End of Watch review

                 Once upon a time there was a little horror movie phenomenon called “The Blair Witch Project”  and it freaked a lot of people out because it was shot on a hand held camera, causing the audience to question whether or not the terrifying recording was “real”. It wasn’t… but since then we have been inundated with hundreds of these ‘found-footage’ style movies in increasing numbers every year. What’s more, is now they don’t have to be horror films. This year alone we have been introduced to the first hand-held superhero flick with “Chronicle”, the first digi-cam teen sex-comedy with “Project X” and now the first faux-Youtube cop-drama with “End of Watch”.

                 Written and directed by David Ayer (“Training Day”, “Street Kings”), “End of Watch” accounts the day by day scenarios of two average L.A. beat cops, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña. Early on we see Officer Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal) showing his partner Mike Zavala (Peña) his new camera equipment and how he plans to log his police work for some unknown project that is never really explained. We watch them as they goof in the shower room, make tasteless jokes as they patrol the streets and gamble their lives as they raid hidden fronts for the Mexican cartel, who are slowly positioning an all-out war with the LAPD. We also see how they conduct their romantic lives, as Taylor falls in love with a chipper grad-student played by Anna Kendrick and Zavala makes way for a new child in his life. As the risks get higher, the rewards get richer and the two find themselves further and further involved in a street-level massacre neither of them are equipped to handle—all of which, would have been more exciting if I could have seen a damn thing that was happening.

                Despite the fact that I kind of enjoyed myself, there are of plenty of reasons why this movie is subject to criticism. Politically speaking, this depiction of the LAPD seems fall in line with the clichés of racism in that particular department. Though one of the leads is Mexican I found it to be more than a little suspicious that every crime in this story is perpetrated by African American’s or Hispanics. This is also reinforced by an unsettling strain of casual separatism, sexism and homophobia expressed in the comedic banter between the two main characters throughout the film.

                As I have already stated in exasperation, the cinematography looks really bad, which I won’t excuse even if  it’s ‘supposed’ to.  By tethering itself to this first-person style, many of the movie’s core action scenes are incomprehensible and visually muddled. Also, as a personal gripe, whenever a movie presents the footage as self-recorded by its characters, I am taken out of its supposed realism every time I see an angle that a camera shouldn’t be in, an editing splice or cut that wouldn’t make sense or an establishing crane/helicopter shot of the cityscape—in which there are many in “End of Watch”.  

                Despite my numerous problems with this picture, I couldn’t help but be entertained by the hard-R-rated energy it celebrates and the charismatic performances by its cast. I also appreciate Ayer’s screenplay for delving into character, keeping the emotional core of the movie balanced and pacing the episodic beats of the timeline very well. It takes risks and it’s certainly not a safe movie but it’s not a very smart movie either. The thick-headed testosterone is somewhat absorbing as you slowly drop your guard and accept the gritty style of what Ayer is presenting, but when it is all said and done—as amusing as the ultra-violence and vulgar dialogue is at times—this film is made with the same moral complexity and technical competence as a sleazy episode of “COPS”. 

Grade: C 

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Sep-2012

Resident Evil: Retribution review

               How bad can something be before it starts to become funny? This is the question writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson has been asking his whole career, and finally, after five movies in this tired video-game inspired franchise, I think I’m starting to get the joke.  Like an episode of Family Guy proves, sometimes a lame gag repeated ad nauseum can eventually accumulate hilarity, not because it was ever funny, but because of the absurdity of how hard they are trying to sell it.  This is “Resident Evil: Retribution”.

                As with all of the other movies by this director, who has spent the majority of his career ruining established properties like “Mortal Kombat”, “Alien vs. Predator” and “Death Race”, “Resident Evil: Retribution” is as over-designed,  messy, action B-movie, with pretty much no coherent plot to be found. Actually, unlike his other Resident Evil’s, this one commits more fully to the video-game structure, in that every scene is a goal or task oriented set-piece, with a boss battle at the end of it. Along the way, our hero Alice, played by Anderson’s long-time wife and collaborator Mila Jovovich, has to pick up different achievements and upgrades, whilst protecting her team and her clone daughter.

                So what’s the ‘story’ you might ask? I have not the slightest clue.  The movie begins with a big war scene (shot in reverse and then back forward, for some unknown reason) between Alice and the evil Umbrella Corporation, who have been trying to unleash a zombie/monster virus on the world since the first installment back in 2002. Suddenly, Alice wakes up as a happy house mom with a kid and husband…until they are attacked by zombies with tentacles coming out of their mouths. We then find out, through a lot of clunky exposition, that she is actually entrapped in a big simulated city, where Umbrella plans to test zombie outbreaks on millions of clones. Is Alice a clone herself? We don’t ever find out and we don’t really care. Instead we get a series of digital-looking action scenes as she and her team of one dimensional sidekicks have to shoot their way through the phony city.

