“Megamind,” the new animated kid’s flick starring Will Ferrell and Tiny Fey, ponders an age old question, asked by super villains from Lex Luthor to Doctor Doom: What’s the point of being evil is there’s no one there to stop you?
Self described super genius and master of all villainy Megamind (voice of Will Ferrell) has had a lifelong rivalry with Metro Man (Brad Pitt), a hero so special he can literally walk on water. Megamind has been trying to wrestle control of Mega City from Metro Man for years, and despite his best efforts cannot defeat the ridiculously square-jawed hero. That is, until the day he breaks out of jail, kidnaps intrepid girl reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey) and finally outsmarts his nemesis. Metro City is finally his but now that his lifelong dream has come true he finds when there is no good guy, no yin to his yang, his evil existence is an empty experience. To combat his boredom he decides to create a superhero to spice things up… of course nothing could go wrong with that plan.
“Megamind” plays like the evil stepchild of “The Incredibles” and “Monsters vs Aliens” with some pop culture references thrown in—like a takeoff on the famous balcony scene from “Superman” and a wild spoof of Jor-El’s windswept hair. It’s a pleasant enough confection, with some genuine laughs sprinkled throughout, but given the talent involved—Ferrell, Fey and David Cross—it should be much funnier.
David Cross and Ferrell make the most out of their characters. Ferrell gives Megamind fun vocal tics—he pronounces Metro City as one long word, Metrossoity—but Fey, in the Lois Lane role, and Jonah Hill as the newly minted superhero, hand in the bland voice work that doesn’t add much to the movie. It’s a shame, spunkier voice work would have wrung a few more laughs out of a script that is more a funny idea than actually funny all the way through.
Little kids probably won’t get—or care about—the “Superman” references or Megamind’s secret taste for Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You,” but they will enjoy the larger than life characters, the 3D slapstick and even take away the message that there is good inside of almost everyone.
Judging by the look and feel of “Machete” director Robert Rodriquez has clearly spent a lot of time at the local repertory theatre. Either that, or he’s hung around Quentin Tarantino’s house, watching old exploitation films from the 70s. The look and feel of his new film, “Machete,” inspired by a fake trailer he made for their co-directed epic “Grindhouse,” harkens back to a simpler, rougher time, but the context is very 2010. The film is part Mexploitation gore fest, part rant about illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States.
The story begins with federale Machete (Danny Trejo) trying in vain to rescue a hostage from the evil drug lord Torres (Steven Seagal). Less than three minutes into the film the knife wielding lawman has decapitated one unlikely bad guy and shot another using a gun still attached to a severed hand. Don’t trust this guy with the cutlery. The bust, however, goes bad and Torres ends up killing Machete’s wife and leaving him for dead. Cut to three years later. Of course Machete isn’t dead, but he is a broken man, living illegally in Texas, working as a day labourer. When he is asked to assassinate a radical congressman (Robert De Niro) it turns out that he is just a pawn in a much larger political game. Of course, Machete doesn’t like this. Machete doesn’t like lots of things—texting, for instance—and with the help of a radical Mexican rights leader (Michele Rodriquez), an immigration cop (Jessica Alba) and his brother, the murderous priest (Cheech Marin), Machete gets his bloody revenge.
“Machete” mixes Rodriquez’s usual blood and babes with a message, which could have been a good thing, but he is as subtle about hammering home his pro-immigration stance as he is when he sprays the walls with gallons of fake blood. As much as I like the “in-your-face-Tea-Partiers” attitude, I wanted less of that and more of the blood and babes. Rodriquez allows the pace to lag, wedging in too much story and too much “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us” in what should be a down-and-dirty b-movie.
But when he gets it right, when Machete is slicing and dicing and Lindsay Lohan is wearing a nun costume, wielding a gun and trading quips with Robert De Niro, the movie is Saturday afternoon matinee fun. Where else but in a Rodriquez movie would a character survive getting shot in the head because an old bullet already lodged in his skull blocked the new pellet? Who else but Rodriquez could get the notoriously unfunny Steven Seagal to deliver an intentionally funny line?
