Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the transformational horror of “Wolf Man,” the resilience of “The Last Showgirl” and star power of “Back in Action.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In the new Netflix action comedy “Back in Action” Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz star as retired CIA spies drawn back into action when their secret identities, and quiet family life, is compromised. “I always knew you guys were lying about something,” says daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts), “but I never thought you were cool enough to be spies.”
CAST: Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Kyle Chandler, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jamie Demetriou, McKenna Roberts, Rylan Jackson. Directed by Seth Gordon from a script he co-wrote with Brendan O’Brien.
REVIEW: After appearing together in the 1999 sports drama “Any Given Sunday” and 2014’s all-singing-all-dancing “Annie” remake, Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz reteam for the amiable Netflix action comedy “Back in Action.”
Tasked with pulling off a dollop of romance and large-scale action, all set against a backdrop of a “Married with Kids” style family comedy, the frequent co-stars bring versatility and charm to the predictable, but entertaining story.
Diaz, in her first movie in a decade, reminds us why she was such a commercial and critical success before she stepped away from the spotlight. Toggling between relatable mom and kick-ass spy, she delivers the funny and some high-flying action.
Foxx makes short work of Matt. Like Diaz, he makes the mix-and-match of action and comedy look easy and shares effortless chemistry with his co-star.
As the kids, McKenna Roberts and Rylan Jackson ably assist the headliners, with Jackson delivering some of the movie’s funniest lines. “They’re not criminals,” he says of his parents. “They belong to a pickleball league! They watch HGTV!”
Glenn Close shows a previously unseen flair for action (no spoilers here) and British comedian Jamie Demetriou takes a role we’ve seen before—a bumbling fool who aspires to greatness—and milks it for all it is worth.
It’s the characters and performances that make “Back in Action” a bit of distracting fun.
The movie itself delivers on its promise. There are laughs and a big action set piece every fifteen minutes or so, but, story wise, there isn’t much here we haven’t seen before. It plays a like a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist, something that seems familiar, but you can’t quite put your finger on where you’ve seen it before.
“Back in Action’s” story may be as generic as its title, but although predictable, it’s still an old-school crowd pleaser.
Quvenzhané Wallis, the eleven-year-old Academy Award nominee, kicks the old “Annie” to the curb in the opening minutes of the reimagined story of a spunky little orphan and her foster father.
The movie begins with a curly haired red head making a presentation in class. With a flourish, she finishes her show-and-tell with a few snappy tap dance moves. Next up is Annie (Wallis) who erases the old image of the Broadway waif with a spirited “Stomp” style opening number.
It doesn’t all work, but the update does make the old “Annie” seem as au courant as “Downton Abbey.”
Set in modern day New York City, “Annie” drops the “orphan” in favor of “foster child.” Abandoned by her parents, her only connection to them is a note scribbled on the back of a restaurant bill. That scrap of paper and her scrappy attitude sustain her as she lives with a group of plucky kids at failed singer Miss Hannigan’s (Cameron Diaz) Dickensian Harlem apartment.
Her ticket out of Hannigan’s hell hole comes in the form of a viral video shot by a citizen journalist. Chasing a stray dog down the street Annie is rescued by the city’s richest citizen and mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx). Unscrupulous campaign manager Guy (Bobby Cannavale) sees an opportunity to humanize his candidate and asks Annie over for a photo op.
“It’s good PR for my campaign to be seen with you,” Stacks explains to the little girl.
“If I came to live with you, you could become president,” she shoots back.
And thus Annie is invited to live in Stacks’s deluxe apartment in the sky. They form a bond and… blah, blah, blah. You can guess the rest.
Aside from a handful of songs, an overload of cute and shards of a storyline, the new “Annie” has little in common with the original musical. Director and co-screenwriter Will Gluck takes pains to make an “Annie” for a new generation but loses the spirit that made Broadway “Annie” so iconic.
“People love musicals,” he has Miss Hannigan say at one point. “Bursting into song for no apparent reason.” Except in good musicals there is always a reason for characters to burst into song. Annie doesn’t miss any opportunity to sing and dance—it even manages to turn taking out the recycling into a percussive event—but Gluck handles the transitions from dialogue to verse awkwardly. “Are you going to sing to me?” Hannigan asks Guy. “Is this happening?”
Worse, the music isn’t particularly memorable and bland, beat-heavy new school arrangements obscure the lyrics. The music is big, but the voices aren’t. Wallis has a much more natural singing style than he Broadway trained predecessors and gets lost in the mix. Ethel Merman she ain’t. The show was filled with showstoppers—“It’s the Hard-Knock Life” and “Tomorrow” among others—that are reduced in the film to aural wallpaper with choreography that could charitably be described as curious.
Wallis does plucky very well, but is rather one note, not just musically but personality wise as well. Foxx can sing but is saddled with the film’s second worst number, “I Don’t Need Anything But You,” (the “winner” is Diaz’s “Little Girls”) and Cannavale appears to be acting in a Christmas pantomime nobody told the rest of the cast about.
“Annie” is an attempt to recreate an icon for a new age but falls flatter than Miss Hannigan’s high notes.
