Day 196: Spring Breakers

"This is poetry in motion, big booties and money fallin' y'all!"

Harmony Korine, as both writer & director, has never made a film that even remotely interested me or that I found any sort of redeeming qualities in. He is a provocateur, and his debut screenplay, Kids, made for the perfect storm of provocation when it was directed by one of the most despicable directors alive, Larry Clark. That film is absolute, exploitative garbage, claiming to be aimed at teenagers, but clearly intended for gross, disgusting adults who get their rocks off on watching teens participate in risky behaviors. 

While his newest film as writer & director, Spring Breakers, is nowhere near as openly aimed at people with pedophiliac tendencies, it's somehow worse in the fact that it thinks it actually has something meaningful to say about the typical American college girl experience. Part of me hopes that it does anyway, because if it's actually trying to subvert those and becomes sort of the inverse, a film that exploits exploitation so to speak, than it's even more hideous.

The film opens with the boring & disparate tales of four college friends. There's the inseparable Brit (Ashley Benson) & Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), who spends most of her time onscreen making guns with her thumb and forefinger and firing them at her head, in her mouth or at others. There's Cotty (Rachel Korine) who defies description other than to say she's basically just like the other two, and then there's Faith (Selena Gomez) to whom we're introduced at some sort of wacky college evangelical Christian gathering. Look, nobody despises evangelical Christians as much as I do, but even I was offended by the way Korine portrayed this group of college students & their "hip" pastor. 

Faith is obviously the one who's not like the other three, but spends her time with them because they've been friends since Kindergarten. The girls are planning a trip to Florida for Spring Break, but don't have enough money to make the trip, so Brit, Candy & Cotty decide to don ski masks and rob a greasy spoon chicken shack with a hammer & a painted water gun. Their plan goes swimmingly and the girls now have enough money to head to St. Pete. When they arrive, it's the typical parent's nightmare bacchanalia. Liquor, drugs, tits, douchebag guys with faux-hawks, cocaine, white rappers, slow motion, keg stands, borderline rape, actual rape, those sorts of things. This portion of the film plays out like an extended highlight reel for dirty old men to feather their sacks to. 

There's no redeeming qualities to any of the girls as they ride around on scooters, sing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" in a liquor store parking lot, or re-enact the robbery that got them there for Faith's benefit. In short, it was enough to make me want to leave the theater. But something kept me there. It was the entire reason that I had shown up to the movie in the first place, and that was the promise of seeing a full-on bat shit crazy performance from James Franco. Franco makes a brief appearance earlier in the film rapping on the beach at a concert, and I was beginning to think he may not come back. 

Then the girls get arrested at a hotel party where they're caught snorting coke with two wiggers. The wiggers happen to be in the posse of Franco's character Alien, and when Alien sees them in court, threatened with more jail time if they're unable to pay their bail, he steps in and bails them out. He's a drug dealing, gun-loving, white guy who thinks he's black, and he felt compelled to help these girls out and show them a good time in his part of St. Pete. When they arrive at a party, Faith begins to get bad feelings and wants to go back home. Alien tells her she can go, but that her friends are staying, and with that, the only remotely likable character in the film leaves, and the film takes a steep plunge into shitsville. 

Now, I'm not saying I liked the character of Faith or that I enjoyed the movie more when she was in it, but the prospect of losing any sort of voice of reason character made the film's remaining forty minutes an endurance test. Alien has a bit of a turf war going with his childhood friend Big Arch (Gucci Mane), and the remaining three girls want in on Alien's posse and want to become part of his war. When Cotty is shot in the arm by one of Arch's bitches, she leaves for home as well, removing the only other obstacle between Alien, Brit & Candy's dream love affair. 

There is an absolutely interminable sequence in Alien's pool where the three of them have sex, and the girls are constantly calling him a scaredy cat because they know he wants to kill Arch, but won't go through with it. They seriously repeat the same four lines of dialogue, ad nauseam, for five or six minutes. And of course the film ends in a bloodbath with two teenage girls from the middle of nowhere gunning down multiple thugs guarding Big Arch's house. Nonsense.

None of this is to mention the extended "look at my shit" monologue by Franco, where he implores Brit & Candy to look at his guns, money, bed, sneakers, socks, television, money & other assorted shit. This monologue ends with the girls forcing him to fellate the business end of two silenced rifles. Oh, and he's wearing zubaz. I'm serious when I say that I can't tell if they're being serious or not, and I'm not sure which is more disconcerting to me. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the sing-along around Alien's poolside piano of Britney Spears' "Everytime," that then becomes a montage of Alien & the girls robbing & pillaging. I hate to get political here, but I wish every NRA member and every person in Congress fighting to protect our current gun laws would watch this movie. These are the "responsible gun owners" that they're trying to protect. Dumb. 

