Screens
by Jeff Boam
Opening This Week
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson
Blind Faith. Humble Pie. Power Station. The Honeydrippers. The Traveling Wilburys. These are what music fans call supergroups, glorified garage bands stuffed with more over-the-hill rock stars than an episode of Celebrity Rehab. But what about comic book movie supergroups? Well, with the blockbuster success of The Avengers in 2011, Marvel Studios realized its creative vision of uniting several franchises in one butt-kicking package. Blockbuster hit Iron Man 3 kicked off Phase 2, which led the way for Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy (Aug. 1, 2014), The Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 1, 2015) and Ant-Man (July 17, 2015) … after The Winter Soldier, of course. In this PG-13-rated actioner, Steve Rogers (Evans) struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and battles a new threat from old history: the Soviet agent known as the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). The Plus: The franchise. With a worldwide box office of over $370 million, Captain America: The First Avenger proved a super-sized hit for Marvel. The early buzz on its sequel, however, is even better. For this outing, we have Evans (What’s Your Number?), Johansson (Don Jon), Stan (Black Swan), Frank Grillo (The Grey), Samuel L. Jackson (RoboCop), Anthony Mackie (Pain & Gain) and Robert Redford (All is Lost) starring. The Minus: The expectation. The First Avenger ended up to be Marvel’s least successful performer so far as box office and reviews. With a 3rd Captain America reportedly already slotted for 2016, is Marvel getting ahead of itself and setting the bar too high?
Now Playing
Noah
Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly
*** — Boat Trippy
Raising a flood of inspiration and ire, Darren Aronofsky’s mystical-meets-Biblical take on Noah engagingly goes from Requiem for a Fever Dream to Man’s Black Swan Song in two hours and 20 minutes. In this PG-13-rated adventure directed by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler), a man (Crowe) suffering visions of an apocalyptic deluge takes measures to protect his family (Connelly, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman) from the coming flood. But to what end? Of course, the Holy Book has always danced with mysticism … or vice versa. Look at The Bible with open eyes and it plays stranger than Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Martin’s Game of Thrones, an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in historical fiction with dragons and magic. So, it makes the sense that the man who made mind-bending but eye-popping hippie dippy phooey The Fountain would forego a straight ahead literal interpretation of a child’s Bible story. Instead of two giraffe heads sticking out of a wooden boat captained by a robed man with a big bushy white beard, filmgoers get a morality tale drenched with fantastical elements for better and worse. It’s a failing success. And a successful failure. But it’s bold and gets big points for not playing it safe. Like Cecil B. DeMille on peyote, Darren Aronofsky has an epic vision. Like Goldie Locks, sometimes he offers up aesthetics that are too hot, too cold, but does produce many that are JUST right. Fallen angels reimagined as giant rock creatures might prove irksome to some but how is it any more unbelievable than a 1,000 year-old-man named Methusaleh? Thankfully, part of the ‘just right’ results from the casting. Biblical hero and villain, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-of-his-badass-self Russell Crowe carries most of the weight to great effect. Emily Watson, however, steals away from her Harry Potter legacy with a gut-wrenchingly emotional turn.
Bad Words
Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn
***1/2 — Bee Cool
This reviewer has words for Bad Words and they’re mostly really good. In this R-rated comedy, a former spelling bee loser (Bateman) sets out to exact revenge by exploiting a loophole and attempting to win as an adult. Oh, the comedy is not without its bell-ringing missteps but nonetheless ends up to be a solid continuation of the H’Wood trend of adults behaving badly — Bad Santa, Bad Teacher and Bad Grandpa being the dubious — but often hysterical — pioneers. Littered with laugh-out-loud moments throughout its short running time, the movie succeeds chiefly because of the name above all others. Given that it’s a directorial debut, however, this name — B-A-T-E-M-A-N — deserves more than an honorable mention. A former child actor who cut his teeth in the H’Wood sitcom trenches (Silver Spoons, The Hogan Family … Little House: A New Beginning), this actor re-captured the industry’s attention and re-ignited his career as Michael Bluth on Fox’s brilliant and irreverent cult hit sitcom Arrested Development. In raunchy comedies (Couples Retreat, Horrible Bosses), Oscar-baiting fare (Juno, Up in the Air), and summer blockbusters alike (Hancock, The Kingdom), he’s certainly earned the equivalent of a Purple Heart in comedy. Thankfully, for his first helming gig, he chose the appropriate laugh-getter in Bad Words, screenwriter Andrew Dodge’s foul-mouthed societal dust-up. True, the flick does cop out by un-Scrooging its curmudgeon, but it’s done with such style and, ahem, character that it’s definitely worth sitting a spell.
