressing their feelings makes complete sense, as they struggle to find the words in all situations. This struggle is what connects Results to the previous films of writer/director Andrew Bujalski – of the so-called “Mumblecore” movement taking tentative steps towards the mainstream – casting known actors for the first time, and putting them in a more conventional plot. His characters always struggle to make themselves heard – to find the right words.

The film has three tremendously appealing performances at its core. Guy Pearce plays Trevor, the owner of a gym in Austin, Texas – in his mid-40s, who wants to become a kind of fitness guru. He has a vision for his gym – which he hopes to expand that is somewhat New Age-y, but not quite as ridiculous as some of them get. One of his trainers is Kat (Cobie Smulders), approaching 30, who takes a much harder edge with her clients that Trevor would like – pushing them perhaps a little too far if they do not meet their goals. The two of them have a kind of on again, off again casual affair. Into their lives appears Danny (Kevin Corrigan), a transplant for New York, who is recently divorced, and even more recently extremely wealthy – as his mother died, and left him her new husband’s wealth, which he didn’t even know about. Danny says he wants to get healthy – but he doesn’t seem overly committed. When Kat, who becomes his personal trainer, asks him to keep a food log – or simply take pictures of what he eats and send it to her, he takes pictures of the large pepperoni pizza he consumes – a slice at a time.

Trevor and Kat are very much like the protagonists in most romantic comedies – despite both being personal trainers, they are opposites in many ways (she mocks his belief system for example) – yet they have an undeniable attraction to, and chemistry with each other. They should be a good match. But while both try very hard to project confidence, they really lack it – and neither can quite come out and tell the other what they feel. Hell, for much of the movie, I doubt they even know.

Danny is the wild card in the movie – and it gives well known character actor Kevin Corrigan one of the best roles of his career. Danny is creepy, but sweet, well intentioned, but more than a little bit of an asshole. In short, he is a mess of contradictions, and both Trevor and Kat (separately) find themselves in and out of Danny’s good graces (and he theirs) several times throughout the movie – often with no explanation. Danny has money, and knows he can use it to manipulate people – which he shamelessly does, yet not quite in a mean way. Yes, Danny is perhaps a character that could not exist in real time, but he adds a necessary and strange definition to the movie, that would otherwise be lacking.

The movie is not altogether successful. Bujalski is a talented filmmaker, but he’s more at home in movies like his last film – Computer Chess – than he is making a romantic comedy with known actors. The result is at times rather awkward – a square peg, trying to fit into a round hole. Yet, Results is also a rather enjoyable – and original (or at least tries to be) take on the romantic comedy. It’s not a great film by any means – but an interesting one to be sure. I look forward to what Bujalski does next.

Movie Review: Hot Girls Wanted

Hot Girls Wanted
Directed by: Jill Bauer & Ronna Gradus.

The subject matter of the new documentary Hot Girls Wanted is important and timely – and could very well be the basis of a great documentary. But Hot Girls Wanted is not that movie. The movie follows the lives of a number of girls – ranging from 18 to their early 20s – as they decide to enter the porn industry. They are lured to Miami by ads on Craigslist – put there by a rather dim, seemingly bland young man who will act as their manager, landlord, sometimes co-star, and basically pimp. The fact that he is so emotionless just makes him creepier. The girls arrive full of youthful enthusiasm – thinking that it’s all going to be one big party, where they’ll have lots of sex and make lots of money. During the course of the film, most of them will be chewed up and spit out by the industry in a matter of months – something that is not shocking to any of the pros in the movie. One male porn star lays it out bluntly – most are done in 1-3 months – but if everything goes well, really well, they’ll last a full year. And then, they’re done. That’s because the type of porn they do requires a constant stream of fresh faces – and as their “manager” says – “Every day another girl turns 18, and another girl wants to do porn”.

The girls in this movie do what is known as “pro-amateur” porn – which is professional porn, shot to make it look like it was done by amateur. The actresses are supposed to be young and innocent – marketed as being their “first time” on camera. What that means is that the women don’t book much in the way of repeat gigs – once they’ve been used once, that’s it for that producer. If they want to keep working, they have to start doing what the movie calls more “niche” porn – which is just another way of saying they do more violent, disgusting things on camera.

