Mood Indigo - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Mood Indigo  

Starring Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh, and Omar Sy

Directed by Michel Gondry

Rated NR

Run Time: 94 minutes

Genre: Drama/Fantasy

Mood Indigo

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Part quirky comedy, part Salvador Dalí surrealist fantasy, part Dr. Seuss dreamscape, Mood Indigo is probably best described by its scenarios, which are oddly fascinating, not to mention utterly baffling:

• A man takes a bath in purple water. When he's done he uses a power tool to drill through the bottom of the tub and the ceiling of the tenant below him. The grape-colored water drains through the holes into a flower pot, which then instantly sprouts a full-grown flower.

• Eels peek out of a kitchen faucet until a chef can grab them and prepare the squirmy little creatures for dinner. After dinner is prepared, the dishes spin and dance around the prep table until they can be carried to a wavy wooden dinner table with roller skates on the legs.

• Rows of typists frantically hammering on typewriters being moved down the line on conveyor belts. The text they're typing seems to be the thoughts and actions of the main character, who later, inexplicably, takes a job in the facility that likely represents his own brain.

• A device called a pianocktail works like mechanized bartender attached to a piano. As the keys are played — minor keys for more nostalgic drinks, major keys for more optimistic drinks — a little train carrying a glass circles the piano adding ingredients to the musically derived cocktail.

• A man uses a Rubik's Cube as a day planner. When asked about a day later in the week, he twists the sides until they line up for the day he's planning.

• When characters shake hands, their entire hands rotate at the wrist several revolutions.

• At a party someone brings out "oven-baked snacks," which are flaky pastries individually baked in miniature ovens.

• The bride and groom at a wedding are determined by an obstacle course involving boxcar racers with cross-shaped wheels. And the preacher arrives by parachuting out of an iron rocket that circles the inside of the church's cathedral.

• At an office building, a man passes a memo by crumpling it up, loading it into a large revolver and firing it into a tube that snakes through the building.

• When someone dies and their family can't afford a proper funeral, workers come to the house and remove the body by throwing the casket out the window. It's taken to the cemetery not by hearse, but by a delivery truck that belches smoke and soot.

• Two characters ride in a street-side amusement attraction, a fiberglass cloud hoisted up by a giant crane that can reach across all of France.

• A tiny mouse, played by a man in rodent costume, wanders throughout many scenes, including inside the kitchen, where he silently fetches items for the chef.

The french movie is certainly eccentric, and I've only scratched the surface on its odd scenes. It’s directed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, because of course it is. Although it sounds too arty and symbolic for a plot, it does have one: Colin (Romain Duris) meets and falls in love with Chloé (Audrey Tautou, Amélie), named after his favorite Duke Ellington song. Deep into their relationship, she develops a water lily in her lung that cripples her and requires Colin to jump into gear to save her life.

Mood Indigo starts out pleasant enough, but doom and dread slowly creep into the whimsical mixture. This turn is gradual at first as the music switches keys and grows more ominous, then the shots get slow and steadier, and finally the color is sucked from the frame until the film ends in black and white. I wasn't ready for the sudden depression, but then again I wasn't ready for any of it.

While unique and visually fascinating, the film is hollow and lacks humanity and compassion. This is not the first time Gondry has out-dreamed his vision — recall the sad disappointment of Be Kind Rewind — but it's likely to be his most ambitiously visual picture, which is its own reward, great film or not.

Mood Indigo - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Mood Indigo  

Starring Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh, and Omar Sy

Directed by Michel Gondry

Rated NR

Run Time: 94 minutes

Genre: Drama/Fantasy

Opens August 1st

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Mood Indigo is a bubbly film of imagination and surrealism, a zany creation from the mind of Michel Gondry. He's a breathtaking filmmaker that can capture the wondrous and quiet moments of everyday life, mixing them together in a cluster of contorted mise-en-scene and emotionally backed characters. It's remarkable. His most famous work, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is one of the great films of the 2000s, and here he creates a similarly realized tale of love and the heartbreak inherent with such an emotion. The film centers on Colin (Romain Duris), a wealthy, inventive bachelor that lives in a strange apartment in France. A tiny mouse man maneuvers around his house at whim while Colin's hired chef, Nicholas (Omar Sy), cooks meals for him, teaches him how to dance, and basically acts as a surrogate friend. Colin has crafted various appliances, like the pianocktail, a piano that brews a specific liquor based on your note selection.

His best friend, Chick (Gad Elmaleh), tells him about this new woman he just met, insisting she's not American because Colin cannot stand them. Sure enough, she is, as Colin follows Chick to a party for his friend's dog. At this gathering he meets Chloé (Audrey Tautou), a beautiful young woman that finds all of Colin's miscues endearing. She connects with him intellectually and they strike up a conversation that leads to a date. They ride around in a crane-controlled cloud and begin to fall in love. What a strange set-up for a narrative. But the film's first half is mostly built around this sense of world building, creating an environment that looks remarkably similar to our notions of reality but takes a few liberties with physics and chemistry. Gondry's film lacks conventional sense in its first half in terms of the external environment, yet the most important foundation remains: strong characters.

Colin is a driven man dedicated to living happily with Chloé. She falls sick and he does whatever it takes to save her life, investing in odd medical practices and taking up a cumbersome, laborious job to earn extra money to provide for her. He's never worked a day in his life, always relying on what can only be described as a hefty inheritance that allows him to live without worry. Chloé never seems to hold a job either, and this establishes a sense of immaturity and irrationality in the characters. Gondry does something unique with the script and allows for the story to focus entirely on emotion in its second half. By setting up these characters and making them imperfect, he allows the audience to relate to their love and see how it grows. The film is not easy on these central characters, demonstrating unrest in Chick and his girlfriend while emphasizing the hopelessness of Colin as his wife withers away before his eyes. At times, the film acts as a sly, indirect metaphor for the effects of cancer, and that resonates strongly.

What works remarkably about Mood Indigo is how visual representation advances the story and uniquely engages the characters. There's subtlety throughout most of the feature due to the rapidly changing visual landscape and language. Take, for instance, the transformation in color scheme that transpires over the narrative. Once Chloé falls sick, the film relies on dark textures and confined spaces, avoiding sweeping outside shots and jump cuts that the first half grandly emphasized. The last fifteen minutes have a simple change that works vastly for the narrative and the way love affects an individual. The performances are affectionate and nuanced, with Duris in particular showcasing Colin's inner turmoil with composure and subtlety. Tautou is always an enjoyable presence on screen, and she commands the film's second half as the story utilizes her full potential. But perhaps most importantly, if all of these strange quirks haven't convinced you, I'll say this: there's nothing else out in cinemas like Mood Indigo, and that alone makes it worth seeing.

Magic in the Moonlight - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Magic in the Moonlight  

Starring Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Jacki Weaver, Eileen Atkins, Simon McBurney, and Marcia Gay Harden

Directed by Woody Allen

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 97 minutes

Genre: Comedy/Romance

Opens August 1st

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Magic in the Moonlight is minor Woody Allen fare, but that still amounts to an engaging, charming work filled with eccentric characters and hopeless romance. Much of Allen’s films over the past decade have been disregarded, particularly those laced between his best features. He has this natural ability to write characters out of ideas and craft them into a representative form of himself on screen: the skeptics, the religious, the zany, the manipulative, sometimes all mixed together into a strange collection of character traits. A character in the film goes on about Colin Firth’s central character of Stanley, talking about how arrogant and pessimistic he can be, only for the audience to realize that it isn’t so much an analysis of character as it is an admittance by Allen of his own self. That makes his work singular and identifiable, even if works like this most recent adventure never feel like his most observant, focused efforts.

The film centers on Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), one of the most celebrated magicians of his age. He performs on stage as Chinese artist Wei Ling Soo, having women, audience members, and even elephants disappear in front of everyone’s eyes. Some believe it’s real, but Stanley knows like many others that it’s all a show. There is no such thing as magic, and his friend, Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), agrees with him wholeheartedly. As a fellow magician, he approaches Stanley to let him know that something is stumping him like nothing else ever has: a self-proclaimed psychic is sprawling the French countryside, convincing wealthy families of her powers and taking their money. Her name is Sophie Baker (Emma Stone), traveling with her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), and she appears flawless when performing her acts. It truly seems like she is a gifted medium with the ability to tell things about people they would’ve never realized themselves.

Stanley knows this is all fake. It has to be since it goes against his rational approach to life. He’s a man of science, as he attests, insisting that religion and the afterlife are archaic thoughts that Nietzsche would put to shame. Yet as Stanley observes Sophie and sees the way that she genuinely reads people’s traits and seemingly communicates with the dead, he begins to doubt himself and his belief system. His pessimism knows no bounds, along with his stubbornness to acknowledge that he could very well be wrong about everything. Firth plays the role wonderfully, embodying more than the usual, neurotic Allen type and becoming his own force. He’s a disgruntled, sad man at his core, but he externalizes all of his doubts onto others and makes them feel foolish when he is the one falling apart. His rationality is challenged by the fundamental idea of irrationality having a part in this world. It feels like a topic that applies personally to Allen.

Stone provides Sophie with an observant, mystic quality that transforms the film into something compelling. This is far from Allen’s most original work; it’s effectively a romantic comedy disguised as a drama with slight mystery. Sophie and Stanley naturally fall in love, but the last thirty minutes pack enough twists and turns to rightfully keep the audience on their toes. Eileen Atkins also provides a delightful touch as Stanley’s aunt, acting as the force of spiritual nature behind his changing mind and showing him that not everything has to make sense to change a person’s life. If something gives a person’s life meaning, does it have to be the most rational thing in the world? Great discoveries have emerged from wonky beliefs and ideas, so irrational thoughts can provide the most rational people with some emotional grounding if needed.

