Film

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No Escape

Owen Wilson and Lake Bell act scared shitless with the best of them in No Escape, an occasionally gripping but mostly silly American tourist nightmare from director John Erick Dowdle. There are some tense moments and decent sequences in the movie, but it’s an insipid affair in the end, and all of Wilson and Bell’s bug-eyed hyperventilating is for naught. Wilson plays Jack Dwyer, husband to Annie (Bell) and father of two girls, Lucy (Sterling Jerins) and Beeze (Claire Geare). After his company has failed, he takes a job overseas in an unnamed, truly nefarious Asian country. Not long after arriving at their hotel, Jack goes out for a newspaper, only to witness a rebel uprising and the murder of an American in the street. Jack must get back to the hotel ahead of a bloodthirsty mob, corral the wife and kids, and commence running for their lives. After suddenly becoming some sort of action star able to outrun mobs and scale buildings, Jack eventually finds the family. They take to the hotel rooftop, where a bunch of tourists and hotel employees are holing up. They can’t keep the wolves at bay, and things get so bad that Jack has to throw his kids from one rooftop to the other while his wife catches them. This sequence, shot in painful slow motion, stands as the best part of the movie. Actually, it’s the only really good part of the movie. The rest of the film features an unknown enemy that epitomizes every horror film cliché pursuing helpless American victims. The screenplay tries to position the Americans as slightly villainous as well, having conspired to steal the country’s clean drinking water, or something like that.

So, I guess that is the filmmaker’s attempt to make the Asian attackers something less than an entirely racist, stereotypical depiction of people of the East? They have a reason to be nastier than Jason from the Friday the 13th movies, don’t they? Evil America has stolen their water. Hey, at least movies like Rambo are by Bob Grimm cocky enough to name their villains and lay it out on the table rather than making the bgrimm@ villains anonymous. The enemy territory newsreview.com in this movie is just a short boat ride away from Vietnam, so I guess it’s Thailand 2 (where the film was banned). The script originally stated Cambodia as the locale, but that changed. So now it’s just a mean Asian country that shall remain unnamed. That’s cowardly filmmaking. Wilson, in a departure from his comedic and dramatic roles, delivers an admirable performance, even if it is a wasted one. He’s done the running-likehell thing before, most notably in the awful Behind Enemy Lines. It’s a little ridiculous how his engineer character suddenly becomes an awesome ass-kicker in the name of survival. Bell, a comedic actress who is epic in the new Wet Hot American Summer Netflix series, shows she is far more than a laugh machine. She convincingly portrays somebody unlucky enough to have a stupid husband who takes her to an anonymous Asian country where her children almost plunge to their deaths and she is nearly raped. Again, it’s some good acting work for a film that doesn’t deserve her. Rounding out the cast is Pierce Brosnan as a friendly tourist who isn’t what he seems. A moment where his character flies into action to save the day is probably the most ridiculous one in the movie. Nevertheless, the movie is always a little better when Brosnan is on screen. If anything, this movie might give a few folks planning to shift their careers and families oversees second thoughts, especially if those folks traffic in bottled water. No Escape is the sort of film that gets dumped into late summer with hopes that most will just turn their brains off and refrain from scrutinizing the plot points and characterizations. I guess I’m not in the target audience. Ω

"Do you think anyone will have a hard time taking me seriously as an action star?

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3American Ultra Jesse Eisenberg, having himself a great summer with his career best performance in The End of the Tour, spreads his wings a bit as a stoner with a secret in this sporadically fun film from director Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) and writer Max Landis (Chronicle). While enjoying a fine cup of soup, convenience store clerk Mike Howell (Eisenberg) notices some dudes monkeying with his car. Seconds later, he’s killing people with a spoon. Mike’s girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart, kicking mortal ass) is concerned about her beau, who has suddenly attained the ability to wipe out people with robot precision. I will not tell you why. You have to see the movie to find out why. The film has a great premise, and could’ve been a classic dark comedy. Unfortunately, it leans a little too heavy towards the dark side in its second half and goes light on the laughs. Eisenberg and Stewart rise above any of the tonal problems and story lags to make the movie something worth seeing. Stewart just gets better with every movie she shows up in. I think her Bella-Lag is wearing off for sure. Eisenberg plays his part like an ignorant, coiled rattlesnake, and he’s actually appropriately scary at times. Again, a fun film for most of its running time, but it could’ve been something really special.