You could very well make a good documentary about this subject – and parts of Hot Girls Wanted do work quite well. In particular, the scenes of the young women relaxing in their shared house with their manager, actually work quite well. As we watch them go from youthful and naïve – having no idea what they are getting into, to being cynical and realistic about their lives. In just a few months, they are miserable – the sex they have in porn is uncomfortable or downright painful – and it gets worse when they cannot book work. They start to realize that their dreams of making big money aren’t going to happen – it is the men who run the industry who make money, not actresses like them. They are basically pieces of meat.

Those scenes work – for the most part – but the rest of the movie doesn’t. Directors Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus’ basic strategy in much of the movie is to play sad music as stats from the Kinsey institute about pornography flash on the screen. Either that, or we are subjected to horribly awkward scenes of one of the girls as she travels back home to see her parents – she tells her mom what she does, but cannot tell her dad – and the whole episode is painful to watch, as clearly no one wants to be on camera, but there they are anyway. Bauer and Gradus have said that they didn’t set out to make an anti-pornography film, they just wanted to make the “Super Size Me” of porn – that is to make a documentary that allows consumers a glimpse behind the scenes that may change how they think about the subject. I don’t actually believe Bauer and Gradus are as neutral as they claim (nor do they need to be) – as while the film certainly takes pains not to criticize any of the girls for making decisions with their own body, the film also clearly (and to me correctly) sees those decisions as stupid and ultimately damaging to the girls themselves. The film is very heavy handed, with the subjects often saying such on the nose things that if it was a fiction movie, they would be cut for being hopeless clichés. The film tries very hard to tie to overtly sexualized culture at large to the rise in pornography – shots of Nicki Minaj or Miley Cyrus appear early in the film for example, although the movie doesn’t actually do anything of interest with this observations.

 
The basic message of Hot Girls Wanted is that every one of these girls who is in porn is someone’s daughter, girlfriend, etc, and consumers of pornography should at least know that – at least see them as people, and not just masturbation aids. It’s an old point – but still a vitally important one, especially in an era when so much pornography is available online for free for all to see. All this demand means the industry needs more and more young girls to feed it. I hope some of those young girls watch the film before they decide to head into the industry. It may well get them to change their mind. On that level, I guess, Hot Girls Wanted succeeds. As a satisfying documentary experience however, it fails.

Movie Review: Black Sea

Black Sea
Directed by: Kevin Macdonald.
Written by: Dennis Kelly.
Starring: Jude Law (Robinson), Scoot McNairy (Daniels), Ben Mendelsohn (Fraser), David Threlfall (Peters), Bobby Schofield (Tobin), Karl Davies (Liam), Konstantin Khabensky (Blackie), Grigoriy Dobrygin (Morozov), Tobias Menzies (Lewis), Jodie Whittaker (Chrissy), Michael Smiley (Reynolds).

There is so much to like about Black Sea, that it’s disappointing that the movie just never quite comes together to fulfill its potential. The film is well made by director Kevin Macdonald – using the naturally claustrophobic atmosphere of a submarine to great effect. The film tries to be half submarine movie, and half heist movie – with a little more dramatic heft about greed. I think the film was trying very hard to be alike The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) on a submarine. Most of the cast is fine as well. But the film just never quite takes off. There is a lot to like about Black Sea – but not enough.

The film opens with Robinson (Jude Law) losing his job aboard a submarine salvage crew after more than a decade. He’s offered a shitty severance, and isn’t happy about it – nor are many of his friends you get the same spiel. They have an ace up their sleeve though – they know where a German U-boat is – and this U-boat is apparently full of Russia gold. They get a rich man to back them, and then Robinson hires a half British, half Russian crew, and sets out to find it. He makes the mistake of telling them what they are looking for – and informing them that everyone will get an equal share. Almost immediately, some of the men start doing calculations about how much they will receive – and how much more they will get if a few of the others end up dead.