Magic in the Moonlight is not a dense film; there’s too much fluff and repetition in the film’s middle act to become one of Allen’s finer works. Comparisons to recent efforts like Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine will abound but they aren’t fair. Those are not only some of Allen’s best films from the past decade, but some of the best efforts of his long career. Moonlight is its own strange entity, backed by strong performances from the core group of (mostly) character actors. Firth and Stone don’t necessarily have romantic chemistry, but they don’t need that for the film to work. It’s not based on their romance, since it needs that tension and uncomfortable balance to emphasize their reciprocated doubt. Where the story goes wrong is when it becomes too serious about its characters and their endeavors; a hokey illusion that Stanley fails to teach Howard has a brilliant payoff in the conclusion. Moonlight shines when its eccentric, zany nature is on display, not its predictable romantic core.

Lucy - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Lucy  

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi and Amr Waked

Directed by Luc Besson

From EuropaCorp and Universal Pictures

Rated R

90 minutes

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Lucy begins in two very odd places: on a microscopic stage with several splitting cells doing a glowing mambo, and 3 million years ago as a shaggy cavewoman sips water from a river. What happens next is a science thriller so bananas that to explain it thoroughly would require lectures from Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson, with visual annotations from John Woo, Quentin Tarantino and Terrence Malick. And possibly drugs.

The film is directed by Luc Besson, whose films have wavered in quality over the years, but his command of the language of film has always been impeccably fluent and precise. Recall the immediacy of La Femme Nikita or the rhythmic editing of shots and music in Léon. His plots don’t always find their marks, but the journeys they provide are rarely boring. And here he might have outdone himself with a sci-fi flick so dementedly high-minded that it will draw serious comparisons to Malick’s Tree of Life, or maybe just a version re-edited with more kung-fu, gunfights and enough spacey cracked-out science theories to make Bill Nye’s bowtie twirl.

Lucy is bonkers. It’s settings include Taiwan, France and the Eagle Nebula — seriously. Its weapons include guns, knives and inky brain matter. The title character speaks dialogue usually said between bags of Funyuns, but here she is entirely genuine when she says, “I can feel space, gravity, the rotation of the earth, my own brain … I remember the sound of my bones growing.” The film ends when a character is literally absorbed into the space-time fabric of the universe. “Bonkers” doesn’t seem to cover it all in this case.

All this cosmo-nuttiness is caused by a synthetic drug ingested by Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), a party girl caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The crystallized blue drug, when consumed in just the right way, allows the brain to access more and faster computing power in the firing synapses of the mind. Humans use no more than 10 percent of their brains. Dolphins use 20 percent and that extra 10 percent gives them the ability of echolocation. So, the movie reasons, just think of what would happen if humans could go to 20, or 50 or even 100 percent. Lucy pushes that envelope until she becomes a god. And Besson’s movie is her Genesis.

But before it gets all theoretical and trippy, especially in its final 20 minutes, Lucy is a rather straightforward action thriller. Lucy is told to deliver a metal case to drug kingpin Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi from the original Old Boy), whose consideration of human life is negligible. The scene is perfect Besson: Lucy is handcuffed to the case and told, through a telephone interpreter, that she must open it. But before she pops the lid, Mr. Jang and his crew of henchmen all stand behind armored shields, never a good sign. Later, Lucy has the drugs sewn into her belly for smuggling abroad. The plan is going smooth until a wayward kick from a handler dislodges the drugs and sets Lucy on her metaphysical journey through all of Einstein’s theories.

But before she goes all omnipresent, some smaller things happen: she gains the ability to distort and manipulate matter, control other humans and also distort time. She can also see electrical and magnetic fields, which provides a beautiful visual: Lucy plucking electric strings that are the wireless signals for all of Paris. Her new powers of perception allow for a spirited wrong-way chase through France. She can also see inside bodies and minds, change her hair style the way most people refresh their browser windows, and make guns disintegrate in the hands of her enemies. What does your brain capacity have to do with manipulating matter in this manner? I have no clue, but Lucy is a believer so just roll with it.

The movie is slickly edited and shot, and Besson throws in all kinds of inserts, time lapses, B-roll and nature footage to prove his points. When Lucy is in danger, we see two cheetahs eyeing a stray antelope, or a mouse circling a mousetrap. A reference to sex cuts to a shots of animals getting it on. When Lucy begins “colonizing her brain,” the entire universe unfolds before her with animation, space imagery and even more time-lapse shots. This will be the most famous scene in the movie — equivalent to the Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey — as Lucy swipes her hand in front of her, like she’s using God’s iPad, and time creeps backward to the 1960s, then the 1800s and then quicker until the continents mash together, the dinosaur-killing comets are sucked back into space and matter sinks into lava-spewing volcanoes. But as if that weren’t enough, we zip into space to witness black holes, the birth of the galaxy, the Big Bang and what might be the first particle of anything ever. Ambitious? Lucy has everything. Literally everything.

That being said, Lucy is still awkwardly paced. Some of the action is anti-climactic, and much of the non-action just kinda sits there with nothing to do. The ending, which I adored, is so obscure that some audience members would likely rage-quit out of the theater if the movie didn’t abruptly evaporate into the ether. Oh and Morgan Freeman’s in it doing everything you’d expect a Morgan Freeman cardboard cutout to do. I wanted him to have a larger role. Johansson is fun, though. She’s grown more familiar with high-octane action flicks, and here she seems to be having fun, even as the camera seems to hover over her universe-filled eyeballs.

Besson deserves a lot of the credit for Lucy’s audacious ideas. He walked to the edge of the galaxy to fish out this bizarre action-science hybrid. I’m grateful that movies like this are made, even if their ideas are as nutty as a Baby Ruth. And about that zaniness: yeah, it’s all bogus, but surrender your brain at the door. Or at least 90 percent of it.

Lucy - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Lucy  

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, and Min-sik Choi

Directed by Luc Besson

Rated R

Run Time: 89 minutes

Genre: Action/Sci-Fi

Opens July 25th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

As human beings, we use roughly ten percent of our brain’s capacity. The only mammal more advanced than that is the dolphin, which can use twenty percent of its brain and scan the oceans with sonar more powerful than anything created by man. So what could happen if a human had the ability to access 100% of their brain capacity? That’s the central premise of Lucy, Luc Besson’s absurd film revolving around a drug smuggling ordeal leading to a manic force in the form of a badass Scarlett Johansson. How far the film extends the central theme of the story is remarkable, growing increasingly incredulous and ridiculous to the point of nonsensicality. If the story focused on Johansson’s titular character actually turning into a dolphin when her brain hits 20%, the film would feel the same tonally and conceptually. But to start the story, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is studying in Taiwan and with her boyfriend Richard, who’s involved with shady deals. He’s been paid $1,000 to take a briefcase to a businessman, no questions asked.

Lucy is sent as his “surrogate,” handcuffed to the locked case not knowing what could possibly be inside. Inside the building, armed men sense something is wrong, grab her, and take her to Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi). He’s a ruthless man that kills without remorse and has riot shields on hand in case things ever go south. You know how businessmen can be. Lucy, trapped and powerless, opens the case on Jang’s instruction and finds four bags of a blue powder. It’s a synthetic drug called CPH-4, based on the chemical released within a pregnant woman’s body that gives the baby the power to grow bones and form itself. CPH-4 isn’t a sexy name, though, since they want to sell the drugs on the streets in countries like Germany, France, Italy, and the United States. In order to do so, they need to smuggle the drugs across half of the world, and the only way to do that quickly is through people. Lucy is knocked out and prepared to board a plane before she is beaten by her captors, releasing the drug in her system through the bag in her abdomen.

She gains the ability to read minds, control matter, time, and space, and basically do everything you can possibly imagine. The biggest problem with a premise like this is that there is innately no external conflict for a character as almighty as Lucy. The film, then, should internalize the conflict in order to maximize the empathy from the audience toward the characters. But Besson’s film focuses on the sizzling action and pizazz that comes from a woman who can kick ass and have the powers of a god. That may sound riveting, but it becomes exhausting and monotonous when the action looks particularly hokey and contrived. These are scenes that have been achieved far better and creatively in films like The Matrix and even other Besson films like Taken and The Fifth Element. There’s a car chase at the beginning of the film’s third act that is exciting and tense, but once again, it becomes rudimentary when the audience knows that Lucy will obviously survive since she understands how everything in the world works.

The central idea, quite simply, turns out boring. The film attempts to elaborate on the internal battle for Lucy losing touch with humanity but fails to communicate that strongly enough to the audience. She cries when calling her mother despite no longer feeling physical pain and she kisses a man before saying that he acts as a reminder. Of either her past emotional self, or the need for the story to have a love interest. Johansson plays these elements fine enough even if the film’s first thirty minutes ask her to overact to the point of cheesiness. She’s the only acting force behind the film, so her character being thinly sketched makes the audience wonder why exactly they are watching a film centered on her. What’s worse is that the film creates wonky rules based around real-world physics and reality that makes the premise even more implausible and frustrating. Since we don’t understand Lucy as a person and all of her capabilities, the film can make up everything as it goes along. I suppose if I had the mental capacity of Lucy herself, I would be able to understand all of the film’s absurdity and mindlessness.

I Origins - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

I Origins  

Starring Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, and Steven Yeun

Directed by Mike Cahill

Rated R

Run Time: 107 minutes

Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi

Opens July 25th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Mike Cahill is one of the most ambitious filmmakers in the business. His debut feature, Another Earth, was a riveting, thought-provoking science fiction drama that utilized an ingenious premise and emphasized tortured central characters looking to better themselves. That film also starred the glowing, powerful Brit Marling, who has worked on terrific features like Sound of My Voice, Arbitrage, and The East over the past couple years. Their latest collaboration, I Origins, is an uneven, strangely compelling film that far exceeds its own ambition. It’s a film measured by its central character’s stubbornness and resilience toward finding scientific answers in a world that acts in callous, mysterious ways. That man is Ian (Michael Pitt), who studied as a molecular biologist for his doctorate. He loves the idea of human eyes acting as not only true signifiers of self due to their originality, but also as a way to disprove religious believers who insist that there is a Creator who individually makes every human being.

