Movies
QuickGlance Movie Reviews
"Neighbors"
If ever two genres of film were inextricably intertwined, it would seem to be the frat house movie and the gross-out comedy. After all, do frats ever do anything that's NOT gross? Not in the movies, they don't. "Neighbors," starring (and produced by) Seth Rogen and directed by Nicholas Stoller, proudly straddles these two genres and boldly tosses in a third: The "We've-just-becomeparents, NOW-what?" movie. You know these: Baby arrives, cute as a button but bringing ALL kinds of trouble, and then things are resolved in a syrupy sweet finale. It's safe to say that syrupy sweetness is not a problem with "Neighbors." In fact, it is noisy, crude, profane, gross, and sometimes mean. Luckily, it's also extremely funny, and you'll realize by the end that it has some heart, too. Most importantly, what it may suffer in narrative coherence it makes up for with a first-rate cast — the reliably funny Rogen, the game-for-anything Rose Byrne, and in the most pleasant surprise, a truly excellent Zac Efron as an immature, narcissistic, vindictive and, by the way, unbelievably buff frat leader whose obnoxious brio might just be masking deeper issues. (Zac, as a parent who had to watch the "High School Musical" films at least 400 times, maybe more, let me just say: I forgive you now.) RATED: R by the Motion Picture Association of America "for pervasive language, strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug use throughout." RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes. ASSOCIATED PRESS RANKING: Three stars out of four.
"Million Dollar Arm"
Let's face it, there's something about a baseball movie that just invites corniness. The hardest hearts soften at the mere sound of a cracking bat. It's hard for a filmmaker to resist laying the syrup on too thick. And so it is with the Disney film "Million Dollar Arm," which makes a direct, uncomplicated, er, pitch for your heart — a pitch that will probably hit its mark, despite your best instincts telling you this movie should really be subtler at almost every turn. Oh well. Somehow, this flaw doesn't feel like the biggest crime — especially when you have a high-quality cast at work. The quality starts with Jon Hamm, who by virtue of his wellknown charisma, makes a good case for his future film career, now that his days as Don Draper on TV's "Mad Men" are sadly ending. Like Draper, Hamm's character here, the real-life sports agent JB Bernstein (the film's based on a true story), has a certain narcissism at his core. Unlike Draper, however, this isn't a deeply drawn character. Whatever faults he displays at the beginning (he prefers to date sexy models, and he wants to make money — oh no!) are pretty much neatly cured by the end. In any case, the best parts of the story are actually not about Bernstein, but about the two young Indian men he brings to America in hopes of creating the next international baseball sensation — and opening up a huge, untapped market in the world's second most populous country. Hence the title, "Million Dollar Arm," which is the contest that Bernstein devises to find his young stars. As the film begins, Bernstein and his partner Ash (the always entertaining Aasif Mandvi) are searching for ways to revive their flagging business. A failure to land a major account means they can't even pay their LA office rent. One night, though, idly channelflipping between a cricket game and Susan Boyle's famous outof-nowhere audition on "Britain's Got Talent," Bernstein comes up with the idea to find cricket players who might be able to pitch a baseball. RATEDL PG by the Motion Picture Association of America "for mild language and some suggestive content." RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes. ASSOCIATED PRESS RANKING: Three stars out of four.
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On the Edge of the Weekend
"Godzilla"
No one can blame Gareth Edwards for admittedly feeling nervous when asked to helm a remake of the biggest monster movie of all time. Sure, the only other film he had directed happened to be 2010's "Monsters." But this time, it was Godzilla. Well, the latest iteration of the 60-year-old franchise is in capable hands. Edwards' "Godzilla" is a pleasingly paced 3-D spectacle that pays chilling homage to the artful legacy of the original 1954 film — Ishiro Honda's "Gojira" — while emerging as its own prodigious monster movie. Created as a symbol of the nuclear threat following America's atomic attacks on Japan in World War II, Godzilla's reappearance suggests the nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. in the Pacific after the war were really meant to hold the radioactive dinosaur back. This story begins in Japan in 1999 as nuclear physicist Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston, edgy in an unbearable wig) investigates questionable seismic activity at the Janjira nuclear power plant. When a team at the plant, including his scientist wife, Sandra (an underused Juliette Binoche), dies in what everyone believes is a natural disaster, Joe dedicates his life to proving that what caused the devastation was anything but natural. His obsession creates a rift between himself and his son, Ford. Fifteen years later, we catch up with Ford (played by a placid but sexy Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and their son. Serving in the U.S. Navy, Ford disarms bombs, a skill that later helps him save the planet from MUTOs — "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism" — that emerge from a long dormancy and begin traveling the globe, feeding on radiation. RATED: PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence. RUNNING TIME: 123 minutes. ASSOCIATED PRESS RANKING: Three stars out of four.