This movie is so god damned dumb it makes me angry. I wish that I could say there were some redeeming qualities. I wish I could tell you it's worth seeing for James Franco, but he's somehow worse in this than he was in Oz. It seems like the kind of performance that's right in his wheelhouse, with his grill & cornrows & Kevin Federline vibe, but he's almost too self-conscious as an actor to truly go for it. His accent keeps changing, and he just honestly doesn't appear to be taking it seriously, which again leads me to wonder if this entire movie is serious or not. 

Spring Breakers is one of the absolute worst movies I have ever laid eyes on. It's pure garbage with no soul, designed to titillate the viler impulses in the worst people in our society. Steer clear of anyone that thinks this is a good movie or an interesting movie or thinks that it's deep. It isn't. It's shallow and it's the worst kind of shallow because it thinks it's making a statement about shallowness in our society. I hated this film with every fiber of my being.

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 195: Room 237

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In a forty year career as a filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick only made thirteen feature films and four short films, and despite his reputation, he was far from reclusive. However, he was very reticent to let people in on his process and left behind an aura of mystery that lends itself to the sort of myth-making that film scholars delight in.

The new "documentary," Room 237, is a film unlike any other you'll ever see in that it doesn't delve into any sort of factual behind-the-scenes insights into Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining. Rather it takes five people and gives them a forum in which to explain what they think the true, hidden meanings in this film are, and they are so wildly divergent, there's no way they could all be true. However, digging into the mysteries within this enigmatic film is almost as pleasurable as just watching the film itself.




Director Rodney Ascher has made a one-of-a-kind film with Room 237. Unlike a traditional documentary, he forgoes any sort of traditional style, such as talking head interviews, and instead uses footage directly from The Shining with the interviews overlaid as voice over. Therefore, we get to see the same shots, multiple times, with multiple interpretations of them.

The five interviewees and their various theories on the true meanings of The Shining are as follows: Bill Blakemore postulates that the film is about the systematic slaughter of Native Americans by the white European settlers. Geoffrey Cocks theorizes that the film is rife with metaphorical connections to 1942 & The Wannsee Conference in which the Nazis decided to rid Europe of the Jewish people. Jay Weidner's theory is that NASA utilized Kubrick's services to help stage footage of the 1969 moon landing, and The Shining is his confession to his part in this national conspiracy.



Lastly there is Juli Kearns & John Fell Ryan, both of whom focus on the film's tongue-in-cheek implausibilities and inside jokes that Kubrick littered the film with. Kearns focuses on impossible windows in the hotel layout & some pretty odd metaphors involving a minotaur hidden in a skiing poster. Ryan shows interesting overlays and edits that the film makes, and culminates his arguments with a demonstration of how the film syncs to itself when projected forwards and backwards simultaneously on the same screen (if that sounds confusing, it actually works quite well when shown in the film).

Needless to say, it's categorically impossible for Kubrick to have intended the film to have all of these meanings simultaneously, so the audience will likely have to decide for themselves which theories work and which don't. In all honesty, there are holes in all of these various theories, though some are arguably larger than others. Weidner's NASA conspiracies reek of the sort of paranoid ramblings of a man who's spent too much time writing manifestos in a secure bunker. Similarly every point that Kearns makes which seems to make sense or be interesting is almost immediately followed by one which requires gigantic logical leaps of faith to believe.



Since there is no on-screen naming of the individuals speaking, it's hard for me to know whether it was Blakemore or Cocks that posits some early theories about the hidden sexual subliminal images in the film, but they are laughably absurd. It also feels at times like all five speakers are reaching towards things that are obvious continuity errors to place hidden meanings to them, such as a disappearing sticker of the dwarf Dopey on young Danny Torrance's bedroom door.

Nevertheless, Kubrick was a notorious stickler for detail, often spending entire days decorating a set or rearranging props within a given scene to achieve his desired vision. This fact, in and of itself, hangs an air of suspicion over every little detail in the film that is seemingly out of place. There are strong possibilities that these things were done intentionally, but to say with certainty what Kubrick's intentions were is the slipperiest of slopes.



Room 237 is a unique viewing experience that is absolutely essential for fans of cinematic dissection and most assuredly for fans of either Stanley Kubrick or The Shining. It is the kind of film that will make you want to watch The Shining again immediately to see what theories stick with you and perhaps even what theories of your own you could concoct.

The film is showing in limited engagements across the country right now and is also available to stream on iTunes & The Playstation Network, so it's never been more accessible than it is at the moment. I cannot recommend it any higher for fans of Kubrick or movies in general. It will make you laugh, shake you head, and most importantly, think.

GO Rating: 4/5


[Photos 2-5 via Lucy Who]

Day 194: Evil Dead (2013)

"I can smell your filthy soul."

