Once On This Island

Year: 2016

Director: Ron Clements & John Musker

Cast: Auli'i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Jemaine Clement

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Disney is in the midst of what some might prematurely term a Third Golden Age, but let us always remember that following the likes of Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons doesn’t leave newer entries with a high bar to clear. While I loved Tangled and Big Hero 6, Disney’s computer-animated output has never reached as consistent and satisfying a level as its two previous Golden Ages, which produced timeless works like Snow White, Pinocchio, and The Little Mermaid.

If you hold the much-ballyhooed Frozen up to the likes of Beauty and the Beast, the pitiful quasi-musical would melt in a microsecond. And while the box office-gobbling Zootopia is good, it’s an inconsistent allegory that hangs its hat on a Shakira track. So I urge you all to approach the highly praised Moana, Disney’s 56th theatrical animated feature, with a grain of salt, especially as it’s married to the other lavishly praised love object of 2016, Broadway songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is a terrific and talented person, but maybe not the second coming of Sondheim.

Forgive me theatre friends, for I have sinned. I have spoken against the church.

First, the plot. Moana is precede by the cute but inconsequential anatomy-based short “Inner Workings,” depicting the battle between an office drone’s head and heart (his job is a hilariously dour cross between the opening of The Producers and 1984 – the short has a killer electronic score and a cool mixed-medium design, but it’s no “Piper.”)

So, Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) is the daughter of Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison), the leader of a secluded island village. Moana longs to be an explorer out in the ocean, but nobody is allowed beyond the reef surrounding the island. However, when a dark force begins draining the island of tis resources, she must embrace her destiny, sail past the reef, find the deserted demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), and persuade him to return the Heart of Te Fiti, a mystical stone imbued with the power of creation. She must deliver him to the spot where he stole it (which is guarded by the lava demon Te Ka) in order to halt the encroaching darkness that threatens her island.

It’s definitely an inconvenient truth.

So, I’m gonna make a bold assumption and guess that you’ve seen any Disney movie before. If so, you’ve likely already experienced some element of Moana, which scavenges bits and pieces from Mulan, Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid, Pixar’s Brave, and pretty much every entry in the canon, polishing and renaming them like a regular Scuttle. Failing to carve out new territory isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes Moana uses its Disney ancestry to buff out gaping holes in its character arcs, assuming you already know how these stories go, so they don’t have to put in the maximum effort to have them makes sense this time.

Also, I hope you love adorable sidekicks, because Moana is rotten with ‘em. Moana could start an adorable sidekick baseball team with its roster, including a comically tiny pig that the movie pretty much straight-up admits will eventually be slaughtered, ditto an idiotic chicken named Heihei (Alan Tudyk, for some reason), a magical animated tattoo, and even the Actual Literal Ocean. Not since Aladdin found himself saddled with a genie, a monkey, and a flying carpet has there been such a  surplus of wacky reaction shots and goofy hijinks. None of them are execrable, like Frozen’s Olaf, Prince of Darkness, but it’s an overdose of saccharine at times.

But the best thing about Pixar’s island-themed short “Lava” is that no animated island projects could possibly be worse that that, so Moana is in a very safe place.

Well, that probably wasn’t a strong start to a positive review, but let’s carry on and see if we can’t pick things back up again. Moana is a charming film, even if it’s a little childish at times. Hell, it is for kids, and they’re gonna adore the ever-loving sh*t out of it, so who am I to complain? Although Moana could definitely do better than a frightfully repulsive pun about “Tweeting” that is damnable for its anachronism, but mostly because it’s just the pits, even worse than when Frozen bald-facedly stole the “we finish each other’s sandwiches” line from Arrested Development.

Wow, Frozen is really taking a beating tonight. Sorry, folks! I like “Let It Go.”

But let’s talk about the reason anybody over the age of 14 was excited to see Moana: Lin-Manuel Miranda, who co-wrote the music with Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i. While I will never dispute that the musical orchestration itself is ever less than fantastic, his lyrics always seem to tend toward the descriptive rather than the poetic. Here’s an actual line from “I Am Moana (Song of the Ancestors)”:

"I am the daughter of the village chief / We are descended from voyagers… I am Moana."

It ain’t exactly Shakespeare. However, a song where he really pulls out all the metaphorical stops is the villainous ditty “Shiny,” sung with gusto by Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement. It’s a bombastic celebration of wicked wordplay that sparkles amidst many great pieces of music, including several tracks that are brave enough to include entire verses in native Pacific Islander languages, using the orchestration itself to carry the soaring emotional heft. I’m also partial to the opening verse of Moana’s “I Want” song, titled “How Far I’ll Go,” which is in a challenging minor key that I’ve literally never heard before from a children’s film. It’s a great soundtrack, except for maybe “You’re Welcome,” a solo number which Dwayne Johnson clumsily tumbles through like the Rock that is his namesake.

It’s a perfectly lovely film, even if it isn’t perfectly perfect. It has two charming leads, a solid theme about respecting the past and discovering who you are, and two perfectly horrifying monster designs that I guarantee some kid is having a nightmare about this very second. I have my problems with it (especially the introduction of the sentient ocean, which only deigns to help out Moana when the plot needs a deus ex machina), but I’ll definitely buy the soundtrack, which is the highest praise a Disney movie can ask for.

TL;DR: Moana is a serviceable animated adventure with a mostly great musical soundtrack.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1077

Marky Mark

For our interview with Mark Rosman, the director of these films, please click here.

Part two of my fabulous spring cleaning escapades is a set of three flicks that might otherwise have never entered the pages of this blog in a million years: the family-friendly fare directed by Mark Rosman (of The House on Sorority Row), who was kind enough to sit down for an interview on the podcast. We’re incredibly lucky we got a chance to speak with him, and it was the least I could do to rewatch his classic Disney/Duff flicks to prepare. Now that the statute of limitations has lifted on that interview, let’s see how these childhood classics hold up now that I’m old and world-weary.