"Words and Pictures"
If it wasn't for the charming top-liners who can make literary dialogue sound sexy in their sleep, the war in Fred Schepisi's "Words and Pictures" would have to be called off after the opening skirmish. The battlefield is a country prep school where Clive Owen's drunken English teacher and Juliette Binoche's prickly art instructor square off, then pair off, in an amusing school-wide debate over whether literature or painting is best. The way the challenge between these two sharp minds will play out is the only thing that isn't a foregone conclusion in the smooth-as-vodka screenplay, a middle-brow mashing together of "Dead Poets Society" and a rom-com for audiences allergic to vulgarity and sex scenes. The film gives Binoche, who plays Italian painter Dina Delsanto, a chance to show off her own artwork, which is liberally displayed in the film and which looks considerably better and more painterly than simple props. Working with portraiture and large-scale abstraction, she plays a famous artist struck with rheumatoid arthritis and increasingly unable to move her arms and hands freely. Her solution is to use industrial-size paint dispensers hanging from overhead hooks which she can move artistically without fine brushwork. All these difficulties more or less justify her fierce anti-social attitude, which Binoche is able to carry off without becoming an unpleasant character. Owen pulls out a surprisingly literate side of himself in the role of Jack Marcus, an irrepressibly outspoken English teacher and wordsmith who, on the verge of being ousted from the school for alcoholic disorderliness, does something repulsively unethical to save his job. RATED: PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "sexual material including nude sketches, language and some
June 5, 2014
mature thematic material." RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes. ASSOCIATED PRESS RANKING: No ranking.
"Blended"
To say that the new Adam Sandler movie, "Blended," is better than some of his other recent work — "Jack and Jill," for example — isn't saying much. After all, some natural disasters cause less damage than others. But none are a positive development. OK, that's overly harsh to "Blended" — though not to "Jack and Jill." But please understand the frustration. Some of us are old enough to recall a time when Sandler made movies that were authentically funny, and didn't merely earn laughs by reminding people of their most puerile instincts. We also remember acting work by Sandler that deserved real admiration— remember the 2002 "Punch-Drunk Love"? Not to mention some classic moments on "Saturday Night Live" — but now we're REALLY dating ourselves. From Sandler's early, goofy, charming humor, we've traveled to a point where we're trying to analyze, in "Blended," whether his mocking of feminine hygiene products is better or worse than his jokes about a young boy's sexual explorations or a teen girl's futile efforts to boost her flat chest. But there's something else disappointing about "Blended," which stars Sandler and Drew Barrymore (in their third collaboration) as single parents thrown together on an African family vacation. The fact is, there are actual sparks of sweetness, actual moments of tenderness, mostly thanks to Barrymore's sunny and grounded presence (one shudders to imagine this movie without her) and the relaxed chemistry between the stars. But the moments don't stay sweet. They'll end with something like Sandler loudly urinating. Or two rhinos copulating. Tee hee. RATED: PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America "for crude and sexual content, and language." RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes. ASSOCIATED PRESS RANKING: One and a half stars out of four.
"Maleficent"
Maybe it's too soon to say the tide has shifted definitively. But it's certainly been a unique time for fairy-tale villains. After hundreds of years of moral clarity, suddenly we're getting a new look at these evil creatures, who are actually turning out to be complex beings, and not that bad at all. Really, they've just been misunderstood. (And, by the way, those charming princes? Highly overrated.) The most obvious recent example is "Frozen," the animated Disney blockbuster that showed us how the Snow Queen, long portrayed as an icy-hearted villain, was actually a tragic victim of circumstance, with a pure and loving heart. And now we have "Maleficent," which tells us that one of the most evil characters in all of pop culture is equally vulnerable and misunderstood. Plus, she's gorgeous. Duh. She's Angelina Jolie. All this is a rather seismic development in fairytale-dom. There are numerous versions of "Sleeping Beauty," stemming back even before Charles Perrault's from 1697, but the fairy who casts an angry spell on the baby princess, dooming her to prick her finger, has always been, well, just nasty. But now, 55 years after Disney introduced the character named Maleficent in its 1959 classic film— and colored her skin an eerie green — the studio is back with a live-action (not to mention 3D) Maleficent who's more superheroine than evil fairy. Think Maleficent by way of Lara Croft. RATEDL PG by the Motion Picture Association of America "for sequences of fantasy action and violence, including frightening images." RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes. ASSOCIATED PRESS RANKING: Two and a half stars out of four.