Let me get this out of the way, right off the bat: There are some sacred cows for me in the world of cinema. Films that I consider to be holy and above being remade. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead is not one of those films. I have no great attachment to the original film, and I was not up in arms over the proposed remake when it was announced. I feel the need to qualify this fact because I am about to tear this remake to shreds, and I don't want anyone reading this to think that I have some sort of personal animus towards the film based on some affinity for the original.



For the record, I do enjoy the original Evil Dead trilogy to an extent. I think that the films got better each time out of the gate, with Army of Darkness being my favorite. The main thing that sets those films apart from most of the horror movies being made in this day and age is that they have a true sense of levity to them. They're a wonderful mixture of comedy & horror, and while not all horror films need to combine laughter into the mix, when you're being asked to buy into a ridiculous premise like demonic possession via an ancient book of the dead & witchcraft rituals, it certainly helps.

The new film follows the same basic premise as the original, five friends travel to a remote cabin in the woods, find a "book of the dead," and find themselves possessed by a demon. In an attempt to answer the age old adage of "why don't they just leave," the writers added a subplot wherein one of the girls is there to quit her heroin habit, so the others are not convinced by her repeated attempts to try and escape.

The addict in question is Mia (Jane Levy), and her companions are her estranged brother & Ash stand-in David (Shiloh Fernandez), his girlfriend (Elizabeth Blackmore), their registered nurse friend Olivia (Jessica Lucas) & English teacher turned resident book of the dead expert Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci). I have to admit that the way they dealt with the exposition and lengthy backstory had me hooked for the first ten minutes or so. I was honestly impressed by how well they conveyed a lot of information with very little dialogue. Kudos to the screenwriters for managing to hash together a great first act.



Things unfortunately go in the toilet pretty soon after that, and the film's dead serious tone helped to sink the movie almost immediately. One of the most infamous scenes in the original is the "rape tree," which is handled here in the most dire of ways. It was an immediate indicator that the film was not looking to have any fun with its premise, but instead was focused on attempting to legitimately scare its audience with obviously comedic premises.

Director Fede Alvarez has a vivid imagination and certainly comes up with some of the more interesting ways to pile on the blood and guts I've seen in a long time, but he's not terribly clever. The height of his cleverness is on display when Eric, who looks like the prototypical version of Jesus, is attacked with a nail gun and shot through the palms. This is as clever as the director and/or writers were willing to get, and that's ultimately disappointing.



It's hard to criticize the performances in a film like this since all of the actors were being called upon to essentially portray screaming ninnies with ridiculous lapses in common sense. They did that well enough, I would have just liked to see some character development beyond the first ten minutes of the film. They were all perfectly serviceable, but lacked any sort of depth to make you care about them when they're systematically slaughtered.

Another big issue I had was the way the film pushed the bounds of plausibility. I know how categorically absurd it is for me to say that about a film like this, but if I'm playing along with the filmmakers and taking all of this seriously, their characters withstand tremendous amounts of bodily damage and blood loss without dying. And anyone who's seen 127 Hours knows that it's no easy feat to separate your arm from your body, yet no less than two characters in this film do it as if they're cutting the tag off a new shirt.



My issues with Evil Dead can be summed up like this: It's fine to do a humorless remake of a film that had a sense of humor, but don't insist on paying homage to the original every chance you get. This is a dour film with no sense of irony, fun or originality. If the people who made it had their wits about them, they might have tried to lighten the mood a bit. I would have loved this film had it had a sense of humor about what it was, but as it stands now, it's just a violent mish-mash of nonsensical premises presented in the most serious manner imaginable, and if that concept frightens you, you're already more scared than this dreck is going to make you in its entire ninety minute running time.

GO Rating: 0.5/5


[Photos via Box Office Mojo]

In Memoriam: Roger Ebert

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Today brings news that legendary film critic Roger Ebert has died at the age of 70. It’s hard to argue that there has been a more influential film critic in my lifetime, and certainly none that elevated film criticism to an art form like he did. While many critics before him, such as Pauline Kael, helped people to take film seriously as an art form, Ebert was the first popular critic to truly champion a well-made film no matter the genre or subject matter.

He was the kind of critic that readily acknowledged that a film didn’t have to be a serious-minded, Oscar-worthy film to be a great film. He made it okay to give a thumbs up vote to schlock, provided it was well-made schlock, and I cannot emphasize how truly important that is to the institution of film criticism. While I may not have always seen eye to eye with his criticism, I valued it in a way that I valued few other critics.

He truly understood the language of cinema, and helped to make difficult films more accessible, and show the value in a good film where others may have dismissed it outright. And none of this is to say that he loved everything. His book Your Film Sucks, gathers some of his most scathing reviews and shows how sharp his knives could be when they were drawn. But he understood when and how to make that distinction, which I feel is his single greatest contribution to world of film criticism. He judged a film on how well it worked in comparison to what it set out to do, which is something that not a lot of critics before him took the time to do. Many would just casually dismiss a film such as Matchstick Men, where he would take the time to understand the filmmakers intent and score the film accordingly.