His work focuses on the development of irises over the millennia and the transformation from eye-less organisms to the most sophisticated form of sight on this planet. He coordinates with his lab partner, Karen (Brit Marling), a fledgling student that aims to unravel the mysteries of the universe alongside Ian. She’s a loyal, intelligent woman that is equally as stubborn and introverted as Ian can be, hiding her emotions and letting science dictate her days. Ian’s obsession with eyes, however, leaves Karen doing most of the work while he tracks down a girl he met at a party that fascinated him. She had gorgeous eyes that made him idolize her, and a strange encounter with the number 11 leads him to discovering her work as a model. He finds out her name is Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), and they immediately rekindle their love and get married.

The story then moves to Ian discovering that his child may have irises similar to a recently deceased man in Idaho, only then for him to realize that Sofi may indeed have the same eyes as a young girl in India. It cannot be true. As his friend Kenny (Steven Yeun) says, “That’s scientifically impossible.” No logic points to irises being repeated over time, unless that establishes some sort of connection with the mind and soul. Karen even asks at one point if the eyes act as a window to the soul, something that she would’ve previously thought implausible but now grows steadily realistic. The dichotomy between science and religion has been tackled more appropriately in better films, like Robert Zemeckis’s underappreciated classic Contact. There, Jodie Foster’s character experiences what can only be deemed a spiritual encounter in a wormhole since no one else saw what she did. Here, the film uses simplistic notions of both religion and science undermining the other, only to realize they can work together.

The performances at the heart of the film elevate the jumpy, haphazard material. Michael Pitt is a quiet, formidable force in every role he takes, providing a gravitas to the most middling scenes. He acts well alongside Brit Marling, a wonderful presence that makes the most of what becomes a small, supporting role after a strong introduction. Astrid Berges-Frisbey is marvelous as Sofi, giving the character a dramatic heft despite minimal development. She acts as more of an idea rather than an entity herself, but she assumes an occasionally thankless role with tact. Cahill’s film asks for intimacy to draw out the tension in the script. This mostly means that the romance between characters takes up the meat of the story and that the intrigue of the central idea falls to the wayside. It’s a shame since there are philosophically strong questions to be asked in a new way from his ideas. He’s a talented, bright presence behind the screen, and even if I Origins fails to fully achieve its ambition, it’s an inconsistently noble effort.

Interview with Gabriel Iglesias and The Fluffy Movie by Jeff Mitchell

Gabriel Iglesias talks about “The Fluffy Movie”, his life and cake  

By Jeff Mitchell

Stand-up comedian extraordinaire Gabriel Iglesias flew into Phoenix to promote his new concert film, “The Fluffy Movie”.  The Phoenix Film Society, along with some other film critics, enjoyed a warm conversation with the man to discuss his new stand-up concert movie, his start in the comedy business, his favorite on-stage character, and his favorite type of cake!   “The Fluffy Movie” opens in theaters on July 25.

Q:  What is your favorite memory of making this movie?

GI:  The opening segment.  There’s a little vignette at the beginning that tells a story about how my mom and dad met, how I came to be “The Fluffy Kid” and what inspired my dream of becoming a comic.  That was very important for me.  If I chance to do a movie, I was going to tell that story up front and make it as authentic as I could.

Q: We all know you love cake, so what is your favorite type of cake?  

GI: I’m so tired of chocolate cake.  I’m so burned out from that.  I’m doing a routine right now where I’m facing the repercussions of my comedy, and I’m realizing things I talked about in the past are starting to haunt me really bad now.  Cake being one of them, because I’m Type 2 diabetic.

Now, I have to be careful with sugar, but people still bring me a ton of cake because of one joke I did in 1998.  Imagine it’s been your birthday every single day since 1998, and you have three friends.  All three of those friends give you chocolate cake.  I get between 20 and 40 cakes every week, and people wonder why I’m diabetic.   It’s a lot of cake.  Everywhere I go, there’s cake.  People tell me I should have asked for cash.

Q:  Or Transformers, right? 

GI:  Again, that’s part of the whole thing.  I said my son loves Transformers. I go on tour, and I get over 350 Transformers toys to give to my son.  We had a tour bus, and the whole bay in the back was just filled with all of these Transformers toys.  When I got home during Christmas, we just stuffed them all in the closet.  My son opens the door and freaks out when he sees all these toys. I let him keep 15, and the rest we donated to an orphanage called, Hillside.

Oh, my favorite cake?  I have to say, key lime pie.  It is not exactly a cake.  If I had to pick a cake, I’d go cheesecake.

Q:  What is your favorite joke?

GI:  The first joke I’ve ever told on stage.  I was 10.

I went up on stage, and said, “Why did the chicken cross the road?  To check out the chicks.”

I was a genius at 10.  Try telling that at 21, and you look hacky and stupid.   That was the only joke I’ve ever told.  Everything since has been character voices, doing impressions or just telling stories.

Also, I did a school talent show, and the crowd was just into it.

Afterwards, everybody was coming up to me, and I thought, “I like this attention!”

It was positive.  Everybody was happy.  Everyone wanted to put their arms around me.  It was just an incredible feeling.  There’s no job that can compare.   It was a nice warm feeling, and you can’t wait to go back up on stage.

Q:   I understand - before comedy - you had a job at a phone company.  Was it an easy decision to take a chance at comedy or was it difficult because you are giving up your financial security?

GI:  I was 19 or 20 years-old, and I was working for a company called LA Cellular, and eventually, they became AT&T.  I was selling phones in a store called Home Base, which later became Lowe’s.   I was being paid very well. I was single. I had no kids and no responsibilities.  I was probably pulling in about $5,000 / month plus benefits.    My mom was very happy, and then I tried comedy.   Next thing you know, I was doing comedy at night, working during the day and sleeping very little in the middle.   I was burning the candle at both ends, and I was calling in sick a lot.  I was using up all my vacation time to do stand-up, and eventually, it all ran out.

So, I made a choice. Do I slow down with the comedy, or do I give up the security?  I gave it up.  I figured I saved up enough money, and all I needed - in my head - was $600/month.  So, I felt I was covered for a while.  I ran through it (the money) so quick.  I got evicted from my apartment.  I wound up sleeping on my brother’s balcony for a summer.    My sister found out I was sleeping on my brother’s balcony, so she asked me to move in with her.

I rode her couch for a about a year until I finally started making enough money to contribute.  Eventually, it just clicked, and then Boom!  I started paying the rent.  I moved out and got myself a place in Burbank. Comedy Central gave me my first special.  I bought a Hummer before I bought a house, and then I bought a house.  Every year, everything doubled.  The work was doubling. The money was doubling. The popularity was doubling, and it just kept going and going, and now, here we are!

Q:  Since you’ve done voice-over acting and film acting, which one do you prefer?  

GI:  Voice acting, all day!   Honestly, I really don’t like acting.  I don’t enjoy it.  What I do like is going to a movie theatre and seeing my face on a poster.  I like seeing my name on a poster.  That is cool.  When I did “Haunted House 2”, I went with my kid to the movies.

I stopped by the poster and said, “Mmm...I wonder who is on that poster?”

That’s the cool part.  The working?  Showing up on the set at 6:00am and memorizing the script.  They change it on you at the last second, and then the director yells at you.   Other times, the set can be great!  In “Haunted House 2” with Marlon Wayans, we shot the film in four weeks.  That was a very fast shoot, and I liked that.  That was cool.  Plus, Marlon allowed me to be creative and have fun with it.  Other movies? Not so much.

Voice-over films?  I can knock out a whole voice-over movie in one day.  One day! You walk in, they hand you a script, and you don’t have to memorize anything.

They might say, “Would you like an omelet?”

Everybody is really nice.  The director is right there, and every other word out of his mouth is “Great!  Gimme some more of this!  That’s what I’m saying!  Wonderful!”

So, you’re happy.  I love voice-over work.

Q:   What’s your advice to someone who wants to a comedian and doesn’t think it is feasible?

GI:  Anything is possible as long as you’re focused, determined and you really want to do it.  With comedy, there are a lot of people who say they “want it.”

I have these conversations with guys, and they say, “Oh, I want to be a comic more than anything!”

I tell them, “I’m never home.  I miss birthdays.  I miss holidays.  I miss anniversaries.  I miss special moments.  I’m not always there for important times, because I’m out on the road trying to make people laugh.  I give up my privacy. I give up the ability to walk somewhere and relax.”

You know what?  That’s what I signed up for.   There are more pros than cons, and obviously, financially, it’s an amazing thing.  I don’t worry about bills, but then again, Uncle Sam gets me a lot harder than he gets most people.   I have very nice cars.  I never get to drive them, because I’m never home.  I see a lot of nice hotels, but I never really get to enjoy the cities, because I have to be on a plane the next day.    I eat a lot of junk food, because that’s what’s usually available at 1:00am when I’m all done working.

I’m talking to these guys, and I go, “Listen, if you really want to do it Man, you’ve just got to be prepared to give everything up.   Your goal should be, I just want to make people laugh.  If you are ok just doing that, then I say, go for it!”

Q:  You have so many characters in your standup.  Do you have a favorite you like to portray?  

GI:  The Girl Voice.  Anytime I do the Girl Voice, it always throws people off.  They don’t expect this 300 lb. Mexican guy to go, “Oh my God!!”

It catches people so off-guard. It’s awesome.

Q:   Where is your favorite place to perform outside the U.S.? 

GI:   Australia.  I love Australia.  First of all, everyone is so nice.   The people are down to Earth, and they like having fun with you.  Their sense of humor is so twisted, and they love it when you push the envelope.  One of the craziest compliments came from a guy in Australia.

He said, “You are the funniest bloody c**t I’ve ever seen.”

That is actually a compliment over there.

The promoter said, “Yea, it don’t get better than that!”