“Machete” has its moments and a timely message but falls victim to slack pacing. A shorter running time would still showcase Rodriquez’s ideas on race, class and immigration and result in a better movie.
Wilson and Anderson! Together again after “Bottle Rocket,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Darjeeling Limited.” Whoops. Right Wilson, wrong Anderson. This weekend Owen Wilson collaborates with Brad Anderson, not Wes, in a live action adaptation of Anderson’s long running comic “Marmaduke.” The arty flourishes and subtle humor of Wilson’s work with Wes has been replaced with big-dog-in-a-little-car comedy.
Marmaduke (voice of Owen Wilson) is an unruly Great Dane with a habit of speaking directly into the camera. As the film’s narrator he introduces us to his family and leads us through the story of how Phil (Lee Pace), a dog food executive in Kansas, winds up moving the family to California and working for that state’s biggest manufacturer of organic kibble (a slumming William H. Macy). Before you can say “Kowabarka” Marmaduke is “getting his bark on” in The Golden State, winning a surfing contest, falling for a girl dog with Farah Fawcett fur, faking a cat attack to impress Alfa dog Bosco (Kiefer Sutherland) and tearing up the house. Oh that Marmaduke!
Not since Bill Murray loaned his voice to “Garfield” has a hip actor gone to the dogs like this. We can forgive Wilson the odd misstep like “You, Me and Dupree” as long as he keeps appearing in movies like “Fantastic Mr. Fox” but “Marmaduke” earns him a week wearing a shock collar. Bad dog!
He’s not alone. Kiefer Sutherland, Steve Coogan, George Lopez, Sam Elliott and the Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie all take advantage of the easy money of voice acting, but it is Wilson, in the title role, who must take the lion’s share (canine’s share?) of the blame for this. Where is the Humane Society when you really need them? Somewhere Benji and Rin Tin Tin are rolling over (in their graves) at the state of doggie style movies for kids.
Tots may find some fun in the talking animals and gentle action, but there is nothing here for anyone over the age of five except bad puns—Dog Vader, anyone? Boneillionaire, perhaps?—and an allegedly heartwarming story that actually gave me heartburn.
“Marmaduke” is an instantaneously forgettable kid’s flick that’s all bark, no laughs. There are no treats in “Marmaduke,” doggie or otherwise.
There are one joke movies and then there are the SNL skit movies like “It’s Pat” that stretch a thin premise out to ninety minutes and then there is “MacGruber,” a spy spoof starring Will Forte as a secret agent ready to save the world with only a couple of celery stalks, some dental floss and a tennis ball. Similarities to “MacGyver” are intentional, but only the tip of this all-80s parody.
As the movie begins MacGruber has been in retirement for ten years since the murder of his bride (Maya Rudolph) on their wedding day. He is pulled back into the fray when it appears that his arch enemy—Val Kilmer playing a bad guy whose name cannot be repeated here for fear of having to wash my mouth out with soap afterward—may have gotten his hands on a nuclear warhead. Using their wits (and the above mentioned celery stalks) MacGruber, along with his Blaupunkt car radio, cherry red Miata and cohorts Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) must stop him before the State of the Union address.
Like the television character it is loosely based on “MacGruber,” (the movie, not the man) aims to use odds and ends to cobble together a weapon capable of slaying the SNL skit movie curse. It’s not entirely successful, but as a parody of 1980s action films—and the fashions of the 1980s, the cheesy soundtracks of the 1980s and that decade’s cavalier attitude toward movie violence—it has its moments just not enough of them.
First the good stuff. The casting of Powers “Red Dawn” Boothe as a tough talking army colonel is inspired, as is the prerequisite “getting-the-team-together montage. Also great is the dialogue, the kind that used to roll off the tongue of sweaty action stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. “He can be quite a fly in the ointment,” says MacGruber, “so let’s get a couple of fly swatters.” Those lines, played straight as an arrow, and coupled with some crazy non sequiturs provide many of the film’s laughs and there are many laughs, until the movie starts to rely a bit too heavily on bathroom jokes. This movie is more consumed by bums (and their contents) than a diaper designer. Imagine if JCVD told poo poo jokes in “Double Impact” and you get the idea.
