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Lawless

With Lawless, I was hoping for a late summer powerhouse that would top off a mediocre season with something to remember. I figured a film with John Hillcoat at the helm and featuring the likes of Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce and Shia LaBeouf couldn’t fail. While it isn’t a complete failure, it is a bit of a letdown. Considering the star power and the director at hand, I was expecting much more than your typical backwoods moonshine thriller. Hillcoat is responsible for two movies I like very much. The Proposition (starring Pearce) and The Road (Pearce has a couple of minutes in that one, too) are the kind of dark, stylized filmmaking that makes you remember a director’s name. Hillcoat telling the “true story” of the Bondurant brothers, Depressionera bootleggers who stood up to the law, had a great amount of appeal. It makes the mistake of positioning LaBeouf’s youngest brother Jack as the primary character, when his older brothers Forrest (Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke) are far more compelling. LaBeouf isn’t necessarily bad in the role; it’s just that Hardy and Clarke are way better and far more interesting to watch. Whenever the screenplay (written by Nick Cave) turns to Jack, it dulls out. When Forrest takes center stage, things light up. As Charlie Rakes, a lawman sent from Chicago to Virginia to mess with bootleggers, Pearce goes the cartoon villain route. It’s fun to watch at times, but much like Michael Shannon in the recent Premium Rush, the nutty, overblown performance seems out of

place (Trivia note: Shannon was originally cast in the production but left it after financial problems caused it to stall). Pearce is appropriately nasty at times, but clownish in others. There were moments where I was reminded of Joe Piscopo’s Danny Vermin from Johnny Dangerously (“My mother kicked me in the balls once … once!”). Yeah, that’s an obscure reference, but an accurate one, nonetheless. by Bob Grimm The Pearce performance also reminded me of Gary Oldman’s villainous, outlandish, and bgrimm@ far superior scene chewing in The Professional newsreview.com and, wouldn’t you know it, Oldman shows up here as the gun-toting Floyd Banner. I liked Oldman’s villain more than the Pearce one 2 but, like Hardy taking a back seat to LaBeouf, Oldman’s baddie gets less attention. Hardy is perhaps the film’s best ingredient as the big brother who refuses to play ball with dirty lawmen and refuses to die no matter what they throw at him. As I mentioned earlier this summer, Hardy’s performance in The Dark Knight Rises as Bane left me underwhelmed, but that wasn’t really his fault (I blame the sound man!). Here, he is without a mask and allowed to act his ass off. He does so quite nicely. The movie does actually have a couple of high profile actresses in it, basically acting out roles that don’t contribute much to the story. Jessica Chastain plays Maggie, the girl with the mysterious background who takes a job waiting tables and fancies Forrest. I love Chastain in almost anything she does, but she is given nothing memorable to do here unless you count a more than surprising nude scene. I repeat … Jessica Chastain is partially nude in this movie. Mia Wasikowska fares a little better as Jack’s love interest, a religious man’s daughter who likes the bad boys. There’s a lift to her performance here that has been missing from some of her other recent roles, most notably her droll turn in Alice in Wonderland. LaBeouf just doesn’t fit in this time out. He’s got a drawl that sounds like he watched too many Larry the Cable Guy movies before the cameras started rolling, and his big dramatic moments feel far from effortless. He has enough decent screen minutes to warrant a supporting performance, but not enough to make him the movie’s focus. So, when I tally up this year, Lawless will be far away from my year’s worst list. But it will rank high on my list of greatest disappointments. So much for that late summer cinematic booster shot. Ω

Dick Cheney’s family reunion.

1

POOR

2

FAIR

3

GOOD

4

VERY GOOD

5

EXCELLENT

2The Bourne Legacy When Universal decided to forge ahead with the Bourne franchise after Matt Damon, a.k.a. Jason Bourne, decided to call it quits, they were most assuredly looking for a glorious changing of the guard—something akin to when Daniel Craig took over for Pierce Brosnan as 007. What they get with The Bourne Legacy is something closer to the vibe when Roberto Benigni replaced Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther franchise. Jeremy Renner taking over for Damon in this franchise feels like the underwhelming switcheroo that occurred when Andrew Garfield took over for Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man. Renner, like Garfield, is a good actor. But he doesn’t command a movie like Damon can, no matter how good The Hurt Locker was. Renner isn’t nearly as good as Damon as the Bourne centerpiece. The plot feels like a poor, scrapped together excuse for keeping a franchise alive longer that it should be.

3The Campaign While this falls into the category of weaker Will Ferrell comedies, it’s still funnier than most of the stuff thrown out there with the intent of making us laugh. Ferrell stars as a congressman running for reelection who is surprised by the candidacy of an unknown candidate looking to unseat him (Zach Galifianakis). Ferrell is basically doing a riff on his Ron Burgundy character, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He has a few shining moments, including a profane phone message left for the wrong person and a classic baby punching incident. Galifianakis is funny, but his character’s two dogs, heavy breathing pugs, are funnier. This one is front-loaded, with most of the funny stuff happening in the first half. While it misses out on the opportunity to really skewer the American election process, it does have some good giggles involving refrigerator sex and petting zoos, so it’s got that going for it.