I’m like, “Ok. Alright.  He could have just said you’re funny, but no.”

The food is amazing, and the people are amazing.  The way of life is very relaxed and chill.  They come out in droves. I do arenas in Australia.  Love Australia, and Oslo, Norway was amazing. Who would have thought?  A Mexican in Norway.

Boyhood - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Boyhood  

Starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater, and Marco Perella

Directed by Richard Linklater

Rated R

Run Time: 166 minutes

Genre: Drama

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is a tremendous achievement in filmmaking, one of the most intimate studies of childhood I’ve seen. The film, shot since 2002, centers on Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a 6-year old boy at the beginning of the film who ages over the years to be an 18-year old adult by the film’s conclusion. Chronicling his trouble in a divorced home, he lives with his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), and sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), as the former attempts to find a stable home for her children without a father. Their birth father, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), is a fun-loving man who cannot take responsibility for his actions. He takes his children out to ballgames, spoils them to no end, and frustrates both the mother and the children over the years with his consistently inconsistent dependency. Mason deals with the ramifications of his actions throughout the years, seeing his family split into two distinct universes and handling that divide as many children of divorce do in the changing landscape of the family. He must handle two parents, two lives, and two sets of emotion.

The film has earned its distinction as one where the actors mature on screen in sync with their characters. That cannot be true enough. Hawke and Arquette look young and vibrant in the beginning and matured and stable by the conclusion, with Hawke growing cleaner, grayer facial hair in the film’s second half. Arquette’s Olivia lives through multiple heartbreaking marriages that not only devastate her children, but her hopes at achieving success in her personal life and career. The turmoil weighs on her younger-looking face in the film’s beginning moments and takes its form near the end. Time is marked in the film by a unique identifier: the 2000s are mostly marked by the greatest hits of the era. Coldplay’s “Yellow” opens the film as it shines a light on Mason’s world awakening to us, while tunes like “Soak Up the Sun” and “Crazy” remind us of the strange divides we had in popular music. They also properly define the changing years and tell the audience that, yes, these characters are genuinely aging in front of us, even if that’s incredulous in every way. It’s simply unprecedented and awe-inspiring to see it captured on screen.

Ellar Coltrane is the film’s guiding light, the marker that gives us a pulse on the film’s magic. He sprouts from a young, wide-eyed boy to a complicated, compulsive teenager over the film’s 165 minute running time. This is a dense, deeply felt feature that thematically weaves through Mason’s life. Coltrane explores the nature of a boy growing up and the mixed emotions that they face: how can a woman love an abusive drunk of a husband and let him treat her children like garbage? How can a boy love a girl and deal with her moving away to another college while trying to maintain their relationship? How can Mason know whether to drink beer at a younger age without a father figure there to guide him in the right direction? Coltrane is not a perfect actor, but he doesn’t have to be. His character is full of imperfections due to the innate nature of growing up; there’s an unpredictability to the way life works particularly at a young age. Therefore his actions and feelings never need to be enacted in the way film language usually articulates. He’s allowed to be confused and insecure with the way he feels and acts because that’s the breadth of this story.

Linklater remains one of the great humanistic voices in modern film, having tackled the greatest romance in the history of the movies with the Before trilogy and mixing independent and mainstream films throughout his career with ease. What he’s able to do here and done before is address the most relatable issues in life as if they are new and perfectly adjusted to the characters. He has Mason deal with peer pressure and bullying with single scenes, Olivia handle the struggle of children growing up in a broken home along with spouses and their drinking problems, and Mason Sr. spending time with children that he rarely sees and an immaturity that constantly nags at him. The film progresses methodically at its own whim and ebbs and flows with the mysterious path that life takes us down. These characters transform before our eyes physically and figuratively, growing into better, stronger individuals. Every character introduced as a central force gets an impactful arc.

The reason Boyhood is such a towering, beautiful, articulate feature is partially due to my connection with the story and its themes. I grew up with Mason, seeing people plant signs for President Obama and hearing music transform for a new generation. There was hope and optimism, frustration and pessimism, and every other emotion that grows from a tumultuous country that still remains one of the greatest in the world. The film is a celebration of American life and independence, a fierce evocation of the endless ability for change and betterment. I love every element of Linklater’s vision, using his traditional long takes during conversations while using different digital and film lenses throughout the feature to show the way the world has changed, both in front of and behind the screen. It’s something that shouldn’t have been accomplished: these actors were not linked by money but by their emotional connection the story and its importance. Boyhood is a masterpiece that will be celebrated for years to come. It’s the best film of 2014 thus far.

Hellion - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Hellion  

Starring Josh Wiggins, Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis and Deke Garner

Directed by Kat Candler

From IFC Films

Rated R

94 minutes

Metalhead kids devour their way through Hellion

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

The adage of “boys will be boys” only stretches so far until it breaks. And then there’s Hellion, which takes the saying out back and beats it with rusty fence posts until it’s whimpering in the Texas mud.

Yeesh, these boys. The movie opens and they’re relentlessly smashing a pickup truck with hammers and pipes in the parking lot of a high school football game. One kid climbs on the hood to pulverize the windshield. Another kid lights a fire in the front seat. They’re like piranha devouring a Christmas ham.

We’ve seen teens do worse things in movies. Remember Kids, or when Anne Hathaway rolled dice to see how many gang bangers she had to sleep with in Havok. A generation of daughters won’t be let out of their bedrooms by their overprotective fathers because of that scene. But the Hellion kids are 13 years old, with baby fat still on their cheeks and action figures still on their dressers, and there they go lighting fires, starting fights and pulling revolvers during home invasions. Something tells me a long grounding isn’t going to correct this behavior.

Hellion follows Jacob (Josh Wiggins) as he pals around with his little crew of metalheads as they break the law, ride dirtbikes and generally terrorize their neighborhood in sudden violent outbursts. Jacob lets his kid brother, the tiny tyke Wes, hang around with him and his buddies, even as their caustic influence starts to seep into Wes’ little noggin. In an early sequence, Jacob won’t let Wes look at a porn magazine, but in the next scene Wes is being forced to commit arson as a form of gang initiation — priorities are all over the place.

Jacob is screwed up mostly because his dad, Hollis (Aaron Paul), is a deadbeat drunk, whose only expression of emotion comes when he drops flowers by the intersection where his wife was killed in a car accident. Hollis hardly registers when cops bring Jacob home in handcuffs, or when a social worker takes Wes out of the home to live with his aunt Pam (Juliette Lewis). Eventually, though, Hollis does start giving a damn, but it may be too late for his children, who are pushing away from him faster in their downward spirals.

The writing, persuasively realistic in tone and mediocrity, is uneven and frustrating because the film lurks forward without any motivation. At times Hellion feels like a slice-of-life documentary, which gives it an authentic feel but little narrative arc. I could have used a few less shots of the boys just sitting around, or wandering the streets on their bikes. And Hollis apparently doesn’t have a job, which means he can sit around and hammer stuff all day with no progress to show for it.

The children are convincing (and also terrifyingly cold) and so is Paul, who doesn’t show as much range as he did on Breaking Bad, though he does have a heartbreaking scene in a pizza joint that will crush your soul. It is interesting how the film ponders Lewis’s Pam: she’s the only character with her act together, yet the film frames her like a villain, the child-stealing homewrecker. And I adore Lewis. Somewhere, perhaps in different interplanetary dimension, Juliette Lewis is a beloved national treasure.

Hellion tries overly hard to convince us it has some kind of metal cred. The tweens wear genre-clashing T-shirts of Skeletonwitch, Slayer and Pig Destroyer and have circle pits in their living rooms to vintage Metallica songs — and the film features a Transformers-level of product placement for the band The Sword — but the effect seems to be an exact response to Spender Susser’s equally headbanging delinquent-teen drama Hesher. I initially disliked Hesher when it came out, but the film’s subversive nihilist streak has won me over after several viewings. It worked because the metal soundtrack was great, but also because the film had an emotional payoff. Hellion can’t say the same with its more realistic, but abysmally more depressing, final moments.

In the end, Hellion just dishes out too much turmoil, so much that it starts to shove you away. That’s not to say the acting or the directing, by newcomer Kat Candler, aren’t stellar, because they are. It’s just the film is too loud, too scattered and a little too gritty.

Wish I Was Here - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Wish I Was Here  

Starring Zach Braff, Kate Hudson, Josh Gad, Mandy Patinkin, Jim Parsons, and Ashley Greene

Directed by Zach Braff

Rated R

Run Time: 106 minutes

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Empathy is a rare achievement in film, something that needs to be hard-earned and justified in the framework of the narrative. Wish I Was Here makes the audience care about its characters because of their importance to the film’s emotional core. The story rarely wanders away from the paths of the characters, only occasionally meandering down paths that feel a bit unfocused in terms of their breadth and reach. Zach Braff’s film is a bit easy on its characters, too, particularly its central character played by the aforementioned writer-director, but the supporting crew rounds out a film that touches on love, life, death, and the struggles of living toward one’s dream. It’s never a fully cohesive film, but it works because of those themes and the way they tie together in a joyous celebration of life. Even in the wake of loss, love and living life to its fullest must persist.

The film centers on Aidan (Zach Braff), a married actor with two kids struggling to survive in an economically trying time. His wife, Sarah (Kate Hudson), works in an office making all of the money for the family while Aidan struggles to find acting gigs around Los Angeles. Their kids, Tucker (Pierce Gagnon) and Grace (Joey King), attend a Jewish private school because of the money their grandfather, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin), puts toward their education. When Gabe’s cancer comes back from remission, he decides to put his money toward alternative treatment instead of funding the kids’ education. This puts Aidan in a troubled state, causing him to start homeschooling the kids while trying to find sustainable work. His brother, Noah (Josh Gad), is no help with any of us, a genius that lives in a trailer that his mother gave him before she died. Him and Aidan deal with constant torment from their father who seems disappointed in everything they do.

