Watch Richard Crouse review three movies in less time than it takes to do a jumping jack! Have a look as he races against the clock to tell you about the animated superhero flick “DC League of Super-Pets,” the social media thriller “Vengeance ” and the British drama “Ali & Ava.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Vengeance,” a new satire playing in theatres, written, directed and starring “The Office” actor B.J. Novak, mixes-and-matches social commentary, the opioid epidemic and social divides, in a story that plays like a murder mystery wrapped around a journey of self-discovery.
Novak plays New York City writer Ben Manalowitz, a shallow, self-absorbed, know-it-all who wants to host an important podcast that will make sense of America and its current state of divide. “I don’t just want to write,” he says pompously. “I want to have a voice.”
When an unknown number pops up on his phone in the middle of the night, it sets him on the path to finding his voice as a weepy caller gives him the “bad news” that his girlfriend has died.
Girlfriend? Which one?
Turns out it was Abilene (Lio Tipton), one of several women he dated at the same time. The family believes they were in love but Ben has to look up her photo to put a face to the name.
Abbey’s good-old-boy brother Ty (Boyd Holbrook) insists Ben come to the funeral in West Texas. “I can’t do this,” Ben says. “None of us can do this,” says the grief-stricken Ty, “and face the future alone.”
Reluctantly Ben agrees to travel to West Texas and even gets roped into speaking at the funeral. “I wish I had known her better,” he says, looking at a picture of her and a guitar. “I wish I had spent more time with her. She loved music and will always be a song in our hearts.”
On the drive back from the funeral, Ty drops a bomb. “Abbey didn’t just die,” he says. “She was murdered. And we’re going to avenge her death.”
Why not just call the police? “In Texas we don’t call 911.”
Ben says, “As a personal boundary, I don’t avenge deaths. I don’t live in a Liam Neeson movie,” but a lightbulb goes off. This is the story he has been looking for.
He agrees to investigate Abilene’s death in the form of a true crime podcast. “This isn’t a story for everyone,” he says. “It’s a story about the need for vengeance.”
Working with his New York based editor (Issa Rae) to shape the story, his investigation leads him into murky territory, both personally and professionally.
The film’s title suggests a blood-speckled search for retribution but “Vengeance” is more interested in provocation than payback. Abilene’s death is the engine that drives the story, but it’s also a McGuffin, an ultimately not important detail in the overall scheme of things. Novak is more interested in our preconceptions about each other in the great red-state/blue-state divide, and how those biases color the way we behave.
It’s a heady backdrop for a neo-western noir, and it starts strong as fish-out-of-water Ben slowly realizes there is life outside his tiny bubble. Ben is a satire of east coast arrogance, looking down on anyone who dares to live outside the borders of New York City. As he digs into Abilene’s passing, investigating if she was murdered or took an accidental overdose, he begins to place old prejudices aside and actually becomes less insufferable. He is pointed in a new direction as his moral compass leads him to wonder if his own caddish behavior may have played a role in Abilene’s fate and, with the podcast, if he is exploiting her family.
Unfortunately, it is also at this point that the film begins to crumble under the weight of broad MAGA characterizations and juicy droplets of pop psychology doublespeak like “everything is everything so everything is nothing.”
As the story splinters off into a satire of true crime podcasts and social media in general, it gets mired in its own philosophies and the fleet-footed pacing of the early sections slows, dragged to a stop by a muddle of ideas.
“Vengeance” is an ambitious movie that bites off a bit more than it can easily chew and digest, but provides enough laughs and intrigue to be worth a look.
Richard’s new Cineplex.com column is now up and running!
“Making love on camera is such hard work,” says actress Julie Christie, “that there is no time for the libido to take over.”
Maybe so, but some good-old-fashioned romance does manage to blossom on movie sets. Just ask Brad Pitt or Goldie Hawn or Ben Affleck. Each of them met their current paramour while making a movie.
Let’s take a look at some of the greatest Hollywood on-set romances… READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
I have a rule, The flashier the press kit, the worse the movie, and Guess Who has a very flashy press kit. It is a faux leather bound book with cut-outs of Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac that move when you open the front cover. In this case, however, you can’t judge the book by its cover, or a movie by its press kit.
Guess Who takes its inspiration, but very little else from the 1967 Stanley Kramer directed Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, with Spencer Tracey, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Hepburn. That one was a socially aware film, which tackled heavy racial issues with a mix of humor and drama. In 2005 the movie has been remade into an off the wall, disposable comedy starring Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac which inverts the original idea by having an African-American family face the entrance of a white boyfriend into their home.
The father is played by Bernie Mac—and I don’t know why he bothers with character names in movies because he essentially just plays himself in everything. He should simply call himself Bernie Mac and be done with it. Fortunately he’s really good at being Bernie Mac and here he is fun to watch. As the boyfriend, Ashton Kutcher looks good in clothes and doesn’t bump into the furniture.