Richard hosted a “ComedyPRO In Conversation” session with director Nicholas Stoller on Thursday July 24, 2014 at Just for Laughs in Montreal.
From JFL’s website: Filmmaker Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek) is this year’s ‘In Conversation’ subject. His latest film, Neighbors, starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, laughed its way to a $51.1 million US debut over Mother’s Day weekend, and has grossed over $220 million worldwide thus far. In Conversation with Nicholas Stoller takes place at ComedyPRO on Thursday, July 24, 3 pm, at the Hyatt Regency Montreal. It is presented by the Telefilm Canada Feature Comedy Exchange, a CFC initiative in collaboration with Just For Laughs.
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. They 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.
Segel and 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.
There are a handful of laughs in “Sex Tape.” Most of them center on the iPad retrieval from Rosenbaum’s mansion. It’s a ten-minute long farce involving cocaine, a dog on a treadmill and a sex toy used as a boomerang. The sequence is out-of-control and capped by a smarmily charming performance by Rob Lowe (who knows a thing or two about sex tapes), the straight-laced executive with a wild side.
The other Rob, Corddry, is also very funny. His wide-eyed interest in his best friend’s sex tape is amusing and feels like the most genuine thing in the movie.
The whole thing feels like a premise for a joke. The story is candid but doesn’t ever feel heartfelt. For the comedy to work the audience has to be able to buy in and while many can relate to the bedroom blues on display, the movie is more concerned with titillation than sincerity.
At one point in the film Diaz talks about her love of porn, but adds she doesn’t watch it anymore because, “the quality of the writing has gone down hill. I like it when they really feel like they’re in love.” She might have been talking about her own movie.
Diaz and Segel are OK, but despite some enthusiastic (and gymnastic) performances they don’t sell the movie’s main gag. The set up is so drawn out that despite its provocative premise it never seduces the audience.
There are laughs sprinkled throughout. Segel has razor sharp comic timing and can’t help but get a giggle even when he has to rattle off endless exposition, but try as he might, he doesn’t make the same impression he did in movies like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” or “Bad Teacher,” his previous teaming with Diaz.
“Sex Tape” is an R-rated comedy in which the least interesting part of the movie is the sex and the sex talk.
By Richard Crouse – In Focus Metro Canada
For many people, especially those who troll around in the more unsavoury corners of the Internet, the first exposure to celebs like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian came from that most modern form of celebrity introduction: the sex tape.
Paris and Kim’s videoed sexcapades weren’t the first tapes to become public — in 1988 Rob Lowe was embarrassed when VHS images of him and two women popped up on the news — and they weren’t the last.
This week in Sex Tape, Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves. All goes well until Jay forgets to erase the tape and mistakenly stores it on the Internet. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!”
Given how many actors have appeared in sex tapes it’s not surprising that several movies have used the raunchy videos as a plot point.
In Brüno, the titular Austrian fashion reporter (Sacha Baron Cohen) tries to make a name for himself in America by making a sex tape with another famous American, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul. Trouble was, Paul wasn’t in on the joke. “I was expecting an interview on Austrian economics,” said Paul. “But, by the time he started pulling his pants down, I was like ‘What is going on here?’ I ran out of the room. This interview has ended.”
The 2006 comedy Drop Box has production values not unlike that of an actual sex tape but despite its low budget it offers up the funny and often brutal story about Mindy (Rachel Sehl), a big-time bubblegum pop star (think Britney or Miley), who accidentally returns her homemade sex tape to her local video store instead of Glitter, the movie she rented. Realizing her mistake, she tries to re-rent the tape.
Clocking in at just 80 minutes, it’s a character study about a spoiled pop princess who butts heads with an unmovable force in the form of the uncooperative and inquisitive clerk (David Cormican).
Finally, Auto Focus exposes sex tapes’ dark side. Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane’s (Greg Kinnear) all-American public persona hid a secret obsession. “I’m a normal, red-blooded American man,” he says. “I like to look at naked women.” According to the film, he liked making sex tapes with women, usually without their knowledge. The movie speculates his 1978 murder may have been related to this unlawful pastime.
“The Other Woman,” a new madcap comedy from “The Notebook” director Nick Cassavetes, features a character who tries to push infidelity to Tiger Woodsian heights. There have been philanderers on film before, but rarely has one cinematic cheater spread himself so thin, carrying on simultaneously with Leslie Mann, Cameron Diaz and Sports Illustrated cover girl Kate Upton.
That man, Mark King (Game of Thrones’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), is cheating on his wife (Mann) with multiple mistresses, including Carly and Amber (Diaz and Upton).
“We got played by the same guy,” says Carly. “I call it a tie.”
The three women form an unlikely bond—“We are the weirdest friends ever,” says Carly—drowning their sorrows in a sea of tequila shots before hatching a plan to humiliate and financially ruin the three timer. “The three of us can be just as shady as he can.”
With “The Notebook” Cassavetes made one of the most romantic movies of recent years. With “The Other Woman” the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. This is an anti-romance flick about sex, lies and adultery but it is ripe with laughs and some fun performances.