Life is difficult. That seems to be the gist of Braff’s work over the years, articulating that in different ways by emphasizing the nature of death and the way that life has an aimless nature to it all. Inherently that shouldn’t work in a narrative film since there needs to be a driving thematic force reinforced by surrounding subplots and ideas. Aimlessness doesn’t work that well with that concept. But somehow Braff pulls it off as writer, director, and actor, proving capable on all fronts by showcasing the tumultuous and haphazard way we live life on a day-to-day basis. There’s a scene that shows the way that Braff links ideas, with him discussing his wife’s work and how much she seems to love it, and then cutting to her disgruntled at work and dealing with borderline sexual harassment from a cubicle partner. Nothing is as good or as happy as anyone seems to make it.

The performances are sublime and the dialogue thought-provoking. Braff creates an urgency around his character and his hope to reform his life; unfortunately, he doesn’t follow through impactfully to make the character fully change. Patinkin and Hudson are exceptional in their roles. Gabe is a complex character with regrets and a sadness about how much he feels he has failed his family; Patinkin is an expert at these roles and excels. Hudson is a surprisingly strong, subtle force that creates her own strength from providing guidance for a family when the father doesn’t seem to be taking full initiative. The child actors, particularly Joey King, are marvelous. The film’s writing never fully brings together every idea, but tackles death with emotional heft and gravitas. The most important thing about Wish I Was Here is that it’s a compassionate film about compassionate characters. It’s far from perfect, but it cares. That’s rare in today’s cinema, and its ambition is impressive through all of its faults.

Sex Tape - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Sex Tape   

Starring Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe, and Jack Black

Directed by Jake Kasdan

Rated R

Run Time: 94 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Sex Tape is mostly tame and harmless, a promising film with two likable comedians that fails to flourish in its second half. Modern comedies often attempt to tackle raunchy premises because quieter laughers usually go unnoticed in today’s landscape. A film about a sex tape is pretty much as loud of a concept as possible. For that reason, Sex Tape should be far funnier than it ends up being, mostly digressing into awkward conversations that depend on long pauses and physical humor that grows tiresome by the conclusion. Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz have both achieved success over the past decade in mainstream comedies; the former has Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man while the latter has Bad Teacher and The Other Woman. Yet here, their combination cannot seem to shape a coherently funny story. It’s simply that a shocking premise fails to produce laughs alone and needs a hilarious set of characters and jokes to accompany the plot.

The film centers on Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel), a married couple with kids that misses the spontaneity of their earlier days. They no longer have sex like they used to, they are preoccupied with their jobs, and they can’t seem to balance their everyday life to make sure they find happiness. Their kids often remind them of their unrest, with their daughter jokingly asking Jay about the point of life only to follow it up by saying that him and mom are unhappy. Annie is caught up with selling her “mommy blog” to a company run by Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), and on her way home from a meeting decides to get a night alone with Jay. She sends the kids off with their grandmother while the married couple hopes to rekindle their passionate fire. But they fail and fail again, until Annie thinks of a seemingly ingenious idea: how about they film themselves having sex? They do it and, thanks to Jay’s music job that involves him syncing gifted iPads to his own to provide them with his playlists, the video goes out to their friends.

The rest of the film involves their exploits to erase the video from everyone’s devices. It mostly hinges on their ignorance to how technology works in today’s age. They fail to understand what a remote wipe is, how videos can be copied, and how videos are uploaded to servers. To nitpick the film’s thin premise is trivial, though, since Sex Tape doesn’t exist to provide a realistic plot. Instead, it aims to provide the audience with set pieces that embrace the absurdity of these characters and their actions. On that part, it delivers fairly well in the film’s first half. They visit their friends Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper) who are celebrating their 12th anniversary and join them on their adventures. This leads to Annie visiting Hank’s house, which might be the finest moment in the film. Rob Lowe’s performance is ridiculous and hilarious, a man with a very strange Disney obsession and a hankering for the days of old. More specifically, the days of recreational cocaine use.

The film is funniest, as most are, when its comedy gets specific and unique. The problem with most of the film is the broadness of the second half, with the vague exception of a strange comedic cameo in the final moments that provides an inconsistently amusing bit. The product placement grates on the material, too, with Apple playing a hefty role in many of the film’s scenes. But Segel and Diaz are talented, enjoyable comedians that make the most of the material. As it runs a bit thin in the set-up for their sexual frustrations, they bring out the humor in the strangeness of it all. The supporting cast is game and varied, with Corddry remaining one of the most consistently hard-working supporting actors in comedy today. Yet Jake Kasdan’s film cannot help but fall into the traditional traps of mediocre comedies: it fails to engage past its thin premise and falls flat in delivering a compelling story. It’s mostly weak in humor and sporadic with its jokes. Sex Tape is likable and somewhat amusing, but ultimately uneven and tepid in its laughs.

The Purge:Anarchy - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

The Purge: Anarchy  

Starring Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, and Michael K. Williams

Directed by James DeMonaco

Rated R

Run Time: 103 minutes

Genre: Action/Horror/Thriller

Opens July 18th

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

The Purge: Anarchy is either one of the most absurd, fascist films ever made or a vapid, gruesome piece of filmmaking. I think it’s the latter, but the filmmakers certainly make an argument for the former. What we are given is a sequel to a film that squandered its seemingly ingenious premise surrounding a futuristic America: that for 12 hours each year, every crime is legal (including murder). This allows for the country to prosper economically, socially, and financially. Except for the poor, of course, who are the targets of these purges headed by the wealthy aiming to create some sort of population control. This latest feature in the twisted world of the Purge focuses on multiple arcs: a couple (Zach GIlford and Kiele Sanchez) driving home as their car breaks down right before the Purge commences; a former sergeant (Frank Grillo) who aims to get revenge on the man who killed his son; and a mother (Carmen Ejogo) and daughter (Zoë Soul) who wait in their locked-up apartment as assailants break into their complex. The mother and daughter are working class, their father is dying, and they are struggling to survive in many ways.

All of their stories intersect. Not naturally, but because the story demands it and doesn’t care to explain how a city as big as Los Angeles can allow for all of these people to cross paths so neatly. The biggest problem? These characters, however engaging they sound on paper, are pointless. The story wants to explore the depravity of Americans, using these humanoid-like protagonists as a means of looking at the way we would act if given the ability to senselessly kill without punishment. That involves a man mowing down people with a mini-gun mounted in the back of a semi-truck and rich people paying exorbitant sums of money to hunt individuals or kill them with machetes. There’s a really strange obsession with murder by big knife here. The characters encounter many of these violent moments, meaning they should add up to a big revelation, either developing the central protagonists or providing the audience with a new idea about this world. But that seems a bit too logical.

The film is one of those rare breeds that consistently tells the audience that it’s making commentary on issues when in reality it’s all smoke and mirrors. Writer-director James DeMonaco took authorial duties in the first film and this latest feature, but there’s nothing that signifies a singular vision here. The direction is muddled and inconsistent in its jumps from naturalistic close-ups to haphazard action shots. The sound in the theater had substantial problems for most of the film’s opening moments, but that couldn’t disguise the discordant exchanges of dialogue between every character. It’s clunky and formulaic without a care for deepening characters or letting the audience learn from visualization. Instead, everything must be explained! The filmmakers working here, including mega-producer Jason Blum (famous for the Paranormal Activity films, amongst many other horror films of late), have created a product that delivers lowest-common denominator storytelling, deriving elements from insanity and incomprehension rather than development.

There’s something to be said about the manner in which homelessness, poverty, and government control are treated in The Purge: Anarchy, if only to demonstrate the failed attempts at mixing commentary and satire. I admire a major film that attempts to articulate something about societal issues. Yet the film demonstrates that America is full of have and have nots and that the haves are grotesque pigs while the have nots are lost causes. The main character of the sergeant, played by the competent Frank Grillo (who really tries his best with terrible material), gets redemption when realizing that participating in the Purge is part of the problem, but none of that is shown on screen. That’s storytelling 101. And Michael K. Williams pops up as Carmelo Jones, an enlightened extremist that aims to stand against the NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America). He’s ridiculous. Which makes me think that maybe the film is merely here to act as a spoof of social commentary itself and satirize the very nature of the narrative. And then, as the credit sequence rolls, a dubstep remix of “God Bless America” begins. How poetic.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes  

Starring Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman and Keri Russell

Directed by Matt Reeves

From 20th Century Fox

Rated PG-13

130 minutes

Serkis captivates in Apes sequel

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

The apes are back, and once again they aren’t so damned and aren’t so dirty.

In fact, the apes are looking pretty snazzy in Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, with their matchy warpaint high in their evergreen fortress in the rugged forests north of San Francisco. This is where we saw them victoriously scamper to at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the movie that featured the preacher from Footloose, Draco Malfoy and a James Dean puppet called James Franco, yet all anyone could talk about was motion-capture master Andy Serkis and his riveting unseen performance.

Serkis, who had previously played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, returns here doing more motion capture — he gets to wear pajamas to work! — for Caesar, the ape leader who has fled humanity’s rotten grasp to start his own primate civilization in the Sierras. And like his previous endeavor dragging his knuckles, Serkis again steals the show with a nuanced and rare performance that is only seen through the digital surrogate of Caesar, ape emperor. But more on that later.

Dawn wastes no time and begins with immediate exposition: the opening credits reveal that a mutated Alzheimer’s bug is sweeping around the planet in a deadly wave. In a nifty little animation, the infection is shown as a bright orange rash popping up over a spinning globe. And then the orange starts to fade — not because the virus has died off, but because the virus has no one left to kill. Some humans are naturally immune, and they hunker down in the post-apocalypse cities of America. In San Francisco, a decade after the pandemic started, we meet Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and Dreyfuss (Gary Oldman), two sound leaders trying to figure out if a nearby dam might provide their struggling refuge with some power.

