Film

Blows smoke

Pompeii

Man, when is somebody going to make a good volcano movie? There was that stupid phase in the late ’90s when Hollywood took a crack at it, giving us Tommy Lee Jones dealing with an eruption in downtown L.A. and that other one with Pierce Brosnan outrunning a pyroclastic cloud in a beater pickup truck. Now comes Pompeii, a film about the legendary volcanic eruption that buried an ancient city and eventually produced those creepy plaster casts of contorted dead humans and dogs. If ever there was a good setting for a decent movie featuring lots of lava, I would think the story of how Mount Vesuvius blew would be intriguing. However, Paul W.S. Anderson directed this one, and that rarely bodes well for a film. Anderson has a way of destroying interesting premises with his sloppy hand. For prime examples of how he screws things up old school, see Alien vs. Predator, Resident Evil: Afterlife, The Three Musketeers or Death Race. Or, better yet, don’t see them. Anderson takes the historic eruption and makes it the basis for what he probably hoped would be his Titanic. He has a love story, he has a lot of people scurrying for their lives, he even has the mournful female vocals that sound a lot like Celine Dion. He even has a cartoonish villain like the one Billy Zane played in James Cameron’s epic. This one’s an evil Roman senator played by Kiefer Sutherland doing his best Darth Vader voice. Sutherland hasn’t been this embarrassingly bad since he appeared in The Three Musketeers (not Anderson’s Musketeers, mind you, but another abysmally bad take on the classic from back in ’93).

The goofy love story is embodied by Emily Browning—no stranger to bad films, having appeared in Sucker Punch—as the rich girl Cassia, and ab-tastic douchebag Kit Harington as slave/gladiator Milo. The two want to be in love, but they can’t because he’s all poor and emo, and she’s rich. Better they can’t be in love, for Browning needs a by Bob Grimm reason to pout. That’s about all she’s good for in movies. bgrimm@ The film is an exercise in waiting for the newsreview.com mountain to blow as Milo deals with life as a gladiator and Cassia deals with life as 1 a pouty face. When Vesuvius does finally go up, all attention to historic detail and continuity goes out the window. The eruption spews up a gigantic pyroclastic cloud, which seemingly just goes away for awhile as the resort city panics and the main characters stop to fight and have angry chats. History suggests that many of the folks who died in the Pompeii eruption succumbed instantly to intensely high temperatures, yet nobody in this film complains about the heat. All things considered, they all look surprisingly comfortable for long stretches during the actual eruption. The costuming basically looks like togas created for a middle school production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The special effects have their moments, but the 3-D is less than spectacular, and too much of the film takes place in the dark, making it hard to follow. This is basically an exercise in how to create characters that nobody can care about. When everybody starts getting annihilated, they are just blips on a screen rather than characters we have invested in. And let it be said that Sutherland’s work in this film is easily the worst of his career. Yes, it’s even worse than that drunken YouTube video of him tackling a Christmas tree. Actually, that was kind of awesome, much better than anything in the wasteful, lethargic wannabe epic. You have to be a truly bad director to make the eruption of Mount Vesuvius a non-event. Ω

“You know nothing, gladiator Milo.”

1

Poor

2

Fair

3

Good

4

Very Good 5

excellent 2 3 Days to Kill Well, shucks. Kevin Costner and Hailee Steinfeld deliver good performances as father and daughter in this hot mess from sloppy director McG. Costner plays a Secret Service Agent who finds out he’s dying of cancer, and he wants to make his last days on Earth count. So he reconnects with his daughter (Steinfeld) and his ex-wife (Connie Nielsen) in Paris while taking on one last assignment. That last assignment is giving him a lot of money, and an experimental drug that only exists in the movies that could extend his life. Costner is on his game here, and Steinfeld holds her own in the scenes they share together. Unfortunately, the movie is all over the place tonally (sometimes it’s a thriller, sometimes it’s a comedy, and so on). There’s also terrible editing choices and lousy sound editing to boot. Amber Heard shows up as Costner’s boss trying to pull off some sort of femme fatale routine that feels as if it should be in another movie. Only Costner and Steinfeld save this thing from being totally awful.

3About Last Night Don’t just file this one away as another unnecessary remake of an ’80s film, because Kevin Hart and company make the latest adaptation of David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago a wildly entertaining endeavor. Hart, who lights up any film he shows up in even when they stink, plays Bernie, a player who finds himself in a relationship with the fiery Joan (Regina Hall). While Bernie and Joan experience a wild rollercoaster ride of sex and spats, Bernie’s best bud Danny (Michael Ealy) winds up dating Joan’s best friend Debbie (Joy Bryant). The two have a one-night stand that turns into a long-term relationship replete with all the problems of a relationship that started up way too fast. The main reason to see the film is Hart and Hall, who are a crack up under the direction of Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine). However, Ealy and Bryant make for an appealing and intriguing screen couple, so the movie doesn’t nosedive when the action switches to them. It’s better than the original, which starred Rob Lowe, Demi Moore and flippin’ James Belushi. Screw that movie.

