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Franchise killer

Kick-Ass 2

Kick-Ass 2 had barely started when I suffered a serious flashback, a flashback so vivid it felt like I had time traveled. (I was sort of high on Benadryl at the time, which can seriously mess with my mind, but at least it stops my nose from running.) I flashed back to 1989, the summer before my final year of college. I was managing a crappy discount movie theater at the time, and I would go up the road to the nice theater for the big movies a few weeks before they played at our cheap-assed theater. I was a bright-eyed optimist sitting down for a showing of Ghostbusters 2. A few short minutes into that sequel, I knew things had gone terribly wrong with a potentially great franchise. I felt that same, sinking, nauseating feeling as Kick-Ass 2 began by recycling the already infamous bit from the original film, the one where Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) tested Hit-Girl’s (Chloe Grace Moretz) bulletproof vest. This time, Hit-Girl is firing bullets at Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and we are supposed to laugh because it’s just like the first film, right? Wrong. The first film had a creative spark, a visual flair, and an uncanny ability to walk the line between dark satire and bad taste. It managed to parody superhero movies while actually being a decent superhero movie. Kick-Ass 2 is a shrill, abrasive, truly disgusting misfire from a director (Jeff Wadlow) without a clue. I was tortured watching this thing. Taylor-Johnson returns as Dave, a high school student who yearns to be a superhero. Once again, he puts on a mail order costume and becomes Kick-Ass, roaming the streets looking to stop crime. While Matthew Vaughn, the original film’s director, managed to pull something charming out of TaylorJohnson, he’s just an annoying, whiny goofball in this movie.

Returning as Mindy Macready (Hit-Girl), Moretz suffers from the simple act of growing up a bit. Having a tiny 11-year-old girl kick major ass is one thing; having a fairly substantial 15-year-old kicking the same ass doesn’t have the same comic wallop or shock value. She looks a little silly in the same getup, and her performance is surprisingly dull. by Bob Grimm Making matters worse is a subplot where Hit-Girl gives up vigilantism and decides to bgrimm@ give high school an honest go. This results newsreview.com in a by-the-numbers scenario straight out of 1 Heathers and Mean Girls, except this one culminates in the mean girls experiencing simultaneous vomiting and explosive diarrhea, the cornerstone of any summer entertainment. While Mindy goes to school, Kick-Ass looks for other superheroes, and hooks up with Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey) and his gang. Carrey has but a few minutes in the film, and he seems to know what movie he is supposed to be in. He’s funny, just a little sick, and looks great in his outfit. Yes, the movie is being faithful to the graphic novels that inspired it, but they should’ve found a way to make Carrey’s character play a bigger part. Christopher Mintz-Plasse, so good in the original, delivers what will stand as one of the year’s worst performances as wannabe super-villain Chris D’Amico, bent on revenge after Kick-Ass shot his dad with a bazooka. Mintz-Plasse spends the movie screaming, decked out in bondage gear, and embarrassing himself with moments like a rape scene played for laughs. It’s sickening, really. Carrey chose to disown this film, citing its excessive violence. Hey, maybe that was part of it, but I’m thinking he saw a rough cut of Kick-Ass 2, became fully convinced the director had crapped the bed, and decided to stay home rather than put on a fake happy face for the talk show circuit. It’s a shame to see Taylor-Johnson, Moretz and Mintz-Plasse straining to relive the greatness of their previous effort, in much the same way it was tough watching Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis 24 years ago. Ghostbusters, despite many rumors, never got a third movie. I’m thinking the Kick-Ass franchise will suffer that same fate. Ω

“Do not panic! I am a super hero!”

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POOR

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FAIR 3

GOOD 4

VERY GOOD 5

EXCELLENT

32 Guns Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg do the buddy action movie thing, and they do it well. There’s a satisfying mixture of laughs and whiz-bang in this effort, with Washington getting a chance to really cut loose as an undercover DEA agent unknowingly working with an AWOL Navy man (Wahlberg). The two find out each other’s true identities, and join forces to take down everybody who has double-crossed them. The film is shamelessly ridiculous, but it’s good to see Washington going for laughs, and always fun to see Wahlberg doing his manchild bit. This is Wahlberg in a mode similar to his great success with Will Ferrell in The Other Guys, while the film itself leans a little more towards the edgier side. It’s directed by Baltasar Kormakur, who helmed the Wahlberg mess Contraband, and this proves to be a much better and less convoluted effort. Bill Paxton gets to play a bad guy, and he does it well. He’s played bastards before, but never one this sinister.

3The Conjuring This haunted house/demon possession movie from Saw creator James Wan delivers the scary goods. Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston move their family into a nice new home that has plenty of living space, a nice yard, and a bunch of ghosts freaking them out. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson play the Warrens, real life paranormal investigators who looked into this case, as well as the Amityville Horror. Wan teases you for the first chunk of the film, trying to get scares out of closing doors and creepy sounds. Then he pulls the sheet back and goes for some really good, in-your-face frights. This is one of those movies where the family stays in the house even though freaky things are happening, and that’s a bit annoying. Still, Wan, who I used to hate for creating Saw, makes up for the stupidity with scares created without too much help from CGI. He relies on creepy lighting and makeup rather than megabytes for the most part, and he’s fashioned a good old-fashioned haunted house story as a result.

