SYNOPSIS: The tough-as-nails Expendables are back. A mission to stop a shipment of bombs brings grizzled mercenaries Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner (Dolph Lundgren), Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Caesar (Terry Crews) face to face with their toughest adversary yet, arms dealer Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). Determined to bring down Stonebanks, Ross retires the oldtimers and recruits a fresh group of soldiers—Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Victor Ortiz and Glen Powell—but just may find that his old dogs have some new tricks.
STAR RATING:
Richard: 3 Stars
Mark: 2 Stars
Richard: Mark, more people die in the first five minutes of this movie than in any other two war movies combined. There is death by bullet, bazooka and bomb. It’s a wild but oddly bloodless beginning to the movie. Perhaps its because they have scaled back the rating to PG13 from the hard Rs the last two Expendables enjoyed, but removing most of the over-the-top violence leaves an absence of the over-the-top fun of the originals. Why arm Stallone and Company up the wazoo and then skimp on the fake blood and faux carnage?
Mark: I kind of liked the first two but this installment felt…expendable. All the young guns recruited are interchangeable and even the old guys are pretty boring. Schwarzenegger exuded more danger as a governor of a state with18% inflation, Dolph Lundgren looks like a Dutch drag act and only Mel Gibson registers as a crazed billionaire bad guy, a role he ‘s been rehearsing for years.
RC: How could you not love Wesley Snipes saying that his character was put in jail for tax evasion? It’s art imitating life! Or something. I thought that most of the performances weren’t so much performances as they were action star posturing. Kelsey Grammar, as a recruiter for the new batch of Expendables, stands out because he does some actual acting. So do many of the obvious stunt doubles. The rest are bulked-up chunks of machismo floating in a sea of testosterone.
MB: Wesley snipes and his tax joke did make me smile but then he disappears from the story until the end. There are just too many characters to follow: even the poster is in widescreen. The movie felt like an abattoir populated by frisky sides of beef.
RC: Still, as an old-school action movie, it works well enough, despite the lack of gallons of fake plasma. I liked the attempts of creating new catchphrases—which are a must in these kinds of films—like Crews yelling, “It’s time to mow the lawn,” before spraying thousands of bullets into a dock packed with baddies. Also, the action scenes are shot clearly and effectively, and unlike last week’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you can actually see who is shooting-punching-blowing up-kicking-garroting-etc who. It makes it easier to cheer for the good guys when you can tell who the bad guys are.
MB. Even with a high body count there’s this little thing called plot that I demand. I’m still waiting.
SYNOPSIS: Hundred-Foot Journey is a feel-good movie about an Indian family who moves to a small town in France to open a restaurant. Across the street is a Michelin-starred French eatery run with an iron fist by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). Cultures and personalities clash, but soon Hassan Kadam’s (Manish Dayal) talent in the kitchen leads him on a journey. First he crosses the hundred feet between his father’s (Om Puri) restaurant to Madame Mallory’s kitchen, then to Paris and ultimately to his real passion.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 3 Stars
Mark: 2 Stars
Richard: Mark, the last time director Lasse Hallström went all Food Network on us the result was the 2000 bonbon Chocolat, a comic story with a bittersweet edge. He’s revisiting similar ground here, mixing gastroporn, good old-fashioned romance and cross-cultural farce. Despite its predictability, The Hundred-Foot Journey’s collection of characters keeps things lively and amusing and the food looks so good you’ll wish the movie was in Smell-O-Vision. I thought it was an enjoyable film about passion; the passion for food, passion for culture but most of all, passion for life. What did you think?
Mark: Richard, I wouldn’t use the word passion to describe this movie. It was full of warmth, and it glowed from the sun-dappled shots of the French countryside to the sun-dappled shots of the delicious food to the sun-dappled shots of Helen Mirren’s profile contemplating Septuagenarian sex. But passion? If this movie about food were a food, it would be a nice custard, served at room temperature.