I cannot overstate the importance his criticism had on my young film going life. Every Friday I would tear into the entertainment section of the local paper (The Bergen Record in northern NJ) to read his syndicated reviews (one of the earliest I remember reading was his review for Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989). Honestly, how many ten year olds cared what a film critic thought about a film, but to me, his opinion mattered. I valued it, even at a young age, and he helped to make me more than just a casual filmgoer.

Roger Ebert loved movies, and this, more than anything else, informed his criticism of film. He didn’t divorce this love of film from his job, and he could write eloquently about films that others would likely just reject. His love of film helped him to champion the underdog and it also led him to eloquently tear down abject failures. He could take it personally when a filmmaker fundamentally failed, and a negative review from him could be enough to make a filmmaker take stock of their work before trying again.

It’s become to easy to dismiss the art of criticism in a culture where anyone with an internet connection can voice their opinion on art, so the loss of a titan like Ebert is immeasurable. In addition to his work in print, he was also one of the first critics to embrace the blogosphere and use the internet as a way to publish articles and other thoughtful pieces that a newspaper might otherwise not make room for. It’s hard to know what impact his loss will have on the critic community, I just hope that whomever is selected as his successor is thoughtful and considerate enough to love film as deeply as Mr. Ebert did.

The fact that he continued his work even after cancer had ravaged most of his face & body is a testament to how deeply felt his love of what he did truly was. He wasn’t one to turn and run in the face of adversity, and it grows his myth even larger in the wake of his passing. Roger Ebert will not be replaced. It’s as simple as that. Much as he struggled to find a replacement in the passing of his long time critic partner Gene Siskel in 1999, the world will try (and fail) to replace Ebert atop the film critic pedestal. Someone else may come along and take over his job as critic at the Sun-Times or take over his blog, but no one will ever replace the man himself.

I would personally like to extend my deepest condolences to his wife Chaz, who was by his side for so many years and became a symbol of strength in the face of adversity. It is a truly sad day for anyone in my line of work, but it is an especially sad day for anyone who loves film, because we’ve lost one of our own. Rest in peace, good sir. You will be missed.

Day 193: Admission

"Virginia Woolf was a twat, extremely overrated, no Getrude Stein. I'll have a breast."

Tina Fey is a force to be reckoned with on the small screen. As head writer for Saturday Night Live, she oversaw one of the show's renaissance periods in the early 00s, and as creator & star of 30 Rock, she forged a path for the smart, single camera comedy that has become a staple of prime time television. On the big screen, however, her work has been sadly met with indifference from the movie going public. Apart from her gig as the writer of Mean Girls, most of her starring vehicles have floundered, and its unfortunate that her most recent film, Admission, has gone the same way, as it's arguably her best film yet.



Based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Admission tells the story of Princeton admissions officer Portian Nathan (Fey), a career driven woman working in a high pressure job at the top University in the country. When Princeton loses its number one ranking from US News & World Report, she is charged by the Dean of Admissions (Wallace Shawn) to find spectacular new freshman to elevate the school's standing once again.

One such student falls into her lap courtesy of old college acquaintance John (Paul Rudd) who runs an alternative high school in New Hampshire called Quest. His prized student, Jeremiah (Nat Wolff), is about to begin his college search, and John is desperate for Portia to take a look at him. He doesn't seem like Princeton material, though, and John's true motives come to light when he tells Portia that he thinks Jeremiah is the son she gave up for adoption when they were in undergrad together.

Portia is dealt a further blow when her longtime boyfriend (Michael Sheen) leaves her for a woman he's been having an affair with. So between her relationship crisis, the information about her possible son & increasing pressure at work, Portia's life seems as if it's going to unravel.



The thing that I love most about this film is how well it manages this balancing act with equal parts humor and realistic pathos. It's no surprise that it comes from Paul Weitz, the director of another similarly underrated film, About a Boy. Unlike that film where Hugh Grant's character in that film was dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood, here is a woman who on the surface has her life together, but secretly harbors the fear that she really doesn't, and Fey is perfect in the role.

The major thought that I had throughout almost the entire film was that it shouldn't work as well as it does. It seems so cliched pairing this driven career woman with Paul Rudd's flighty, worldly eco-warrior, and all of the film's themes come to a head when she helps John & Jeremiah birth a cow, a scene that should have sent me running for the aisles for all of its obvious heavy-handedness, but somehow it worked. I think that what made scenes like that work is that they never linger. The film is packed with scenes that seem like they will collapse the film with the obviousness of their meaning, but they move so quickly that nothing feels forced because they don't dwell on the themes the way other movies would.