The Perfect Man

Year: 2005

Director: Mark Rosman

Cast: Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear, Chris Noth

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A teen girl is tired of her mom moving all the time after a series of bad breakups, so she invents a fictional secret admirer and catfishes her in order to get her to stay in one place.

Ah, there’s nothing like a pre-teen comedy centered around online fraud to get the laugh train rolling. Is it just me, or does the separation of a decade or two always make delightful movies seem so much more grim? Well, regardless of that trenchant observation, The Perfect Man is a fun romp through the angst and malaise of mid-2000’s teendom. If you can stifle your urge to smack Hilary Duff for complaining about the size of her family’s gargantuan apartment (which basically takes up an entire floor of a building and requires several long exterior tracking shots to navigate), there’s a snappy script and a silly sense of humor buried within the film.

A keen sense of directorial vision isn’t exactly a high priority in these types of films, but Mark Rosman successfully ushers it to safety. His presence can be felt in the roving camerawork that defines the film’s geography and the creative staging of the computer sequences, but for the most part he doesn’t try anything too fancy, preferring to let the story speak for itself. And while that story would hardly surprise any remotely awake audience member (the perfect man has been inside yourself all along…), it’s a charming and nostalgic trip back to the early days of the internet, where anything seemed possible and the world wide web was a wide open fantasy world ready to be explored, instead of just a repository for porn, kittens, and hateful YouTube comments.

It’s one of those films that you just need to let wash over you without a trace of cynicism. Luckily, the dialogue helps promote that, both with disarmingly intelligent Kevin Williamson-esque teenspeak and a series of witty, playful banter sequences, especially early on. Sure you can laugh at how Duff’s character thinks it’s appropriate to drop by her friend’s uncle’s apartment in the middle of the day or the arch selfishness present in every single decision she makes, but that’s all part of enjoying the experience.

A solid supporting cast likewise buoys the film, led by Rhea Pearlman in an undernourished but warmly human role as the mom’s best friend. While her talents may have been slightly wasted, people like Mike O’Malley and Chris Noth round out a credible group, and the teen cast (including Ben Feldman and Vanessa Lengies) provide excellent realistic urban foils for Duff’s squeaky clean Disney-informed performance. Even Heather Locklear sells us on the plight of her heartbroken character, though she may need to take her face to the shop to get it moving again.

Unlike the titular man, it’s not a perfect movie. There’s a frankly hideous gay stereotypes that prances through at shockingly regular intervals to completely lose his mind like a dog in heat any time a human man walks by, and there’s a bit of business with a fire escape and an orchid that could have used a great deal of polish, but when worst comes to worst, The Perfect Man pulls through. If youth-oriented, female-driven romantic comedies aren’t your bag, this film isn’t for you, but otherwise it’s a pleasant treat that doesn’t overtax the imagination. It’s a comfort film, like shoving macaroni and cheese into your eyes.

Rating: 6/10

Life-Size

Year: 2000

Director: Mark Rosman

Cast: Tyra Banks, Lindsay Lohan, Jere Burns

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: G

When a young girl tries to use a magic spell to resurrect her mother, she accidentally brings her doll to life instead.

Of all the movies on this list, Life-Size can most easily be described s a cult classic, at least among members of my generation. The TV movie (which aired on the Disney Channel about 800 times a week in the early 2000’s) has burrowed its way deep into the subconscious cultural minds of the millennials. It was with no small measure of excitement that I revisited this film, and it was with profound disappointment that I received it, though I did bring back several valuable impressions that were completely missed by baby Brennan.

First off, this movie is dark. Beneath the wacky fish-out-of-water hijinks inherent in a doll joining the human world, there is a savagely strong riptide of bitter loss. Lindsay Lohan only had one shot at bringing her mother back and accidentally wasted it, so her performance is tinged by guilt and bitter despair. Family movies are expected to have “heart,” but the lessons garnered from this situation are rife with poignant, messy humanity in a disarmingly direct way. It’s about as surprising as, say, a Spongebob Squarepants episode where the undersea gang battle apartheid.

This depth and color of emotion is the film’s biggest strength. At its core, Life-Size is about learning to let go and not dwelling on the dead while forgetting to live. It even goes so far as to have Lohan’s football team lose the climactic game at the end, a narrative and physical impossibility in films of this ilk. It’s like Rosman forgot he was making a children’s movie and kept on careening straight back into cynical horror. But this is the really wonderful thing about Life-Size: It doesn’t treat children like blithering idiots. It has a discussion at their level about real issues that, unfortunate as it is, many of them may be facing. It’s brave, it’s real, and it makes an intelligent argument in favor of life.

And then there’s that Barbie stuff. I don’t mean to diminish what are a handful of decently amusing sequences, but the film doesn’t really engage with its concept as much as it could have. The script utilizes her doll identity as a means of combatting the expectation that women have to be perfect at everything (like I said, this flick is hella dark), but there’s a lot of potential comic energy that finds itself wasted. After a couple gags, her doll origins hardly come up, in favor of a rather forced and awkward family drama about Lohan being uncomfortable with the doll making moves on her dad. Also, the theme song “Be A Star” is bubbly, catchy stuff but in the world before autotune… Let’s just say I never thought I’d write that Tyra Banks should stick to acting.

By the end of the film, Life-Size has covered just about every emotional base it’s possible to cover on the Disney Channel, but it vanishes without a true delightful sparkle that would allow it to rise above its TV movie peers. It’s dashingly unique and heartfelt, but its humor is much too ordinary for its far-out conceit. It’ll always be worth a watch if it pops up on your TV station, but otherwise it’s not worth actively seeking out again.