And wouldn’t you know it, the dam is in monkey country, where Caesar — a horse-riding, english-speaking, elk-spearing primate that puts those bike-riding bears at Barnum & Baileys to shame — has staked out his own kingdom within the trees and mist. After the humans cross into their borders, Caesar confers with his orangutan elders and his warrior chimps before deciding on a course of action. The decision he makes surprises me: backed by his furry army, he marches to the gates of the human city to announce to a stunned population that they have a “human home” and Caesar and his friends have an “Ape home” and never the two shall meet.

It was pretty much at this point I decided I liked this movie. A lesser film would have had a big action sequence here followed by three identical, yet slightly different, action scenes and then the credits. But Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is less interested in war and gunfights than it is with the examination of two competing societies — one on an upswing, the other crumbling away — as they struggle for meaning in a post-apocalyptic world.

These types of movies are usually filled with obnoxious archetypes, the kind of characters that Walking Dead fills its roster with to move the plots forward in lumbering incoherence. But that’s not the case here. Aside from one meathead (Kirk Acevedo, who’s actually been on Walking Dead), Dawn is filled with smart and understanding human characters. They do things that real humans might actually do. They think. They reason. They encourage each other. They smile. Even Oldman, who turns into a minor villain, is given so much common sense that it defies the genre, which so frequently clings to murderous nutjobs. Clarke’s Malcolm has several important scenes that require him to trust his ape neighbors, including a sequence where he walks into Caesar’s village to petition that they all work together. His wife shares her medicines with the sick apes. And his son swaps comics with a lovable orangutang who has a thirst for reading and knowledge. These are decent people, and likable, too.

The human characters are mirrored in many ways within the ape society. Caesar plays Malcolm’s counterpart; he’s curious and willing to hear out his human visitors. Like Malcolm, Caesar has a son and a wife, and several close advisors, including apes called Ash and Rocket, and rampaging human-hater Koba, who was used as a test subject by humans before the fall. Caesar orders Koba to work peacefully with the humans and Koba points at his scars, “human work,” he says in slow English. Maybelline did a number on this guy, and his actions are hot-headed and cruel, but not without merit.

Of course, the established truce falls apart in a spectacular fashion as the movie requires it, but that doesn’t take away the goodwill that was established earlier in the picture. Caesar believes in the humans, and some of the humans believe in Caesar, and that sets the stage for an epic standoff that is less about man versus ape, and mostly about competing ideologies, specifically peace versus war.

This is a competent and lyrically written action bonanza. It works on paper without a single special effect, yet the special effects make it something exceptional, especially Serkis and the other motion capture actors. The apes have weight, character, presence and momentum. It’s obvious these aren’t just computer models; they have a heavy physicality to their movement. Talk is being thrown around that Serkis should get an Academy Award nomination for a role he’s never seen in. I don’t think we’re there yet, but we’re definitely closer. And the fact that we’re even debating that is a huge testament to the work Serkis has thrown himself into.

Aside from the motion capture, though, Dawn also deserve accolades for its gorgeous set design — from the rusty and overgrown city to the splintery wood deathtrap of the forests — and also its steady cinematography. Reeves did us no favors when he created super-shakycam with Cloverfield, but here he and cinematographer Michael Seresin slow their shots down, and atone for their movie sins, with careful careful camera placement and inventive composition of apes swinging through the trees or a single shot of a rotating tank turret. There are several long-takes, including one with Clark storming through his compound looking for an escape from the invading apes. It’s no Children of Men, but the attention to the nuts and bolts of filmmaking is profoundly evident on the screen.

I must circle back to Serkis before closing out my review. I think he’s figured out how to fix lifeless CGI — a human must inhabit the special effect. It won’t fix a movie’s CGI, but it puts it on the right path to create something memorable. Something like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Begin Again - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Begin Again  

Starring Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Hailee Steinfeld, Adam Levine, James Corden, CeeLo Green, and Catherine Keener

Directed by John Carney

Rated R

Run Time: 104 minutes

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Opens July 2nd

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Begin Again celebrates music unlike any modern film I’ve seen, insisting that it has the ability to move people more so than any other craft. How ironic then that it’s presented as a film. The film’s original title, Can a Song Save Your Life?, captures the essence of the story more directly, but both titles have similarly affecting meanings. They both refer to the film’s central character, Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a disgraced music-business executive that created his own record label back in the day with popular artists under his wing. But the music industry is changing and his way of doing things was pushed to the side. That might be because of the work itself, yet it seems to lie more within his raging alcoholism and familial issues. His daughter, Violet (Hailee Steinfeld), dresses like she needs a father to tell her what’s not acceptable while his ex-wife, Miriam (Catherine Keener), raises her alone. Dan’s life is in ruins and he’s prepared to find a way to make that end.

Then he finds Greta (Keira Knightley), a nervous musician on stage at a bar after being pushed by her friends to show her talents. Greta plays a quiet song with a guitar that doesn’t excite the crowd, but Dan sees an arrangement happening and the potential bursting within the music. The film sets up this piece of the narrative over a 20-minute span, using these three minutes as a way to introduce the characters and how they were both pushed to this moment. It’s a smart storytelling tactic by writer-director John Carney, allowing the scene a wider perspective to demonstrate the utter despair both of these people feel in their lives. Greta’s similarly down on her luck, having come to New York with her boyfriend, Dave (Adam Levine), who launches a singing career and begins to reach stardom. They used to sing together, recording videos of duets and working in tandem for writing. Now, he’s beginning to sell out and craft songs that push aside all they’ve done. After he cheats on her, she feels lost and prepared to head home to the UK. Then she runs into Dave.

He hatches the idea that they should record an album outdoors during the summer in New York City. It’s a concept album at its most extreme, capturing the turmoil of the city while simultaneously using natural sound stages to let the music work for itself. Carney’s film develops as a simplistic one by nature, yet it defines itself by the eccentricities of the characters and their interactions with music. Take, for instance, a moment when Greta prepares to leave a clichéd post-breakup message on Dave’s phone while drunk. Where the scene could’ve had her character emotionally fall apart, she stands strong and comes up with a genius idea: to write a revenge song and leave that as the recording. The scene captures that song in full and lets the audience marvel at the strength of the character and her best friend always by her side, Steve (James Corden). There’s another scene where everyone is gathered at a party and Steve says that no one can resist dancing to the song about to be played. Naturally, everyone freezes and fights the urge to dance. It’s one of the happiest progressions I’ve seen, speaking volumes about the infectious nature of music and the way it brings out the innate happiness in all of us.

The performances here are terrific. Ruffalo in the lead makes his character a likable drunk, one we despise for his weakness of character while also loving his ability to create music out of nothing. He’s a creative genius stuck in a rut that makes his personal life a nightmare. He brings humor and compassion to what could’ve been a one-note, fake man. Knightley is equally affecting. A scene near the end of the film shows her love for music overpowers her love for a man, demonstrating her strength as a musician. The film surprisingly avoids romance when it can; this isn’t a romantic comedy, nor is it a music tale mixed with romance like Once (a superior film). Instead, it’s a film that shows the love we all have for music, and the way that these people care about that work so much more than a romantic relationship. The supporting performances are strong, Carney’s direction is fluid despite clunky elements structurally, and the ending is moving and whole. Excluding the credits sequence that tacks on far too much for the story, Begin Again is a terrific look at the power of music.

Snowpiercer - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Snowpiercer  

Starring Chris Evans, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell and Octavia Spencer

Directed by Joon-ho Bong

From The Weinstein Company

Rated R

126 minutes

All aboard! Snowpiercer victoriously steams through summer

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Dust the peanut shells off your shirt, gather your stuff and start heading for the car: With outs still left to play, Joon-ho Bong’s succulent sci-fi masterpiece Snowpiercer just hit a walk-off home run to end the summer.

I’m not one to romanticize the summer’s popcorny action blockbusters. It’s a phenomenon that has grown to a worrisome size and brand of exclusivity — entrance is only granted by way of $200 million or more, and its only members are superheroes and transforming robots. But every now and again a movie like Snowpiercer comes along in the heat of the summer to obliterate our movie expectations.

This is a wholly unique and fascinating movie, one that further proves the most daring and groundbreaking movies have been from the science fiction genre, which is rich with ideas and spectacular invention. The movie takes place aboard a massive train that is plowing around the frozen globe, the result of a botched cloud-seeding experiment 17 years ago to reverse global warming. The outside world, extinct of all life, is wintery white and equally frigid, yet on the train there is heat, food, shelter and safety, but to varying degrees of concentration.

The humanity that survived the winter apocalypse have been assigned social classes aboard the train, which is so long that engine and caboose are presumably separated by area codes. Wealthy one-percenters ride near the front in lavish comfort, while the poor and undesirable ride in the rear, a gulag of cold steel and unbearable conditions. This is where we meet Curtis (Chris Evans), who has grown weary of the Marxist dystopia the rear of the train has provided him. It’s cramped, there are mandatory public countings, brutal beatings, children are kidnapped, and the food, protein bricks made of what looks like black cherry Jell-O, isn’t quite Soylent Green, but it’s close.

Curtis and the other supporters of wise village elder Gilliam (John Hurt) stage a massive revolt that requires them to time the opening and closing of train doors with the brute force of a hastily constructed battering ram made of metal drums. Once they’re through the first couple cars, they start picking up momentum as they race from their third-world prison up through the social classes.

The film has some marvelous performances, including a showstopper by Tilda Swinton as a kooky government leader, but let’s make no mistake about this: the star here is the train, which is so expertly designed and utilized within the plot that it’s a character unto itself. First, the look and feel of the train is just perfect. It’s wide enough to contain action and storytelling without feeling cramped, but tight enough to create a sense of claustrophobia when it’s needed. And at some point these train cars existed on a real set somewhere, because when the camera looks through open doors you can see distant cars undulating in the distant. It’s a hypnotic special effect. Bong also does a clever trick: he doesn’t show us any cars that Curtis hasn't yet visited. This allows us to explore the train as Curtis does, from the industrial refinery cars through to the greenhouse and aquarium cars and later in cars devoted to steam saunas and dance clubs. Watch how even the color temperature changes from the blues and greys of the rear of the train to the warm and organic browns and yellows of the paneled sleeping cars.