The film also has a nice third-act turn that helped to alleviate some of the obviousness that was in the air. I won't risk spoiling anything, but I was a big fan of the way that the last half hour of the film artfully wove its way through all of the themes that they had been dealing with. I was actively expecting two things to happen which didn't, and I was pleasantly surprised that it managed to avoid falling into a hole that it seemed to have dug for itself.



The performances are great, particularly Fey & Rudd. They're both world-class comic actors, right at home in this sort of film, and watching them interact with one another was great. Sheen was also a lot of fun in his role as a spineless intellectual who did everything in his power to avoid conflict. Lily Tomlin is fantastic as Portia's mom, the epitome of everything that Portia is rebelling against in her own life, and frankly it's just nice to see her on screen again.

The film's script by Karen Croner is efficient & witty without ever feeling forced, and Weitz's direction compliments it nicely at every turn. The way that the film uses montage is great, particularly early on when Portia is reading applications & touring around various high schools. It all works together incredibly well. The film's score was done by Stephen Trask, who co-wrote the music for Hedwig & The Angry Inch, and the best compliment I can pay it is that you would never know that if you weren't already aware.



As with most of the film's that I've really liked this year, this one has had trouble finding an audience as well, which is sad. I feel as though people are more than willing to pay money to see schlock, but whenever something small and genuine comes along, it's met with indifference. This is a perfect date movie because it can be enjoyed by both sexes equally, and that's something you would never find in a Nicholas Sparks film. If it's still playing, do yourself a favor and go see Admission. It's a lovely little film.

GO Rating: 3.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Top 5 Movie Trailers That Were Better Than The Movie

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It's happened to all of us, we see a trailer for a movie that looks so amazing, and think that there's no way the movie won't be great. I could name dozens of examples of good trailers for films that turned out to be lousy: Star Wars Episode 1, Cloverfield, Rise of the Silver Surfer, Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Matrix Reloaded, any M. Night Shyamalan movie after Signs. There's no great art in taking two or three minutes worth of great footage and making it look enticing to the viewers, but there's another phenomenon that exists in the world of movie trailers.

I've selected five trailers for movies that I actually liked, but after seeing the film, I was disappointed that it was nowhere near as good as the trailer for the film. These are the kinds of trailers that, when you re-watch them, make you want to immediately see the movie again. Now, there's lots of great movies with equally great trailers, but it's a rare phenomenon to have a great trailer, and then the movie turn out to be good, just not as good as the trailer, and today, I'm looking at my Top 5 examples...

5. Flight (2012)

I rather enjoyed Flight, even though a number of people I've spoken with said it felt like an R-rated afterschool special. But one thing I just couldn't get over about Flight, and I even mentioned it in my review is that it had an absolutely amazing trailer. The trailer is gripping, intense, suspenseful, and gives you just enough information without giving away everything, which is the cardinal sin that far too many trailers commit. Flight the film got 3.5 out of 5, but I'd give this trailer a 5 out of 5.



4. Watchmen (2009)

It's ironic that this trailer uses a Smashing Pumpkins song from the terrible film Batman & Robin, and this trailer debuted before The Dark Knight in the summer of 2008. It was almost ominous, but in spite of the overwhelming odds against it, Zack Snyder's Watchmen film managed to be pretty damn good, although I won't go so far as to say it's great or even one of the ten best comic book movies ever made. The trailer gives you iconic imagery that fans of the book recognized immediately, and even though the costumes seemed a little off, you still get pumped up about the very notion of a Watchmen movie. Again, Watchmen is not a great movie, but every time I see this trailer, it makes me want to watch it immediately.



3. Garden State (2004)

I spent the spring and summer of 2004 obsessively watching this trailer, fevered with anticipation for a film that looked as though it could legitimately be The Graduate of my generation. No film could live up to such high expectations, and I definitely enjoyed Garden State in spite of its numerous plot contrivances and quirk for the sake of quirk. But watching this trailer again and hearing Frou Frou's "Let Go," it's like I'm transported back to a time when I thought this movie was going to change my life.



2. Independence Day (1996)

The summer before my senior year in high school, this trailer was showing before every movie, and all the anticipation was focused firmly on the week of July 4th when we'd finally get to see The Fresh Prince, Lone Starr & Ian Malcolm kick some alien ass. And don't get me wrong, the first time I saw Independence Day, I thought it was great. I found myself getting caught up in the jingoism & the spectacle of it all, but let's face it, the film is nowhere near as good as this trailer. It's a classically edited 90's action movie trailer, featuring Don LaFontaine's dulcet tones & the promise of the action movie to end all action movies. In retrospect, it just turned out to be the best Roland Emmerich movie ever made.



1. Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

I adore Where The Wild Things Are. I don't think any film has ever captured the inner turmoil of being a ten year-old boy better. The only problem is, the film's trailer was an absolute masterpiece. Featuring the song "Wake Up" by the not-yet overrated Arcade Fire, the film promised to be a journey to another world where anything was possible. It looked incredible, the creatures looked just right, the design elements looked amazing, and Spike Jonze was directing it, what could possibly go wrong? Essentially, the only thing that went wrong was that this trailer is selling a completely different movie. In fact, with the exception of the short shot of Carol crying, there's no hint of what the movie's true nature was going to be. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I really do love the movie, but I think I'm not alone in saying that the movie that this trailer promised us would have been even better.



Honorable Mention that I am totally embarrassed that I forgot...

Moonlight Mile (2002)

Here's a movie that I love, that most people have forgotten about, yet I'll never forget seeing this trailer before Road to Perdition all three times I saw it, and I couldn't wait to see it. I love Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon does solid work & Jake Gyllenhaal was starting to grow on me. Add in the Rolling Stones reference in the title & Elton John's Someone Saved My Life Tonight, and this trailer looked amazing. Again, the movie is great, but this trailer is transcendently good...

Day 192: The Croods

"Big words make me angry... keep talking!"

Dreamworks Animation's seven year partnership with Paramount ended last year, and 20th Century Fox has taken over as the distributor for their animated films for the foreseeable future. It's interesting that The Croods is the first film released as part of this new partnership since, on the surface, it bears many striking resemblances to Fox's own animation franchise, The Ice Age series. If there's an obvious joke in here about Neanderthals being Fox's strong suit, I'm going to go ahead and dodge it, but this is a film far more in line with the lackluster Ice Age series than the strong work Dreamworks has been churning out of late.



The film opens, much as the also 3D Kung Fu Panda 2 did, with a 2D animation sequence. This one is narrated by Eep (Emma Stone) and done as a series of cave paintings that give us the backstory on her family, the eponymous Croods. The dad, Gurg (Nicolas Cage) is overly protective of his family, since all manner of disasters have befallen the other clans in their neighborhood, and he has a system to keep his family safe. His system essentially consists of locking his family away in a cave and repeating his catchphrase "never not be afraid" ad nauseum.

Eep, as the story requires her to, wants more out of life though, and her curiosity one night causes her to cross paths with Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a slightly more advanced human who is traveling to the sun, so that he can ride it to "tomorrow." I swear I'm not making this up. In context, it sort of makes sense, since these primitive humans would have an equally primitive understanding of the universe, but it's still a bit of a stretch.

An earthquake destroys The Croods' cave, and they set off in search of a new home. Their paths cross with Guy's again, and he is taken hostage by Gurg since he knows how to make fire, and could come in handy. The rest of the film plays out as a typical road adventure, as the insanely protective father must come to terms with his family's desire to grow and learn more about the world around them.



First things first, the film looks gorgeous. It's beautifully animated, and many of the 3D effects are great, in particular the flying debris, dust particles or fire embers had the many children at my screening reaching out to grab them. The animators have taken great care to lovingly animate the film, and it's pure eye candy. A lot of the action sequences are exciting and great to look at as well, particularly the family's first trip outdoors to secure breakfast.

The film is also jam packed with humor, not all of which works, but most of which is aimed squarely at the young people in the audience. Unlike the best Dreamworks & Pixar films, this one is not entirely interested in entertaining the adults in the audience. The humor is mostly for the kids, and my six and three year-olds are it up, particularly the antics of Guy's sidekick Belt. I did find it odd how lowest-common denominator most of the humor was, considering one of the co-writers/co-directors is Chris Sanders, who did the wonderfully subversive Lilo & Stitch.

The film has a ton of problems however, not least of which is the mixed-tone of the film. It's squarely set in a fantasy world, at least as far as the wildlife in the film is concerned. There's a ton of Flinstones-esque stone age parallels to modern day devices like photographs, umbrellas & shoes, and it makes the whole film feel much more lightweight than it would have been had it dodged these sort of cheap jokes altogether. At times it seems like the film is trying desperately to let you know that it's got a lot of brains & heart, but these moments all seem forced and more contrived than if they weren't surrounded by so much nonsense.



The film's climax, in particular, is preposterous & ham-fisted. There's a genuinely touching moment with Gurg coming to terms with his over-parenting, but it's followed by a ten minute sequence that feels significantly reduced in order to wrap things up in a timely fashion. The film spends over an hour with The Croods wandering around, essentially doing nothing, and then forces virtually all of its characters to have a change of heart within the same ten minute sequence. And to top it off, it's followed by the most absurd climactic sequence this side of The Matrix Revolutions.

The voice cast does admirably solid work. Cage is one of my favorite actors, but he's unreasonably restrained here. The only glimpse we get of the bonkers Cage that we know and love is a late second act sequence where he dresses up like Guy and tries to unleash a series of dumb inventions on his family. Stone & Reynolds are both good in their by-the-numbers roles, and Cloris Leachman manages to score the most laughs as Gran. Clark Duke is also funny as the dim-witted son Thunk, and Catherine Keener is reliably good as Ugga, the mother.