Up until the introduction of celery stalks to a place where the sun doesn’t usually shine, the movie is a silly homage to the excess of 1980s b action movies, afterwards it’s an only occasionally funny homage to the excesses of modern sketch comedy—awkward pauses, pushing the joke past its breaking point and juvenile characters.
Forte is 100% committed to the role of the inept MacGruber, but his cocky, but insane take on the character gets tired after the first half hour. Wiig fares better. It seems she is incapable of not being funny even when the material isn’t up to snuff. Val Kilmer, who is looking more like mid career John Travolta all the time, hams it up, but doesn’t have the same comic verve he did in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” but then, he had a much better script to work with that time out.
“MacGruber” has some laugh-out-loud moments, just not enough of them. It seems it would take more skill than Mcgyver to rescue this movie.
Taking its lead from “The Hurt Locker,” another Iraq war film that isn’t about the war as much as it is about the effect of war on the individual, “The Messenger” focuses on two very different soldiers doing one very difficult job.
With only three months left on his tour of duty Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is stateside after being wounded in Iraq. A bum leg and an eye injury sustained in combat will keep him on US soil, but his new assignment takes as much guts as staring down the enemy in battle. Paired with Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) he becomes half of a causality notification team, the messengers who deliver the bad news to the families of fallen soldiers.
“The Messenger” is first and foremost a human drama about how people deal with anguish and a war movie second. In fact there are no battle scenes but the emotional violence is just as jarring as the explosions in “The Hurt Locker” or the wild gunplay of “The Kingdom.” This is the least violent war movie ever. It’s a study of various kinds of grief from rage to acceptance to denial. More interestingly it examines the toll delivering the bad news takes on Montgomery and Stone. “There’s no such thing as a satisfied customer” in their business says Stone.
Stone, with his ever present toothpick, is pure military, obsessed with protocol—in his world next of kin are referred to as NOK and he has a strict set of rules he will not deviate from. Harrelson gives him an unpredictable edge, filling him with the tics of an unstated and probably troubled history.
It’s a commanding performance that suggests that Woody Harrelson is one of the best and most underrated actors working today. I don’t know what happened on his six year hiatus from the screen but he emerged on the other end of it a better actor. He can be charming, funny, dramatic, but most of all, believable whether he’s playing a disturbed man who thinks he’s a superhero (“Defendor”) or the leader of the “Angels of Death Squadron” in a serious drama.
Playing opposite him is Ben Foster, an actor who up until now I have always associated with by-the-numbers psycho roles in “Alpha Dog,” “3:10 to Yuma” and “30 Days of Darkness.” I wrote him off as a slightly more kinetic Bruce Dern type, all bulging eyes and volatile energy, but his performance here is a revelation that should help him escape the typecasting hell he been trapped in. Foster brings a tortured vibe of someone who has just come back from a hellish situation but his character deepens when he begins to look beyond the NOKs as simply being part of the protocol of his job and recognizes them as people.
Harrelson and Foster have many great moments together but a wonderfully low key scene in a kitchen between Foster and Samantha Morton, a war widow he falls for, could be taught in film schools. In one long uninterrupted shot it’s a marvel of understated acting that carefully uses words and, more importantly, silences to portray their delicate, complicated relationship.
Outside of the three leads “The Messenger” is filled to bursting with good performances—look for a powerful cameo by Steve Buscemi and good work from Jena Malone—and only occasionally dips into melodrama. A monologue about the smell of “rage and fear” should perhaps have been rethought, but more often than not it is pitch perfect.
The star of “Me and Orson Welles” should be Zac Efron, the “High School Musical” heartthrob who makes his non-singing-non-dancing debut here. His Disney good looks have made him a star and he’s an agreeable presence on screen but he is overshadowed by another actor playing a man who died many years before the core audience of this movie was even born. Newcomer Christian McKay plays Orson Welles with such panache that Efron becomes a supporting player in his own movie.