The tone of the film is a little weird—somewhere between Meet the Parents and Father of the Bride, managing to be both trite and the earnest at the same time.
It lacks the import or backbone of the original, yet Guess Who still manages to say something sensible about tolerance while being fluffy and fast moving.
I liked this movie more than I thought I would.
Eureka moments abound in “Jobs,” the new biopic about the life of tech wizard and Apple founder Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher). According to this film Jobs grabbed inspiration in the most unlikely of paces, usually accompanied by a wide-eyed look. In fact he spends so much time staring off into space one has to wonder if there isn’t another, more interesting movie playing just off screen.
Early on in the film the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote reminds us that, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” This journey takes us from Jobs’ early days in Paulo Alto, California where he and a motley group of techies began to redefine the way that people interacted with technology, through to his rise and fall as Apple’s CEO and head nerd to his eventual redemption. Strangely, the movie begins with a clip of the older, obviously ill Jobs, but never revisits that flash forward scene or the man’s illness.
“Jobs” serves as a reminder that it is rare to find an extraordinary film about an extraordinary person. Perhaps it is that it’s hard to take “Two and a Half Men” star Kutcher, despite his resemblance to Jobs, seriously in the role of a visionary. Or maybe it’s just a standard movie about a man who made innovation his life’s work. Either way “Jobs” is the kind of movie that feels better suited to television than the movies.
It doesn’t sugar coat Jobs’ legendary temper. In fact, given the way he behaves for most of the film—dismissing Apple founding father Daniel Kottke (Lucas Haas), or denying paternity of his child—the movie should be called “SOB”, not “Jobs.”
Ripe with inspirational music cues and lines like “There are still those of us who believe in what Apple stood for… what you stood for,” that despite the raw edge to the man’s personality, “Jobs” often plays like a hagiography rather than biography.
A movie about a man driven to excellence should have a bold connection to its subject. Unfortunately “Jobs” feels like an old dial-up connection.
“No Strings Attached,” the new R-rated rom com from director Ivan “Ghostbusters” Reitman is a modern movie for a generation of text and sex couples terrified of commitment.
Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman play 20-something Los Angelenos who slowly realize that sex is easy while love requires a lot more work. She’s a “relationshiphobic” workaholic. He wears his heart on his sleeve. At first they agree to a friends-with-benefits set up, arranging trysts by text and keeping it informal but when the l-word—that’s love—rears its head it threatens to blow apart their casual connection.
“No Strings Attached” is one of those rare movies where the main characters are the least interesting people in the movie. Natalie Portman (who stars and is one of the movie’s producers) is having an interesting year professionally. In “Black Swan” she hands in one of the most memorable performances of the year only to follow it up with a dull offering a movie that she seems miscast in. This seems more like a Kathryn Hiegl movie than a Natalie Portman vehicle; a movie with leads that could have been played by any number of Hollywood rom com regulars. Insert Heigl and Paul Rudd or Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel and this would have been pretty much the same movie.
Worse, despite the bouncing bed springs and many, many shared sex scenes, Kutcher and Portman don’t seem to have much chemistry. The pair generates so little heat you may want to bring a blanket with you to the theatre.
Luckily the supporting cast has more to offer than the above-the-title stars. Who knew Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges had such a light touch? He has a small, recurring role and knocks it out of the park every time he’s on screen. Ditto Greta Gerwig, the former indie darling who impressed in “Greenberg” and now has the funniest line in this movie and will someone please give Lake Bell the lead in a comedy. She’s beautiful, funny and pulls focus from whoever she shares a frame with. As the neurotic television producer she has the funniest almost-love scene we’ve seen in ages and adds some much needed zip to the predictable and occasionally even dull story.
Go to see Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher sorta naked. Stay to see Lake Bell, Ludacris and Gerwig bring the funny.
There have been so many animated talking animal movies in the last couple of years that it is getting hard to tell one from another. Remember the one where the animals break out of the New York City zoo and travel back to Africa? Wasn’t that Madagascar? Or was it The Wild? Actually it was both. These movies have become so interchangeable that even the five year olds that make up their target audience must have a sense of déjà vu when they go to the movies.
The latest animated movie to recycle this journey theme is called Open Season, and it is essentially the same story with a few minor tweaks. Martin Lawrence voices Boog, a friendly, spoiled bear who lives in his trainer’s garage. Like the lions in The Wild and Madagascar he’s the pampered king of his urban environment and knows little about nature. He performs in a wildlife show and is perfectly content until a fast-talking deer named Elliot comes along. Elliot, voiced by Ashton Kutcher, shows Boog how to punk the local convenience store, a move that convinces his custodian that he should be returned to the woods. The kind-hearted keeper drops him in the middle of the woods, far from hunters who have declared open season on every living thing in the forest.
Boog is lost without the comforts of home and is determined to make it back to his old way of life, but first he must answer that age-old question, “Does a bear s**t in the woods?” Apparently not if your name is Boog and you’ve been raised in a garage with indoor plumbing. He must also learn to fend for himself and out-smart a psycho hunter who has a vendetta against all furry creatures.