One last thing I have to mention is the film's score by Alan Silvestri. It is awful. It's so overbearing and bombastic, you can't help but be overwhelmed by it for virtually the entire running time of the film. The mark of a great score is that you don't notice it, and you can't help but notice this score. It forces itself on you in an unpleasant way, and resembles Hans Zimmer at his worst.



If you want the real lowdown on The Croods, I would say this. If you have children, particularly under the age of ten, you should definitely take them to see it. If you're just a childless fan of Dreamworks animation or Nic Cage, however, I would subtract a full star from my final rating. Your kids will adore this movie, but you'll find yourself weighed down by its plot contrivances and hollow climax. In the "absurdly protective dad" genre, it's not as good as Finding Nemo, but it's also nowhere near as bad as last year's atrocious Hotel Transylvania, and it even fails to reach even the mediocre heights of Dreamworks' recent output like Madagascar 3. But make no mistake, your kids will love it, and at the end of the day, that's what these films are all about.

GO Rating: 3/5


[Images via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 191: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

"That is a terrible trick to do for children, what if they try and copy you?"
"I'll sue them."

There is no greater sin for a film to commit than that of squandered potential. There's honestly nothing I hate more than a film full of great comedic talent flailing about in a desperate attempt to get laughs where the script has failed to provide them. The world of Vegas magicians seems less a source ripe for parody than a last resort comedic device designed to simply differentiate itself through the sheer fact that no one has really taken a major shot at it before. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a film so jam packed with idiocy that it will almost annoy you more when it actually manages to deliver a handful of inspired jokes.




Bullied from a young age, Burt (Mason Cook) seeks refuge in a crappy birthday present from his mom, a Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin) magic set. Any child of the 70s and 80s will recognize this as a nod to the ubiquitous Harry Blackstone magic sets of that era, and the film relies on that sort of nostalgia to bring you into this world. Burt's only friend is Anthony (Luke Vanek) and they hone their craft as kids, and as adults, form the magic duo of Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) & Anton Marvel (Steve Buscemi). They're stuck playing cut-rate rooms in Vegas until they are offered a deal to bring their act to Bally's by Doug Munny (James Gandolfini). The catch is that they would have to split up, but Burt refuses to leave Anton behind, and turns the deal down.

10 years later, the duo are still doing the same show, to increasingly diminished crowds, and what's more, they despise one another. Their style of magic is now being usurped by crazy street magicians like Steve Gray (Jim Carrey), and an attempt by these old school hams to jazz up their act leads to disaster, and Anton abandons Burt. With his contract cancelled, Burt must try and get his mojo back, as Munny will be opening a new casino, and the winner of a magic competition will get the chance to headline at the new casino.



Don't get me wrong, there are some truly inspired bits throughout the film. Burt trying to continue his two man show by himself is very funny, the running gag about bed sizes also made me laugh and Jim Carrey's final scene is also about as funny as anything he's done in the last decade. But the film prefers to wallow in cheap, lazy jokes. Spray on tans, big wigs, nonsensical Criss Angel/David Blaine -style street magic, this is all pretty low hanging fruit, and the film unfortunately doesn't aspire to any greater heights than these.

The fact that I've gotten this far into the review without mentioning Olivia Wilde's character will also tell you what an afterthought the script treats her as. She's perfectly good in the role and manages to score a few laughs as a foil for both Carrey & Carell, but her character (a stagehand turned magician's assistant with aspiring magic dreams of her own) is a total romantic throwaway.



The main trio of Carell, Buscemi & Carrey are all perfectly fine. They're great comedic actors who can always manage to do a lot with very little. They never show the desperate flop sweat they must have been drenched with, which is really a testimony to how committed they are to this paltry material. Arkin is great in his small role as a shyster who's stil got a few tricks up his sleeve, and Gandolfini is always good, even playing a character as one-note as the one he does here. There's also some funny work in small roles by Jay Mohr & Brad Garrett.

Director Don Scardino has worked almost exclusively in television, and his uninspired work here shows as much. The film is flat and uninteresting visually, and as I said earlier, relies far too much on wigs to get laughs. The script has two screenwriting credits & four story credits, and my opinion on films written by that many people has been well-documented in the past. When that many writers are all fighting for their material to be front and center, it spells disaster for the finished product.



In fairness, I may be giving The Incredible Burt Wonderstone a bum rap. It is definitely a much better comedy than this year's mega-hit Identity Thief, but merely being better than an awful movie is no great feat. This film could have been hilarious and it's a decent rental for a night when you've got nothing better to watch, but it's got too much wasted potential for me to recommend it.

GO Rating: 2.5/5



[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 190: Oz The Great & Powerful

"Good work, you just sneezed away the plan."