RC: Perhaps there wasn’t passion of the Gordon Ramsey style, but I thought the characters, particularly the young leads, brought enthusiasm not only to their romance but to their rivalry as well. As Marguerite Charlotte Le Bon moves beyond simply playing the romantic counterpart and puts herself and her dream of being a chef first. I liked that she was spunkier than you often see in a movie like this. Ditto Mirren. As Madame comes to respect and then like her new neighbors, her ice queen demeanor slowly melts, allowing the actress to subtly reveal layers of character.
MB: None of them impressed me Richard, not even Mirren. The one actor that did blow me away was the great Indian actor Om Puri, whose name even sounds like a fine dish, served with a side of raita. I didn’t find much that surprised me in the script either, although I wasn’t expecting the young Indian chef to cross the road and work at Mirren’s classical French restaurant . Whether or not you see him as a contemptible sell-out or not probably depends on your attitude towards fusion cuisine.
RC: Tone wise this movie reminded me of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It may not be the most original movie to hit screens this summer, but I liked the characters and left the theatre hungry for more.
MB: I just left the theatre hungry. The vindaloo has the best part.
SYNOPSIS: Chris Pratt is Peter Quill, a cosmic Indiana Jones style adventurer. After stealing a mysterious metal orb that containing an “infinity chip,” he becomes the target of Ronan (Lee Pace in full-on wrestling bad guy mode), an intergalactic Genghis Khan with ambitions to destroy his mortal enemies, the Xandarians. To avoid capture Quill forms an uneasy alliance with a genetically engineered raccoon and bounty hunter Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), Groot (Vin Diesel), a plant-based humanoid, the deadly assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and a revenge hungry warrior named Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). As the chip’s power becomes obvious, the band of misfits slowly bond, becoming the Guardians of the Galaxy as they battle to keep the orb from Ronan.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 4 Stars
Mark: 4 Stars
Richard: Mark, summer blockbusters haven’t been much fun this year. Sure, we’ve had giant robots, action galore and some edge of our seat moments, but from the xenophobia of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to the daddy issues and nuclear nightmares of Godzilla the season’s tent pole movies have been a bit gloomy. Guardians of the Galaxy is a tonic for the troops. An old-fashioned space opera, it’s a wild ride and the most pure fun blockbuster since the first Iron Man movie. Did you have as much fun at it as I did?
Mark: Richard, I generally don’t care for space operas, but this one’s a game-changer. It’s debt to Star Wars is enormous, with Chris Pratt as Luke Skywalker, Zoe Saldana in the Carrie Fisher role, and the raccoon and the tree as R2D2 and CP3O. But then its originality takes flight—literally—and the movie becomes its own unique creation. Unlike Star Wars, it has a great sense of humour about itself, and if you don’t fall in love with the talking raccoon with the Brooklyn accent, you’re as villainous as the bad guys in the movie.
RC: Totally, it’s filled with one-liners, sight gags and funny moments that play off the more standard blockbuster-style action and battle scenes. Pratt has an offhand delivery that recalls Harrison Ford in Han Solo mode, Cooper does wisecracks like a skilled Catskills comic and (ALMOST A SPOILER) there’s Baby Groot to up the cute factor. They supply the light moments, but despite Cooper’s presence, this isn’t The Hangover in space, it’s an all out action movie with a blithe spirit. The only bits that dragged for me were the set-up scenes. Did you find the exposition got in the way occasionally?
MB: I don’t think you watch this movie for the plot anyways. But the very first scene, a waaaay too serious deathbed scene between a boy and his mother, left me with a bad taste and it took me awhile to recover from it and enjoy the movie. It isn’t all that far from the old Flash Gordon serials, except that every piece of technology is beyond state of the art and the makeup is wonderfully imaginative. My biggest beef? The bad guys have bad dialogue. And they deliver their lines in the standard three octaves lower register of villains in hackier flicks.