With a story this familiar the movie really needs some exceptional voice work to elevate itself above the others, but few of the voices here are remarkable. Lawrence and Kutcher do good work, as do supporting actors like Scottish comedian Billy Connolly who lays on the brogue as a belligerent squirrel, and Patrick Warburton who lends his distinctive “Puddy” voice to Ian, the vain deer, but most of the voices are quite ordinary, the kind you hear on straight-to-video animated releases.
Open Season is an amiable enough movie, with a few laughs and the kind of life lessons about friendship that have become commonplace in these animated movies, but I left the theatre feeling like I had been there and done that. The similarities to other recent movies are so strong that it takes more than just a couple of new characters doing the same old jokes to maintain interest.
In What Happens in Vegas a young successful woman marries an unemployed guy after a night of drinking. No, it’s not the Britney Spears story, it’s a new romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.
The premise is right out of Rom Com 101. Kutcher is Jack, a good looking womanizer who can’t hold down a job. Diaz is the beautiful but controlling Joy. In other words they are stereotypes: he’s a slob; she’s a controlling harridan. One drunken night they hook up in Vegas, and despite their differences they wind up getting hitched. In the cold light of day they both realize they don’t really like one another and need to get an annulment, pronto. That is until Kutcher puts her quarter in a slot machine and wins three million dollars. Her quarter, his pull. Back home a judge (Dennis Miller) rules that neither gets a dime of the cash or an annulment unless they try and make their marriage work for six months. Wacky hi-jinks ensue.
Anyone who’s read the Rom Com Handbook knows it’s only a matter of time until the best friend says, “Oh my God, you’re falling for her…” and we discover, once and for all, that opposites truly do attract.
What Happens in Vegas has four solid laughs and 95 minutes of clichés provided by a script that appears to have been written by the Rom Com Automatic Script Generator. It plays to the worst kind of stereotypes, the type of gender humor that should have gone out with Lucy and Desi. Worse than the old fashioned “men and women cannot coexist” approach is an painfully unfunny scene makes fun of domestic abuse.
Diaz and Kutcher, both romantic comedy veterans, are the above the title stars but it is the supporting cast that squeezes the laughs out of this battle of sexes material. Rob Corddry and Lake Bell are the best friends—known in the Rom Com Handbook as “wacky sidekicks”—and have all the best lines. Bell has the same kind of appeal as her co-star Cameron Diaz showed in There’s Something About Mary—she’s beautiful and goofy—and it’s the first time Corddry, who was always so great on The Daily Show, has been funny in a movie. He can take a throw away line like, “She’s awfully hostile for a girl named Joy,” and turn it into one of the funniest things in the whole movie.
The famous Vegas tourist board slogan should be the headline for this review: What Happens in Vegas, despite two funny supporting performances, really should have stayed in Vegas.
Casual sex seems to be making a comeback at the movies.
Recently Love and Other Drugs showcased the informal liaisons of Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal. “We decided it was going to be two characters that both really couldn’t be intimate,” says Jake, “and so we both went to sex as a way of avoiding things.”
This week in No Strings Attached Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher become the latest Hollywood a-listers to try and keep their relationship strictly physical in this Ivan Reitman comedy.
Other films to ask “What’s love got to do with it?” include 9 Songs, the erotic Michael Winterbottom movie about Matt, an English scientist, and Lisa, an American on vacation in London. They meet, jump into the sack and go to Primal Scream and Franz Ferdinand concerts and soon learn, as Roger Ebert noted in his review, “sex is easy but love is hard.”
Another movie couple learned that lesson, with much happier results in Knocked Up, the 2007 comedy about a one night stand, an unplanned pregnancy and enforced maturity. The Guardian called it “a new genre of romantic comedy in which an unappealing hero gets together with a gorgeous, successful woman.” Star Katherine Heigl had a different take, suggesting the film “paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.” In response the film’s director Judd Apatow said “I’m just shocked she [Heigl] used the word shrew. I mean, what is this, the sixteen-hundreds?”
The reviews for Casual Sex?, a 1988 comedy starring Lea Thompson and Victoria Jackson as two women who look for love at an upscale spa—“It was the early eighties,” says Thompson’s character, “and sex was still a good way to meet new people.”—sum up the way many people feel about the sex without commitment. The movie,” wrote Hal Hinson in the Washington Post, “is exactly like the real thing—kinda empty, kinda unfulfilling, and you feel just awful afterward.”
On the other hand James Bond, possibly the screen’s biggest proponent of casual sex, never seemed to have a problem with a quick fling. Not willing to limit himself to earth-bound trysts in Moonraker he even has a rendezvous on a spaceship careening back through earth’s atmosphere. “My God, what is Bond doing?!” asks his boss Sir Frederick Gray. “I think he’s attempting re-entry sir,” replies Q.