Oz: The Great and Powerful seemed to be one of the more interesting films on the 2013 release schedule. Part of me cringed at the notion of it turning into another Alice in Wonderland style over substance fiasco. But another part of me believed that with Sam Raimi behind the camera, this could be a good film, a nice companion piece to the classic 1939 The Wizard of Oz. So, which is it? Read on to find out...



Before you go any further in this review, I must let you know that while I didn't hate this film as much as I did Alice in Wonderland, I didn't like it at all, and in order to explain why I didn't like it, there will be some minor spoilers. Disney has more or less done a terrible job of keeping it a secret who the Wicked Witch turns out to be, but if you're interested in going into this film without any spoilers at all, come back once you've seen the film.

Oscar Diggs (James Franco), Oz for short, is an illusionist living in early 20th century Kansas when the film opens. At a show, a young girl (Joey King) in a wheelchair asks him to cure her, he refuses. All hell really breaks loose when a circus strongman finds out that he's been making advances towards his girlfriend, and Oz is forced to flee the scene in a hot air balloon. His balloon heads right towards a twister, and soon enough, Oscar finds himself in the Land of Oz.

The first person he meets is a witch named Theodora (Mila Kunis) who informs him that he may be a wizard of prophecy, who is said to help defeat the Wicked Witch, restore Oz to its former glory & rule the land as its king. Oz works his charms on Theodora, who takes him to meet her sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz). Evanora tells him he must journey into the dark forest & kill the Wicked Witch, and once he does, he can rule as king.



We're not even forty-five minutes into the movie yet, and I've already skimmed a ton of details and still have a ton more to wade through. Needless to say, this film is bogged down in exposition & incidental nonsense, making the first hour a chore to get through. When Oz finds the witch in the woods, she turns out to be a good witch named Glinda (Michelle Williams) who informs him that he's been tricked by the real wicked witch, Evanora. She brings him to the good part of Oz to meet the people & mount a counterattack against the evil witches.

Now the big turn that Disney has done a poor job of hiding is that Theodora turns into the classic looking green witch when she takes a bite of an apple that her sister gives her to reveal her true form. I was fine with this, even though I knew this "twist," my issue with it is the fact that while I like her a lot as an actress, Mila Kunis is not good enough to sell the big, bold, over the top classic Wicked Witch schtick. Her first scene where she reveals herself to Oz & Glinda is comically bad & her dress shows so much cleavage that it was clear that no one behind the scenes really cared how good she was as an actress.

This was pretty much a deal breaker for me. Put aside the fact that Weisz is a much better actress and would have likely sold the transformation in a more believable way, it's ridiculous to even consider that they're sisters when Weisz has a British accent & Kunis doesn't. It just doesn't seem like a whole lot of foresight was given to what these roles would require of the actresses in them. Williams is thoroughly wasted in a thankless role, and all of her backstory with her murdered father is chucked aside in the final battle in favor of more spectacle.



The real problem with the film though is Franco. He's an actor that is so tricky to cast, because he's great at doing a handful of things, but playing a fraud who wants to be a great man is not one of them. I believe the role was originally intended for Robert Downey, Jr. who would have been much better despite the fact that his age would have made his multiple romantic subplots a bit creepy. Franco has a tendency to look like he's phoning it in (even if he isn't), and while that works sometimes, it's disastrous here. The whole film centers around his character & his character's arc and he looks as disinterested and disconnected as he did when he hosted the Oscars two years ago.

Why the filmmakers felt the need to create an original story when L. Frank Baum has provided us with nearly twenty tales from the Land of Oz is beyond my comprehension. The film cribs more from the film The Wizard of Oz than it does from any of Baum's works, but that's the version of this world most people are familiar with. Sam Raimi added a few flourishes that work, such as the changing of aspect ratios along with the switch from black & white to color, but mostly his talents were wasted on what seems like a film calculated to appeal to as broad an audience as humanly possible.

Films like this are going to feel like they were made by committee, because they almost always are. Why even hire a director like Raimi then? Fans will love some of his stuff in here (Bruce Campbell as a Winkie Guard, a late film homage to the "She-Bitch" from Army of Darkness) but he just reeks of being a director for hire. Even the 3D is pretty pedestrian, I can't honestly remember anything I liked about the use of 3D, and I just left the theater about an hour ago.



Oz: The Great & Powerful suffers from a lot of things: bad casting, lame jokes, overly cgi'd everything, but more than anything else, it falls victim to being inessential. It just didn't need to be made. It's boring as all get out and god help your children if you take them (the handful at my advanced screening were mostly asleep by the end, although it was a school night).

I realize that I didn't even mention things like Oz's sidekicks, the flying monkey voiced by Zach Braff & the China Doll voiced by Joey King. That's how little they matter to the overall story, which was so crammed with stuff, that none of it mattered in the end. I just shouldn't leave a film like this wondering why they even made it in the first place and that speaks volumes about what's truly wrong with the film.
 
GO Rating: 1.5/5



[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]