The Purge: Anarchy review

               It’s difficult to enjoy a genre movie about government-sanctioned annual murder sprees when every three weeks or so our news is treated to another mass shooting or a real-life tragedy, but horror films and thrillers have occasionally been able to make poetic sense from of a senseless time.  In this regard, writer/director James DeMonaco’s  “The Purge: Anarchy”  at least tries to contextualize his brand of schlock alongside easy metaphors and well-worn, occupy-era allegory.

                While last summer’s surprise horror-hit “The Purge” only hinted at its dystopian sci-fi conceits, settling closer within the intimate, home-invader sub-genre, this sequel opens up DeMonaco’s futuristic setting. Rather than being locked into one location, we travel through the murderous streets, following a handful of frightened survivors as they look for temporary refuge from the bloody holiday. Pair number one consists of an inner-city mother and teenage daughter (Eva Sanchez and Zoe Soul) whose apartment door is kicked in by their sexually frustrated slumlord. After barely escaping his attack, they run into pair number two, a young disgruntled couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) whose car dies in the wrong side of town just before a city-wide alarm sets off the lawless free-for-all. The only thing keeping these four alive is a stoic police Sergeant (Frank Grillo) who’s on a path of vengeance, as he stalks the roads in his armored car.

                It’s clear that DeMonaco grew up on movies like John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” and Walter Hill’s “The Warriors” and tries to bring the same sense of unflinching bleakness alongside a broad satire of our current social landscape. But like other throwbacky horror directors such as Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, DeMonaco’s films live and die within the borders of their pastiche. As a fan, he can come up with an exploitation premise that sounds great as a one paragraph synopsis on the back of a DVD. As a director, he seems to struggle when it comes to telling an engaging story with characters you might care about.

                Neither Purge is particular memorable or entertaining, given their anarchic concepts, and unlike the Carpenter film’s they endlessly reference, their dower tone makes it uncomfortable to revel in the mindless popcorn violence. Likewise, the ripped-from-the-headlines soapboxing about class wars and wealth disparity lacks the depth or insight for the film to really work as a think-piece. Instead, we are treated to a competent TV-level cast wandering around an aimless plot as they jump from one scenario to another—some of which are mildly rousing, most of which are poorly staged and severely devoid of the necessary filmic discipline to garner adequate thrills.

                At best, “The Purge:  Anarchy” is a fanboy wish fulfillment that will make you nostalgic for Regan-era paranoia, at worst, it’s a philosophically muddy piece of trash-cinema that juxtaposes awkwardly and flippantly against the kinds of real-world terror and random acts of violence reported nightly on CNN. Perhaps only time and distance can illuminate the appropriate perspective to really understand what these movies are trying to say and what they might be doing effectively. Regardless, in a contextual vacuum, they tease more than they satisfy.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2014

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes review

                Nobody thought that 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” would actually be pretty darn good. Despite a notable lack of charisma from its human performers and an unrefined tonal execution by director Rupert Wyatt, the movie’s central story about a super-smart chimp named Caesar losing faith in his human masters and rising to become an ape revolutionary, was surprisingly nuanced and engaging in a way that its pulpy source material didn’t initially suggest. Though light on the social satire originally in the forefront of the classic Apes series, ‘Rise’ was a delicate character study that argued for the artistic validity of animated motion capture performances, giving actor Andy Sirkis the opportunity to turn in a mo-cap tour-de-force.

                This summer’s sequel “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”, directed by J.J. Abrams protégé Matt Reeves, chronicles Caesar’s tumultuous reign as the leader of the ape rebellion. After the world’s human population has been devastated by a virus sprung from the same concoction that gave the primates their intelligence, a small group of survivors trek into the woods to activate a local dam, hoping to restore power to their near-vacant city. On the way, the group stumbles upon an ape village, accidentally inciting a diplomatic scuffle when a clumsy human nervously shoots one of their guards. Luckily for them, group leader Malcolm (played by “Zero Dark Thirty” actor Jason Clarke) is able to calm the storm long enough to allow the excavators to enter the ape’s territory while they work on the broken dam.

                Caesar’s lingering hope for human civility allows for him to carry out the hesitant truce, particularly as his ape queen becomes ill after childbirth and Malcolm’s partner Ellie (Kerry Russell) has the medical background to aid in her recovery.  However, Caesar’s war general, a spiteful chimp named Koba, still psychologically and physically scared by human experimentation, reveals less trust in the union and begins to enact a counter agenda of his own.