Rating: 5/10

A Cinderella Story

Year: 2004

Director: Mark Rosman

Cast: Hilary Duff, Chad Michael Murray, Dan Byrd

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The Cinderella fairy tale is updated to tell the story of a young outcast who works at a diner and the handsome jock who falls in love with her online.

Oh, nostalgia. Where would we be without you? The golden glow of the endless summers of yesteryear creates a kind of superpower in people, making them invulnerable to the terrible movies they loved during their childhood. Sergio experienced this firsthand when I sat him down to watch A Cinderella Story (on VHS, no less), a movie (that he was seeing for the first time) that I still largely enjoy, but it, for all intents and purposes, not a masterpiece.

This is nothing against Mark Rosman, who ushers the film in and out of existence so efficiently that you half wonder if you accidentally pressed the fast-forward button on your remote. No, the biggest cross A Cinderella Story has to bear is its script, which is so achingly 2004 that your pants sag a little just from looking at the poster. It’s an unforgivably treacly teen soap marred by some legitimately embarrassing slapstick that’s enjoyable on many levels, but true quality only rarely rears its head.

Fortunately, most of the not-so-good remains genuinely arresting. Just like The Perfect Man, A Cinderella Story is a sort of time capsule to a more innocent age of the Internet, where computers were enormous and you could leave a cell phone behind at a school dance without noticing for days. And you can’t help but find yourself tickled by certain details of the storyline, like the fact that Chad Michael Murray is so thick that he doesn’t recognize Hilary without her masquerade mask on (even though her hair, lips, body, and voice remain exactly the same) or the idea that “Cinderella”’s father could somehow tragically perish in his own home during an earthquake that doesn’t even knock her stuffed animals off their shelves. Although, interestingly enough, this scene links A Cinderella Story with the horror masterpiece Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which also incorporated the real-life Northridge earthquake into its story. Well, it’s interesting to me at least.

Another unintentionally hilarious conceit in the script is that gorgeous, blonde, convertible-driving Hilary Duff is somehow a nerdy outcast. Sure, her car could use a fresh coat of paint, but the way people go on about it, you’d think it was a 1972 Gremlin with the bumper taped on. And the main insult that flies her way is “diner girl,” because apparently it’s uncool to have a job. It’s like the screenwriter’s only human contact came from reruns of The Real Housewives. Or, to be fair, maybe people who live in the Valley really are just that terrible.

The only unforgivably bad elements of A Cinderella Story are the wicked stepsisters. Their vain, pugnacious screeching is absolutely murder to get through. The pair of them are introduced with an underwater fart gag and it only goes downhill from there. Luckily, their screen time is severely limited, or you’d have to chew a handful of Tums before putting the movie on.

But enough of that Negative Nancy crap, because the movie has an ace up its sleeve. The wicked stepmother, that paragon of sinister vanity, is played by Jennifer Coolidge, mistress of spinning twenty minutes or less of screen time into cinematic gold. She’s pure, hyperbolic evil, and consistently hilarious throughout the entire affair. Lin Shaye (of the Insidious franchise) also makes a brief but delightful appearance as the school’s daffy secretary.

I really enjoy A Cinderella Story for what it is. What it is isn’t a great film, but it’s a window into another time and I madly appreciate it for that. So you can feel free to utterly ignore my numerical score if that sounds up your alley. If not, stay away. Either way, you won’t regret it.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1969

You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Tiny

Year: 2015

Director: Peyton Reed

Cast: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll

Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Ant-Man is a punchline. A superhero who can make himself really tiny? He’s the Aquaman of the Avengers. It’s like when you’re at a restaurant and ask for a Coke and they say, “I’m sorry, we only have Ant-Man.” At least, that’s been the online dialogue among non-comic book fans. But guess what? Guardians of the Galaxy took a property that literally two and a half people cared about and converted it into a media juggernaut, so why not Ant-Man?

Enter Edgar Wright. …Exit Edgar Wright. Leave the keys to the guy who made Bring It On and Yes Man (I’ve never ever heard of that superhero). Suffice it so say, Ant-Man isn’t quite the sterling success that Guardians was, though it packs some punch in a very similar, if slightly watered down manner: trump up an achingly generic storyline with a heavy dose of good-natured humor and hope for the best.

Also – exactly one disappointingly brief ab shot.

Ant-Man tells the story of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a cat burglar trying to turn his life around after his release from San Quentin. He’s working hard to be a good role model for his daughter, but it’s tough to find work as an ex-con. He’s sent on a job that turns out to be an elaborate set-up by Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, looking just as confused to see himself here as I am), who has invented a suit that can shrink the size of the wearer while increasing their strength. This suit is controlled by the Pym particle. Only Hank knows the formula to this particle, which is also a liquid because science. Also he can mind control ants, because why not.

Hank enlists Scott to work with his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) to help him perform an elaborate heist and shut down the operation of Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who has taken over Pym’s company to develop a shrink suit called the Yellowjacket, which he plans to sell to HYDRA, which is basically the Marvel equivalent of Osama bin laden presents the Nazi Party. If this suit falls into the wrong hands, it’s somehow even worse than Iron Man’s suit, which can shoot nuclear warheads out of its ass. Because ants. Or something.

I’m so sorry, Hunter.

The biggest liability – and the biggest strength – of Ant-Man lies in just how inconsequential it really is. It knows it’s a story you’ve heard a quintillion times before and it knows it’s just a breadcrumb on the trail to Avengers XD: Montezuma’s Revenge or what have you, so when it takes the liberty of not taking itself so seriously, it soars. Ant-Man is a film with a tremendous sense of humor, both about itself (and its stature among its epic superhero peers) and within itself. It’s a genuinely funny movie, much like Guardians of the Galaxy before it, though admittedly most of its best lines are disproportionately handed to the terrific Michael Peña (as Scott’s best friend Luis).