Efron is Richard Samuels, a teenager with dreams of being on stage. So far it doesn’t sound too different from “High School Musical,” I know, but in this case the year is 1937 and the stage in question happens to be at the Mercury Theatre on Broadway. After an impromptu audition—he plays drums and sings a Wheaties jingle on the street in front of the theatre—Richard is hired as a bit player for Orson Welles’s (Christian McKay) landmark production of “Julius Caesar.” He is given little rehearsal and only one piece of advice; don’t criticize Orson Welles, ever. It is, he’s told, a privilege to be “sprayed by Orson’s spit” on stage. When Richard falls for pretty production assistant Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), however, he puts himself in the cross hairs of the temperamental Welles.
“Orson Welles and Me” is set years before Hollywood beat the stuffing out of Welles. Here he’s still a boy wonder—a maverick (before Sarah Palin came along and ruined the word for everyone else) and womanizer who financed his theatre company with the money he made as a radio actor. McKay is pitch-perfect in a role that has defeated other good actors in movies like “The Cradle Will Rock” and “Fade to Black.” The British actor, who played Welles in a one man show before making the film, looks the part and really gets inside the head of this brilliant but difficult man.
When McKay isn’t on-screen, however, the story tends to sag a little. Efron and Danes do some good work and director Richard Linklater dies a nice job of showing the chaotic week leading up to the opening night of “Caesar,” but when the story leaves the theatre it becomes much less interesting. The backstage machinations, on-stage work—we see a hefty chunk of the play during the film’s climax—and attention to period detail—people actually say “Yowza!”—elevate it beyond a typical coming-of-age story but it really only comes to life when MacKay is front and center.
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is the best movie with the worst name that we’ll likely see this year. Despite its silly title—which makes perfect sense in context of the movie, but will be a mystery to anyone unfamiliar with the story—this screwball George Clooney film has many serious points to make about the state of modern warfare, but does so with a healthy dose of satire.
Based on a story that is “more true than you think” it begins when journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) uncovers a story about the New Earth Army, a secret psychic battalion of super soldiers sponsored by the US government in hopes of finding a new way to fight wars. The Pentagon wants to be the first super power to develop super powers. Teaming up with Lyn Cassidy (Clooney), a veteran psychic soldier, Wilton tracks down Cassidy’s mentor Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), an eccentric New Age shaman now working at a prison camp in Iraq run by Kevin Spacey’s character, Larry Hooper. Hooper is a former psychic soldier who lived in Cassidy’s shadow until he managed to subvert the original purpose of the New Earth’s Army and take control.
Directed by hyphenate actor-turned-George Clooney’s best friend-turned-writer-turned-director Grant Heslov, the pen behind “Good Night and Good Luck” the movie has a wonky feel right from the get go. Its dizzying blend of slapstick, satire and drama is a hard thing to pull off, but Heslov with the help of his lead actors and a strong supporting cast including Coen Brothers regular Stephen Root, find just the right tone for the first hour.
In fact, the first sixty minutes of “The Men Who Stare Sat Goats” is giddy good fun; as fun a ride as there is in theatres this year. Its absurdist, filled with memorable images—Clooney staring down a goat, enlisted men doing the Watusi and a montage of Jeff Bridges embarking on a journey of enlightenment—and no joke is too broad. It’s as if Crosby and Hope had gone to Iraq instead of Singapore or Utopia. Then along comes Kevin Spacey who ruins all the fun.
It’s as if the filmmakers were afraid to stick to their guns and make a surreal free form movie so they added Spacey’s sniveling character to add in some conflict. It’s meant to up the drama of the piece but it’s the point at which the movie loses much of its zip. The conflict Spacey brings is simply not as interesting as the rest of the film. The final third of the film suffers for it, but it remains an unpredictable romp with some nice performances and pointed comments on the absurdity of war. I couldn’t help but think that if someone like Robert Altman had made this film in 1974 the message and the madness would have been intact without the spoiler of Spacey.
