Film

Voices from the Past

The Virginia City Cemetery comes alive with the 19th century Comstock residents. They share their stories, lives, and deaths. The performance will last 90 minutes as you walk through the cemetery with the widow of Silver Terrace as your guide.

Performances start Saturday, Sept 28th and runs each weekend until Sunday, Oct 13th.

Two shows daily on Saturday & Sunday 10am & 1pm AdmiSSiOn $20

For reservations call 775-240-5762

Bring this ad for a $2 discount on tickets

N OPEN PO E

H HOURS OU SR

featuring

Free Guest Pass! Offer good with this ad. You must be a Bring this ad to membership e t Pree GuFre GueestF PasFre ues st a as Free! Guest Pass

Dysfunctional

The Family

Luc Besson’s The Family tries to be too many movies at once, and none of them are any good. It’s an overcooked Mafia meatball comedy laced with jarringly inappropriate violence and jokes that only its writers would enjoy. It wants to be a comedy, but it isn’t funny. It wants to be a sometimes scary and realistic take on Mafia life, but it severely lacks tension. It also wants to be a family drama, but because none of its characters can be taken seriously, it lacks credibility. It also boasts an over-stylized, fairytale quality that just makes the whole undertaking a weird, unbalanced experience. Robert De Niro plays Giovanni, a Mafia hitman who ratted out his co-workers and has been relocated with his family to Normandy, France, where he receives the new name Fred Blake. His wife, Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), daughter Belle (Dianna Agron of Glee) and son Warren (John D’Leo) all seem rather forgiving of Fred’s past evil ways, and take to their new town with varying degrees of acceptance and criminal behavior. Obviously, De Niro has mined this sort of material before with his mafia comedy Analyze This, and its sorry sequel, Analyze … Oh Stop It, Already! While he went with parody in the Analyze movies, he plays it straight and mellow in this one, except when Frank regresses into violent behavior when the plumber tries to screw him over. Then he goes into Travis Bickle mode, with the sort of violence that doesn’t feel at home in a stylish comedy. One of the bigger films of Pfeiffer’s early career was Married to the Mob, and her Maggie character is essentially just a replay of her mafia girl in that one. A thick N.Y. accent and a lot of eye-rolling reminds of her past glory, but does little to make the new movie anything original or intriguing. It’s a shame, because Pfeiffer is an interesting actress who isn’t pulling down many good roles these days.

Agron’s part of the movie is perhaps the film’s most annoying and discordant. Her character is a high school virgin looking to lose it to a young man studying to be a teacher. She’s also capable of breaking your ass with a tennis racket if you try to take advantage of her in a public park. She’s also a hopeless romantic who thinks suicide is the answer when her man rejects by Bob Grimm her. She’s also a crack shot with a handgun when mobsters show up from the U.S. to end her. bgrimm@ She’s a whole lot of things, and none of them newsreview.com make a lick of sense. As for D’Leo, his story involves dealing 1 with the bullies at school. He hatches some sort of plan involving sports trading cards that never truly gets spelled out, and finds himself in trouble for stuff that’s never made clear. Like Agron’s character, his story arc feels incomplete, misguided, unfulfilling and the antithesis of the intended funny. Besson made Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element back in the day when he was good. He also made The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and this movie when he was bad. I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s a better visual artist than complete storyteller. When he puts words to his visuals, they just don’t match. It worked well with The Fifth Element, which was a beautifully odd film, but his formula just doesn’t work when applied to a giggly Mafioso story. There’s a dopey subplot involving Giovanni’s yearning to be an author. He’s writing some hackneyed novel/memoir that raises the ire of the agent assigned to watch him in Normandy (Tommy Lee Jones, whose performance appears totally confused, as if he’s in a movie that is supposed to be serious). At one point, the people in their small town invite Giovanni to some sort of film society screening to give commentary on a movie. That movie winds up being Goodfellas, which should’ve provided a chance for De Niro to perform some good self-parody. Besson blows this opportunity, and the moment winds up feeling desperate and muted. There are some other little nods to American mobster movies and TV shows that just don’t work. Vincent Pastore shows up as a character named Fat Willy. Pastore, of course, played Big Pussy on The Sopranos. So instead of being a large vagina he is now a big dick. Funny. The Family has an identity crisis. The performances aren’t half bad. In fact, you could argue that De Niro and Pfeiffer are actually quite good in the thing. Unfortunately, they are slaves to a script that doesn’t know what it is trying to say, and a director more interested in a film that looks pretty rather than one that is coherent. Ω

“Let me teach you a thing or two about camping!”