But when Ant-Man isn’t laughing, it’s unrepentantly mechanical. Characters repeatedly show off their grotesquely inflated single behavioral traits like some kind of low rent freak show, trying not to trip over the hypnotically gargantuan foreshadowing scattered haphazardly at their feet. Character motives bend and snap in ways that put Elle Woods to shame, all in the service of ladling the audience with as much steamy, nutritious Marvel Cinematic Universe exposition as they can handle. The highest number of the most affordable cameos jockey for position among the actual storyline, which at this point is so overgrown and choked out that the establishing shots are practically subliminal and the entire second act has been converted into one incoherent montage,

Although, to be fair, I’m pretty sure that’s technically a genre now.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly serviceable. Those who love Marvel will get a kick out of connecting the dots. And those who just want Ant-Man only have to unfocus their eyes during a couple key moments to keep themselves pure. There’s a dash of political commentary, a surprising playfulness in the infrequent action sequences incorporating the balletic exchanging of sizes, and the questionable creature CGI is easily overlooked by the film’s jocular tone. No, the only truly, egregiously bad thing about Ant-Man is Evangeline Lilly’s hair, which she has clearly stolen from Bryce Dallas Howard’s sacrificial wig altar on the Jurassic World set.

It’s the only possible explanation.

But the fact remains that Ant-Man is a lark. It’s a fun, occasionally clever sugar rush, but it’s not Marvel filmmaking at its finest. It’s worth a watch for the humor, but absolutely do not go into it expecting anything other than a tinier version of everything you’ve already seen before. By every definition of that word.

TL;DR: Ant-Man is a funny, but inconsequentially generic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Sure. Why not beat the heat? Just beat it at matinee prices.

Word Count: 850
Reviews In This Series
Ant-Man (Reed, 2015)
Captain America: Civil War (Russo & Russo, 2016)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

False Evidence Appearing Real

Year: 2014

Director: Dan Gilroy

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Rick Garcia

Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Once you get past the initial disappointment that Nightcrawler is not an X-Men spin-off, you’ll find that it’s a remarkably excellent film, teleportation or no teleportation.

I wouldn't mind having the ability to teleport away from that hair.

Nightcrawler is about the scariest things that go bump in the night: freelance news agents. When Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) discovers that he can trawl around Los Angeles in the middle of the night with a camcorder taping grisly crimes and sell the footage to news stations at a massive profit, he jumps at the opportunity. He’s career-driven, well-spoken, ambitious, and totally insane, which makes him pretty much perfect for the job.

Soon he finds himself an employee/navigator: Rick Garcia (Rick Garcia), a young, hungry man with nothing to lose. Together, they rise to prominence and Lou strikes up a relationship with Nina (Rene Russo), a news director at the lowest rated station in LA who is willing to pay top dollar to outdo her competitors. This includes ignoring the moral implications of Lou’s methods, which involve trespassing, obstructing police, and ignoring wailing victims in pursuit of the perfect shot. Their relationship is based on about 50 percent blackmail and 50 percent creepy carnage fetish.

They got a real healthy thing going on, those two.

Nightcrawler is a brooding and slow-paced exercise, plumbing the depths of the dark shadows and empty spaces of the city. It’s more mood piece than traditionally structured narrative, excellent for anybody who wants to take a quick wallow in the gritty underbelly of modern media. For those to whom that isn’t exactly an enticing prospect, the film also kicks up the slow boil to provide a bubbling, frothing, overflowing burst of supreme thriller action in the third act. But where it excels in the first two thirds are in the quiet, the contemplative, and the beautifully macabre.

This tone could not have been achieved without three things: The first is the slick cinematography by Robert Elswit, who must be an indescribably evil man considering his intimate, delicate kinship with darkness itself. His camera embraces the night, making shadows come to glistening life and even swathing the daylight scenes in cloying, omnipresent black. The second of these is the score by James Newton Howard (also the man behind last year’s “The Hanging Tree,” from Mockingjay – Part 1), which provides a beautiful, percussive, almost fantastical counterpoint to the gruesome nature of Lou’s subjects. The keening, soaring, indelible orchestration pulls the sweaty, ill-begotten excitement straight out of Bloom’s mind and converts it directly into music. It’s the sonic equivalent of the sick satisfaction of picking off a scab.

The third and final tentpole of Nightcrawler is Gyllenhaal himself, who is absurdly fantastic, trading out his movie star charisma to become a pale, sickly speck of a man who still manages to maintain that same sort of magnetic pull. His mannerisms, soft-spoken and almost prim, lend dreadful clarity to his amoral actions. Actually, he’s rather like Sheldon Cooper come sour, come to think of it. Gyllenhaal inhabits the role mentally and physically, more completely than I think anyone, including himself, could have imagined.

And yet Eddie Redmayne won for this.

In addition to being a nail-biting thriller welded onto a gloomy slow-boiler, Nightcrawler is a film where the subtext is almost more prominent than the text itself. It’s an unflinching look at how exactly the news (and, by extent, the media) shapes our reality. It’s no coincidence that Lou opens the film attempting to sell illicit scrap metal. He treats humans the same way, impassively collecting and packaging them like so much waste, creating a story that fits his own imaginary narrative rather than the one that life has laid out for him.

The excellent cinematography also endeavors to drive this point home, depicting its grisly subjects largely through the viewfinder of Lou’s camera rather than his own eyes. His own world – the world of news media – is profoundly separate from reality, and in the gulf of that separation lies the film’s true darkness.

Yes, Nightcrawler might be a little ponderous and a bit too keenly repetitive in its opening scenes, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most profoundly effective (and affecting) thrillers of the decade so far.

