Film

Game over

Pixels

Vintage video games come to the forefront in Pixels, a feature length movie starring Adam Sandler based on a quirky little short film by Patrick Jean. The fact that the short film is a lot cooler than this full-length feature reveals that 1) perhaps the concept works better in a small dose and 2) getting Adam Sandler involved was, as it usually is, a really bad idea. Sandler, in mopey dog wiseass mode, plays Brenner, installer of home video equipment and best friend to Cooper (Kevin James), the president of the United States. Brenner is a former video game whiz kid who lost a world championship to Eddie (Peter Dinklage) when he failed to come through during a round of Donkey Kong. That loss sent him on some sort of damaged ego spiral that ruined his life, while fellow gamer Cooper went on to be the leader of the free world. While Brenner is out making the rounds and trying to score with Violet (Michelle Monaghan), a customer going through marital turmoil, Guam is attacked by the 1980s video game Galaga. It turns out that aliens have retrieved a videotape of old games shot into space in the early ’80s and interpreted it as a declaration of war on their planet. So they are sending old timey video games to wipe us out, and using dubbed footage of ’80s icons like Daryl Hall, Ronald Reagan and Madonna as messengers. It’s all fairly interesting at first, but this is an Adam Sandler project, after all, so he and his cohorts are likely to wear out their welcome after the first half. Not only do they

wear out their welcome, the film goes from mildly entertaining to total Stinksville as it wears on. The premise and the build-up are promising, but the Sandler shtick and some tepid, shallow writing do everything in. As for the special effects, we’re talking about Pac-Man, Centipede and Donkey Kong here, so massive, by Bob Grimm awe-inspiring special effects are not in order. If you should choose to spring for the 3-D bgrimm@ version, you will find yourself wholly disapnewsreview.com pointed and a couple of more bucks poorer. Surprisingly, even though Sandler is 1 nothing to get excited about here, the worst performer in Pixels happens to be the normally reliable Dinklage. He mugs so much in this movie, you could drink a cup of coffee out of his head. Also making an ass of himself is Josh Gad as Ludlow, the strange conspiracy theorist friend who is basically around because he’s overweight and kooky. The film is directed by Chris Columbus, who directed the first, shitty Harry Potter movie—and the much better second one—along with the awful Mrs. Doubtfire and Home Alone. Even though he’s responsible for some lousy movies, including this one, he did debut with Adventures in Babysitting, and that movie rules. So I can’t totally hate the guy. I can only partially hate him. The once mighty Sandler has hit so many cinematic potholes these last few years that his suspension is totally shot, and his tires are trashed. His future slate involves a deal with Netflix to produce and star in films, including the upcoming, already controversial Western spoof, The Ridiculous 6. It appears Hollywood is losing faith in him, which makes total sense. It’s sad to see the likes of Monaghan, so good in films like Source Code and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, hitting a point in her career where she has to play a Sandler love interest. In fact, it’s utterly heartbreaking. It’s perhaps the film’s greatest feat that Monaghan makes her character’s leanings toward Sandler semiconvincing. That’s some heavy-duty acting, for sure. If you are looking for some summer movie fun, go see Ant-Man, Trainwreck or Inside Out. Pixels is a total letdown, as disappointing as losing a handful of quarters in a faulty Asteroids machine while ingesting crap pizza at Chuck E Cheese’s. Ω

"Nerds!"

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3Ant-Man After a shocking directorial exodus and a series of rewrites, Marvel’s Ant-Man makes it to the screen as a reasonably enjoyable piece of summer fare thanks to the total charmer playing the title character. Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, a wisecracking professional thief given a new lease on life when Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) shows him the wonders of his incredible shrinking suit. Rudd was given the job by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), who left the film as its director after working on the project for years. While Wright still gets an executive producer credit and some writing credit, Peyton Reed (Yes Man), a virtual stranger to big budget blockbusters, wound up at the helm with a script rewrite from Adam McKay and Rudd himself. Reed does a good—although not outstanding—job in Wright’s place. The framework for the movie plays it mighty safe, with an emphasis on family viewing and very little of the offbeat touches that are the hallmark of a Wright affair. Still, Rudd is great as the title character, and some of the shrinking sequences are a blast.

