Film

Out of order

The Judge

The prospect of Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall sharing a movie together is, in a word, awesome. So what does director David Dobkin—with Downey as producer—do with such an opportunity? He gives us a movie so cliché-ridden that the occasional inspired moments scream out at us like a lost puppy yelping while being swarmed by rabid bats. Downey plays Hank Palmer, one of those typical movie lawyers who gets bad guys sprung free in Chicago and pisses, literally and figuratively, on lawyers trying to put bad men in jail. Just before he gets another baddie off the hook, a call comes in from home. It turns out his mom died while tending to her flowers, so Hank is off to his hometown for the funeral. In that hometown is his lousy dad, Joseph (Duvall), the town judge and major league prick. Wouldn’t you know it? It turns out Hank’s hometown is the absolute opposite of Chicago. It’s one of those rural, country paradises that the protagonist despises but we, the viewer, can see is a pretty darned nice place, especially if you like fishing trips, bike rides and hot bartenders who are willing to sleep with you. You just feel terrible for a guy who has to go to a place like that, right? Hank hates his dad. Oh boy, oh boy, does he hate him. Joseph hates his son. Gee willikers, does he hate that little son of a bitch. The reasons for their mutual hatred are slowly revealed, and not a one of those reasons comes as a surprise. Hank does the funeral, and is all ready to bolt and go deal with his newly developing divorce when he gets called back to town. Turns out dad’s Cadillac and, consequently, dad are being investigated in a possibly intentional vehicular homicide.

You know what this means? Court drama! And because it involves a son defending his dad, it’s a family court drama! And it is long. By god, at 141 freaking minutes, is it ever so horribly long. Billy Bob Thornton plays the evil lawyer that Hank must face in court in defense of his dad. We know he is evil because he has by Bob Grimm a steel, collapsible cup that he drinks water out of, one that he snaps open and closed bgrimm@ with a vengeance. Other cliché characters newsreview.com include the autistic brother who likes to film things, and the “Coulda Been Somebody!” 1 brother (Vincent D’Onofrio) who lost a chance to be a baseball star when Hank got them into a car accident as a teen. I would have to say the highlight of this movie is the scene where a sick Joseph shits himself in a futile attempt to make it to the toilet in time. Hank comes to his rescue, and we are treated to a scene where we not only see Robert Duvall covered in shit, but the gruesome aftermath when Hank cleans him off in the shower. Dobkin adds a little humor to the crap shower scene, with Hank’s daughter outside the door doing a knock-knock joke. You see, it’s funny because the kid doesn’t know that behind the door is her dad and granddad standing in a shower covered with shit. That’s some major hijinks right there. So, this is a courtroom drama involving Billy Bob Thornton and his stupid cup, a disease-of-the-week movie involving rampant shitting, a romance because Hank gets it on with an ex (Vera Farmiga) and her daughter (I won’t go into that), a fish-out-of-water dramedy, a mystery about who done run somebody over and a little bit Rain Man due to the autistic brother angle. It’s really unbelievable that so much talent threw down for The Judge. Downey was on Howard Stern recently, where he claimed that Duvall was a bit of a holdout, and didn’t really want to make the movie. I’m guessing the opportunity to crap himself on screen and then get a nice shower from Iron Man must’ve sold him on the gig. Ω

"Nobody calls me Boo Radley!"

1

Poor

2

Fair

3

Good

4

Very Good 5

2A Walk Among the Tombstones Liam Neeson plays a former policeman and recovering alcoholic in director Scott Frank’s sometimes interesting and always unpleasant serial killer drama. Neeson’s Matt Scudder, after accidentally killing a civilian during a shootout, has gone rogue since his days on the force. Eight years have passed, and while he’s quit drinking, he’s doing some pretty unsavory jobs as a private investigator. He gets pulled into the world of a drug dealer after his wife has been kidnapped, and a lot of bad, bad things start happening. Neeson is very good in the film, but the script, written by Frank and based on the novel by Lawrence Block, has too many cardboard characters. Worst of all is a homeless kid sidekick. There’s also the strung-out heroin addict, the whispery-voiced abductor of women, and the creepy guy who tends the cemetery and keeps pigeons on the roof … and he knows something. I liked Neeson here, and I wouldn’t mind seeing the character again. Hopefully, the next film with this character—if there is one—trims the fat.

2Dolphin Tale 2 Call this one The Empire Strikes Back of Dolphin Tale movies, in that it is slightly better than the original (not much—just slightly) and it has Tauntauns (actually, that’s not true). The likes of Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Harry Connick Jr. rejoin annoying child actors Nathan Gamble and Cozi Zuehlsdorff (yes, the Cozi Zuehlsdorff) for another round of gooey sentimentality involving dolphins. This time out, and probably due to all of those current issues involving whales and dolphins in captivity, the story spends a lot of time on rehabbing and releasing animals rather than confining them for human amusement. In addition to Winter, the dolphin with the prosthetic tail, there’s a pretty awesome sea turtle and a kooky pelican that kids will love. The movie kind of works as educational fare, but when it drifts away from the aquarium tanks it’s a real hell ride. It must be said that Harry Connick Jr. can’t act for beans, Ashley Judd’s career has really hit the skids, and Morgan Freeman just has no business being within a million miles of this film. Gamble and Zuehlsdorff (yes, the Cozi Zuehlsdorff) are, I’m sure, a couple of exquisite human beings, but watching them in a movie is an annoying, tedious task. I love the dolphins and aquatic life in this film. It’s the humans who drive me crazy.