Mann goes all in as a Lucille Ball-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown type, Diaz has great comic timing and even the voluptuous Kate “She’s a clichéd version of every wife’s nightmare” Upton, who will never be confused with Meryl Streep, is charming and funny. Singer Nicki Minaj, who darts in and out of the film in an extended cameo, manages to get a couple of zingers in there as well.
Coster-Waldau doesn’t fare as well. He’s fine as the oily Casanova but is more “Game of Thrones” (he’s Jaime Lannister on the HBO show) when it comes to playing comedy. In other words he’s better at sword swinging than slapstick.
The film is slightly mean spirited and not terribly subtle in its examination of the dynamics between men and women, or in its soundtrack. The “Mission Impossible” theme blares over a scene where Diaz and Mann spy on Coster-Waldau, and you can bet your bottom dollar “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” will play at some point.
It may not be refined but it does get the girl power stuff right, and that’s more the point of the film. This isn’t a movie about the men, they are flesh props, simply the McGuffins that forward the plot. This is a movie about female bonding rather than female blaming and on that level it scores. The comedy material is often elevated and enhanced by the performer’s skill, but the film has its (broken) heart in the right place.
“The Other Woman” is a chick flick that isn’t “Bridemaids” funny, but you will laugh out loud quite a few times.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada In Focus
In the new movie The Other Woman Mark King (Game of Thrones’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) tries to push infidelity to Tiger Woodsian heights by cheating on his wife (Leslie Mann) with multiple mistresses, including Carly and Amber (Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton). “We got played by the same guy,” says Carly.
“Getting played” in Hollywood movies dates back further than the invention of the ashleymadison website.
In 1960 the Jack Lemmon movie The Apartment tackled the subject of adultery. The film, about a lonely insurance company lackey who allows his bosses to use his apartment as a trysting spot in hopes that they will promote him, was a big hit, but also a controversial one. The Saturday Review called it “a dirty fairy tale” and co-star Fred McMurray says a woman on the street hit him with her purse, taking to him to task for making “a dirty, filthy movie.”
2005’s Derailed, stars Clive Owen as a married man who hooks up with Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston) after meeting her on a commuter train. In a hormone induced rush they decide to consummate their illicit affair at a seedy hotel, only to be interrupted by a burglar who robs them and sexually assaults Lucinda. Things spiral out of control as the robber blackmails the couple and seems to have an unquenchable thirst for Owen’s money.
Derailed is a cautionary tale about staying faithful to your spouse and never, ever renting rooms in sleazy hotels. Part Fatal Attraction, part Hitchcock thriller the movie stays on track through the set-up of the story, but as soon as the going gets rough the story, well… derails.
The most famous infidelity movie has to be 1987’s Fatal Attraction. It begins with Michael “I’m a married man!” Douglas having a fling with Glenn “I’m not gonna be ignored!” Close. When he tries to break off their affair, she becomes a lesson in why not to cheat on your wife.
The film was a sensation on release, inspiring a number of imitators including The Crush, Single White Female and a spoof called Fatal Instinct, and its most famous clip, the rabbit boiling on the stove, even inspired a phrase in the Urban Dictionary. According to the website, cook your rabbit “refers to the moment when someone goes over the edge in their obsession with another person.”
In an interview twenty year after the film’s release Close said, “”Men still come up to me and say, ‘You scared the [crap] out of me.’ Sometimes they say, ‘You saved my marriage.'”
Cormac McCarthy may not be a household name around your place, unless you live with the Coen Brothers or maybe with the Pitt’s.
Literary critic Harold Bloom called the writer one of the four major American novelists of his time, and he has two all-star movies set for release, which may make his name a little more commonplace.
Later in 2013 James Franco directs, scripts and stars in Child of God, an adaptation of Cormac’s 1973 novel about, “a dispossessed, violent man whose life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order.”
This weekend a star-studded cast lead by Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Michael Fassbender headline The Counselor, directed by Ridley Scott.
Producer Steve Schwartz says the story of a lawyer in over his head after dipping his toe into the drug trade, “may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.”
And that’s saying something about the writer who gave us a character like No Country for Old Men’s killing machine Anton Chigurh. Empire.com warned that when, “McCarthy throws “a dark character at you, it’s a safe assumption that you’re not going to be able to get them out of your head for a good, long while—if ever.”
As written by McCarthy and played by Javier Bardem, who earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the part, Chigurh is merciless, a murderer who makes life and death decisions with the flip of a coin.
The Road—a 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction—is another disturbing McCarthy novel adapted for the big screen.
The story is simple. A man and his son (Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee) try to survive in a dystopian world. Armed with only a gun and two bullets they must scavenge for food amid the ruins and protect themselves from cannibals who roam the desolate land.
The Road is a movie based on small moments set against a big backdrop. No parent will be able to forget the stark image of seeing a young boy who doesn’t know what a can of Coke is or a father teaching his son how to commit suicide.
It’s tough, no nonsense work from a writer who says he’s “not that big a fan of exotic foreign films,” especially movie with magical realism. “You know, it’s hard enough to get people to believe what you’re telling them without making it impossible,” he says. “It has to be vaguely plausible.”
