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www.newsreview.com Danny Collins

It’s been 12 years since the great Al Pacino has been involved in a project totally worthy of him. (His Roy Cohn in 2003’s HBO miniseries Angels in America was his last great role.) He’s become a bit of a caricature in the last decade, appearing in some of its worst movies—Ocean’s Thirteen, Gigli, 88 Minutes, Jack and Jill and Righteous Kill to name a few—and hamming it up to the point where he’s nearly unwatchable. Danny Collins isn’t a return to absolute greatness for Pacino, but it does serve as a rather relevant and crowd-pleasing vehicle for the former Michael Corleone. Pacino steps up as the title character, a Neil Diamond-like rock singer who has spent the past 40 years touring and performing “the hits.” No longer a productive songwriter, he’s come to rely on the comfort of crowds reacting happily to his most popular hit, “Baby Doll.” He’s also heavy into drugs and alcohol and engaged to a girl half his age. On the eve of his birthday, his manager (a delightfully acerbic Christopher Plummer) gives him a special present: a framed personal letter to him that John Lennon wrote many years ago that was never delivered. Lennon had once read an article about Collins, was moved, and sent a correspondence from him and Yoko with his phone number. He was offering some fatherly advice to the confused young Danny, but due to a scummy collector getting his hands on the letter, Danny never got it. The gift throws Danny into a tailspin, wondering what life would’ve been like if he could’ve called Lennon and been pals. Trivia note: This element of the story is actually based on the true story of folk singer Steve Tilston, who received a similar reassuring letter from John Lennon 34 years after it was written, phone number and all.

Danny packs his bag and heads to Jersey, where he takes up residence in the neighborhood Hilton and commits to finding his estranged son (Bobby Cannavale). He puts himself on a course for redemption, putting a piano in his room and trying to rediscover the artistic hunger that drove him 40 years earlier. Undoubtedly, Pacino must have seen the by Bob Grimm “redemptive” angle in the script as a nice parallel to his own fledgling career. His last bgrimm@ great cinematic venture, besides the HBO newsreview.com effort, was 2002’s Insomnia, which capped a long stretch of good-to-great vehicles for the 3 American icon. Pacino dives into the role of Danny with much aplomb, but also employs the sort of nuance that has been missing from his work for too many years. He’s fully engaged in the movie, which helps him to rise above the schmaltz and make it something entertaining, moving and funny. He gets help from a stellar supporting cast, including Annette Bening as the hotel manager Danny has a crush on, Jennifer Garner as the daughter-in-law he’s just meeting, and the aforementioned Cannavale and Plummer. Cannavale deserves special notice, because his character is given a disease-ofthe-week plotline along with the abandoned son routine, enough clichés to torpedo any performer. Somehow, Cannavale turns the whole thing into his best screen work yet, and it’s actually a pleasure to see him exchanging lines with Pacino. Of course, the biggest sell in this film is buying Pacino as a singer. Pacino is a shitty, shitty singer, and he seems to know it, so the couple of scenes where he’s on stage strutting his stuff to “Baby Doll” are a bit comical. Yet, they have a lot of appeal and play not unlike Mickey Dolenz in his latter years faking his way through “I’m a Believer.” Danny Collins might not mark the return of the great Pacino, but it does stand as his best work in a decade, and proof that the old bastard has plenty of gas left in the tank. I also think he should do a little tour as his Danny Collins persona. It would be fantastically awful to the point of being awesome. Ω

When this guy says,  "Say hello to my little  friend," he isn't   talking about a gun. 

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3Backcountry Of all the animal attack movies, films where the likes of sharks, birds, insects, Mickey Rourke, and tigers attack and eat people, the bear attack movies freak me out the most. Granted, Jaws is still the granddaddy of all animal attack films, but there’s just something so freaky and depressing about bears mauling humans in movies. Backcountry goes into the Bear Attack Hall of Fame with Grizzly, The Edge and the documentary Grizzly Man. Missy Peregrym and Jeff Roop play Jenn and Alex, a troubled couple looking to have themselves a good old time in the wild, hiking trails and canoeing lakes. Things take a bad turn when Alex loses his way and gets the couple lost. Then, well, things become absolutely catastrophic when a bear smells Alex’s bloody socks, finds their tent and decides to have itself some hikers for dinner. There’s a bear attack in this film that will bring tears to your eyes. A character goes out in the most horrid and gory of ways, screaming and fighting the entire time. Then, we are treated to the sight of the dead victim being feasted upon by the bear, while their significant other is forced to flee and battle the elements. As bear attacks go, this one isn’t quite as bad as Harold Perrineau getting eaten while Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins watch in The Edge, but it’s pretty damn brutal. Much credit goes to the performer and makeup artists, who do a great job in making you feel somebody is really buying it via bear face. Writer-director Adam MacDonald’s film is a good watch thanks to the performers, and some fine bear casting. The story, which MacDonald describes as Open Water with a bear, is supposedly based on a real life event where two campers were attacked in northern Ontario. Knowing that MacDonald based his carnage on something that really happened makes Backcountry all the more scary. Available for rent on iTunes, Amazon.com and On Demand during a limited theatrical run.