3The Equalizer Based on a TV show from the ’80s that I never once watched, Denzel Washington plays Robert McCall, a quiet employee at a Home Depot-type store. Robert likes to go drink tea at a local diner and read his book, and it appears that there is very little to him. When a young prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz) gets into trouble with Russian mobsters, Robert springs into action, and major details of his past are slowly revealed. Washington is pretty damn great in the role, playing a sweet, gentle man who can tear your face off in an instant without blinking an eye. The film is directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), and while Fuqua resorts to a lot of visual clichés (slow motion, rain) he totally owns those clichés. Marton Csokas is good and scary as Teddy, the film’s main bad guy. His confrontations with Robert are quite memorable. The movie doesn’t offer much when it comes to new things, but it does provide solid entertainment through and through. I’m hoping Washington gets a franchise out of this one, because I’d like to see more about the story of Robert McCall.

5Gone Girl David Fincher set out to make the nastiest, most poisonous movie about marriages gone bad ever made, and I think he succeeded. Fincher and Gillian Flynn, the author of the novel and screenplay, came up with a toxic cocktail, laced with dark humor, scabrous satire and blistering performances. On the day of his fifth anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returns to his home after sulking at the bar he owns with his sister (a funny Carrie Coon) to discover his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), is missing. Nick calls the police and the in-laws, and quickly finds himself sucked up in a media circus that leaves him dazed and confused. His demeanor in public is a strange combination of a malaise and ill-timed smiles. Yeah … he’s a suspect. Through a series of narrated flashbacks, we hear the story of the Flynne marriage from Amy’s perspective, chronicled in her diary. Then, at about the halfway point, the movie goes completely, wonderfully insane. For those unaware of the plot twist, my best advice to you is that you should accept it—even though it’s totally bug nuts—sit back, and enjoy the rest of this messed-up ride. Anybody who goes to this movie thinking they’re going to see something grounded in reality will be setting themselves up for disappointment. Gone Girl is nightmarish fantasy, a hyper-sensationalized “what-if” that thrives on its implausibility. Had this movie tried to stick closer to reality, it would’ve killed too much of the fun. Pike, a British actress perhaps known best for Jack Reacher, gets the role of a lifetime with Amy, and she devours it. Affleck shows what’s been true all along in his career: He’s a fine actor capable of great nuance and a movie star of the highest order.

2The Maze Runner The maze in the title is a fun spectacle full of shifting walls and weird spider robots. When the movie is in the maze, it is good. When it’s out of the maze, it kind of stinks. Dylan O’Brien plays Thomas, a teenager transported to a camp surrounded by a large, constantly shifting maze. The camp is inhabited by other teens, including Alby (Aml Ameen), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Gally (Will Poulter). They are all clueless about why they have been put there and how to escape, but they do send a squad of “runners” into the maze to map it out and search its outer reaches. The searches are fruitless until the mysterious Thomas takes charge. The mystery of the maze is intriguing, but the payoff is blah. The Lord of the Flies drama between the leads is typical, boring stuff. I liked the design of the maze, and the maze turns out to be the film’s most interesting character. Second place goes to Poulter, who is a long way from the comic territory he staked out in We’re the Millers. Too bad the rest of the movie feels like a patchwork of many movies before.

4The One I Love A husband and wife (Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss) struggling in their relationship visit a retreat on the advice of their therapist (Ted Danson), and they make a startling discovery in one of the guest houses. That discovery results in something that is beautifully clever in addressing the problems that plague many relationships, while also playing like a really cool Twilight Zone episode. The big twist results in one of the better romantic comedies in years. Calling this a romantic comedy is almost an insult, but it has romance, and it is funny, so I suppose it falls into that genre. I do think it’s a movie that many therapists will hate, because it could save some couples a bunch of money. Duplass is making a name for himself as an understated, offbeat romantic comedy lead. He’s actually the star of another of the more recent great romantic comedies, Safety Not Guaranteed. Moss, star of TV’s Mad Men, has a movie career spanning over two decades, but The One I Love makes it feel like she’s just arriving. (Available on VOD, Amazon.com and iTunes during a limited theatrical run.)

4The Skeleton Twins Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader take their respective careers to the next level in this film, with both spreading their dramatic wings and proving their talents go well beyond things that are just funny. Craig Johnson’s second directorial effort has some intermittent laughs, but it gets a lot darker than one might expect for the Target Lady and Stefon. The movie should do a lot for both Hader and Wiig’s careers, and stands as one of the year’s best family dramas. The two play brotherand-sister twins, long estranged, who wind up back in each other’s lives. Milo (Hader) tries to commit suicide in L.A. after breaking up with his boyfriend. His twin sister, Maggie (Wiig), had been trying to do the very same thing back in New York when the call comes in that Milo is in the hospital. After an awkward reunion in a hospital room, Milo is heading to New York with his twin sis to lay low for a while. As Milo adjusts to life back on the east coast, Maggie conducts an affair with her scuba instructor. Luke Wilson is sweet and funny as Maggie’s affable husband, and Ty Burrell is memorable as a man from Milo’s past. Wiig and Hader make for a very convincing onscreen brother and sister, something that’s surely the result of all those years they spent together on SNL.