3The Diary of a Teenage Girl A 15 year-old girl winds up in a relationship with her mother’s boyfriend, a man in his 30s, in this justifiably uncomfortable and very nicely acted film from director-screenwriter Marielle Heller. Bel Powley is fantastic as Minnie, a dark, awkward teen living in San Francisco doodling strange things in her sketch book and losing her virginity to Monroe (a never-been-better Alexander Skarsgard) behind her mom’s (an excellent Kristen Wiig) back. The film handles the completely illegal relationship in a way that works out fine in the end, but it’s a little rough at times. Skarsgard pulls out all the stops as a charming moron, while Wiig kills it in the scene where she finds out what’s going on. Powley, who is actually seven years older than her character, captures the essence of a teenager who’s getting a little ahead of herself and might not be altogether stable for a myriad of reasons. Heller infuses the film with interesting animated sequences, and does a nice job recreating 1970s San Francisco. It’s a good movie, but it certainly isn’t for everybody.

5The End of the Tour Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky’s account of his interview with David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, gets a very fine film starring Jesse Eisenberg as Lipsky and Jason Segel in a surprising, non-comedic turn as Wallace. The movie is beautiful in that it’s so eloquent in the way it shows two young writers simply talking to one another about their craft, and deftly illustrates how Wallace thought and spoke thanks to an incredible performance from Segel. The film chronicles the final days of Wallace’s book tour, a time where he was trying to learn how to deal with the perils of sudden success. It’s heartbreaking in that we viewers know what fate awaits Wallace 12 years after their meeting. It touches upon the sadness and problems that plagued Wallace and eventually led him to suicide, made most evident when the two square off over Wallace’s college sweetheart (Mickey Sumner). Segel and Eisenberg make this particular moment an uncomfortable and even scary one. Segel, without outright declaring what his afflictions were, gives us real insight into the insecurities and conflicts that beat Wallace down in the end. Directed by James Ponsoldt, who is on a hot streak with this and prior films The Spectacular Now and Smashed, the film offers nice insight into the sudden fame that Wallace achieved, and the journalist who was fascinated by it.

3The Gift Joel Edgerton writes, directs and stars in this capable thriller about the perils of bullying and moving back to your home state. Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall play Simon and Robin, a married couple returning to California where Simon has a new job. While shopping for throw pillows, they run into Gordo (Edgerton), a high school pal who Simon doesn’t seem to remember at first. Gordo goes out of his way to welcome the new couple, dropping by the house uninvited, stocking their pond with fish and basically creeping out Simon. As the film progresses, more is revealed about Simon, his past with Gordo, and his current dishonesty. Bateman, who usually opts for more comedic roles, is very good as a man who thinks he has control of his domain, and thinks he can get away with habitual fibbing. Hall is terrific as the wife who can’t help but feel a little sorry for Gordo. Edgerton is creepy and somehow sympathetic as the strange man of the past who wants Simon to remember him in the worst way. Edgerton shows that he can write a screenplay with some good twists, direct it so there are plenty of surprises, and act it so that it’s good and scary. A true triple threat.

3Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt. This time around, he’s hanging from airplanes, performing overly long tasks underwater, and riding a motorcycle again. Everything he does is in service of a convoluted plot involving some sort of evil syndicate of international agents. All sorts of nationalities are in on the evil, but the United Kingdom is especially nasty in this one, giving the whole thing a little bit of a James Bond vibe. Simon Pegg’s role is increased this time out, his computer analyst guy becoming Hunt’s sidekick. Newcomer to the series Alec Baldwin gets a couple of good scenes as the CIA guy trying to eradicate Hunt’s agency. Rebecca Ferguson is impressive as an English agent who may or may not be a villain and, yes, is quite decent-looking in a bikini. Jeremy Renner is around to crack wise as he messes with Baldwin’s character, while Ving Rhames still gets to collect a paycheck. As for Emilio Estevez, sadly, he’s still dead after his elevator accident in the first film. This is my least favorite M:I yet, but it’s still a good film. Things feel a little by-the-numbers, but Cruise is a crazy bastard willing to go all out for his movies, and this installment is no exception. The dude is nuts, and we, the movie-viewing public, benefit from this.

4Straight Outta Compton I watched the entirety of this thrilling new N.W.A. biopic, not knowing that Ice Cube’s son was playing Ice Cube. It’s not like the guy is named Ice Cube, Jr. He’s actually named O’Shea Jackson Jr., his dad’s birth name with a Jr. tacked on to the end. Jackson, Jr. is the No. 1 reason to see Compton, a blast of a film that chronicles the rise of rap group N.W.A., the eventual infighting, and the birth of some gigantic solo careers and record labels. Along with Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell is a revelation as Eazy-E, and Corey Hawkins provides a nice anchor as Dr. Dre. The film works best when covering the early days and the creation of the legendary album that shares the movie’s title. It also spends plenty of time on the band’s management problems with Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti in a moderately distracting wig), and Eazy-E’s eventual death from AIDS. At a running time of 180 minutes, plenty of ground gets covered, and covered in a way that never gets boring. This is a solid cinematic time capsule that gives some deserved glory to an influential group that forever changed the landscape of hip-hop and brought much needed attention to a very troubled part of the world. It does the band, and the biopic genre in general, proud.

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 run-of-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 shell-shocked 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.