3Elysium Writer-director Neill Blomkamp follows up his strong feature-directing debut District 9 with another solid sci-fi effort, a film that delivers terrific action in service of a screenplay that takes a few missteps. Matt Damon stars as Max, a future resident of a nearly uninhabitable planet Earth. As he struggles to get by, rich people live the good life on a huge space station. After an accident leaves him full of radiation, he must get to the space station to use one of its healing chambers. Since the rich don’t allow the poor in their digs, Max winds up getting a super robot skeleton grafted to his body in order to provide some forceful incentive to let him in. The movie is equal parts brilliant and stupid, a visual feast that almost loses it in the end due to a hokey finale. It’s still one of the year’s better big blockbusters and proof that Blomkamp is not a one hit wonder. Jodie Foster is on hand as a narrow-minded government type who wants nothing to do with poor people. Sharlto Copley steals all of his scenes, playing against type as an evil killer agent in the service of Foster’s baddie.

2Jobs Yes, Steve Jobs was an important tech figure and, yes, I am eternally grateful to him for my many Apple gadgets, which I love more than any stupid thing I’ve ever owned in my life. That said, I don’t think he was Jesus, or even Ashton Kutcher for that matter. Kutcher grows a Jesus beard and acts sanctimonious and a bit like a douche as Jobs, depicted here as a man who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. The film seems to be saying that we wouldn’t have iPods if Steve Jobs had never dropped acid, which might be a valid point. Kutcher isn’t terrible here, but his performance is a bit goofy at times, even cartoonish. Some of the tech stuff is interesting, such as the building of the first Apple computers in the family garage, but the depiction of Jobs is ultimately shallow. A decent supporting cast includes Josh Gad as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Dermot Mulroney as Mike Markkula. Not a bad movie, but not a good one either. 3 Lee Daniels’ The Butler Director Lee Daniels, prominently mentioned in the film’s title after a much publicized lawsuit, delivers a fine emotional wallop with this historical epic very loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen, a butler at the White House for 34 years. Those going to this film for its true historical significance take note: the film contains much fiction. Allen is renamed Cecil (played by Forest Whitaker), and is given a fictional son in order to depict a family conflict regarding the Civil Rights movement. So, this film, which shows the butler interacting with presidents from Eisenhower (Robin Williams) thru Ronald Reagan (Alan Rickman), is mostly made up. That doesn’t hurt the film’s dramatic significance. It’s an ultimately moving experience. What does damage the film a bit is horrible makeup, especially a goofy fake nose for John Cusack as Richard Nixon. The makeup is sometimes so bad, that the film turns into unintentional comedy when some characters are on screen. Whitaker holds the whole thing together, and Oprah Winfrey, in her first starring role since her excellent turn in Beloved, does strong work as Cecil’s wife. Other stars playing presidents include a relatively makeup-free James Marsden as John F. Kennedy, and an absolutely covered Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson.

3We’re the Millers Jason Sudeikis plays a small-time drug dealer who gets in over his head and is forced to smuggle drugs from Mexico by his boss (Ed Helms). Realizing that border agents seem to go easy on families, he hires a fake family to make the trip in an RV. The family includes a wife (a stripper played by Jennifer Aniston), a daughter (a homeless girl played by Emma Roberts) and a son (a hapless neighbor played by Will Poulter). The film has a Vacation movie vibe, especially because Sudeikis is charming in a way that Chevy Chase was for a brief time in his career. Aniston plays a mighty good stripper for sure; she has another calling in case the whole acting thing doesn’t work out. Roberts gets perhaps her best role yet as Casey, delivering some great eye-rolling moments. As for Poulter, he steals scenes nearly every time he speaks, and his encounter with a tarantula is priceless. Sure, the movie gets a little gooey and sentimental by the time it plays out, but we’ve come to like the characters by then so it’s OK. It’s not a grand cinematic effort by any means, but it does provide some good laughs, with a fair share of them being quite shocking.

3The Wolverine I’m not an X-Men Origins: Wolverine hater. I thought it was stupid fun. Still, many despised it, so this is a new attempt to take Hugh Jackman’s Logan into a freestanding franchise. Director James Mangold goes a darker, more serious route, but proves quite adept at making action scenes. The opening scene in Nagasaki and a fight above a bullet train are incredible. Jackman, who has a lot more veins popping than the last time we saw him, still has a blast in the title role. The plot involves an old friend of Wolverine’s looking for the key to eternal life, which Wolverine actually has, so this makes him a mutant of extra purpose. Most of the action takes place in Japan, and Wolverine loses his powers for a stretch, so we get the odd sight of him bleeding and getting lethargic. Mangold and his crew must get credit for filming two of the year’s most beautiful women, Tao Okamoto and Rila Fukushima. Good lord, these two are remarkable looking. Famke Janssen makes some dream appearances as Jean Grey, and, yes, stay through the credits to get what some might consider to be the film’s best scene.