Jude Law has aged into a good actor over the years – more convincing now that he’s taking on more interesting roles than the “pretty boy”, leading roles he got earlier in his career. His Robinson starts out a good man – he just wants what’s fair, and wants to share that with others who have gone through what he has. But over the course of the movie, he grows increasingly desperate and paranoid – wanting more and more to get the gold, even though doing so will risk everyone else on board – and could very well kill them all. Perhaps even better than Law is the ever great Ben Mendelsohn as Fraser – a violent man aboard the boat, who on more than one occasion takes matters into his own hands. Mendelsohn has quickly become of those actors who enlivens everything he is in. A couple of the other actors don’t fair quite so well – with Scoot McNairy playing the one note corporate stooge, and Bobby Schofield playing the “kid”, Robinson feels responsible for. Like Law and Mendelsohn, they are playing caricatures – unlike them, they don’t make them very interesting. None of the Russian characters become memorable at all – in fact, they all bleed together.

Still, one note characters is pretty much par for the course in movies like this. The real problem is that the film just never builds the necessary tension to really take off. The movie is at its best when it doesn’t try to do so much – when it’s focused on the nuts and bolt of trying to survive the various catastrophes aboard the ship, then the film works. When it slows down (or stops altogether) in order to try and become something deeper and more meaningful, the movies loses it way. Movies like this need to move forward constantly – and when they slow down they sink. That’s what happens to Black Sea – which despite how well made it is, and how well acted it is by Law and Mendelsohn, sink under the weight of trying to do too much.

 

Movie Review: Fifty Shades of Grey

Fifty Shades of Grey
Directed by: Sam Taylor-Johnson.
Written by: Kelly Marcel based on the book by E.L. James.
Starring: Dakota Johnson (Anastasia Steele), Jamie Dornan (Christian Grey), Jennifer Ehle (Carla), Eloise Mumford (Kate), Victor Rasuk (José), Luke Grimes (Elliot Grey), Marcia Gay Harden (Mrs. Grey), Rita Ora (Mia Grey), Max Martini (Taylor), Callum Keith Rennie (Ray), Andrew Airlie (Mr. Grey).

I have not read the literary phenomenon Fifty Shades of Grey – for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I know it was going to be bad. How could a book that started out as Twilight fan fiction actually be any good? I put in my time – reading all four of Stephanie Meyer’s awful novels, and I’m done. I didn’t much want to watch 50 Shades of Grey the movie either – I skipped it in theaters, and it’s been out for home viewing for a few weeks now, and I still managed to avoid it. But my wife was curious about it – so we rented the Blu-Ray (yes, I still rent Blu Rays, and DVDs – I like supporting the only video store anywhere near my house). Watching the movie I have to admit that this is probably about as good as a movie like this could possibly be, especially if it’s unwilling to go into full on porn mode. That doesn’t mean that Fifty Shades of Grey is a good movie – God, does it not mean that, this movie is awful – but watching the film, I got the distinct impression that the filmmakers and actors know just how ridiculous and stupid the movie they are making is, and they are trying very hard to wink at the audience to let us know they are in on the joke. Perhaps that helps some viewers – but not me. I’ve never been a fan of “so bad it’s good” movies, or even movies that are pure camp – and I don’t think Fifty Shades of Grey even works as either of those things because it’s not sincere enough to be truly that bad, but it’s too sincere to be camp.

The best thing about the screen adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey is Dakota Johnson as main character Anastasia Steele. She plays the ridiculously named character as awkward and shy – even embarrassed by her own character name, which she can barely squeak out when she introduces herself. But the awkwardness masks her strength – she may end up the “submissive” in the movie’s central relationship, but she’s in control of everything from the get go. Johnson has a sly smile through much of the movie – she knows what she is being asked to do is silly, and she embraces it. Her co-star, Jamie Dornan doesn’t fair quite as well, although I think he’s in on the joke as well. He plays Christian Grey – the self-made billionaire who introduces the shy, 21-year old virgin Anastasia into his world of sex – as a man completely lacking in humor – or even regular human emotionless. He’s almost like robot – an only slightly more advanced model of Jude Law’s Gigolo Joe from Speilberg’s masterpiece A.I. No one can play a character this rigid, and not know how it’s going to come across, right?

The film is directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, who seems to have watched the erotic thrillers of the 1990s – like Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct – a few too many times. She favors lots of sweeping crane shots of the Seattle skyscrapers, and cold, bright lite offices. I think the hope was that all those cold, sterile rooms would be contrasted by the scenes in Christian’s “red room” (which unfortunately is nothing like the Red Room in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks – which is far freakier than this could ever hope to be) – when the character engage in sex – but it doesn’t really quite work, as the sex scenes are a little too mechanical to truly be effective – they could have used some of that wild, reckless abandon of the sex scenes in Blue is the Warmest Color a few years ago, who had sex scenes wildly over the top, but then again, that was the point.