Take a wallow on the dark side, why don’t ya?

TL;DR: Nightcrawler is a dark, devilish mood piece driven by an astoundingly dark turn from an unexpected actor.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 765

Kim Jong Oops

Year: 2014

Director: Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen

Cast: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Randall Park

Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It is at this point obligatory to point out that it's obligatory to point out the controversy surrounding Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's new film The Interview. But all this hand-wringing will get us nowhere, so let's get right to it. Sony was hacked and theaters that premiered The Interview on Christmas day were threatened. You can read all about it in my article here. 

But after a swift backtrack (possibly having realized that thanks to the media coverage and first amendment-touting American audiences, they would make approximately a kerjillion percent more in box office than if the release were uneventful), Sony gave the film a limited release in a couple hundred indie theaters nationwide and allowed flag-hungry viewers to do their patriotic duty and purchase it via online streaming one day early. Everyone in the media and across the globe seems a little muddled about the ramifications of this decision, especially now that there's considerable evidence that North Korea might not have actually been directly involved. But let's just agree not to take anybody on the entire planet at their word at this point and look at the facts.

The Interview has been released. So far, nothing terrible has happened. And, from the physical evidence of the film itself I can conclusively say that if nuclear tensions arise from this decent but underwhelming comedy, then the world is in even worse shape than I thought. It was not wise of Sony to greenlight a film about the assassination of a currently standing leader, especially one as notoriously three-crayons-short as Kim Jong-un. Nor was it wise to release it on Christmas because seriously, who is programming these Christmas releases this year? American Sniper? Unbroken? I'm gagging on the gritty bioptastic jingoism.

But The Interview is a lark. It's just another frat comedy, using the background of a derelict regime to lend gravitas and irony to the parade of dick jokes.

In the measuring contest, the tank wins by a landslide.

As just about everyone in the solar system knows at this point, The Interview is about entertainment "journalist" Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his producer Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen), who are asked to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) when they score an exclusive interview with him. The two best buds see this as a way of pushing their careers forward, but when Kim and Dave form a fast friendship and Aaron falls head-over-heels for Sook (Diana Bang), a sexy propagandist, things get complicated.

And by "complicated," I mean "North Korean boner jokes." But I don't mean to devalue the film in its entirety. There are some genuinely decent moments of comedy and - it must be said - the dick jokes can be pretty great. As is to be expected by anyone who has been awake in the Anglosphere for more than five minutes, there are moments that tip into the less sensitive end of the spectrum, but the whiffs of misogyny, racism, and homophobia are not strong enough to be truly poisonous.

This is literally all we can ask in a movie where every female character (of which there are a mere two) is immediately treated as a source of erotic pleasure, even if they're in a position of power - say, a CIA agent or a high-ranking official of a militaristic dictatorship. Here's a little experiment - next time you have a female judge at a hearing (although - since you are reading this blog - I am certain that you are a peace-loving, law-abiding, respectable individual and won't find yourself in this situation), wolf whistle as loud as you can and follow that up with a nice "va-va-voom" or two. See where that gets you and send me a note in the comments.

Science is fun!

There are plenty of fun, non-execrable comic moments, especially in the first half hour (in which the film focuses more or less exclusively on incisive pop culture riffs rather than uneven political satire), but none will have you carted off to the E. R. for a busted gut. And they begin to peter out once the duo actually arrives in North Korea, which isn't as thoroughly represented as it could have been, either through shyness or lack of current information. Although the destitution of the country is mentioned many times, it is almost never seen. In a way it makes sense - it's easier to understand why Skylark would have trouble seeing the problem, and this is a comedy - not a documentary. But if we're going the political route, which a movie like this inevitably can't avoid, why not go all in?

This sort of gradual wearing out as the film goes along is present in the aesthetics as well as the comedy. In fact, the very first moments of the film are its absolute best, using color theory, framing, composition, and juxtaposition to establish the bleak atmosphere of North Korea as well as the fact that Dave Skylark is an ill-informed man-child whose program can't hold up to the likes of hard news. This is all accomplished swiftly and efficiently in the opening minute and a half, a level of cinematic prowess that swiftly vanishes, like the very last of our Christmas cookies before I woke up this morning, damn it!

But despite its drawn-out decline, The Interview is never less than pleasant, though it evaporates from the tongue as soon as it's tasted. Riding as it does on the backs of a gaggle of strong performances, it may be wobbly but it never falls down. James Franco isn't far from his usual schtick, but his act of character creation is more than meets the eye, with subtle, ingrained tackiness that draws some big laughs. Seth Rogen is consistent as always, but Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan (as the sexy Agent Lacey) are the real standouts in this parade of malfeasance.

That's right, smoke that victory cigar.

I have sung Park's praises again and again, but he outdoes himself as the little-seen despot, finding outrageous humor in Kim Jong-un's stunted personality, but simultaneously harnessing a raw power that breaks through his cuddly teddy bear persona and makes him a character to truly fear. Any actor could have coasted on the realities of the dictator's presence in the audience's subconscious, but Park goes above and beyond to menace and create a subtle, cunning villain that elevates the cheery comedy into something even remotely meaningful.

And although Lizzy Caplan's character is nothing but a flesh shell with a great rack, she brings a warmth and humanity to the role, grounding even the most ridiculous one-liners into a realistically human character despite her remarkably minuscule screen time. Without these four performers, The Interview would collapse like a despotic regime after the removal of its leader.

All in all, The Interview is a decent way to kill an hour and a half, but it's nothing to write home about. It's especially nothing to write to North Korea about. Its ill-handled release is a source of great turmoil in the industry at the moment, but as the waters settle, let's allow this film to become a footnote rather than define the moviegoing experience of 2014. It's really not memorable enough to deserve much more than that.

