“Horrible Bosses 2” is being billed as a comedy and stars people—like the Jasons, Bateman and Sudeikis, Charlie Day and Jennifer Aniston—usually associated with making people laugh, but does the almost complete absence of anything giggle worthy preclude us from labeling it a comedy? Discuss.
In the second peek at the pitiful employment record of Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day), the guys go into business for themselves. Their product, the Shower Buddy—a shower nozzle that shoots shampoo and conditioner as well as water—seems like a sure fire As-Seen-On-TV hit but when a shady billionaire (Christoph Waltz) tries to swindle them out of their livelihood they decide to get even by kidnapping his son (Chris Pine). “If we’ve learned one thing about ourselves,” says Nick, “it’s that we’re not murderers.”
Off the top it has to be said that Bateman, Sudeikis and Day have great chemistry together. They joke, jostle and jape like brothers, giggling their way through the movie as if they are in on a fantastic gag that only they get. The trio seems to be having fun, and judging by the outtake reel that plays over the credits, the set was filled with laughter every time someone blew a line. If only the audience could have as much fun watching the movie as the cast did making it.
“Horrible Bosses 2” is a demotion from the original film. There are more laughs on the average job application than in this workplace “comedy.” It’s misogyny masquerading as humour, with unlikeable characters and an inane premise that diminishes in interest as the running time increases.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is nothing fancy… and it’s also nothing Clancy.
As the first of the Ryan movies not based on a Tom Clancy novel it feels generic. There is the usual spy story intrigue, exotic locations and tense scenes but what the movie doesn’t have is the ear for dialogue of the other films in the series. When you have a senior CIA agent muttering the line, “This is geopolitics, not couple’s therapy,” it’s hard to know whether this is a satire of spy films or just badly written.
As played by Chris Pine (taking over from Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck) CIA field agent Ryan discovers evidence of an upcoming terrorist attack. Leaving his jealous girlfriend (Kiera Knightley) behind, he is sent to Moscow to continue the investigation by Intelligence boss Agent Harper (Kevin Costner).
Dodging bullets and bad guys, he encounters Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh, who also sits in the director’s chair) an evil businessman with a plot to destabilize the global economy and create the “second Great Depression” in the United States.
Remember when Kenneth Branagh used to make movies like “Henry V” and “Hamlet”? I do too, which makes me feel a little empty inside when I watch something like “Shadow Recruit.”
This is a case of a director with no affinity for the material. It’s almost as if this was pieced together by people who had seen a lot of spy movies, but didn’t really understand them.
Like Branagh’s “Thor” movie, the action is muddled and so frenetically edited it’s often hard to see through the flashes of light on the screen to see who is punching who. A little clarity in those sequences would have gone a long way to make up for the ridiculous dialogue and under developed characters.
Branagh plays Cherevin with all the nuance of a Bond villain. He’s ruthless, flamboyantly accented and super smart. Smart enough to bring down the global economy but not smart enough, apparently, to see through Chris Pine’s terrible drunk act near the climax of the film.
Knightley is the movie’s third headliner, but you have to wonder why she would accept a role that gives her little to do except complain and go all moon faced over Ryan.
Then there’s Pine, who heroically anchors the “Star Trek” series but comes off here as a little too bland to play an international man of mystery.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is the first Ryan movie after a twelve-year break. It wasn’t worth the wait.
In your mind’s eye when you picture ex-Marine turned CIA analyst Jack Ryan, who do you see?
Is he a dark-haired, suave six-foot movie star with a hot temper and a racy Twitter account? Or maybe a world-weary fellow with a scar on his chin and a resemblance to Indiana Jones? Or how about the Red Sox fan formerly known as Bennifer?
Created by writer Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan is the lead character in nine novels and the star of five films. This weekend we’ll see him uncover a Russian plot to destroy the U.S. economy with a terrorist attack in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
Chris Pine, best known as Captain Kirk in the recently rebooted Star Trek series, is the newest member of the Ryanverse, and hopes to bring something new to the character.
“I can’t be Alec Baldwin,” he told Empire. “I can’t be Harrison Ford. I can only really do my own thing and stay true to the pillars of this character.”
Baldwin originated Ryan on screen in the 1990 high-tech thriller The Hunt for Red October.
The movie could have been the beginning of a James Bond-esque franchise for Baldwin, but he left the series after just one outing despite the film being one of the top grossing movies of the year. In a Huffington Post blog he says he was pushed aside for another actor “with much greater strength at the box office.”
Baldwin doesn’t name names, but Harrison Ford soon signed on, playing Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.
Author Clancy, who passed away in 2013, was not a fan of the Ford years. He thought the two movies dumbed down his original stories and thought Ford was too old to play the role. “Giving your book to Hollywood is like turning your daughter over to a pimp,” he said.