Sabotage
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington
**1/2 — True Sighs
An ambitious, bullets and brawn, blood-splattered bust, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s convoluted latest nonetheless ends up to be his best post-politico flick thanks to pure gall. Granted, calling the once and future Terminator’s new project his ‘recent best’ is as empty an accolade as calling Peter Dinklage H’Wood’s tallest short actor. In this R-rated actioner, members of an elite DEA task force (Schwarzenegger, Worthington, et al) find themselves being taken down one by one after they rob a drug cartel safe house. Twisty rather than straight-ahead, Sabotage falls far from being a lyric-for-lyric interpretation of the Beastie Boys song … though that narrative may’ve made more sense in the long run. Instead, moviegoers get presented with a tangled web of dirty Feds, dirtier drug cartels, and Hard R violence verging dangerously close on NC-17. A glorified shoot-‘em-up crammed with too much story, the script proves to be this project’s most gratuitous saboteur. Just because a who-done-it angle gets worked in doesn’t make it any less of a piece of action porn. For Schwarzenegger, it’s been a long crawl back, littered with C-Grade actioners that get appreciably better (The Last Stand, Escape Plan). These days, he seems to turn out higher grade flicks while working amongst more of an ensemble (The Expendables and its sequel), which Sabotage bares out. In allowing his fellow players more scenery chewing moments, this H’Wood legend actually elevates the material because he’s more thoughtful and restrained than in his other recent movies. Still, more was expected of David Ayer considering that this is the follow-up to his thinking man’s buddy cop flick End of Watch. Like James Ellroy with less of a sense of humor, this writer/director made a name for himself crafting oblique LA cop conspiracy tales mired in blood and bad decisions (screenwriter, Training Day; writer/director, Street Kings) before giving critics an A-Ha moment with Watch. With Sabotage, however, he seems to be regressing back to Harsh-er Times.
Divergent
Shailene Woodley, Theo James
*** — Deftly Hollows
Better than The Twilight Saga but never as good as The Hunger Games, Divergent is the latest YA fantasy adventure to make it to the big screen with all of the aplomb of a soggy paperback. In this PG-13-rated sci-fi adventure, Tris (Woodley) learns she’s Divergent and won’t fit in a world divided by factions based on virtues, so she infiltrates a war-like faction to discover her destiny. This adaptation skews way closer to Games, presenting a dystopian near-wasteland where its government-fearing denizens live an almost Quaker-like existence until unrest causes … hey, wake up! The ideology and theocracy behind the plot points are as paper thin as the script pages it was typed on, but Woodley runs with the role and never stops, hitting all of the emotional marks and taking countless beatings. Let’s hope the inevitable follow-up aspires more to Catching Fire than catching Eclipse though.
Small Screens
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd
***1/2 — Anchors Aweigh
In this PG-13-rated comedy new to DVD, former top rated San Diego newsman Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) returns to broadcasting to make New York’s first 24-hour news channel a ratings success in the 80s. Anchored by a sometimes bizarre but oftentimes gut-busting brand of humor, the continuing misadventures of Ron Burgundy defy the odds of comedy sequels and gives moviegoers a very worthwhile follow-up. A deuce to what’s very possibly become the most quoted comedy of the last quarter century could’ve turned out very (Ghostbusters 2) very (Caddyshack 2) very (The Odd Couple 2) badly for moviegoers. The Legend Continues proves quite the opposite, milking huge laughs, shoehorning in many funny cameos, and making a dead-on assessment of cable television news even when the jokes are too indulgently reverential to the first flick.