If you take one thing away from this movie, please let it be that Randall Park deserves more starring roles. Make it happen, America.

TL;DR: The Interview is a forgettable bro comedy driven by several terrific performances.
Rating: 6/10
Should I Spend Money On This? That's your call. If you want to do your part for 'Murca, you can rest assured that you'll be pretty safe in doing so. If you want to skip it, you won't miss much.
Word Count: 1312

Girls Gone Gone

Year: 2014

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris

Run Time: 2 hours 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It is both a blessing and a curse to not have read the source novel for a new film, especially as a reviewer. On the one hand, I have no context for Gone Girl's successes or failures relative to its original narrative, as well as the perspective which most fans will have that I lack. But on the other, I can take the movie completely on its own terms, devoid of any pre-existing judgements.

At any rate, I saw Gone Girl and it was pretty good. I have absolutely no desire to read the book at this moment in time, so perhaps it failed as an advertisement, but it took the number one spot this weekend, so who am I to talk? I'm not even number one on this blog.

This picture of Ben Affleck is number one. Actually, while we're on the topic, let me boost my Google search numbers real quick: Sexy. Shirtless. Underwear. Go-go boots. Penis.

The story, as adapted by Gillian Flynn from a novel by Gillian Flynn, goes like this. Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), by all appearances, are a happily married couple. But after an economic downturn, they both lose their jobs and it begins raining on cloud nine. Boo hoo, why don't you dry your tears with the opulent Missouri mansion that you somehow still get to live in.

White people, I swear.

Anyway, one day Amy disappears and Nick must find her, dead or alive, to prove that he isn't guilty of murder most foul. As a media circus paints Amy as an angel and Nick as a violent wreck, we soon learn that neither of them are as they seem. They both land in the bitter, cynical, manipulative, and unhappy-in-marriage end of the spectrum. Basically they're perfect for each other.

And I'm gonna cut off here because I've been told that mysteries don't work as well if you give too much of the plot away. Though, for those interested in being in the know, there's a 600-page tome full of spoilers available for eight bucks on Amazon.

OK, OK. I know that joke was garbage, don't rub it in. Oh Ben Affleck, you and your Pecs. Abs. Girlfriend. Beard. Gay. Batman.

As with most films adapted from novels that aren't Psycho, there are numerous potholes simply from crossing over - namely the bloated plottiness of the second and third acts and the arch, overly written dialogue of the first. The latter, sprinkled among copious flashbacks, leaves Affleck and Pike stymied. While he strains to spit out lines so wooden they could kill a vampire, she adopts a mildly bemused expression and clings to it like a security blanket.

Luckily, Gone Girl and its performances quickly begin to loosen up, and at least the utter non-chemistry the two actors have during the first act works in the favor of the film's underlying themes. And once Affleck eases into the script like a non-heated pool - first with one tentative toe, then all at once, he brings an easy humor to his character that lights up the film like a firecracker.

This is the most literal interpretation of one of my statements that I have ever found in screengrab form.

And once the film gets on track it stays there, bolstered by strong performances on the sidelines by Carrie Coon as Nick's twin sister and Neil Patrick Harris as Amy's pining ex-boyfriend. But what makes or breaks the film is the slick direction by David Fincher, which adamantly does both. With a strong sense of personality, much of Gone Girl stands out among its decidedly underwhelming 2014 peers.

Fincher is known for being stylish and precise in his set design, dialogue, cinematography, and composition, as most recently seen in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network, but while his aesthetic complements the wintry inhumanity of an icy thriller and the slick modernity of technological progress, here it feels almost antiseptic. The visual schema makes every character, movement, and event feel like it's part of a well-oiled machine, in diametric opposition to the mechanics of the story, which details the consequences that intelligent people face when a carefully planned-out life has a wrench thrown into it by messy reality.

The chilly aesthetic doesn't necessarily ruin the film, but rather keeps it at arm's length. And a particular reluctance to indict a husband quite as much as his wife (among other elements that I can't spoil in good conscience) lends the film an unrelenting air of quiet misogyny. It's not present enough to make the movie a truly vile experience, nor is it necessarily a bad way to tell the story.

In a perfect world, a movie that vilifies a woman would blend into the background because it's just one way to portray a character in a wide array of potential roles. But in today's political climate, especially regarding sexism in Hollywood, Gone Girl contributes to a poisonous attitude. It is just another tile in a mosaic of hate - not necessarily actively hateful, but not something we need at this moment in time.

What we do need is a nice, relaxing bubble bath.

All that said (and I do have to say my piece before supporting a movie with such a toxic depiction of a female character), Gone Girl is quite good at what it does. It is a wild mystery thriller married to a psychological portrait of a marriage gone wrong and a man daring to challenge his public image. It is stylish and cool, and the set design, especially a scene in an abandoned mall, is impeccable.

I don't know if I would call Gone Girl a "fun" watch, but its extensive run time speeds by in the blink of an eye (unless your bladder is exploding - my advice: don't drink an entire Icee during the previews) and it provides consistent entertainment from start to finish. While I may have my issues with some of the bumps it hits along the way, it is still a remarkable film and one of the better efforts in a year in which there's nothing much impressive going around.

TL;DR: Gone Girl is a perfectly serviceable mystery thriller, but not a transcendent masterpiece.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? It's certainly less likely to make you teeth-gnashingly angry than Annabelle. If you bladder can withstand the punishing running time, why not give it a shot?

Word Count: 1098

Beware! Beware! Her Flashing Eyes, Her Floating Hair!

Year: 1980

Director: Robert Greenwald

Cast: Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, Michael Beck

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

I love the 80's. I love Olivia Newton-John. I love Gene Kelly. I love ELO. I love glitter. I love camp. I love watching other people roller skate. I love bright colors. I love terrible outfits. I love terrible movies. But I also love reversals. I hate Xanadu.