“More Than a Game” is billed as the LeBron James movie but the superstar player is only part of the tale. The best story in this new documentary, six years in the making, is actually the life story of LeBron’s childhood coach, the man who shaped LeBron not only into a superstar athlete, but ushered him and his teammates from boyhood to manhood.
The film chronicles the rise and, well rise of James and his high school cohorts, the Fab 4 (later to become the Fab 5), a group of fearsomely talented b’ball players who dominated every basketball court they dribbled on from grade school to graduation. Along the way we learn of their struggles and the personal price they paid to become national champions.
Like all sports movies it adheres to the usual win some-lose some formula designed to build drama, but because the story is so recent—most of it happens in the 00s—there isn’t that much drama to be had. LeBron is a superstar and he didn’t get that way by slacking or losing lots of games.
Far more interesting than the rise to the top of the high school athletics heap is the story of the camaraderie, teaching and sacrifice that got LeBron and his teammates there. Like all good sports docs, it’s not really about the sports, it’s about the story behind the game.
That’s where Coach Dru Joyce’s story comes in. He taught these guys how to play the game, but he also gave them something much more important than that. He became a father figure for these young men, giving them more than dribbling advice. He gave them the tools they needed to survive on and off the court, He gave them a winning attitude and that is the heart of the film. He’s an inspiring character who left a career in corporate America to do something really important—be a mentor.
The rest of the film is slickly produced and well put together but suffers from a lack of in-depth reporting and repetition of already established facts. We know coach and players worked hard. We know Dru Senior and Little Dru (one of the Fab 5) had personal and professional problems but much of the meat of the doc is left only half explored. More revealing is the look on James’s face when he and his mother discuss his difficult upbringing. It underlines the early life of pain he’s overcome and is one of the true, raw moments in the film that doesn’t feel overly slick and manufactured.
“More Than a Game” is more than just a sports documentary but could have benefited from less repetition and more good old fashioned reporting.
With a lineage like his it should come as no surprise that Duncan Jones’s first feature film, Moon, is a sci fi space epic. You see, Duncan Jones is better known as Zowie Bowie, first son of David Bowie, whose song Space Oddity became a top five hit forty years ago. He may be best known to triviaticians as Zowie but that should change with the release of this evocative and intelligent film.
Sam Rockwell is astronaut Sam Bell, a Lunar Industries employee living and working on a space station on a three year contract. “Three years is a long haul,” he says, wearing a t-shirt that reads It’s Almost Quittin’ Time. “It’s way, way, way too long. I’m ready to go home.”
His job is to tend to machines that are “harvesting solar energy from the dark side of the moon” and providing almost 70% of earth with power. His only companion is a robot / cup holder named Gerty (voiced by the appropriately named Kevin Spacey) although he can receive taped messages from his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott). The loneliness of the job is broken, however, when he discovers that he may not be truly alone.
The comparisons to 2001 are obvious, made even more apparent by Spacey’s HAL-like delivery of his robot lines, but Jones has simply used Kubrick’s film as a visual reference on his way to creating a unique and fascinating film. Another thing he borrowed from Kubrick and many other sci-fi films of the 60s and 70s is his emphasis on ideas rather than special effects.
Michael Bay this ain’t.
It’s a deliberately paced story packed with grand themes, unusual story twists and a dark covering of creeping dread. In the middle of it all is Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, the lonely astronaut.
For a decade Rockwell has teetered on the verge of enormous mainstream success. He’s co-starred in big studio pictures with Nic Cage and George Clooney (Matchstick Men and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind respectively), earned street cred by starring in small difficult films like Choke and Snow Angels and has occasionally been the best thing in so-so movies like Joshua. He’s an inventive and fearless actor who delivers a performance in Moon that proves, once and for all, that he can carry a movie virtually by himself.
As Sam he hands in a performance ripe with longing, confusion, horror and yes, even a bit of humor.
Moon—which could easily have been retitled ***SPOILER ALERT*** The Clone Wars: This Time It’s Personal for commercial purposes—is a promising debut from a new director and a reminder of how good Sam Rockwell is.