5Inside Out This is another Pixar masterpiece, not only because it looks fantastic, but also because it generates real, genuine feelings. It also has some of that blissful, bizarre insanity that made Up such a winner (the films share the same director in Pete Docter). There are creations in this movie that just burst with genius energy. The movie takes place inside the mind of Riley (voice of Kaitlyn Dias), newly displaced from Minnesota to a small house in San Francisco with her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan). Inside Riley’s mind we see her emotions, played by the likes of Amy Poehler as Joy, Bill Hader as Fear, Lewis Black as Anger, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, and Mindy Kaling as Disgust. Along with being very funny, the film bluntly addresses the loss of memories as we grow up, how memories can be forever tainted with sadness, and just how important sadness is to any human being. It’s all handled in a Pixar way, which doesn’t mean whitewashed and sanitary. At times, the film is actually quite brutal and startling.

2Minions The little yellow things from Despicable Me get their own film, and their banana shtick is fun for a while, but not enough to sustain an entire feature. Things start funny enough with a brief history of the Minions since the beginning of time. They’ve always wanted to be henchman, and they are attracted to bad guys, so we see a lot of their past, unlucky bosses (Dracula, T-Rex, Napoleon, etc.). They wind up settling north worshipping the Abominable Snowman when three of them (Stuart, Kevin and Bob) decide to head out on a journey to look for a new master. Their travels take them to New York in 1968, the year of my birth and arguably one of the worst years in American history. The pop culture references when they first arrive, including a fantastic Richard Nixon billboard and The Dating Game, are well done. The movie has a cool Mad Magazine vibe in its first half. The charm soon wears off when the trio head to Orlando in search of Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock), the world’s greatest female super villain. The film goes off the rails in its second half as the Minions routine grows grating. Jennifer Saunders is a highlight as Queen Elizabeth when the action goes to England, but she isn’t enough to save the movie.

4Mr. Holmes Ian McKellen is shockingly good as the infamous Sherlock Holmes in this decidedly unorthodox twist on the sleuth’s story. McKellen plays him as an aging man in his 90s, fighting memory loss and struggling to recall the details of a case that caused him to walk away from the detective life. He does this on an estate accompanied by his housekeeper (a typically wonderful Laura Linney), her son (the charming Milo Parker) and his bees. The film features flashbacks to 20 years earlier (which has McKellen playing somewhere in the vicinity of his actual age), with Holmes trying to remember the circumstances involving a beautiful woman, her husband and a Japanese man. Things are a little slow-going at first, but when the pieces all get put together, it’s a nice payoff. Director Bill Condon (miles away from his pitiful stint on the Twilight series) has made a film full of sumptuous visuals, splendid acting and good humor. McKellen plays Holmes as a dignified, if sometimes nasty, older man who never wore that silly hat or smoked that huge pipe. In an interesting twist, his character is actually world famous and the subject of movies he considers garbage. The year has been a little light on great performances so far. McKellen’s is certainly one of them. His interactions with Linney and Parker are classically good. Condon and McKellen worked together before (Gods and Monsters). This stands as a much welcomed reunion.

3Southpaw This is one of the better boxing movies in many years. Jake Gyllenhaal transforms himself as Billy Hope, a boxer at the top of the world with a beautiful wife (Rachel McAdams) and daughter (Oona Laurence). He loses everything, Rocky V style, and must fight for redemption and the custody of his child. Forest Whitaker plays Billy’s unorthodox trainer, reminiscent of the role Burgess Meredith played in the Rocky films. Yes, I’m comparing this movie to Rocky in many ways because it is clear director Antoine Fuqua draws much of his inspiration from that series. Gyllenhaal, like Robert De Niro in Raging Bull before him, put himself through a rigorous training process to become a convincing fighter, and he certainly looks the part in the ring. Out of the ring, Billy mumbles a lot, which makes sense considering the amount of blows he’s taken to the head. It’s a typically great performance from Gyllenhaal, who rises above the moments where the script becomes a little too conventional. Laurence, who’s reminiscent of a young Natalie Wood, does strong work as the daughter who has to put up with a dad who can’t seem to get his act together.