RC: By the time the end credits roll, however, none of our gripes matter much because the movie is so much fun.
MB: The movie is so much fun it actually enjoys itself.
Synopsis: Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) begins the story “just like you: vulnerable, uncertain, frightened of death,” but when the bag of drugs some very bad people “slipped into her lower tummy” bursts, her life is changed forever. She doesn’t overdose. Instead the drug expands her mind to 10 times the usual capacity. She becomes a turbocharged human who can change her appearance and move objects with her mind. She contacts a world-famous neuroscientist (Morgan Freeman) to pass along her newfound knowledge, but not before unleashing the power of her mind on the baddies who got her into this mess.
Richard: 3/5 Mark: 3/5
Richard: Mark, Lucy is a different style of movie, the philosophical action movie. The philosophy is all mumbo-jumbo but that doesn’t matter because the film is filled with many enjoyable scenes. Imagine a mix of Limitless, La Femme Nikita and The Matrix run through Luc Besson’s absurd style of moviemaking and you get the idea of what this movie is all about. What did you make of it?
Mark: The movie is great when it remembers it’s a thriller but when the pseudoscience and dime-store spirituality takes over, it becomes oppressive. I always can depend on Besson for brisk pacing but he slows it all down for a series of lectures — literally, with Morgan Freeman narrating his part as seems to be his custom now.
RC: Freeman is one of two top-billed stars in this movie, but his part could have been played by almost anyone. The movie really belongs to Scarlett Johansson, who starts off as a bubbly party girl and ends the movie as the keeper of the secrets of the universe. It’s a bit of a stretch, but if you can wade through the silly scientific theories, there are some great scenes that are more fun than a barrel of neuroscientists. In one fight scene, all the bad guys have knives and guns while Johansson taps into her inner Jedi Knight to defeat them without raising her hand. That sequence alone is worth sitting through the entire 80-minute running time.
MB: I liked lots of scenes in the movie, especially at the beginning when Johansson realizes how much trouble she’s in. Afterward she’s a bit of an automaton but a very hot one. And what did you think of the trippy psychedelic visuals and time travel revelations toward the end?
RC: You mean the Terrence-Malick-by-way-of-Stanley-Kubrick tribute? I don’t want to give away anything, but with a movie as loopy as this one, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there is some wild time travel back to the beginning of time. I guess it’s an attempt to add some profundity to the story, but it plays more like a Philosophy 101 student on an acid trip.
MB: Loopy is right, Richard, maybe even crazy. But at least Besson cribs from the best.
SYNOPSIS: Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves working through the Joy of Sex page by page. All goes well until Jay forgets to delete the video and mistakenly posts their three-hour amateur porntacular on the cloud. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!” With BFFs Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper), the embarrassed couple try and retrieve each of the “infected” iPads, especially the one in the hands of Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), the family-first CEO of the company that publishes Annie’s G-rated mommy blog.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 2 Stars
Mark: 2 Stars
Richard: Mark, any movie with the word sex in the title and Cameron Diaz in her underwear and a newly slim Jason Segel in the all-together should be a lot sexier than Sex Tape is. The first twenty minutes plays more like an attempt to break the world record for using the word “sex” in a movie than an actual story. Diaz and Segel talk about sex, have sex, then talk about it some more, but rather than being racy or slap-your-thigh funny it becomes tiresome. The only word used more often is “iPad,” which is even less provocative.
Mark: Richard, this movie is one of the best Apple commercials I’ve seen in years. But it does have some laughs. I couldn’t decide, though, if it was original yet flimsy or flimsy yet original. I was glad the running time clocked in at a neat 90 min as it was wearing out its welcome fast. That’s mostly because Cameron Diaz’ smokin’ hot bod is naked only in the first half of the picture. She has a pretty good chemistry with Jason Segal, but Rob Lowe steals the show. Considering his own past, it’s a neat bit of stunt casting.