The train’s prominent role in the film also gives it some stand-out performances, including when two men have to wait for a sharp curve for the train to bend enough so they can see each other for a firefight. In another scene, a massive brawl is halted so the murderous combatants can count down to an eventual “Happy New Year!” They know it’s a new year because the train, which takes a full year to circumnavigate the globe, crosses a specific bridge. After some cheering and a little song they all return to killing.

Most importantly, though, the train has relevance within the plot. Bong and fellow screenwriter Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) have created a substantive mythology from the speeding locomotive’s existence. Curtis’ journey from one end to the other isn’t just a road movie, it’s metaphor, allegory, spiritual parable … it’s whatever you want it to be: young and old, life and death, rich and poor, head and tail. Interpretations of the train’s implications are going to be like the locomotive’s meandering journey around the world — all over the map.

This isn’t quite high art, though it’s awful close and it does have its fair share of brawls, shootouts, swordfights, riots, plenty of violence and scenes that reveal the true, and terrifying, nature of the train and its inhabitants. John Hurt’s character wears an umbrella handle where his hand once was; that makes for a doozer of a story late in the movie. There’s a sequence in a school car that is nuttier than it has any right to be, yet it also provides some important exposition about the train’s engine and the prophet-like man who supposedly keeps it running. In yet another scene, immediately after an action bonanza, the main characters stop at a sushi restaurant and have a bite to eat. The film has it’s own pace and tempo, but the movements work surprisingly well.

Go see this movie. You might have missed Transformers 4 last week; keep missing it and instead put your money into a movie that you haven’t yet seen, or will likely see again.

Snowpiercer - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Snowpiercer  

Starring Chris Evans, Kang-ho Song, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Alison Pill, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

Rated R

Run Time: 126 minutes

Genre: Action/Sci-Fi

Opens July 2nd

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Snowpiercer is one of the best films of 2014, a kinetic, gripping piece of science fiction that’s always involving. Bong Joon-ho establishes himself as one of the brightest talents working behind the camera, a man with the ability to thrill behind character drama alongside violent action that holds meaning. It’s a rare, brilliant mix. The film centers on Earth in 2031, where a failed global warming experiment leads to the world freezing over and all life ceasing to exist. A lucky few boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels the world in the span of a year with a growing class divide amongst the citizens onboard. The back of the train is comprised of individuals without money, simply attempting to live in the horrid conditions provided to them. Most of them don’t remember what the outside world looks or feels like: there are no windows, most have been on the train for roughly 17 years (besides the babies born post-apocalypse), and they are fed protein blocks that look like gelatinous blobs of blood. Their lives are full of starvation, hard work, and fighting for survival.

Curtis (Chris Evans) is fed up. He wants to make it to the front of the train to reached the fabled Engine, which somehow keeps the train running at all times. It provides them with water converted from the ice outside and the essentials needed to keep the ecosystem running on board. Along with Edgar (Jamie Bell), a young man born on the train near its inception, and Gilliam (John Hurt), a wise old man without most of his limbs, they attempt to advance past the soldiers and to the front of the train. Others include Tanya (Octavia Spencer), a woman whose child is taken to the front for an unexplained purpose, and Nam (Kang-ho Song), a man addicted to a drug made of toxic waste called Kronol. It’s a highly flammable substance that Nam and his daughter, Yona (Ah-sung Ko), use as currency in exchange for helping the passengers advance through gates. The former developed them himself and the latter is psychic, having the ability to see through the gates to warn them of what’s to come.

There have been other revolts, all failures. The previous insurgents were killed by the guards, something that Mason (Tilda Swinton) often reminds the members of the tail section. She adores Wilford Industries and everything that it stands for, idolizing its creator who lives with the Engine. Wilford is a demigod to the people near the front of the train despite the ridicule and doubt he faced from outsiders for his invention; those people onboard are wealthy and reserved their spots to live just as they used to before the scientific experiment went wrong. Joon-ho instills plenty of commentary within that struggle to emphasize a class divide between rich and poor. It’s riveting. Curtis and Edgar talk about how they forget what steak even tastes like or what their mother’s faces look like. Imagine being denied the simple joys of life, and that is the way they live. While that conflict emerges, there is a fundamental attack on naysayers of climate change and the way that technological advances can backfire on us. The central premise isn’t overly far-fetched considering how far the world is going to combat global warming.

While that may make the film sound heavy, there’s one important element to consider: the film is a blast. The action is staged appropriately and masterfully keeps within the narrow confines of a train. Every room feels as if it’s crafted by a brilliant designer who just so happened to know how thrilling the rooms would be in a film. Snowpiercer kicks ass and uses its characters as vehicles for caring about the action. These are properly defined people who believably live inside this train. They are emotionally ravaged, mentally exhausted, and physically lean. And they are ready to fight for their lives. Evans is great in the lead, particularly in a late moment when he delivers a moving monologue about his first moments on the train. Swinton is impressively unique, too. The action is fast-paced and brutal, with the film remaining uncompromising in what it shows; blood and graphic violence ensue because it needs to in the context of the narrative. Snowpiercer is a unique breed of actioner: it’s a tiny blockbuster set entirely on a train, it’s ridiculously ambitious in narrative scope, and it has a story that makes the audience care. It’s great filmmaking.

Third Person - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Third Person  

Starring Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde, Mila Kunis, Adrien Brody, James Franco, Maria Bello, Moran Atias, and Kim Basinger

Directed by Paul Haggis

Rated R

Run Time: 137 minutes

Genre: Drama/Romance

Opens July 2nd

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Third Person is like a broken wrist: it’s limp, disjointed, and bothers the viewer for every minute of its existence. Paul Haggis seems to be desperately reaching for the success he achieved with Crash, the 2006 Best Picture winner that stands as the highlight of his career. That Oscar vehicle worked on a tremendous level emotionally and brought together an impressively deep cast into a coherent, thematically sound narrative. His latest film, about a writer that’s struggling with his latest work, feels omniscient and self-aware like its title suggests, only it doesn’t recognize how incoherent it really is. The film’s protagonist, Michael (Liam Neeson), is stuck in a hotel in France writing his newest book while being haunted by a voice saying, “Watch me.” The first scene painfully screams details about his character: there’s a pill bottle on his desk!; there’s alcohol!; he takes off his glasses because he can’t concentrate! The camera cuts between each of these moments multiple times, emphasizing his supposed drug addiction while simultaneously repeating details that could have been explained in half the amount of time.

Anna (Olivia Wilde) arrives at his hotel room after being flown there at Michael’s whim. She wants him to read her short story, but before that happens they make love on the bed while she receives mysterious texts from a man named Daniel. Meanwhile, an American businessman named Scott (Adrien Brody) is in Italy to steal designs from fashion houses. He goes to a bar to grab a beer (something that he painfully cannot find and when he does, it’s warm, much to his chagrin) and meets Monika (Moran Atias), an attractive woman who leaves a bag with 5,000 Euros in the bar by mistake. Or was it? Scott tracks her down to give her back her bag, but she notices the money is missing; it’s for her daughter, she says, to get her back from wherever she is. It sounds like a kidnapping story, and Scott gets swept up in the beauty of the woman without realizing that he might be getting conned. The other story follows Julia (Mila Kunis), a woman that mistakingly left her child alone to almost suffocate in a dry cleaning bag, being forced to live a normal life while leaving the boy with his father, Rick (James Franco).

If these stories don’t sound connected, you’d be onto something. The link between the three stories is muddled and confusing until the third act twist, which seemingly explains everything that’s been discombobulated. Haggis’s film, however, reveals an embarrassingly lame explanation that neither thrills or challenges the viewer; instead, it insists that it’s logically sound and connected. What becomes so frustrating as a viewer is not that the link between these stories isn’t readily apparent, but that we have to stumble through such hackneyed, contrived dialogue and scenes in order to get there. If we’re supposed to buy that Michael is a talented writer, then why could we care less about his words and the impact they are supposed to have? As he writes, “White. The color of trust,” followed by other short, incomplete sentences, it isn’t thought-provoking. It’s a poor excuse for blatantly pointing out symbolism and giving the viewer very little to imagine themselves.

There aren’t strong performances in the film as much as there are strong actors attempting to perform melodramatic material. Third Person never earns the loud, bombastic scenes it repeatedly brings on the audience; it’s frustrating to see an actress as talented as Olivia WIlde subjected to such vulgar, schizophrenic traits as her character has. James Franco and Mila Kunis are asked to cry and yell a lot, never giving us subtlety when we need to ground these characters in some reality. Based on the structure of the film, though, that last element may be a bit excusable. And Neeson is a good actor when provided with dense work, but the story allows everyone else to experience what he should be, leaving his character tragically empty. That may be intentional, but as a hero it leaves the audience cold. Basinger and Bello pop up in small roles but only exist to spur on the thematic obviousness of the subplots. As writer and director here, Haggis never creates a sound narrative; instead, he provides the audience with an absurd, misguided ending that frustrates rather than compels. Third Person is an underwhelming failure.

Tammy - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Tammy  

Starring Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Allison Janney, Dan Aykroyd, Mark Duplass, and Gary Cole

Directed by Ben Falcone

Rated R

Run Time: 96 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Opens July 2nd

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Tammy is an embarrassing misfire for Melissa McCarthy. She’s an actress that won the goodwill of many with her hilarious supporting performance in Bridesmaids, and followed suit with leading performances in Identity Thief and The Heat. She essentially works better alongside a group of strong comedic actors and within stories that don’t rely on her for narrative drive. But here, her husband Ben Falcone is writer, director, and co-star (albeit briefly) and shines a spotlight on a boring slob of a character about who I never really cared. There’s a genuine lack of comedy within a film that so desperately wants people to laugh; the jokes are dissonant and constantly fall flat. It feels like that type of comedic failure that comes along in every comedian’s career, yet it’s surprising how early McCarthy’s is coming. That’s primarily because her type of humor appealed more broadly over her previous efforts due to the people surrounding her, and now the work feels more forced and less amusing. The schtick has grown old.