3Celeste & Jesse Forever Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg play the title characters, a married couple going through a divorce but trying to stay friends. They are trying to stay friends so much that they hang out with each other all of the time and still live in the same house, much to the chagrin of friends and coworkers. Jones co-wrote the screenplay with Will McCormack (who also plays a supporting role), and the movie has a fresh feel to it. Jones goes all out with her performance. She’s funny, but also awkward and nasty when her script asks her to be. Samberg does his best screen work yet as the confused artist type who likes to dig deep holes for himself and then go surfing. It’s nothing altogether groundbreaking, but different enough to make it a relatively unique romantic comedy experience.

4The Dark Knight Rises Director Christopher Nolan wraps up his Batman trilogy with a rousing, though occasionally clunky, conclusion. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has retired Batman, and is living a reclusive life in his mansion when Gotham is besieged by the masked revolutionary Bane (Tom Hardy). Batman is eventually forced out of retirement, and meets his physical match in Bane while also facing off against a crafty cat burglar (Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, never referred to as Catwoman in the film but obviously playing that part). Hardy makes Bane a great physical adversary, but his performance is marred by a terrible voice dub that makes him sound cartoonish and out of place. Hathaway has a lot of good fun in her role, as does Gary Oldman returning as Jim Gordon. The movie has a lot of good action, and Bale has never been better as Batman. It’s not as good as the previous chapters in the trilogy, but it’s still very good and a fitting conclusion to a great story. 3The Expendables 2 Here’s a sequel that learns a lot from the mistakes of the first installment, while capitalizing on the ideas that should’ve made the first installment good fun. It gathers up a bunch of old goons, gives them big guns, and tells them to shoot things. And, this time out, they do it better and with much aplomb. It’s obvious before the opening title credit, in a sequence where many a man is shredded via gunfire from aging American action superstars, that Stallone and friends are going to get things right and deliver the crazy-gory goods. Much of the credit must go to newly anointed Simon West, who replaces Stallone in the director’s chair. West made the ridiculously enjoyable Con Air, which combined stellar action with funny, dumb dialogue to much success. Unlike Stallone’s effort with the first movie, Expendables 2 gets real laughs, rather than groans, from its boneheaded dialogue.

3Hit and Run Dax Shepard writes, co-directs and stars as Yul Perkins, a.k.a Charles Bronson, a former getaway driver in the witness protection program who risks his life to get his girlfriend (Shepard’s real-life main squeeze, Kristen Bell) to a job interview on time. Along the way, he is chased by a friendly but clumsy US Marshal (Tom Arnold) and a former crime partner (Bradley Cooper), who isn’t happy and wants to shoot him. The best thing about the movie is the sarcastic, playful rapport between Bell and Shepard, who make for a great screen couple. Some of the scenes where Bell’s character interrogates Shepard as they drive are real winners. As for the driving, there are some well-filmed chases in the movie, making it OK as far as action flicks go. Arnold and Cooper are both funny in their supporting roles. Cooper’s scene involving his character’s treatment in prison has to qualify as the year’s most awkward scene.

4ParaNorman Here’s a stop-animation movie that isn’t afraid to be creepy for the kids. Norman (voice of Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see dead people and has premonitions, for which he gets picked on at school and yelled at by his parents. As it turns out, he’s the only one who can save the town from a curse involving zombies and witches. Directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell have put together a great-looking movie. And Butler’s script actually pushes the limit of the PG rating to the point where adults might be surprised by what they have taken their kids to see. As for this being too scary for kids, let me tell you that the kids were screaming with delight at my screening. They love this stuff. Also features the voices of John Goodman, Leslie Mann, Casey Affleck and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. One of the year’s best animated films.

2Premium Rush Yeah, it’s another bike messenger movie. Not learning anything from Kevin Bacon’s blunder starring in Quicksilver, Joseph GordonLevitt wastes his time as Wilee, a failed lawyer turned bike messenger who likes speed so much he has no brakes. When he gets a mysterious parcel, he must race through the streets of Manhattan avoiding an overacting villain (Michael Shannon, in a rare less-than-great performance). As cool as some of the sequences are, they are servicing a plot that goes nowhere and feels derivative. The movie actually plays like an unofficial remake of Quicksilver, which also featured an upwardly mobile young man taking to the streets on his bike because it makes him feel better than wearing a suit all day. There are many moments of bike riders recklessly dodging cars, running red lights, and generally causing street mayhem. At one point, Shannon’s character tells Wilee’s that everybody in New York hates him and could care less about him. There are no truer words spoken by a character in Premium Rush.

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