RC: The Robs are the best part of the movie. The iPad retrieval from Rosenbaum’s mansion gives Rob Lowe (who knows a thing or two about sex tapes) a chance for some off-the-wall fun as the straight-laced executive with a wild side. Rob Corddry’s wide-eyed interest in his best friend’s sex tape was amusing and felt like the most genuine thing in the movie. I thought Diaz and Segel were OK, but I didn’t buy into the movie’s main joke for a second.
MB: Yes, well, talk about a manufactured crisis! There’s lots to pick apart here, especially the subplot involving Corddry’s blackmailing teenage son. But there’s some nifty dialogue, especially at the beginning of the movie, and a scene I liked at the porn server’s with a cameo by a Famous Comic Actor. By the way, all those porn website titles they spiel off are real ones, or, umm, so I was told by the guy sitting next to me.
RC: Hey! I was sitting next to you. I take the fifth. Unlike you, I hated the first section of the movie. I thought the least interesting part of the movie was the sex and the sex talk.
MB: No one will mistake this movie for the classic comedies of Preston Sturges. The movie aims low and thereby exceeds expectations. Not very demanding, but it is summer.
SYNOPSIS: Set ten years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes saw Caesar (Andy Serkis) break free from a San Fransisco primate sanctuary and start an ape uprising, the middle-aged chimpanzee is the leader of a large population of genetically evolved apes. Most of humankind was wiped out by a pandemic of ALZ-113—a “simian flu” virus that speeds up the rebuilding of brain cells in apes but is deadly to humans—but when a small band of humans scout a water source near the ape camp a monkey wrench is thrown into the fragile peace between homo sapiens and simians is threatened. “Apes do not want war,” says Caesar, but a battle—gorilla warfare?—for control is inevitable.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 4 ½ Stars
Mark: 4 Stars
Richard: Mark, to riff off of the old Superman tagline, “You will believe an ape can speak.” The special effects are amazing, but beyond the pixel manipulation that brings Caesar and company to vivid life, there are remarkable performances that, for lack of a better phrase, humanize the apes. These aren’t the erudite apes of the Roddy McDowell era, with vocabularies that would impress even Conrad Black, but simian characters that behave somewhere midway between pure instinct and higher intelligence. I went bananas for the apes. You?
Mark: The apes may have limited vocabularies but they’re a lot more interesting than the humans in the picture. This is a very sophisticated blockbuster that deals with our queasy relationship to the animal world and also acts as a metaphor for our need for civilized diplomacy. The post-apocalyptic world of a verdant but decaying San Francisco is visually plausible, and there are plot points worthy of a Greek tragedy. But enough about that. The apes are rad, man!
RC: It sure is a different kind of blockbuster. It has all the elements of the usual summer fare—it’s a sequel, things blow up and, if that wasn’t enough, also features an ape —but it takes risks. About half of it is done in ape sign language (with subtitles) and it’s not chock-a-block with action. Instead it takes time building characters and motivations so when the wild ape-on-human action begins it feels earned and it feels epic.
MB: Ape-on-human? What about the fabulous ape-on-ape action? Havent seen this kind of gritty action since the Bumfight videos of the Nineties. When these apes go at each other, it’s feral and primitive. WWF, take note! And the ape sign language forces them to act with their eyes, which reminded me of the power of old silent films. I didn’t need a bunch of clunky dialogue to know what these gorillas were thinking.
RC: I agree. I think this is the kind of performance that could convince the Academy to consider “motion capture” acting for inclusion in the Oscar acting categories. Beyond the performances though, is a thought-provoking movie about race, gun usage and xenophobia. Its masked in allegory and, well, a story about talking apes, but it touches on those hot button topics in an interesting way.
MB: What is missing from the movie is James Franco, who brought some lightness and offhand charm to the last Apes movie. The apes are so strong in these films that the movie needs some star charisma to balance it out. Nevertheless, we’ve come a long way away from Bedtime for Bonzo.