3Testament of Youth Vera Brittain’s infamous autobiography finally gets a feature length film (it was adapted into a mini-series in 1979), and a good one at that. Alicia Vikander plays Brittain, a young British woman angrily trying to convince her father (Dominic West) and mother (Emily Watson) that it is totally appropriate for her to go to Oxford and become a writer rather than just getting married. World War I commences and throws all of their lives into turmoil, including her brother Edward (Taron Egerton), family friend Victor (Colin Morgan) and her boyfriend, Roland (Kit Harington). The film effectively shows how many young men regarded the big war as no big deal, something where they wouldn’t even serve in active duty. Many men signed up, and many men died in trench warfare that went on for over four years. Vikander delivers the film’s greatest performance as a young woman who finds herself in the thick of things as a nurse, putting her writing career on hold. The film gets a little longwinded at times, but Vikander remains interesting and powerful throughout. The movie is a good record of how WWI forever changed the world set the stage for future wars.

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3Trainwreck The hilarious Amy Schumer gets her first starring vehicle with a screenplay she wrote under the directorial tutelage of Judd Apatow and costarring Bill Hader. I would say this movie signals the arrival of Schumer as a cinematic force to be reckoned with. She plays Amy, a magazine writer playing the field in New York and doing it rather sloppily. When she’s assigned a story covering a sports medicine doctor (Hader), she unexpectedly falls for the guy, which puts into flux her whole plan to just fool around with a lot of people. Schumer has crafted a pretty runof-the-mill romantic comedy plotline with her screenplay, peppered with sometimes beautifully shocking profanity. She shows that she has the ability to nail the laughs, but she can also bring the emotional stuff, too. She has a funeral scene that is, dare I say, sublime. Hader is his always-terrific self as the shellshocked boyfriend just trying to bring some stability into Amy’s life, and Colin Quinn is terrific as her retirement home-dwelling father. The story is a little weak and predictable, but Schumer and Hader are awesome together, so that makes this very much worthwhile.

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Of Monsters And Men Goes Warm, Then Cold

Icelandic band strikes opposite notes in first two releases

by John Flynn

Icelandic group Of Monsters and Men plays a wide range of music, switching between whimsical storytelling and stark personal confessions. PHOTO CREDIT: OF MONSTERS AND MEN

In the winter of 865, viking Hrafna-Flóki watched his new settlement fail. Partly out of spite, he named the place Iceland though it was filled with rolling, verdant hills. Of Monsters and Men hails from that land and seeks to represent its multifaceted country by releasing music of all themes, tones and shades.

“We try to represent as best as possible, but we also just behave like we behave because that’s the way we are,” co-lead singer and guitarist Ragnar (Raggi) þórhallsson says. “We’re just a band out there trying to make music.”

The band’s first album, “My Head Is An Animal,” featured the worldwide single “Little Talks,” which entranced with its triumphant horn melody, propulsive “Heys!” and back-and-forth singing from the coleads, Raggi and Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir.

“For our first album, we went for a lot of storytelling. It was a way for us to get to know

each other,” Raggi says. “We were mainly making new settlement fail. Partly out of spite, he named a story together, but also putting stuff in there that the place Iceland though it was filled with rolling, we wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable talking to verdant hills. Of Monsters and Men hails from that each other about.” land and seeks to represent its multifaceted As the band gelled, the next album, country by releasing music of all “Beneath The Skin,” chose to lay themes, tones and shades. inner-most thoughts bare over best as possible, but we “We try to snowy, minimalist rock — a sharp contrast from the also just behave like represent as best cozier, folksy jams. we behave because that’s the way we as possible, but we “We wanted the audience to know us are,” co-lead singer and guitarist Ragnar also just behave like we better,” he says. “We also just wanted to (Raggi) þórhallsson behave because that’s the challenge ourselves says. “We’re just a band out there trying way we are.” and do something hard: to speak clearly about to make music.” RAGNAR ÞÓRHALLSSON, more things with the co-lead singer and guitarist lyrics without distracting album, “My Head Is that much with stories. It An Animal,” featured the was a chance for us to grow.” worldwide single “Little And despite the chilly Talks,” which entranced with its connotations of his country’s name, triumphant horn melody, propulsive Raggi doesn’t hold a grudge against “Heys!” and back-and-forth singing from the co- Hrafna-Flóki. leads, Raggi and Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir. “I think it’s one of the coolest names. I embrace it,” he says, joking a bit. “I think they did a good job of naming the country.”