                Like the previous film, the strength of this feature is in its deep-digging character work.  Though some of the apes are able to string together words to create broken sentences, the majority of their actions and emotions are expressed physically through detailed computer animation. Said animation and other special effects have been significantly improved since the last installment, and the motion capture body-work by Andy Sirkis and other members of the ape-cast are especially fluid and believable.

                The action is ramped for genre-fulfilling summer movie thrills but it is the quiet moments between the storms that keep the audience invested in the plight of both sides of the futuristic cold-war. In our current socio-political climate it’s difficult to not draw parallels to America’s divided views on gun violence, as well as global tensions between hostile nations and their ever- intensifying saber-rattling. Of course the Apes series has always aimed to discuss these sorts of ideas and Reeves’ sensitive direction allows for intellectual discourse, just under the surface of the blockbuster’s bombast.

                While some of the characters are noticeably underwritten—particularly Kerry Russell, Gary Oldman as a trigger-happy Donald Rumsfeld type,  and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Jason Clarke’s teenage son—the emotional foundation of this story is solid enough to keep you glued to every interaction on the screen, particularly by the titular simians. Those grievances aside, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is a substantial achievement that raises the bar for genre filmmaking in 2014 by being intimate, epic and distinctly human at the same time.

Grade: A-

  

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2014

Jersey Boys review

                Both as an actor and as a filmmaker, director Clint Eastwood has become synonymous with working class, blue collar American romanticism. His best movies are no-nonsense genre staples that give actors enough room to breathe and explore their characters, in stories that vibrate in the margins between Speilbergian optimism and the darker shades of the types of 70s films in which he once stared.  It’s a tricky balance to strike every time and as he grows older, struggling to differentiate a chair from a responsive human being, he also seems to have a harder time distinguishing the good cinematic ideas from the bad.

                In his most recent offering, “Jersey Boys”, based on a Tony award winning Broadway production, Eastwood curiously tries to ape Scorsese’s greatest hits, as he portrays the popular soda-shop pop-rock band Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons as self-made wise guys, struggling to keep their egos in check long enough to make the money and get the respect they never had growing up on the streets. And in attempting to bridge the tone of a Broadway musical with the grit of something like a “Mean Streets” or “Goodfellas”, the movie never finds a comfortable identity of its own. Instead, the whole thing wobbles around like a confused drunk prostitute, trying on styles she can’t afford in stores she doesn’t belong in.

                With that said, Clint likes his actors and his movies always accommodate their needs and talents, and even here newcomers like John Lloyd Young, as the passive Frankie Valli, fills the role with earnest desire and interior complexity while his character is passed around and forced into crime and/or fame by his frienemy Tommy DeVito, played by “Boardwalk Empire” actor Vincent Piazza. Piazza channels a youthful De Niro as the selfish but charismatic guitar player and lights up every scene he’s in with familiar, yet effortless energy.  Other characters, such as Christopher Walken as the mobster kingpin Gyp DeCarlo and Mike Doyle as the band’s flamboyant producer Bob Crewe, keep things light, even as the messy screenplay attaches more and more narrative weight.

                Unfortunately, performances alone couldn’t save this movie from its inherent problems. The plot skims the specifics of the band’s rock and roll history during the 50s and 60, instead focusing on the “Behind the Music” gossip of interpersonal tensions, affairs and legal scuffles, before eventually downing in 20 unearned minutes of drama between a washed up Vali and his teenage daughter that we never got to know as a character up to that point. Stylistically, Eastwood oscillates between stagey camera set pieces and blocking that resembles edited close ups on the proscenium and distractingly unoriginal tracking shots where the characters break the fourth wall by addressing the camera directly.

                The one thing that could have saved this Broadway adaptation--the music-- is far too understated and sometimes just avoided to make room for the multi-stranded plot and the shifts in character perspective. When we finally do get barely contextualized performances of Four Seasons’ standards such as Sherry and Big Girls Don’t Cry, it only underlines the movie’s missed opportunity. There’s no lack of ambition in “Jersey Boys” but it what it does lack is the discipline and finesse required to keep a biopic of this scope from tripping allover itself.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2014

22 Jump Street review

                Phil Lord and Chris Miller have a made a career out of meta-absurdism, first in their short-lived Mtv cartoon “Clone High” and then later with their feature-length animated films “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and  this year’s  “The Lego Movie.” While primarily working on high concept, half-thought adaptations, these guys know exactly how to approach a project with enough creative distance to see Hollywood cynicism for what it is and point it out on screen, while still living up to their end of the bargain. This puts them in the unique position where they can make fun of their own movies and be as subversive as they want as long as they still make a profit.