                Everything about this movie is consistently bad; the hammy acting by its C-list cast, the showy action shots—done with that obligatory post-Wachowski, sub-Snyder, slow-motion moving camera--and its attention seeking,  poke-you-in-the-eye 3D. Every single element is a sigh and groan until you realize that everything is also consistently cheesy, over the top, and *gasp* fun. By abandoning plot and character development completely, Anderson has now widdled this franchise down to his bare fanboy fetishes, resulting in the type of bad movie that invites you to mock it along the way. This movie is so unnecessary and so lazy that it feels like a parody of a Paul Anderson film, and if that were actually the case then this would be something of a satirical masterpiece.  However, as it stands, this is still just a stupid action movie made for people who are only interested in receiving the bare-minimum of their genre expectations and the comfort of brand recognition.

                So, what can I say? Should you see this movie? I don’t know. If you have seen all the others and you liked them, then I doubt you would suddenly find fault in this mess. If you have never been a fan or you don’t have the stomach for heavy loads of cheese, then you better stay away. However, if you can shift your perspective and appreciate the movie for all its awkward and outrageous camp, than maybe you can enjoy “Resident Evil: Retribution”.  It’s not boring, and better yet, it’s only 90 minutes long.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2012

The Words review

                 It has been noted by many that making a film about writing can be very difficult to pull off because the act, in and of itself, isn’t very cinematic. “The Words”, a romantic drama starring Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana, struggles with this very issue within the entirety of its running time, but rather than trying to find creative ways to keep things dynamic, instead it grinds its heels in the dirt, expecting the audience to drop their guard and go along with this sterile, meandering story-within-a-story-within-a-story.  Normally I could be sympathetic to this type of risk taking in cinema…that is if this movie hadn’t been so belligerently boring.

                This directing debut by Lee Sternthal and Brain Klugman thoroughly explores and fetishizes writing; writing as a process, as a lifestyle and as an art form. The plot is split into three separate narrative timelines and each layer focuses on a separate love story. But ultimately, like its writer characters (who are incessantly narrating the film within an inch of its life) this movie spends far too much time telling and not showing.

                The first layer consists of an aged writer named Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) doing a reading of his latest novel for a large class of grad students. There, a would-be extramarital lover (Olivia Wilde) is sitting in, waiting for her chance to pounce. 

                The predominate plot is detailed within the book that Quaid’s character is reading, a story about a young struggling writer named Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) who moves to New York, where he is unsuccessfully trying to get his first novel published. After him and his supportive wife (Zoe Saldana) are married, they take a trip to Paris, where Rory finds an old manuscript for a novel that he decides to publish as his own.  After doing so, his career is magically transformed and he becomes an overnight literary celebrity.  Soon he is confronted by an old mysterious man (Jeremy Irons) who tells him that he was the original writer. Because this movie wasn’t convoluted enough, we then enter a third level that takes place in Irons flashback, in which he then goes on and on about his lost love in World War II.  Are you following any of this?  If you’re not, I don’t blame you. 

                I can easily say that I haven’t seen this kind of pig’s ear of a screenplay since last year’s “Sucker Punch”.  Each plotline is less interesting than the last and as soon as you find yourself begging for the movie to get the point, it decides to embark on yet another aimless digression.  The multiple framing devices serve no final purpose and the supposed endgame to all of this narrative tilt-a-whirling is absolutely bewildering and cumbersome.

                Cooper, Saldana and company, including the now-rarely seen Jeremy Irons, are all doing their best to carry this dead dog of a movie through to the ending, but minutes seem to stretch into hours, as you pass many identical scenes of couples kissing, writers typing and people reading.  The pacing is inconsistent and the dreary score seems to be working hard to lull you into a daze, hopefully putting you to sleep,  where you can escape the film’s own pretentious self-satisfaction.  

                The only credit I can give to “The Words” is that it looks good.  The cinematography by Antonio Calvache is presented with obvious craft and an attention to detail. However, without any hesitation, I beg any reader interested to avoid this unmitigated, tangential, yawn of a film.

               

Grade: D -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Sep-2012

The Possession review

In 1973 “The Exorcist” was unleashed upon the world and since then we have never been able to shake ourselves from it. By taking old scary movie cliché’s and throwing them out of the window, William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty changed horror forever and had set the bar for that genre very, very high. What we have in the wake of that film is “The Possession”, a formula chiller, based on the new cliché’s designed by all of the subsequent Exorcist clones—in which there are legion. 

Based on the supposed true story—aren’t they always—“The Possession” stars a haggard looking Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Clyde, a divorced college basketball coach with two pre-teen daughters. His ex-wife, played by Kyra Sedgwick, has begun to move on and has brought a replacement father into their old home. His daughters are still hoping for reconciliation but with a possible career change in Clyde’s future, that prospect seems even more unlikely.  One day while Clyde is trying to keep his kids entertained, they decide to visit a yard sale near his new bachelor pad. His youngest daughter Emily, played Natasha Calis, finds an antique wooden box, etched with a strange Hebrew inscription.  Over time Emily’s demeanor begins to change, her room starts to occupy hordes of CGI moths and it is discovered that an ancient Jewish demon, known as a Dybbuk, has begun to share living space inside her body.