It's just not fair. The 1980 Newton-John vehicle (for Kelly's career it was less a vehicle than a hearse) is the perfect synchronization of just about every element that makes me love a film. So I feel personally affronted when those ingredients synthesize into such a messily boring film as the roller disco flop Xanadu.

An accurate representation of the number of people who manage to stay awake by the end of Xanadu.

Let's get the story over with quick, so nobody falls under the impression that this is a bad-good movie worth seeing. Kira (Olivia Newton-John) is a muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus whose duty is to provide inspiration for struggling artists. Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) is a man, a washed-up painter who has recently returned to his creativity-assassin of a job - recreating album covers in large scale prints. Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) is another man, an ex-clarinetist who longs for the glory days of big band music and who pretends that he gels with the storyline in any meaningful way.

After meeting her several times over the course of a week and discovering her on his newest album cover, Sonny learns that Kira has been sent to inspire him and Danny to work together and create a new club in the heart of the city. I'll give you a nickel if you can guess the name of the club. But Kira falls in love with Sonny along the way, despite the fact that she is set to return to her neon-tinged home dimension upon the completion of the project and that he is a bland, irritating, moppet-headed cipher with no autonomy, no money, and no personality.

You know what? Screw Sonny. She should have ended up with Gene Kelly.

This simple story kicks in only at the beginning and the end of the film, much like bookends. But whereas bookends are used to house important compendiums of the world's knowledge and foremost literary minds, these plot nuggets are used to sandwich a whole bunch of roller skating to fitfully lip-synced ELO and/or Newton-John songs. It is up to you to determine the relative importance of these two tasks, but take it from me that your money would be better spent on the bookends.

Or honing your irony skills to satisfactorily explain why this print is hanging on your wall.

Xanadu is an exercise in frustration, frequently setting up dominoes that would indicate a fun, glitzy romp, then encasing them in cement so they can never be properly knocked down. Allow me to take you on a macabre tour of some should-be camp classic scenes that are ruined for one godforsaken reason or another.

• Kira and her sisters are born out of a DayGlo mural: A mural comes to fabulous life, spitting out women drenched in neon auras like a log ride. Who then dance uneasily to an ELO song, not even bothering to pretend that they're singing it. The choreography by Kenny Ortega wouldn't be out of place in a yogurt commercial, demanding no effort from the dancers and receiving it in abundance.
• Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John share a tap number: Gene Kelly was still a master of the craft of dance, but by 1980 his body and soul were beginning to wear, and the steps were mostly borrowed from his older, better films. Throw in two uniformly terrible performances (Gene Kelly bumbles his way through the role like he bumbled onto the set by accident - which may or may not be true, considering that he only took the job because the set was close to his house; Olivia Newton-John does nothing to inflate a flatly written role, instead plastering a daffy, dizzy smile over everything like a Band-Aid) and you have a sublimely disappointing sequence.
• Sonny and Danny conjure up an imaginary battle between a big band jazz club and an 80's rock mosh pit: The two bands combine to perform in a delirious mash-up explosion of styles, but this is only at the tail end of an exhausting, incalculably long and pointless scene where the two different bands play drab, generic, awful pop. The resulting effect is something like putting the movie (and the audience) in a Spanish Inquisition torture device, punishingly stretching Xanadu to feature length.

We are also saddled with an interminable and extraneous animated sequence and about 92 scenes of Sonny roller skating while unrelated ELO songs play in the background just to remind us that they worked on this movie. The fact that they seem to actively flaunt their involvement in Xanadu is a testament to the purity and overwhelming power of... the drug market in the late 70's.

There are only two good scenes in the entire film, and neither of them live up to the lofty expectations, given the film's status as a cult classic. One, in which Kira roller blades around an empty warehouse while flirting with Sonny and shifting in and out of corporeal reality is reliably strange and arresting, though it suffers from the film's budget. The other is the (almost) showstopping (almost) final number "Xanadu," which is the only good song to come out of the entire affair, though the performance of said number is just about as lackluster as everything else in the preceding 80-something minutes.

Is it too much to ask for a little pizzaz in my roller skating fantasy numbers?

It's too low budget to achieve anything more than a vaguely glitzy series of sets composed almost entirely of cheap lighting effects in dark rooms. The framing is frequently alienating, usually forcefully shifting focus from the central figure by accidentally obscuring them with something far more interesting, like a dancer being spun on a ring by her neck.

Even when the framing isn't ruining a shot, the composition and coverage work double time to pick up the slack, like a bleating ballad that is shot absolutely static for five minutes, only deigning to subtly zoom in on Newton-John's face on occasion as if to prove to themselves that the camera was still actually on. By the end of the film, even the dancers look bored - as if instead of using a metronome, director Robert Greenwald (whose career has taken a far less dismal and bleak turn - he now directs documentaries about the drone wars) sat there reading War and Peace aloud.

One of the only good things about the film is that they let Newton-John use her native Australian accent. Hearing a non-American accent in a Hollywood film is nothing to spit upon and that at least maintains auditory interest during the long, long, long wait for the closing number. But everywhere it can, Xanadu sucks the air out of itself like an auto-cannibalizing glittery vampire, reducing itself to a mewling, quivering wreck of a movie.

TL;DR: Xanadu is underbaked, boring drivel when it should be a high-fashion camp classic.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1225

I Don't Know About You, But I'm Feeling 22

Year: 2014

Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ice Cube
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Dynamic duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller are tearing up Hollywood at the moment, having already turned three terrible ideas into immensely entertaining films with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, and The Lego Movie.

