Film

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Focus

It’s been a couple of years since Will Smith and his mopey kid (along with eternal suck director M. Night Shyamalan) inflicted After Earth upon us. Will Smith has to eat, so it stands to reason he’d make movies again, even if his once adoring public is a little gun shy of his offerings at this point. Focus is a relatively small movie for the Smith mega machine, a semi-standard conman movie that allows Smith to use his wisecracker persona. It’s a movie that does a good job making him likeable again, even if he’s playing a lying scumbag. Nicky (Smith) is enjoying a fine meal at his hotel one night when Jess (Margot Robbie, who must be the hottest girl on God’s green Earth—and all of the arctic and desert parts, too) sits at his table. This starts a movie-long relationship between the conman and the conwoman wannabe. Nicky co-runs a thievery ring that specializes in a lot of little scams and robberies, claiming that the smaller stuff all adds up. Jess, his trainee with a perfect touch when it comes to lifting watches, craves the “big sting.” Nicky wants nothing to do with that. Or does he? The first half of the movie is actually quite good, as we see Nicky showing Jess the ropes and battling with an urge to gamble. His gambling addiction leads to a high stakes game of WTF? as Nicky squares off with a cigar chomping B.D. Wong at a football game. Wong’s character overhears Nicky and Jess doing some small bets regarding the game, and wants in. Needless to say, the stakes go very high.

The second half of the film goes a little off course as Nicky goes to work for racecar mogul Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro) involving some sort of speed-reducing scheme. Gerald McRaney shows up as a grouchy bodyguard during this portion of the film, and he helps to elevate it over the material. The scams in this film, even the simple by Bob Grimm pickpocket stuff, are all outrageous to the point of implausibility. It also doesn’t help bgrimm@ that it’s established early on that Smith’s newsreview.com character is a selfish liar, so every big reveal isn’t all that surprising or clever. He’s 3 clearly bullshitting all of the time. Still, the scams do manage to be somewhat fun to watch at times, even if they are a bit too nutty to take seriously. The main reason to see the movie would be Robbie, who is just taking movies by storm. She absolutely stunned in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and while this film isn’t half that movie, she’s atomically good. Robbie is lined up to play Harley Quinn in the upcoming Suicide Squad (alongside Smith and Jared Leto) and, at just 24 years old, she stands as one of the more interesting up-and-comers in Hollywood. Will Smith is a solid second best reason to see Focus. His role allows for that humorous, fast-talking side so absent from the likes of After Earth and Seven Pounds. (He did have a funny cameo in Anchorman 2 and Men in Black 3 was OK). His recent stinkers had me almost forgetting that I usually like his movies. It’s good to see him back in decent form. The film is co-directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the team responsible for Crazy, Stupid, Love. and the vastly underrated Jim Carrey vehicle I Love You Phillip Morris. In some ways, Focus is their least engaging venture yet, which says a lot for their abilities because it’s still good. Next up for them would be the wartime comedy Fun House starring none other than Robbie. As a conman movie, this one falls way short of films like The Sting, but is much better than crap like Now You See Me. As for Will Smith films, it also falls somewhere in the middle. As for Robbie, well, just see it for the watch-robbing Robbie. She steals the movie, lifting that sucker right off of Will Smith’s unsuspecting wrist. Ω

"Yeah, I've seen The Wolf of Wall Street ... several times ... a couple of scenes anyway."

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Poor

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Good

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Very Good 5

3American Sniper While Clint Eastwood’s film has plenty of problems, Bradley Cooper rises above the patchy melodrama and overly slick segments with his portrayal of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Kyle holds the American sniper record of 160 confirmed kills, and was killed by a veteran he was trying to mentor on a shooting range. The film works best when depicting Kyle at work in Iraq, constructing some very tense battle scenes and sequences as seen through Kyle’s riflescope. There’s a subplot involving an enemy sniper named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik) that feels like an entirely different movie. For some reason, Eastwood employs a showier style in the scenes involving Mustafa, which feel a bit false and artificial alongside the movie’s grittier moments. Saddled with the film’s worst dialogue, Sienna Miller battles hard in trying to make Kyle’s wife, Taya, an intriguing movie character. Cooper, who physically transformed himself for the role, does an excellent job of conveying the difficulties and stress that Kyle’s job entailed. He’s an actor forever taking risks and challenging himself, and he’s a big reason to see this movie.

1Fifty Shades of Grey Subbing for her sick roommate, mousy college student with a porn name Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), who is so innocent she doesn’t know what a butt plug is, goes to Seattle to interview billionaire business guy douchebag Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). After the interview, Grey starts stalking Anastasia at the hardware store where she works, but that’s OK because he has billions of dollars and looks like the result of a night of passionate lovemaking between Ryan Phillippe and Eric Bana. His psychotic courtship eventually winds up with Anastasia becoming his prospective bondage slave. He offers her a formal contract that, if she signs, will allow him to be the dominant and her the submissive in a kinky sex relationship that will involve spanking, humiliation, nipple clips and eating toast in bed. The sex scenes eventually happen and, if anything, they provide some good, hearty laughs. While the screenplay doesn’t explain much, Grey’s sexual proclivities and needs to abuse his mate have something to do with his being a crack baby. So I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for him when he’s torturing his girlfriend because his mom was a stupid crack whore. Fair enough. When people aren’t having sex in this movie, which is quite often as things turn out, they talk in a somber, slow, irritatingly elongated manner. Everybody in this movie is a mopey, sodden sop. I love Seattle, but watching how residents behave and communicate in this movie makes me never want to visit the city again, even if the Mariners make the playoffs.