1

Poor

2

Fair

3

Good

4

Very Good 5

5Blue Jasmine There was a time in film history when Woody Allen was consistently making the best movies in the business. His latest, one of many movies he has made in the last 10 years, is that return to form that some of us former Allen fans have been waiting for, thanks in large part to a phenomenal central performance by the sure-to-be-Oscarnominated Cate Blanchett. Blanchett plays Jasmine, the wife of a Bernie Madoff-type financier (Alec Baldwin) who must relocate from New York to San Francisco after she is bankrupted and emotionally destroyed. She gulps martinis, criticizes her helpful sister (Sally Hawkins), and, quite frighteningly, is prone to bouts of talking to herself. Allen finds the dark humor in the story, and employs a supporting cast that includes comedians Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K. and, most astonishingly, Andrew Dice Clay, who, doggone it, delivers one amazing performance as Ginger’s financially destroyed ex-husband, Augie. Above and beyond the humor, Allen makes his film a parable about how some deeds are irredeemable, and some folks are simply doomed. It’s as bittersweet as any movie you will see this, or any, year, for that matter. As far as the Allen film canon goes, it’s a top five installment. It’s one of those films where everything pulls together perfectly, with Blanchett at its powerful center.

4Drinking Buddies Olivia Wilde plays Kate, a microbrewery employee in a relationship with an OK but perhaps mismatched guy (Ron Livingston). Luke (Jake Johnson) is her coworker, the perfect guy for her, but he’s in a relationship with a nice girl (Anna Kendrick) that also doesn’t seem to be a perfect match. Writer-director Joe Swanberg takes this well-worn premise and does something altogether wonderful, funny and original with it. Wilde is a revelation in the main role. She’s had a lot of showy Hollywood roles and this is by far her most naturalistic and best movie effort to date. She’s sweet, funny, and just a little messed up. Johnson, so good in Safety Not Guaranteed, is equally good here, making Luke a more complex character than he first appears. Kendrick and Livingston are good in the less showy but equally important supporting roles. This is one of the summer’s more pleasant surprises. Swanberg has a funny cameo, and you might recognize him if you are one of the 12 people who went to see You’re Next. (Available for rent on iTunes and Amazon.com).

3Lee 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.

3Riddick Vin Diesel finally makes it back as the shiny-eyed ex-con who growls a lot in this OK retread of Pitch Black, the original film in the Riddick series. This one, mercifully, gets away from the drearily baroque dealings of The Chronicles of Riddick and gets Diesel back on a desolate planet battling weird monsters. The first half of the movie has Diesel fighting scorpion-like beasties with the help of a CGI dog, and it’s actually pretty good. Things slow down in the middle when a bunch of bounty hunters show up and talk a lot, but they speed up again when the bounty hunters must also battle the monsters. Diesel, who I usually can’t stand, is actually in decent form for this one, obviously relishing the chance to revisit the character that made him a big star. Director David Twohy does a lot with a relatively meager budget, putting together a movie that looks good. While the movie isn’t anything to get all that excited about, it does manage to recapture a little of the spirit that made the first film fun.

5The Spectacular Now Miles Teller delivers his breakout performance as Sutter, a partying high school senior who everybody loves but nobody takes seriously, until well-balanced Aimee (Shailene Woodley) comes along. They start a complicated relationship that is ill advised at both ends, but sometimes that’s the best way to start a relationship. Teller is a marvel here, turning Sutter into something far from your average high school screw-up. Woodley, so good in The Descendants, is proving to be one of cinema’s great young actresses. This film is a unique and intelligent take on growing up. This is directed by James Ponsoldt, who piloted last year’s terrific Smashed, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who appears here as Sutter’s sister. Ponsoldt is officially a force to be reckoned with, having made two of the best films of the last two years. Others in the cast include Jennifer Jason Leigh as Sutter’s mom, and Kyle Chandler as his idiot dad. And while he only has a couple of scenes, Bob Odenkirk is terrific as Sutter’s tolerant employer. To read a plot synopsis of this film is to make it seem ordinary. It’s far from ordinary. It’s spectacular.

3We’re the Millers Jason Sudeikis plays a small-time drug dealer who gets in over his head and is forced by his boss (Ed Helms) to smuggle drugs from Mexico. 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.

4The World’s End Simon Pegg and Nick Frost star as part of an old gang of friends getting back together to finish a pub crawl they failed to complete 20 years earlier in their hometown. Pegg plays King, the group leader and now slightly disturbed man-child, while Frost plays Andy, the group pessimist who’s still recovering from a partying incident years before. They start drinking pints, only to discover that blue-blooded robots have overrun their old town, so in addition to completing the crawl they must save the world. This is the third film from Pegg and director Edgar Wright after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and it is a worthy conclusion to their “Cornetto” trilogy (named for a brand of ice cream that appears in all three films). It delivers a lot of laughs, great action, and even serves a significant emotional punch. One of the summer movie season’s great surprises.