Cloudy, an adaptation of a children's book with a modicum of plot, became a pun-filled adventure comedy. 21 Jump Street, a film reboot of a classic late-80's television show, had surprisingly fresh humor and heart. And The Lego Movie turned what should have just been a cheap cash-in shill into one of the best animated comedies of the decade with a central moral about the nature of creativity.

So the pressure was on them when it came time to do the unthinkable - plan a sequel to a comedy reboot of a classic late-80's television show. 22 Jump Street might just be the weakest of their endeavors, but it still delivers what one has come to expect from one of their films - a delightful comedy wrapped around a startlingly firm central core.

And for once I'm not referring to Channing Tatum's abs.

22 Jump Street follows youthful undercover agents Schmidt (Jonah Hill, looking admittedly slightly too old to play the part, even with the film's comedic emphasis on his age) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) to college after their undercover high school antics in the first film. Their mission is to discover the source of the dangerous Whyphy drug that is circulating the local campus. Once again the two agents find their own niche - Jenko with the football-playing frat boys and Schmidt with the hipster art crowd.

But things begin to fall apart when Jenko befriends frat leader and potential suspect Zook (Wyatt Russell) and Schmidt fears that it will ruin their investigation as well as their friendship. There's also some business with potential love interest Maya (Amber Stevens), but that never coalesces into anything more than a series of gags that - though funny - tend not to have anything to do with the matter at hand. She has about as much effect on the plot as the bean bag chair, which - come to think of it - might actually get more screen time.

Hill and Tatum reprise their roles with gusto and in fact, I maintain with absolutely no trace of irony that Jenko is the best role Channing Tatum has ever played. Better even than comedy superstar Hill's slightly wan Schmidt, Tatum embraces the blind jocky enthusiasm of Jenko with verve and skill, proving that he might fare much better in the business should he decide to stick with comedy rather than wan romance or popcorn action flicks.

The boys at the center impress, although they are no longer surrounded by the stellar supporting ensemble of the first film, something which really tamps down on the effervescent humor. Russell and Stevens have their share of moments, but they are nothing compared to what came before. In fact, Rob Riggle and Dave Franco's brief cameos immediately outshine any of these newcomers' output. Only Jillian Bell as Maya's put-upon roommate Mercedes does anything of interest, bubbling relentlessly forth from the screen like a force of nature.

An adorable blonde force of nature.

So no, it doesn't capture the newness and utter joy of 21 Jump Street, but that was never going to happen. And the slick music video sensibility of the production design and cinematography tends to bring you out of the film somewhat, especially when the soundtrack overwhelms the dialogue to such a point it becomes clear that the Hot New Track is more important than what jokes are being told (one such track, "Turn Down For What" having the unfortunate potential to instantly date the film when it fizzles out of its 2.7 seconds of popularity).

This is an unfortunate new trend in Hollywood comedies (last seen by Yours Truly in the remarkably unbearable That Awkward Moment) and likely has more to do with studio tampering than the work of the two directors, who I hold in too much esteem to think they stood for the idea of burying their jokes. Anyway, I hope it goes away soon and think it best not to spend too much time dwelling on it, lest they catch on.

What 22 Jump Street does have in spades is electrifying meta humor. Nearly every single joke is geared toward one level of self-awareness or another, whether it's the fact that the characters are nearly always on the cusp of being aware they're in a movie, the more cloying "this is a sequel" jokes that are beaten into the ground with a baseball bat, then pile-drived into the planet's core, erupting in a volcano of meta that showers the entire universe, or the subtle and infinitely clever gags like the one concerning Tatum's previous role in White House Down.

See above: "Popcorn action flicks"

In short, some of it works, some of it doesn't. Fortunately the jokes featured most frequently and at the forefront are the kind that work. And it wouldn't be a Lord and Miller film without a totally unexpected and cleverly thematic philosophical manifesto buried within the comedy, and this film is no different. In fact, it's utterly brilliant - elevating the repeated meta gag of "sameness" as the centerpiece for the entire film.

What starts it off is a cheesy joke Ron Swanson makes about how important it is to do the exact same thing as last time. Yes, it's just a meta joke about being a sequel, but that idea branches out throughout the film into a startlingly dense web. It's Miller and Lord's way of dealing with the pressure of handling a sequel to a highly successful film and it's genius.

(THEME SPOILERS? ARE THOSE A THING?) When Jenko makes friends with Zook, a man exactly similar to himself, he begins to act upon that theme in earnest. Sure doing the same thing can be comforting and desirable, but he soon discovers how empty it is to just mindlessly repeat the same things over and over again. A central tenet of the film is that it is perfectly acceptable to repeat oneself, but a twist to the formula is absolutely necessary. It's the only way to grow and change as a person and to stop from dragging yourself and others down. 

Leave it to our boys to turn their funny meta sequel for a TV reboot into a musing about the nature of mindless repetition. So there's the twist that justifies the entire thing. Seriously, the pieces all click together like an episode of Arrested Development on the fourth rewatch. It's an impressive endeavor emphasized within the film at every turn, sometimes quite strongly and obviously (like the characters that constantly reprimand the agents for not doing the same thing) and sometimes with delicate subtlety (like the sets of twins that pepper the film in various supporting roles.).

Hell, the film even features twin statues.

Because of the dedicated efforts of the directing team, they have once again achieved a resounding success. 22 Jump Street is not a Kubrickian puzzle box of a film, but it's a dreadfully smart sequel that, while never quite as funny as the original, is definitely worth a watch. If you loved 21 and want more of the same, you'll get it, but with that oh so delicious twist of lemon.

TL;DR: 22 Jump Street is an astoundingly clever film but ultimately isn't quite funny enough to obviate its more intrusive elements.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Honestly, no. Wait for RedBox and do a double feature at home sometime. But definitely check it out before the year is over.

Word Count: 1300