                Like their animated features, nobody expected a “21 Jump Street” movie to be anything worthwhile, but because of their devil may care self-awareness they managed to wrangle an adaptation of a forgotten 80s high school drama into being a pretty relevant and effective comedy. The sequel—an even harder pill to swallow conceptually— doesn’t deliver as much heart or as much insight into the modern American teenage experience, but it does maintain the first movie’s quick wit and the skewering of its own commercial purpose.

                After a disastrous drug pinch, undercover agents Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt (Jonah Hill) are placed back into their student personas, now enrolled in University to find the source of a new street drug called WhyPhy. While there, they each find a new niche to fit into. Jenko finds his fit as a super-jock football star, and Schmidt finds love as a sensitive poetry slammer.

                While the plot is peripherally interested in the drug case they’re supposed to be following, the movie tends to focus more on the two’s relationships and the awkwardness of masculine bonding in male dominated crime-comedies. The Lord/Miller meta-humor is prevalent throughout, including many fourth-wall shattering in-jokes about the franchise itself as well as pop-culture references surrounding both actors’ celebrity. However, instead of the perceptive commentary surrounding teen trends that peppered the first movie, this installment delves more into homoerotic tension inherent in cop movies and post-Apatow buddy flicks. As Jenko finds kinship with a dreamy football meathead and Schmidt falls for an artsy creative writing major, the two begin to drift apart, causing jealousies and comedic set-pieces based on clichés and set-ups from American rom-coms.

                 The gay jokes become even more punctuated when Tatum’s character berates a drug dealer for using the three lettered ‘F’ word, in a scene that could be interpreted as a sign that casual homophobia is officially intolerable or that straight Hollywood has to find craftier ways to get away with it. This double-sided suspicion can be read throughout the film’s entirety, but because it kept me laughing and because I am still on board with the unlikely comedic screen chemistry between Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill I am willing to give the questionable social politics within movie the benefit of doubt. Others may not be as forgiving.

                As a pop-corn comedy “22 Jump Street” does exactly what it says on the box, it’s funny, it’s fast moving, and while it’s constantly winking at the camera it manages to surprise with quick plot shifts and mini-jokes hidden underneath the folds of the major set-ups. What it doesn’t do as well is tell a coherent story that moves effortlessly from point-A to point-B. Between the jokes and the character work, the framework of the story is occasionally muddled from too many gags and too many call-backs to the previous movie. In poking fun at the excessive nature of unwarranted sequels Lord and Miller have--maybe intentionally?--created an excessive sequel that, intentional or not, still suffers from the same trappings.

Grade: B-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2014

Edge of Tomorrow review

               Historically there has never been a great videogame film adaptation. Sure, some might argue that movies like “Mortal Kombat” or “Prince of Persia” are watchable, but given their competition within the genre that simply isn’t saying anything. Regardless, videogame aesthetics in production design, special effects and level-boss-level-boss plot structuring have definitely infiltrated the action movie genre, especially in the last 10-15 years.  “Edge of Tomorrow”—not based on a game property—is an action sci-fi that not only understands the appeal of videogame logic, but, more importantly, it understands how to integrate it into a compelling narrative without having to shoehorn fan-bits from a known franchise.

                Tom Cruise plays Cage, a propagandist for the new world military after a meteor landing sets loose a full-on alien takeover.  After paying his dues around the edges of the war he is drafted in by his superiors and thrown into battle, only to quickly die on the beaches of an ambush, finding himself returning to the same day and the same battle over and over again until he can learn from his mistakes well enough to find the source of the Alien hive-mind. In discovering the best ways to avoid his demise he meets Rita (Emily Blunt), a war hero who once shared the same deja-vu experience and who can best help Cage accomplish his existential mission.