4American Hustle David O. Russell continues his impressive directorial roll with this semicomedic look at the notorious ’70s Abscam scandal. This is basically Russell shooting for Scorsese glory here, and while the style of the movie seems copied at times, there’s no denying the power of the ensemble cast. Bradley Cooper scores laughs as a pathetic FBI agent looking to make a name for himself, and Christian Bale looks great in a comb-over as the conman forced into an alliance with the law. Amy Adams gets one of the strangest roles of the year as a con artist pretending to be British, and she pulls it off quite nicely, while Jennifer Lawrence steals her every scene as a seemingly dim Long Island housewife. You also get stand up comic Louis C.K. as Cooper’s field boss. The film falls a little short of greatness due to its sometimes carbon copy feel, but the cast pulls it out of the fire. It also has the best use of Robert De Niro as a bad guy in many years.

3Frozen I have to admit I was more into the strange Mickey Mouse short that precedes this musical adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen” than the actual feature. It features retro Mickey busting out of a black and white film and becoming 3-D as he battles a bad guy kidnapping Minnie. It’s worth the price of admission. As for the actual feature movie, Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel have wonderful voices, and the visuals are fun to behold in this middle-of-the-road Disney fare. It has a lot of music—some of it quite good, some of it, well, not—and a beautiful look to it. For recent Disney animation, my vote goes to Tangled for best, but that’s not to say this one is a letdown. It’s OK. Just OK. It’s about on par with Pixar’s latest, Monster’s University. It’s fun to watch, but not altogether memorable. 4 The Lego Movie Fast paced, frequently hilarious, and visually fun, this is the sort of movie we’ve come to expect from Pixar, one that appeals to both kids and adults on many levels. It’s also notable that it isn’t a Pixar film, but a product of the still formidable but inconsistent Warner Brothers animation wing. The plot follows Emmet (Chris Pratt), a “generic” builder as he goes about his homogenized life, building structures under strict deadlines, listening to the same song (Tegan and Sara’s terrific “Everything is Awesome”) every minute of the day, and following the rules of the omnipotent President Business (Will Ferrell). President Business demands conformity in a decidedly socialistic way, but he keeps everybody at bay by promising Taco Tuesdays. Things change instantly when Emmet meets Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), who reveals to Emmet that he’s living in a pre-programmed world, and there’s the possibility for real life beyond its walls (echoes of The Matrix and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil). Emmet joins forces with Wildstyle and her extremely cool boyfriend, Batman (Arnett) to take down the establishment and restore freewill. The Lego Movie is a bit exhausting at times, but at least the constant stream of activity is laced with super intelligence rather than bombastic, vapid visuals. It’s a cliché, but I’ll say it: “Fun for the whole family!”

3The Monuments Men Director George Clooney’s war epic about historians racing to save art from the Nazis looks and feels like it was just taken out of a time capsule buried in 1958. It’s quite breezy for a war movie, peppered with laughs provided by a strong cast including Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and John Goodman as men trying to thwart Hitler’s plan for a giant museum. It has one of those whistle-infused soundtracks, and it doesn’t hurt that Clooney and Dujardin look like Errol Flynn and Gene Kelly. The movie moves briskly, and is perhaps a bit too weightless for a movie of such heavy subject matter. It also has a useless subplot involving Damon and Cate Blanchett. Still, Clooney has great command of the camera here, the ensemble (especially Murray and Goodman) shines, and it’s fun to watch. This is an interesting piece of World War II history, and it’s good that somebody has made a decent movie to cover this chapter of Hitler insanity.

4The Past Berenice Bejo (Oscar nominee for The Artist) took Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of Marie, a woman who has invited her long absent husband Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) to her home so that they can finalize their divorce. Marie is in a new relationship with Samir (Tahar Rahim of A Prophet), whose wife lies in a coma from mysterious circumstances. Some compelling acting makes up for writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s (A Separation) sometimes longwinded storytelling (the plot contains a bunch of unnecessary twists and a few shocks that aren’t all that shocking). When the movie works, it fires on all cylinders, especially when Mosaffa is acting across from the child actors in this film. Bejo has some powerhouse scenes that make it quite understandable that she has received some nice accolades. The film’s final image and use of music is the best thing in the movie.

3Robocop RoboCop is a remake that totally rewrites an original in a way that won’t piss off its legions of fans. Joel Kinnaman steps into the role of Alex Murphy (played in the late ’80s original by Peter Weller), a Detroit cop in the year 2028 who gets himself blown up after causing too much trouble for a criminal kingpin. Murphy, with the permission of his wife (Abbie Cornish) has his life saved by being placed into an armored endoskeleton with the purpose of making him a law enforcement superhero. In the original, Murphy (well played by Peter Weller) started his crime crusade not really knowing who he was, with memories suppressed. He eventually figured out his identity and solved his own murder. The new film drastically diverts from the original, having its Murphy freak out upon waking up as a robot, fully cognizant of who he is. It’s only when his emotional stability comes into question that his doctor (Gary Oldman) decides to mess with his brain and shoot him full of dopamine, turning him into a robot zombie. Paul Verhoeven’s original is a far superior film, but this one has its merits.