4Cinderella Director Kenneth Branagh knows what Disney junkies, young and old, crave in their fairy tale movies, and he unabashedly delivers the goods with this, the latest “live action” remake of a Disney animated classic. Of course, any Cinderella movie would be a slog without a good actress playing the title character. Luckily, Branagh has scored a great one with Lily James (TV’s Downton Abbey), as charming an actress as any to ever play an iconic Disney role. Screenwriter Chris Weitz gives Cinderella a sweet and sad backstory, showing us a young girl (Eloise Webb) living a happy and secure life with her doting parents (Ben Chaplin and Hayley Atwell). As the fairy tale dictates, Cinderella loses her mom, paving the way for the Queen Bee of all stepmothers, played here by a spot-on, devilish Cate Blanchett. Blanchett and James are so good in their roles because they aren’t trying to break the mold. They both embrace their parts as if they know what we have come to expect, and the result is a sort of adorable nostalgia in the case of Cinderella. She’s a genuinely nice person you can root for as portrayed by James. Adding to the charm would be Helena Bonham Carter (Branagh’s ex-girlfriend) as Fairy Godmother. As to be expected, Carter plays it joyfully weird and quirky. When the pink gown transforms into that glorious blue dress adorning the spinning James, it’s pure movie magic. It’s a lot of fun seeing Branagh embracing the Disney canon and making it his own for nearly two hours.

3Furious 7 The latest Furious movie says goodbye to series mainstay Paul Walker while taking car chases to seriously outlandish and fantastical extremes. In some ways, the film has become more of a science fiction offering rather than a car chase movie, and that’s fine by me. I have to admit that part of me got uncomfortable watching Paul Walker racing around in cars a little over a year after he died in a fiery car crash. You can say Walker died doing something he loved, but I’m thinking irresponsible and reckless speeding dropped way down on his favorite things list during the final moments of his life. Like, to the way, way bottom of that list. That said, Furious 7 does spark some life into a very tired franchise by going totally bananas, and it’s pretty remarkable how Walker, who had allegedly only filmed half of his scenes before he died, is inserted into the movie posthumously. Director James Wan, primarily known for horror movies like Saw and The Conjuring, has delivered the franchise’s best offering since the first one. This movie gets my blessing for the sequence involving Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and Walker’s Brian O’Conner jumping a car through not one but two skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi. Will there be an eighth film, even though Walker is no longer with us? Um, given that the movie made nearly $144 million in its opening weekend, I think it’s a foregone conclusion that Universal will find a way to keep the engines running on this sucker.

2Get Hard For me, a new Will Ferrell movie is usually a cause for celebration. Hey, I even liked Land of the Lost, a film I feel was unjustly dismissed by the masses. Alas, even the great comedic masters misfire from time to time, and Ferrell’s latest goes on the dung heap with the likes of his Kicking and Screaming and Bewitched. Ferrell plays a finance guru who gets convicted for crimes he supposedly didn’t commit, and sentenced to hard time in San Quentin. In an attempt to not get raped when he goes to jail, he hires his car washer (Kevin Hart) to train him in prison ways, for he immediately assumes the man did time because he’s black. So, right there, the Ferrell character is a racist ignoramus that we are supposed to feel sorry for, and that just doesn’t happen. Ferrell and Hart labor for laughs in a sea of dick and ass rape jokes, and it’s all quite ugly and mostly unfunny. There are some highlights, including a simulated prison riot in a wine cellar that inexplicably includes the appearance of an angry baboon, but the jokes are mostly duds. You know you are in trouble when your plot is mostly identical to a failed Rob Schneider movie (the equally offensive Big Stan).

1Insurgent Director Robert Schwentke chooses a lot of gray tones to go with his dull dialogue and muddled, straining performances to make this one a sleeper in a bad way. Shailene Woodley, an actress who is impressive most of the time, simply doesn’t make for an intriguing action heroine. The material seems beneath her. After the oh-so-rousing events of the first film, Tris (Woodley) and Four (Theo James) are living in a “faction free” zone, meaning the zone is not run by any of the factions by which everybody in this society is categorized by. The factions are Amity, Abnegation, Erudite, Dauntless, Candor, Flounder and Douchebag. I would say this mess has the worst Young Adult fiction premise ever, but I’ve seen the Twilight films, so I would be lying my ass off. While living among the factionless, they have a surprise meeting with Four’s hot mom Evelyn, played by the incomparable Naomi Watts, one of my all-time favorite actresses. Watts is totally wasting her time in this crap, because, well, if Kate Winslet can slum in this pigeon spooge, so can Watts. While Watts makes a fairly brief appearance in this chapter, her character figures to be bigger in future installments. So, consequently, I weep for Watts’s immediate film future.

4It Follows A young woman (Maika Monroe) pays for having some car-sex fun in a very, very big way in this creepy, ghoulish, unrelenting horror film from writer-director David Robert Mitchell. Taking more than a few cues from John Carpenter’s Halloween and the zombie works of George Romero, Mitchell is very much tuned into the sort of stuff that makes filmgoers squirm and sweat. The movie, based on one of his own nightmares, combines voyeuristic camera work, eerie soundtrack vibes and some fine acting for one of the better, oldschool cinematic scares of the past decade. Monroe’s character gets cursed after having the aforementioned car sex. The curse involves an unstoppable force that can take the shape of any human, be it an old naked man on the roof or one of your parents. That force is not only out to kill the cursed individual; it’s out to kill the cursed individual in very violent ways. The shape-shifting “monster” proves a highly effective device, because you will find yourself constantly scanning every frame of this movie, evaluating every human being that appears. Crowd shots are especially unnerving. There are times when the “monster” is fairly apparent, and others where it is something vaguely visible in the back of the shot. In short, you don’t ever feel safe watching It Follows.

HAPPENING THIS SATURDAY! EXPLORE THE FINE ART OF FERMENTATION

SOCIAL SCIENCE: THE ART OF BEER

Date: Saturday, April 18th Time: 6:00–9:00pm

Cost: $15 members $20 nonmembers

Location: 490 S. Center Street, Downtown Reno

Ages: Adults only—must be 21 or older to attend

Tickets: Purchase online at nvdm.org or call 775-786-1000

Don’t just drink beer, understand beer! Explore the fine art of fermentation when you sample beers from local breweries, learn how beer is made, examine varieties of hops, and challenge your skills and your friends in fun beer games too!

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