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Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2014.4

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<dl dt_class="field"> He's Just Not That Into You (2009) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1001508/">3/10</a> <div>A star-studded cast can't save this utterly derivative and cliché script. Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Connolly, Scarlet Johannson, Justin Long, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck. And Busy Phillips---of <i>Freaks and Geeks</i> fame---had a small role. This movie purports to dispel the myths of dating, marriage and male/female relationships. Though it may appear to do so superficially---at least it very clearly tells you that it is doing so---at a deeper level, it is no better than any other film in this genre. I don't remember every minute of this 129-minute movie---you read that correctly, this so-called "chick flick" is over two hours long and never seems to end---but I'm almost 100% certain that it failed the Bechdel Test.<fn> It also fails other common tests: there are a dozen lead characters and they're all white. The women all have low-level jobs---most work together in a cube farm and another is a struggling singer---while the men are all successful : one is a record executive, another owns/operates his own bar/restaurant, another is a successful real-estate agent and another's job is unclear but he owns his own boat. The women are all kind of dependent on their men, whining about their inability to get married or find a guy. The men clearly don't care. Not recommended.</div> Brother (2000) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222851/">8/10</a> <div>Takeshi Kitano directs himself in the starring role in this story of the journey to America of an exiled Yakuza gangster named Aniki Yamanoto. He is sparing in motion and speech but when he moves, he does so precisely and with great and often lethal force. He is also extremely shrewd at conquering territory in his newfound home, where the existing gangs seem to be less quick to pull triggers than he. The movie also stars a very young Omar Epps. Yamamoto joins forces with another local Japanese gang and they commence expanding their territory. There are many execution scenes that delineate the new power divide. There are scenes of self-mutilation among the Yakuza that makes you wonder whether they'll kill themselves off before their enemies can do it. They finally end up taking on the Mafia and things get really ugly. The scenes themselves are often very stylistic and pretty, despite the gruesome depictions in them. It's nicely filmed in what I've come to think of as the Japanese crime-drama style. Many of the shots feel like Grand Theft Auto Tokyo/San Francisco. Saw it in English and Japanese/Spanish with English subtitles. Recommended.</div> Sexy Beast (2000) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203119/">8/10</a> <div>This is an English crime movie starring Ben Kingsley as a thug named Don Logan sent to collect Ray Winstone's character, Gad, to help execute a robbery. Gad has been living in Spain for years after retiring from the safe-cracking business. Logan doesn't take no for an answer and he makes the most of his reputation as a ruthless henchman. Gad, his wife and his friend and wife are all extremely leery of Logan and give him a lot of leeway. Kingsley fills all the space he's given with menace, although it's a tight-rope of false menace versus the fear of the others, who just want to extricate themselves from this situation. They want the nightmare of Kingsley's character to go away and he <i>knows</i> this, he <i>feeds</i> off of it. Spoiler alert: Logan pushes them all too far and Gad's wife ends up taking him out with a shotgun after which he taunts them from the ground, spitting blood and curses and epithets while he chokes out his last. Gad goes to England to do the job anyway, trying to cover tracks, but the head honcho there---Teddy, played by ian McShane---oozes just as much menace as Don Logan. I thought the film had a nice style---it was directed by Brian Glazer---and it reminded me a bit of some of Kubrick's work. Recommended, but not highly.</div> Frozen (2103) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294629/">5/10</a> <div>The standard Disney princess-meets-boy movie has been transplanted to the great white North, presumably somewhere in ... Iceland? Because of the trolls? Or Norway because of all of the names, like Olaf? Probably generically European, I guess. It's all just one big place. The first act---about 40 minutes---is pretty insufferable. There is one forgettable musical number after another, with the most appalling lyrics. And then, out of nowhere, the door to the sauna/shop cabin in the woods opens and we are introduced to the innkeeper, who seems snatched right out of the <i>Emperor's New Groove</i> and is a breath of fresh---and funny---air in an otherwise odiously predictable movie. A movie made all the more unbearable by the back-to-back-to-back and seemingly endless crooning. The one song that really stood out was, of course, Olaf the snowman's ode to summer, another slyly hilarious song made poignant by his utter obliviousness to the meaning of the words he's singing. That twenty-minute segment in the middle could be extracted into a good short film. What I'm calling the third act was just as predictable as the first act. How were the much-vaunted animations? The snow was well-done, I guess. The human figures were terrible, at least the female ones were. Has anyone else noticed that Disney has ended up depicting females as Bratz dolls instead of human-looking? The male characters were fine, although of course all conventionally handsome. Josh Gad as Olaf was a standout. The musical numbers and plot was 100% designed so that Disney doesn't have to pay anyone to write the inevitable Broadway musical.