But the sex scenes aren’t really the problem with the film. The problem is that essentially the movie doesn’t have a plot – and it drags on for more than two hours – and most of that time is spent with the leads talking to each other, and having the same conversation. Christian really wants Anastasia to sign a contract before he’ll take her into the Red Room – although this hardly seems like a deal breaker, because of how often they have sex without that contract signed, but I digress. It seemed to me that half the movie was spent with him hounding her to sign the damn contract, or talking about the contract (although this does give the movie it’s best scene – a contract negotiation that is legitimately amusing) – the rest of the movie consisting either of him creepily stalking her, or the two of them having sex, or the various other subplots the movie jams in. I could complain that there really is no reason to believe that simply being into BDSM means one is somehow sick and wounded, and dealing with childhood abuse, but why bother? The movie doesn’t really take that question too seriously, so neither will I.

For the most part, I found Fifty Shades of Grey slow, monotonous and kind of dull. I think the filmmakers legitimately tried to make the best movie they could from what they heard to work with – but there just doesn’t seem like much was there. At least now I can say I have some idea what all the fuss was about.

Movie Review: Thought Crimes

Thought Crimes
Directed by: Erin Lee Carr.

At what point does someone’s dark, twisted and frankly disgusting fantasies cross the line between being just being disgusting and actually becoming illegal. That’s the question at the heart of the new documentary Thought Crimes, which tells the story of Gilberto Valle – a New York City cop who was arrested after his wife discovered what he was spending his time online doing. He talked to several people about – all on various chat rooms online – about how he wanted to rape, kill, dismember and eat his wife – and many other women in his life. He insists that they were all just harmless fantasies – others insist that it represents an actual criminal conspiracy, since it was not always clear he was joking, and, in their opinion, he took steps to actually stalk at least one woman he talked about. But was he actually planning anything? Based on the evidence in the documentary, I still don’t know.

Thought Crimes is very relevant today, because in the past, people who had these types of fantasies had to keep them private – perhaps keeping a notebook or something similar. But with the internet, it allows you to connect with people from around the world who share your similar dark views. But does talking about these fantasies make them more likely to occur?

The film was directed by Erin Lee Carr, who had a lot of access to Valle, and basically lets him tell his side of the story. The story become a tabloid sensation – something to mock and look down on. But he never really got his side told. Carr is not wholly sympathetic to Valle – it certainly questions him on some of his more questionable assertions, and makes it clear at some points that he is clearly lying. It also has a sly, subtle sense of humor – at times cutting between the various online chats talking about cooking humans, and scenes of Valle himself cooking. It’s certainly not an innovative documentary in any real way – basically it’s made up of interviews, talking heads and screen shots of the conversations that were the basis of the various legal proceedings against him. It’s a simple, straight forward style – but it is mostly effective for the type of movie it is.

But the simple style makes the film feel more like a TV documentary – better than Dateline or 48 Hours, but certainly in the same ballpark. It’s not surprising that after a Festival premier earlier this year, the film went straight to HBO – that’s where the film belongs, and where it fits. The film has a fascinating subject, and doesn’t try to answer all the questions it raises – rather it allows the audience to come up with their own conclusions. It’s certainly not a great doc – but it’s an interesting one.

Movie Review: Tomorrowland

Tomorrowland
Directed by: Brad Bird.
Written by: Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird & Jeff Jensen.
Starring: George Clooney (Frank Walker), Britt Robertson (Casey Newton), Hugh Laurie (Nix), Raffey Cassidy (Athena), Tim McGraw (Eddie Newton), Kathryn Hahn (Ursula), Keegan-Michael Key (Hugo), Thomas Robinson (Young Frank Walker), Pierce Gagnon (Nate Newton), Matthew MacCaull (Dave Clark), Judy Greer (Mom).