Too often are movies rarely any more or less entertaining then their advertising. “The Possession” is a trite and lazy film that does exactly what it promises and nothing else.  Produced by Sam Raimi, who was once well known for making horror movies outside of the box (The Evil Dead), this treatment, directed by the Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal, is so tethered to CGI, digital color correction and an obstructive sound design, that the movies core characters and themes seem to be forced from one special effects moment  to another. What results is another one of those drab, blue-grey, washed out horror movies where the score seems to be guiding the audience more than the director.

                What’s more disappointing is that some of these performances are actually pretty good.  Jeffrey Dean Morgan strips away his usual T.V star swagger for a more Javier Bardem-like sullenness.  The two young actresses playing his daughters, both the possessed one and normal one, are also very watchable.  Toward the end of the first third, I found myself more interested in the peripheral divorce story than the looming ghosty plot that dominates the majority of the film. However, when hell literally breaks loose, characters are forgotten, believability is compromised, and while the movie replaces the R-rated bloody crucifix, for a PG-13 star of David, the final act is still basically “The Exorcist” in a yamaka.

So even if it’s not original, how does “The Possession” work as a horror film? Will you find it scary? I will admit that there are some effective chills along way but structurally the movie works as a series of scenes comprised of these exact beats: divorce is a bummer, teenagers whining, something weird happens, tense music, the sound drops and then the big jump-scare—rinse and then repeat.  Some of the imagery is fulfilling in its creepiness and there are a few creative set-pieces that almost belong in a better movie.  Ultimately if you want to be startled for a couple hours but you don’t want to be challenged at all, then I suggest you wait a few years and watch “The Possession” on basic cable.

Grade:  C-

Originally Published by the Idaho State Journal/Sep-2012

Lawless review

              What is the fascination with people and crime, specifically crime in movies? I myself am a big fan the kind that involves violence towards authority types and the planning and stealing of things.  Crime genres are marketable because they can become a vicarious wish fulfillment for the audience. Gangster movies in particular capitalize on the exploitation of the American dream.  “Lawless”, a new period gangster film, brought to us by Aussie auteur John Hillcoat (“The Road”, “The Proposition”) and writer Nick Cave— who has fronted several successful rock outfits like The Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party, and Grinderman—presents an unabashedly apologetic representation of the outlaw that is both ultra-violent and idealistic at the same time.

This film, based on the novel “The Wettest County in the World” by Matt Bondurant, is a supposed true-story about a family of brothers in the 30’s who work in Franklin-County Virginia as bootleggers during prohibition.  The eldest brother Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy) has created a unique relationship with the police in his town, by ways of intimidation and sometimes accommodation. What is created is a special kind of ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ protocol that seems to work at keeping peace between the lawless and law enforcement.   Shia LeBeouf plays the youngest brother Jack, a bright-eyed gangster-wannabe who has eyes on the preacher’s daughter (Mia Wasikowska). Jason Clarke plays the middle child Howard, a hotheaded alcoholic who is always one comment away from rolling up his sleeves. Things change when a Chicago special deputy named Charley Rakes (Guy Peirce) enters the town and decides to makes the Bondurant brothers his special project.  Out of desperation, the brothers turn to mob to sell their hooch and eventually things get complicated and bloody.

Almost like “The Godfather” for the hillbilly set, this is a movie about brotherhood, masculinity and living by a familial set of morals and ethics. So many individual things about this movie showcase pop-entertainment at its highest caliber.  The sets and period costuming are spectacular, the soundtrack will send you to iTunes as soon as you get home and the direction by Hillcoat is equally visceral and contained. As an ensemble film the performances are all fantastic, especially by Tom Hardy who gives us another stunning physical portrayal and Guy Perce as the corrupt gentlemen-dandy, who also happens to be a sadistic psychopath.  Unfortunately where the movie fails for me is in Caves overambitious screenplay.

Because the story deals with so many individual characters and their individual arcs within the story, much of the plot becomes convoluted, episodic, and sometimes it just feels as though it’s making its self-up as it goes. By including two separate romances (one involving Tom Hardy and a waitress played by Jessica Chastain and the other with LeBeouf and Wasikowska) as well as another subplot dealing with the mob's battle with the police (and whatever it is that’s at stake for them) many story threads seem to be battling each other for screen time, leaving most of the secondary characters underdeveloped and the pacing erratic.

                Being based on a novel, I can see how all of these scene-bits were supposed to piece together, creating a sprawling epic story about the nature of the depression-era in American history. However as a condensed screenplay, “Lawless” feels like a two hour first-season recap of one of the coolest TV-shows that never existed.  With all of that said, I still have to recommend this movie despite all of its obvious storytelling problems. I do so because of the effectively sullen atmosphere, Hillcoat’s impressive display of craft within each scene and because it was genuinely unpredictable.  It’s not going to win any Oscars but it will end up on my DVD shelf.

Grade: B –

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Sep-2012