When the Reel Guys aren’t at the movies, one of their favourite things to do is talk about going to the movies. This week Richard and Mark have a look at talking apes, a vengeful Scarlett Johansson, and a singer with a papier-mâché head and a talking raccoon. So throw some popcorn on the BBQ, crank up the air conditioning and enjoy the Reel Guys’ most anticipated films of the summer season.
Richard: Mark, I was a huge Planet of the Apes fan as a kid. Loved the rubber masks, the twisty endings and the “YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!” scene still blows my mind. Saw them over and over, and even enjoyed the bad ones like Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Today, as an adult, I have a full-sized Cornelius bust with faux chimpanzee hair in my office. So, given my obsession with simian cinema, my inner 14-year-old goes a bit ape every time I see the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes trailer. What’s got you excited this summer?
Mark: I’m a Planet of the Apes fan, too, Richard. The idea of animals acting like humans is a welcome change from my life in show business, where humans act like animals. I’m really looking forward to Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson in a Luc Besson revenge/action flick. This is Scarlett’s moment, and this is going to be the movie to make her a megastar. The trailer made me spill my popcorn!
RC: Johansson is doing interesting work these days, splitting her time between rock ’em, sock ’em movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and smaller movies like Chef and Under the Skin. Michael Fassbender has a similar career arc. We last saw him in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Next up he’s in Frank, a strange indie based on the life of Frank Sidebottom, a real-life English musician who wore a giant papier-mâché head complete with painted-on eyes, ruby red lips and slicked-back hair.
I love Fassbender for still taking chances on movies like this when he could easily cash big Hollywood paycheques time after time.
MB: Sounds like one strange biopic, Richard! A more commercial variant I’m looking forward to is Get On Up, the James Brown story starring Chadwick Boseman. The Godfather of Soul never wore a papier-mâché head, but he was big on ermine capes and tantrums, so this should be a lot of fun. And what a soundtrack it will be!
For life lessons and laughs, there’s And So It Goes, a mature rom-com starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton. Bring your CARP card for discounts on soft-chew treats from the concession stand.
RC: I don’t have a CARP card …. yet. I do like soft chew candies, however. As far as movies go, I’m curious about Guardians of the Galaxy. So many of the summer’s blockbusters have been oh-so-serious affairs that I think this one promises some good laughs and action.
MB: The cast suggests it might be more than your typical sci-fi adventure. But it’s Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz in Sex Tape that gets me hot. Big laughs, lots of action, at least of the horizontal variety.
SYNOPSIS: Picking up four years after the invasion of Chicago seen in the last Transformers film, “Dark of the Moon,” the action begins when unemployed robotic engineer Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) uncover deactivated Autobot, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) hidden under a pile of junk. Their discovery puts them under the microscope of CIA agent Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) and tech tycoon Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci). The two are hatching a plan, fueled by equal parts paranoia and genius, to build man made second generation Transformers to seek out and destroy the Autobots. Complicating matters is Lockdown, a ruthless Transformer bounty hunter with no allegiance to Autobots or Decepticons.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 3 Stars
Mark: 2 Stars
Richard: Mark, everybody loves spectacle. The Romans had the Coliseum and we have the Transformers movies. Like the gladiatorial shows of yore, in Michael Bay’s movies it doesn’t matter who lives or dies— the films don’t care about their human characters and neither do we—all that matters is the spectacle of the whole thing and at almost frenetic three hours Age of Extinction certainly delivers on that score. For many, getting value per minute for their movie dollar will be enough, but do you, like the old Roman emperors, give this a thumbs up or down?
Mark: Richard, I was glued to my seat throughout! You see, some idiot had spilled epoxy on the seat before I sat down and it took the full two and three quarter hours to wriggle out of my jeans. I have never been able to sit through a Transformers movie, but epoxy aside, at least this one had a coherent story, some decent acting thanks to Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer, and some exciting chase sequences. I just can’t wrap my head around watching a bunch of Swiss Army knives on steroids bashing each other. But then again, I’m not a twelve-year-old boy.