                “Edge of Tomorrow” is an exciting, well-constructed action movie that doesn’t assume the worst of its audience. While I would hardly call it an intellectual experience, it’s at least formally interested in breaking down the genre in terms of its use of temporal space within its stop and start-over conceit. In creating a ‘game’ like narrative with something similar to a save points and boss-battles, the movie subtly challenges the notion of action movie death and the meaningfulness of second chances. Walk of characters such as Bill Paxton as the barking drill Sargent is afforded the choice to change his reactions and his line delivery a little bit every time the story rewinds, as well as other characters whose parts, had they only been on screen the one time, would have registered as incidental at best.  Impressively, by the very nature of its mechanics the movie forces us to get to know background characters, see things from multiple perspectives, and analyze the structure of the plot, and, to its credit, it does so without ever feeling fussy or overtly experimental.

                Cruise and Blunt have just enough screen chemistry to keep the ball rolling and the special effects and the world building are adequately high-tech and cleanly presented, if not somewhat underwhelming in terms creating a visual experience original enough to comfortably call this movie a modern classic. But while “Edge of Tomorrow” may not break the mold visually, its tight script, its considerate storytelling and its light comedic touch elevates this film from summer movie CGI-pulp to something at-least worth giving a second look.

Grade: B+

Originally published on the Idaho State Journal/June-2014

A Million Ways to Die in the West review

                 Seth McFarlane has created a brand of comedy full of endless in-jokes, references, and absurdist asides that have cemented his popular animated sitcoms like” Family Guy” and “American Dad” as the “Simpsons” for the ADHD generation.  Last year his first feature “Ted”, about a foul-mouthed magic teddy bear voiced by McFarlane himself, proved for many that his raunchy non-sequitur style of humor could play just as well in a long-form three act structure. But underneath all his frat-bro bravado and his edgy envelope pushing, McFarlane is a traditional genre enthusiast. Like Matt Stone and Trey Parker of “South Park”, he writes a lot of his own music, he’s a Broadway song-and-dance geek, and the majority of his best jokes owe everything to the classic Hollywood references he liberally pulls from.

                Unlike “Ted”, which I found to be mildly funny when it wasn’t being obnoxiously sexist and homophobic,  “A Million Ways to Die in the West” has a slightly better sense of consistency and engaging storytelling, without having to sell out the dignity of his characters for a joke.  Moreover, it seems to celebrate its comedic influences—specifically the western parodies of the ‘70s such as “Three Amigos”,and even more specifically “Blazing Saddles”—in a way that projects a fanboy-ish glee built from feely-good memories of McFarlane’s youth.  And like an excited fanboy, Seth occasionally puts the minutia cart in front of his comedic horse and struggles to find the balance between his usual bawdy humor and the innocent joy for the genres he’s sending up.

                McFarlane plays Albert, an awkward sheep farmer who feels alienated from the dangerous lifestyle led by the other cowboys during the 1860s wild wild west. His girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) has just left him for a mustachioed dandy named Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), leading Albert to stupidly schedule a duel with his enemy without having any knowledge of how to shoot a gun. Luckily, his new mysterious friend Anna (Charlize Theron), the secret wife of a traveling Bandit played by Liam Neeson, helps prepare him for the worst by teaching him the basics of gunplay while at the same time unpacking his guarded masculinity.

                From the opening credits, accompanied by an original song by the director himself, it becomes obvious that this film is meant to be a throwback to a simpler style of spoof comedy, and for the most part, as a story, the movie moves easily and without much narrative fuss. Unlike his cartoons, McFarlane tempers his urge to jump to asides and tangents and admirably keeps the story about his characters and their—admittedly cliché—motivations.  Uncharacteristically, rather than trying to build a story around a pile of pre-written jokes, as is usually the Seth McFarlane way, it’s the comedy in the film that’s often forced and, at times, poorly integrated. What results is about a 40% laugh to joke ratio.  Neil Patrick Harris steals every scene he’s in and there are a handful of visual gags that inspire a decent chuckle—that is if the movie’s trailer didn’t already spoil them for you—but just as many gags fall flat and sometimes Seth’s pandering to the  lowest common denominator peeks through, especially in a series sorely unfunny sequences featuring Giovanni Rabisi as Albert’s virginal best friend and his prostitute girlfriend played by a wasted Sarah Silverman, whose making him wait for their wedding night.   

                Though this film will eventually find a life in mid-afternoon cable programming, “A Million Ways to Die in the West” is a well-intended mixed bag. McFarlane’s natural confidence and good looks slightly miscasts him as a believable nebbish, but he has genuine on- screen chemistry with Theron and I would love to watch these two in a classical Hollywood musical parody someday (come on Seth, you know you want to). Ultimately, this comedy is more fun than it is funny. 

Grade: C+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2014