</div> The Waterboy (1998) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120484/">6/10</a> It is neither an exaggeration nor necessarily a compliment to write that this is possibly Adam Sandler's best comedy, or is at least in the running with Happy Madison. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/">8/10</a> <div>A wonderful stop-motion animation written and directed by Wes Anderson and based on a story by Roald Dahl. The film is unmistakably a Wes Anderson flick with the usual rogue's gallery that includes Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe and Jason Schwartzman all lending their voices to characters. Meryl Streep lends her voice to Felicity Fox, Mr. Fox's wife. Mr. Fox is voiced by George Clooney, who at times seems to be channeling Everett McGill from <i>Oh Brother Where Art Thou</i>. There were no musical numbers, which was a nice change of pace from <i>Frozen</i>, which was filled end-to-end with them. The story follows a reprobate Mr. Fox who supplements a boring career as a newspaperman with a few last capers that involve stealing from three local farmers. The farmers respond with extreme prejudice and Mr. Fox's capers end up dragging the whole local animal world into danger. His son, Ash, is kind of strange (played by Schwartzman, of course) and in competition with his cousin, who's come to live with them for a while and who is quite an accomplished athlete much more in the vein of his uncle than his uncle's son (Ash) could ever be. The first and second acts were quite strong while the final act kind of dragged a bit, but it was a madcap and zany animated feature that is well worth the time. Recommended.</div> The Jungle Book (1967) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061852/">8/10</a> The classic Disney movie has its own cloying bits of story, but the feel of the film was somehow much more artistic than Disney's later efforts (like <i>Frozen</i>, reviewed above). The songs are great and include more than a few classics and more memorable characters than most of Disney's princess-drenched pap. Baloo, Bagira (Baggy), Ka and King Louie all stand out---although what also stands out is that there almost no female characters at all. The film's not without its problems, but the musical numbers are something to look forward to rather than to dread. Ka stretches all over the trees and forms stairs and wheels out of his coils for Mogli to fall into and it's somehow nicer than the CGI animations we have today. Recommended. Ponyo (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0876563/">7/10</a> This is a wonderfully drawn Japanese cartoon that has a plot made for six--year-olds. It was an adorable plot but it didn't give adults much to go on. I could only find a dubbed version (or perhaps the original was in English?) because I usually avoid Hollywood dubbing of Japanese anime like the plague. Ponyo's father was voiced by Liam Neeson---of all people---and his rather distinctive voice took me a bit out of the aesthetic of the film. Highly recommended for small kids but not anywhere on the level of a <i>Spirited Away</i> or <i>Howl's Moving Castle</i> for adults. Singin' in the Rain (1952) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045152/">7/10</a> Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen star in this movie about a silent-film company that makes the transition to sound. Set in 1927, the feel is quite over-the-top and it's hard to tell whether it feels dated because the film is from 1952 or whether it feels dated because it's pretending that it comes from 1927. I don't know if it's worth 8.4 out of 10 on IMDb but it definitely has its moments and it's definitely worth being called a classic. It was highly entertaining and there was a number near the end that was positively Daliesque. There were so many fantasies within fantasies that I think we were three inception-levels down if not four. O'Connor's "Make 'em laugh" routine is marvelous and Kelly's scene opposite Hagen where they act out a scene in a movie while discussing her having gotten the girl he likes fired was pretty inspired. Walk of Shame (2014) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2463288/">5/10</a> Elizabeth Banks is charming in this movie, which goes a long way to papering over the otherwise glaring cracks in the script. James Marsden is also quite good as the sheepish, earnest one-night-stand. It's a popcorn comedy that ended up being fun enough with an utterly unsurprising ending. Bill Burr had a cameo as a police officer but was unnecessarily brutal and not funny at all. Not recommended but also not not recommended. Prisoners (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392214/">8/10</a> Jake Gyllenhall and Hugh Jackman are the two leads in this well-made film about child abduction. Hugh Jackman plays the father, driven mad with grief over the loss of his daughter. Jake Gyllenhall plays the police officer assigned to the case. Both are very, very intense. Maria Bello played Jackman's wife, who arguably handled the abduction even worse than her husband. Paul Dano and Melissa Leo were both very, very good but I won't mention their roles so as not to spoil anything. The ending was a bit lame, in that it made what should have been routine police-work looks like nigh-miraculous leaps of intuition.<fn> Still, highly recommended. The Lego Movie (2014) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1490017/">4/10</a> <div>A movie for the A.D.D. generation. This movie is, on the surface, an explosion of color, sound and scene and context changes. Below the surface, there might be some social critique, but it is quickly buried beneath a relentless avalanche of nearly incomprehensible action. Imagine yourself clinging to the edge of a rubber tube, smashing your way down category--5 rapids, holding on for dear life and trying desperately to anticipate what's going on. That helpless feeling you have---if you've imagined properly---is exactly how you'll feel watching this movie. When it slows down for some insipid dialogue, delivered during a Matrix-like pause, you're ever so thankful that the onslaught on your brain has, for whatever reason, abated. You're so happy that you don't even care that the one-liners are carefully vetted to satisfy all audiences and censors and harbor no true critique. This movie is rated PG and is therefore open for kids of all ages---who are we kidding?