The story centers on Tammy (Melissa McCarthy), a woman that has just about everything go wrong in her life. She loses her job at Topper Jack’s, a fast food joint that takes itself a bit too seriously, her husband cheats on her with the neighbor, and her car breaks down after hitting a deer while she rocked out to music. She heads a few houses down the street to her mother’s (Allison Janney) house, telling her that she’s going to skip town and start a new life. Her grandmother, Pearl (Susan Sarandon), decides to join her on that adventure, providing the car and money to get them along. Despite her mother’s objections, they head off and try to begin anew. Pearl is a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed woman that’s sexually promiscuous and adventurous. Tammy must deal with her shenanigans, which leads to a run-in with an older gentleman, Earl (Gary Cole), and his son, Bobby (Mark Duplass) at a dive bar. The older two have sex, the younger two bond, and they each cross paths while Tammy and grandma try to find their way.

The plot is flimsy like cardboard and dry like sandpaper. The story meanders and often follows whatever path Tammy takes, even if that fails to move the story forward or allow character progressions to happen naturally. The dialogue is repetitive and too straightforward, explaining every nuance of the story and allowing nothing to the imagination. It’s impressive how empty the experience becomes as it reaches its conclusion. Almost all of the supporting characters have no life, merely existing to push along Tammy and her development. What’s so dull about that element is the fact that Tammy is such an unrelatable character. She’s an energetic woman that certainly provides life to each scene, but McCarthy can’t redeem the contradictory nature of her person. Take, for instance, the fact that her husband has committed adultery and she says it’s a sin and can’t fathom that idea. But she had an ice cream man fondle her while also lusting after a new man, and that’s funny, so I guess it’s okay.

The film champions Tammy’s stupidity, mining it for laughs and deriving the heart of her character out of her lack of knowledge. Her insolence knows no bounds, spitting on fast food on her way out of her firing and calling people assholes when they don’t deserve it. That’s not a very likable character. She mistakes Cheetos for Lay’s, patterns for both pairs and galaxies (I know that makes no sense, but Tammy thinks it does), and doesn’t know who Mark Twain is. The character’s obliviousness to life around her is unnerving in how much joy the writing couple finds in it. The alcoholism at the heart of Pearl’s character is also offensively drawn, mined for laughs because drinking excessively and ruining your life is funny! When the story attempts to redeem the character, it never feels sincere. Neither does Kathy Bates’s lesbian character in the second half, who acts as a sage that delivers wisdom while also liking to blow stuff up. Tammy may be nonsensical and derivative, but it’s also unexpectedly something else: painfully unfunny.

Earth to Echo - Movie Review by Eric Forthun

Earth to Echo  

Starring Teo Halm, Astro, Reese Hartwig, Ella Wahlestedt, and Jason Gray-Stanford

Directed by Dave Green

Rated PG

Run Time: 91 minutes

Genre: Adventure/Sci-Fi

Opens July 2nd

By Eric Forthun of Cinematic Shadows

Science fiction adventures rarely focus on characters as much as Earth to Echo. It's a surprisingly resonant feature that emphasizes the togetherness and foundation of friendship vital to overcoming adversities in childhood. At times, its ambition reaches the heights of iconic children's adventures like The Goonies and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (to which comparisons are almost necessary, since the film borrows heavily from those '80s classics in both structure and theme). Yet the film ultimately settles on a story that doesn't want to deliver a strong social message that its opening moments allude to, nor does it aim to make profound realizations about technology and extra-terrestrial life. Instead, it's a straightforward tale about loners growing up in the same neighborhood that face the end of their life as they know it: not the end of the world, but the end of their friendships.

The trio at the heart of the story spends every waking moment together: Alex (Teo Halm) is a foster child that feels isolated due to his parents having a new baby; Tuck (Astro) has an abrasive older brother that gets the family's attention while they focus on moving away; and Munch (Reese Hartwig) is the techie nerd that loves dearly but couldn't act normal if his life depended on it. They are all likable presences primarily because they are kind-hearted kids who focus on helping and supporting each other. One sweet moment has Munch saying that he can't lie to his mom because, after her divorce, she's had enough men lying to her. The boys soon find out, however, that the time spent in their neighborhood may be short-lived due to the construction of a highway over the area of land on which they live. These construction workers won't let them know why it's happening, just that it is and they need to move soon or else they'll be forcefully evicted.

Before their last night, they discover that people's cell phones are acting up and showing a digital map to some place in the desert. Their curiosity spikes. They decide to take a journey to discover what exactly this is, soon finding parts that help them put together a mechanical alien that they name Echo. This extra-terrestrial is hurt and needs help getting back to his ship. They discover that there are others out there looking for Echo and hoping to use him for scientific research to understand why these aliens are on Earth. If the premise sounds like science-fiction, it's surprisingly a character-driven effort that emphasizes melodrama over large visual effects. That may be a disappointment for some, but upon viewing it's a refreshingly balanced take on a topic that we've seen many other times, and in better films, I might add. But the characters make the film: Hartwig brings Munch a tenderness and compassionate insight that goes past the whacky sidekick persona usually employed in children's movies. And the decision to have the make-up of the group be a foster child, an African-American, and an overweight outcast shows the increasingly changing landscape of the American family.

Yet despite the film's ambitious first half set-up, the second half is marked by a lack of emotional and narrative drive. The story bogs itself down in plot points rather than actual stakes for the characters and their actions, leading to a distanced viewing that feels inconsequential. Science fiction can usually comment on society in some affecting way, which the first ten minutes promise remarkably: the inconsiderate destruction of human lives at the cost of a freeway is a stark realization of our times and the necessity to expand. But that promise falls away with disregard for that social insight in favor of Echo-driven storytelling. The film will certainly please kids and hit the right comedic notes for both the little ones and adults. Most importantly, despite its narrative and tonal flaws, Earth to Echo cares deeply about its characters and their friendship. However distant it may seem emotionally in its second half, there's a shred of compassionate storytelling that feels refreshing amidst much of the pessimism in mainstream film.

Deliver Us From Evil - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Deliver Us From Evil  

Starring Eric Bana, Joel McHale, Edgar Ramirez and Olivia Munn.

Directed by Scott Derrickson

From Screen Gems and Jerry Bruckheimer Films

Rated R

118 minutes.

Deliver Us From Evil; Return to Sender

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Deep into Deliver Us From Evil, two police detectives are searching an apartment complex for a demon-possessed Iraq War veteran. One of the men, an Australian with a bad Bronx accent, turns to the other man and tells him, “We should split up.”

Obviously no one here has actually seen a horror movie. And that’s the problem with any horror flick: the audience is always smarter than the characters. In Deliver Us From Evil’s case, the intelligence gap is especially noticeable considering these characters aren’t horny teens vacationing at an abandoned cabin in the woods, but veteran detectives who presumably graduated the police academy without shooting their hands off or wrapping their cruiser around a telephone pole in the parking lot.

The cops are Sarchie (Eric Bana), the “we should split up” genius, and Butler (Joel McHale), who’s backward hat bro-ness wouldn’t cut it in a Limp Bizkit video. They cruise the New York streets waiting for the ping of Sarchie’s detective radar, his internal WTF-locator. It starts pinging a lot around three combat veterans from Iraq who may have brought a dark curse back from the warzone. And “dark curse” isn’t a metaphor for PTSD; they actually bring a stupid superstitious demon back with them. The demon is activated when it sees a Latin curse written on pretty much any surface. As luck would have it, two of the soldiers started a painting company after their tours in Iraq, which means they can start painting the curse all around town, but mostly in dank basements, creaky-floored Brownstones and — oh, you know, wherevs — the freakin’ lion enclosure at the zoo.

Bana is a likeable enough guy. He has the face of an everyman, and the seriousness of someone who wouldn’t put up with the events of Deliver Us. But in walks Sarchie to every terrible horror cliche the movie can hit before some unseen buzzer goes off and points are tallied. Cats hiss and jump, lights flicker, flashlights go dead, bathtub water spins and churns, mirrored doors are closed, a piano is tickled in the dark … at one point a Jack in the Box turns up with terrifying motives. This is pretty much the most basic horror package. These gags are sold in bulk at Costco.

Nevertheless, the film unspools ever forward, the mismatched pairing of Seven and The Exorcist. Edgar Ramirez turns up as some kind of defrocked exorcist priest, who’s too handsome and cool for the priesthood, but there he is in a 30-minute exorcism listening to The Doors (it’s the demon’s favorite band) as some poor actor has to say vile things in a gurgly voice. And why do demons talk like the Cookie Monster? A demon with Sam Cooke’s voice could pretty much conquer the world, but apparently they haven’t figured that out yet. And speaking of demons, have you seen those hilarious Bob Larson videos? This movie should have hired those actors.

Deliver Us From Evil is written and directed by Scott Derrickson, who has a lot of experience with horror films, including Sinister, The Devil’s Knot and the The Exorcism of Emily Rose. His career makes a strong case for a theory I’ve long championed: every director should make one horror film, but no director should make two. Kubrick, Spielberg, Scorsese, Friedkin … they’ve all made contributions to the genre, and yet they’ve never repeated themselves simply because they only made one of them. Now here’s Derrickson, whose entire career has exploited the same jump scares that look pretty much identical from movie to movie. He’s not doing horror any favors by diluting its features.

But horror sells, they’re cheap to produce, and easy to make. And judging by the scripts, they’re green-lit with a shrug from a studio head — “eh, whatever.” By those standards, Deliver Us From Evil is exactly what you’d expect with a modern horror movie. And by that I mean it’s weak and irrelevant.