RC: No one can accuse Bay of skimping on… well anything. “Age of Extinction” is a wide ranging action orgy that plays off of Bush era Homeland Security paranoia and also explains why dinosaurs became extinct. It comments on the ethics of unarmed warfare and blows up most of Hong Kong. Bay doesn’t do anything by half measures but I found myself wishing the movie was about half as long as it is with half the bombast. It’s stylish—“Why run when you can run in slow motion,” Bay seems to be asking—not unlike a car commercial, but is excessive on almost every level. I don’t expect or want “My Dinner with Optimus Prime,” but in this case I think less would have been more.
MB: My feelings here are complicated. I used to take it for granted that this kind of direction was evidence of a hack sensibility, which assumes that quantity makes viewers forget quality—a real cynic’s position. But watching this installment, I’m no longer so sure. I think Bay really believes that these grand excesses are heroic, even Shakespearean—its running time is equal to Hamlet. The movie is cheesy and schlocky, for sure, but the one possible grace note is Bay’s commitment to the drive of the film. Too long, for sure, but at least this movie moves.
RC: Shakespeare never wrote a play about a giant alien robot playing bucking bronco with a humungous dinobot. That’s all Bay.
MB: Or had a billion dollar grossing movie. That’s all Bay St.
SYNOPSIS: Based on the Broadway hit of the same name, Jersey Boys begins in 1951 Belleville, New Jersey and follows childhood friends Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young who won a Tony for his performance of Valli on stage), Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) and Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) from the streets to the studio and with the addition of songwriter and keyboardist Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen), from clubs to concert halls as the Four Seasons, one of the biggest selling acts in rock history. Hits like Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like A Man and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You kept them at the top of the charts but ego, in-fighting and money troubles blew them apart.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 2 Stars
Mark: 3 Stars
Richard: Mark, I thought director Clint Eastwood set up the story of the band well enough. From their hard scrapple beginnings to the height of their success, it’s a rags-to-riches story and when it focuses on the four band members it works. Unfortunately it takes a cast of characters to tell the tale and Eastwood seems content to allow his supporting actors to go off-the-charts theatrical. By the time the end credits roll it’s clear that the movie is a caricature of a real life story. Nothing feels completely genuine, as if the theatricality of the stage version bled into the film.
Mark: Richard, I think I know when the film goes off the rails. When the band breaks up two thirds of the way through, everything that follows feels forced, cheesy, and the emotions play a bit phony. But I still enjoyed the movie. I saw the theatrical version twice and I’m a big fan of the group. The music makes a bigger impact in the stage version, but some of the characters play better in the film. None of the acting is stellar, but it’s always fun to watch Christopher Walken do his “good mobster” schtick, and Erich Bergen as Bob Gaudio, the brains of the group, really stood out for me.
RC: The songs are undeniably catchy and well performed by a cast, three quarters of which come from the various incarnations of the stage show. They are earworms that sound authentic, by and large thanks to Young who perfectly mimics Valli’s soaring multi-octave falsetto voice. The bulk of the movie, unfortunately, doesn’t soar as high as Young’s voice. The Broadway show is basically a rock concert with a story. The big screen treatment requires more.
MB: I thought it did-in places. The feuding between the members of the group worked better in the movie, but the opening scenes of Italian boys in da hood has been done many times before and went on way too long. Note that it takes one full hour before they sing their first hit, Sherry. The movie filled in a lot of texture about the Jersey mob and life on the road that wasn’t in the play, but you know, Richard, it’s about a rock group in the Sixties, so I don’t even have to like it to like it.
RC: I liked the style, the songs but I wanted more from the characters. The songs will stay in your head, the characters won’t.
MB: And after Valli got his name upfront of the group, shouldn’t it technically have been “Frankie Valli and the Three Seasons?”
By Richard Crouse & Mark Breslin – Metro Canada