After a brief opening scene, where the two main characters – an older inventor Frank (George Clooney) and a teenage girl, Casey (Britt Robertson) – bicker like characters in a 1930s screwball comedy, Tomorrowland gets right to its best sequence. When Frank was a boy, he headed to an amusement park to enter an “Inventor competition” with the jetpack he built (it doesn’t quite work – but he’s close). The head judge, Nix (Hugh Laurie) isn’t overly impressed – but who we assume is his daughter, Athena (Raffey Cassidy) is – she gives Frank a pin, and tells him to follow them when they leave. He ends up on a very slow theme park ride – “It’s a Small World”, before the bottom drops out of the ride, and he finds himself transported – to Tomorrowland. What follows is a sequence of pure, childlike wonder – as Frank has to rely on his non-functioning jetpack to work to save him. The scene is a triumph of special effects and imagination – and gets the film off to a tremendous start. This is what you go to see a Brad Bird movie for. Unfortunately, Bird never hits this high watermark again for the rest of the movie. The film doesn’t really make much sense from a narrative point of view – or at least it has huge plot holes, and things the film never really bothers to explain (like, say, where the hell Tomorrowland actually is). There are isolated moments that work, and the film remains full of visual imagination every time we’re in Tomorrowland – which truly is full of things you’ve never seen before. But that just raises another problem with the film – we spend the vast majority of the overlong 130 minutes of Tomorrowland the movie on boring old earth.

After that magical opening sequence, the action switches from the childhood of Frank, to the teenage years of Casey. Her dad (Tim McGraw) is a NASA engineer, but he’s about to lose his job (thanks, Obama!), but Casey is trying very hard to make it impossible for NASA to close its operations, which would keep him on the payroll. This, of course, leads her to be arrested. When she is released, among her possessions is a pin – just like Frank got as a kid. When she touches that pin, she is transported to a magical place – or more accurately to a field, where she can see the magical place in the distance. She eventually gets there – but there is a time limit to how long she can stay. But once she sees it, she needs to go back – and she heads out on a journey that will involves robots, Athena, who hasn’t aged since we saw her with a child Frank, and Frank himself, who definitely has.

Bird is a talented filmmaker – in fact, he is a great one, as the three animated films he began his career with – The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007) – are all brilliant, and his live action debut, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) – is the best of the series, and one of the best pure action movies to come of America in recent years. He has, at least since The Inredibles, been accused by some as being a kinder, gentler version of Ayn Rand – looking down at those who are not “exceptional”. I almost have to believe that Tomorrowland is a response to that – a laughing one – as when we find out the origins of Tomorrowland, they are in fact very similar to Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. But Bird’s vision is far more hopeful than Rand – he believes in exceptionalism to be sure, but thinks it can accomplish great things – especially if we keep a positive outlook. That is really the message of Tomorrowland – that we should stop concentrating on the negative things in the world, and stopping resigning ourselves to the inevitability of destruction, but rather concentrate on how we can fix things – make them better. That is where Casey comes in – she is the most relentlessly optimistic person you will ever see in a movie. When her teachers tell her about disease, global warming, or even teach dystopian novels in school, she always wants to know if they can fix it. Make it better.

That’s a message I can get behind. Sure, I like dark movies – and some of the best sci-fi in movie history is dystopian – but sometimes we need a positive message – and if nothing else, Tomorrowland has a positive message. Yet, it’s delivered in such a confusing movie. Time and again as I watched the movie, I was left scratching my head at the plotting – as the movie raises questions it doesn’t answer (Where is Tomorrowland? What rules govern it, who gets kicked out, and what happened to it? Who is chasing Frank and Casey, and on whose authority are they acting? How did Casey get chosen? What special skills does she have? What is this test she scored so high on, and how did they measure it?, etc, etc.). Bird seems to have a lot of things he wants to get to in Tomorrowland, and he rushes into them headlong – and as a result the narrative suffers.

 
Tomorrowland is far from a bad movie. It’s well acted, well intentioned and full of visual imagination. I like its positive outlook on the future – or at the very least, that it holds out hope if we want it to. The final moments is syrupy and sappy of course, but it works. But not enough of the rest of the movie does. Bird is a talented director – but this time he does what he hasn’t done before – place the visuals over the story. Bird is so good because the two are of equal weight in a Bird movie – that isn’t the case with Tomorrowland – which is what makes it a major disappointment from Bird.