---but in the first fifteen minutes, we see a man have half of his personality erased for failing to prove his allegiance by incapacitating his own parents. As the lead Lego-man said, <iq>I'm just gonna come right out and say this: I have no idea what this place is or what's going on---at all.</iq></div> Big Night (1996) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115678/">8/10</a> Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub play Italian brothers with a restaurant in New Jersey that is on the verge of closing because they cook authentic Italian food and the customers are sparse and mostly <iq>Philistines</iq> (as Tony Shalhoub says). This seemed a promising film, but I was unable to finish watching it. More details in a future edition. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843866/">8/10</a> <div>This is a very solid spy movie. There's good continuity from the first movie and Chris Evans and Scarlet Johansson reprise their respective roles well. I liked almost everything about this movie and look forward to more in the Captain America series. The effects were well-integrated and not too distracting right up until the very elegant ending credits. I'm not so happy with Samuel L. Jackson's continued ham-handed portrayal of Nick Fury, though I admit that I may not be remembering just how much of a jingoistic jerk Fury was in the comic books. My admittedly old memories of him all see him as "cool", whereas he was probably exactly the proponent of the security state that Jackson portrays him to be. Robert Redford is also way over the top and it's hard to tell whether he's deliberately being over the top in his portrayal of a right-wing power-hungry super-criminal and where I'm so out of touch with US culture that I can't tell that he's just espousing very mainstream views.<fn> The main premise involving H.Y.D.R.A. was well--thought-out and executed. Highly recommended.</div> My Cousin Vinny (1992) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104952/">8/10</a> It is absolutely clear from the first time she opens her mouth why Marisa Tomei earned an academy award for this movie. Joe Pesci is good, Ralph Macchio is...ok, but Marisa Tomei is spectacular. The whole movie is quite a clever and nicely made courtroom drama that pokes fun at everyone---although the American South arguably gets the worse and more unfair treatment. They're pretty much all hicks, according to this movie. Still, there are so many good lines and clever turns that it's definitely worth watching. Highly recommended. District B13 (2004) (fr) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414852/">6/10</a> This French parkour film stars one parkour star---David Belle, ostensibly the inventor of the sport---and one stuntman, Cyril Raffaelli, both of whom deliver some nicely choreographed fight scenes. The first act ends on a very cool note, with Belle delivering the coup de grâce. The plot is mostly predictable but it's quite well-made and the parkour scenes are worth the price of entry. Some of the thugs are less one-dimensional than usual (e.g. K2) and the sub-titles are idiomatically rather than literally translated. There's a bit of a twist at the end that's not bad. Recommended for fans of the genre. I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095348/">4/10</a> As the title suggests, this is a send-up of blaxploitation movies of the 70s, starring a couple of the Wayans brothers as well as Jim Brown, Bernie Casey and Isaac Hayes. Some parts work; most don't (at least anymore...the movie hasn't really aged well). The outside sets are kinda nice as are some of the cars. When Kung Fu Joe (played by Steve James) is pulled over, he gets out of his Nissan, which tells him that his "door is ajar"---that took me back because we had a '84 Nissan Maxima that did the same thing. It has its moments---a 23-year--old Chris Rock plays a bit part as "Rib Joint Customer", inventing the temporarily popular <iq>I'll have one rib</iq> catchphrase. Not really recommended unless you need to fill a hole in your silly 80s movies education. </dl> <hr> <ft>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test" source="Wikipedia">Bechdel Test</a> is a gender-bias test that <iq>asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.</iq></ft> <ft>For example, Redford's character asks the idiotic and purportedly provocative question that included the hypothetical <iq>when Pakistan starts killing women in soccer stadiums [...]</iq>, I wondered whether his hyperbolic depiction of Pakistan as an Islamist stronghold with Sharia law was due to ignorance on the part of the scriptwriter or Redford's character's ignorance or whether it was US propaganda injected into the film to form people's opinions about Pakistan more negatively.</ft> <ft>There are several pretty glaring plot holes, but they don't really ruin anything. The one that comes to mind is that, when Loki went back to the house at the end of the film, he saw crews working the frozen ground, looking for more evidence of other abductions. However, there is a car parked on top of a giant piece of plywood <i>right next to them</i>. It doesn't occur to anyone to ask "I wonder what's under here?" Instead, they dig into frozen ground and rely on Loki hearing Keller's stupid whistle before they realize that there might be a prisoner stashed under the plywood.</ft>