2Hot Tub Time Machine 2 The primary charm of Hot Tub Time Machine was seeing John Cusack running around in the ‘80s again. That was the main reason for the film existing, and the main reason it was funny. The secondary charm was the antics of Rob Corddry as Lou, the suicidal heavy metal fan who had to deal with his bullied past. The film was the first to really highlight Corddry’s talents, and he kicked some ass. Now comes this dreck, sans Cusack, with Corddry taking the lead. The movie sort of stinks, but I’m not putting all of the blame on Corddry. Movie sequels often prove to be unnecessary, and this one would be a king of the unnecessary sequels. First off, without Cusack, we’re missing the main reason for the franchise’s existence, the glue that held it all together. Cusack provided a nice anchor for the madness going on around him. Corddry and his cohorts (Craig Robinson as Nick, and Clark Duke as Jacob) just seem to be running around like mad in this movie, with no sense of purpose. The plot involves the boys jumping the tub and traveling to the future, where they mine just a few laughs. In truth, this film has no business being on the big screen. If you don’t have the dough to bring a major star back, but you still want to do a mediocre cash-in sequel, go ahead and make it with the secondary stars, but send the results straight to Netflix.

3The Imitation Game Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing, who helped win the war against the Nazis when he and others invented a machine capable of breaking the Enigma code. Morten Tyldum’s film, while a tad cumbersome at times, does do a good job of illustrating the impossible odds Turing and his team were up against in trying to decipher the code. Keira Knightley (who had a nice 2014 with this and Begin Again), Matthew Goode and Charles Dance contribute to a strong supporting cast. Cumberbatch portrays Turing as a disagreeable, unlikeable social outcast who just happened to play a huge part in saving the free world thanks to his talent for solving puzzles. The film also delves into some of the more controversial times in Turing’s life, and sometimes the order of things gets a little confusing. Cumberbatch keeps the whole thing afloat with a typically strong performance.

3The Last 5 Years After some respectable musical efforts in awful films (Pitch Perfect, Into the Woods), Anna Kendrick takes a nice leap forward in this film adaptation of the offBroadway musical. She plays Cathy, a woman we see singing a mournful post breakup song at the film’s beginning. Her husband, newly famous writer Jamie (Jeremy Jordan), has just left her for superstardom and multiple girlfriends. The film then flashes back to show moments over the last five years of their lives, with almost all of the dialogue being sung. The two stars, especially Kendrick, have exceptional voices, and do much of their singing live. The music itself isn’t all that memorable, but it’s not bad and does require Kendrick and Jordan to use their upper register often. They both have impressive pipes. What drags the film down a bit is that the Jamie character is a bland, typical, reprehensible prick. That could work fine, but he’s portrayed sympathetically instead of for the asshole he is. The script calls for more humor and less sap. Still, the technical aspects of the movie are exemplary. The film, directed by Richard LaGravenese, was shot in about three weeks on a miniscule budget, but still winds up being a rather competent exercise in musical theater. In the end, it shows that Kendrick is the absolute real deal. (Available for rent on iTunes, On Demand and Amazon.com during its limited theatrical release.)

3The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Things go bad for the sea creatures of Bikini Bottom when the hallowed secret formula for the Krabby Patty goes missing. The undersea home falls into a deep apocalypse with everybody wearing leather, and it’s up to SpongeBob and some of his cohorts to go above water and get the recipe back. The film is typical zany SpongeBob when it’s underwater, rendered in traditional animation (albeit 3-D). When they go above water, it’s a different story. Live action and CGI mix in a way that’s visually fun, but a little spastic at times. Still, there’s a spirit to the movie that’s always alive, and some great random humor (Bubbles the Future Dolphin is definitely a highlight). Antonio Banderas has some fun as a goofy pirate looking to start his own food truck using his pirate ship. SpongeBob fans won’t be disappointed, although they will probably enjoy the underwater scenes more than the flashier live action sequences.

4Still Alice Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease steals the mind of a very smart woman in this moving and heartbreaking film. Julianne Moore plays Alice, a professor at Columbia University who leads a very organized and regimented life of lectures, dinner parties and runs in the park. Alice starts forgetting words here and there, and then proceeds to lose her place in lectures. When she loses her way during a routine jog and can’t find her way home, she begins to realize that these aren’t normal memory loss problems for a 50-year-old woman. At first, Alice thinks she has a brain tumor. But some memory tests suggest to her neurologist (Stephen Kunken) that something else could be causing her difficulties. After a series of brain scans, the conclusion is made: Alice has Alzheimer’s. Moore gives us a deep, fully realized, multi-dimensional performance that never overdoes the sentiment or feels trite. Alice is a woman who prides herself on her encyclopedic knowledge for teaching, and exhibits nothing but grace as that knowledge is rapidly stripped away. Credit Moore for making every step of Alice’s tribulations seem honest and credible. A great supporting cast includes Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart and Kate Bosworth.