Next up was Ben Affleck, who took over in the 2002 prequel The Sum of All Fears.
“The day I received the offer to play Jack Ryan,” said Affleck, “I was filming a Pearl Harbor scene with Alec Baldwin. He was very sweet and said I should do it.”
The part’s originator has become the go-to guy with actors who sign up to play Ryan. When he was offered the part, Pine was shooting Guardians of the Galaxy with Baldwin. “He urged me to hold onto it,” said Pine, “and to attack it.”
With a cast that includes Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde and Michelle Pfeiffer apparently the “people like us” referred to in the title are all exceptionally good-looking persons. Just as the cast reflects a specific, unreal vision of real life, so does the script.
Chris Pine plays Sam a sleazy New York salesman who is on the cusp of being investigated for fraud. When his estranged father passes away he travels to Los Angeles only to confront his mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) and his father’s legacy—a daughter named Frankie (Elizabeth Banks) from a second, secret family.
This family drama has much going for it, but gets almost fatally bogged down by melodrama and the way the movie stretches out Sam’s inability to tell Frankie why he’s glommed on to her and son Josh (Michael Hall D’Addario).
To make up for the slow moving story director Alex Kurtzman tries to jumpstart the pacing with frenetically edited scenes that would seem more appropriate to an action film. I know Chris Pine is best known as the young Captain Kirk, but not all his movies need to be cut as though a fight is about to break out.
It’s too bad because at the core of the film is an interesting story, which is ably performed by the good looking cast (even if they are frequently saddled with long melodramatic, confessional speeches).
Pine proves he can do more than action pieces and Pfeiffer has a small, but complex part, but it is D’Addario who adds heart to the story. As Frankie’s troubled eleven-year-old son he grounds the movie, giving the viewer a reason to feel empathy not only for him but for Sam and Frankie as well.
“People Like Us” is an effective family drama, clumsily told.
“Rise of the Guardians” takes familiar characters and transports them into a modern 3D fairy tale, complete with superhero nicknames. Santa becomes North, the Boogeymen is Pitch and the Sandman is Andy. OK the last one doesn’t sound all that superhero-ish, but the nap maker is the most mysterious and capable of the bunch of them. He’s definitely not sleeping on the job.
North (voice of Alec Baldwin) is the leader of the Guardians, a group of childhood fantasies come to life, whose job it is to protect the kids of the world—when they aren’t busy providing wonder and awe by exchanging quarters for teeth, ensuring good dreams and organizing Easter egg hunts, that is. When old enemy Pitch, (voice of Jude Law) reemerges, the Guardians put aside their daily duties and reunite.
Assigned a new recruit, Jack Frost (Chris Pine), by Manny (or the Man in the Moon as he is more formally known), some of the Guardians find it hard to accept a new member. “All he does is freeze pipes,” says the Easter Bunny, but despite the icy mayhem Jack seems to inspire everywhere he goes, he has a warm heart. He is search for meaning in his life, “I’ve tried everything but no one can see me,” he says. He’s on a quest for identity, to be recognized, and soon discovers the Guardians–and Pitch–hold may hold the key to his locked down memories.
“Rise of the Guardians” is beautifully animated. From the ethereal unicorns that lull Sandman’s kids to sleep to the darker vision of the Boogeyman’s horses–the personification of fear and bad dreams–it is guaranteed to spin your eyeballs around in their sockets. The details are lush, the character work beautiful even for the minor characters—if there is a sequel expect North’s army of Yetis and clumsy elves to become major characters—and there is a good message about believing in yourself as you believe in others.
But there is also some grim in this fairy tale. Despite the presence of the Easter Bunny and the lovable and delicate Tooth Fairy the movie contains some images that may upset younger viewers. Pitch’s dark legion of wild-eyed horses may have the intended trick—to inspire nightmares in kids–and a detail in Jack’s backstory is intense, so judge your child’s ability to process the scares before shelling out for tickets for the whole family.
“Rise of the Guardians” is about keeping the wonder of kid’s lives intact, but the animators have also done a good job of transferring some of that wonder onto the screen.
After five television series, ten movies, countless books, comics and video games, a stage version and even an Ice Capades style show is there anything left, story wise, to do with Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the crew of the USS Enterprise? Director J.J. Abrams, the brains behind hit TV shows like Felicity, Lost and Fringe, thinks so and has re-launched the big screen franchise, which has lain fallow since 2002’s Nemesis. Simply called Star Trek, he takes audiences where no man (or director) has gone before, back to the very beginning of the story before Kirk bore an uncanny resemblance to T.J. Hooker.
In this prequel to the original series James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) is a young punk; a thrill seeking juvenile delinquent son of a dead hero recruited to join Starfleet Academy by an associate of his father’s. On another planet is Spock (Zachary Quinto), a half human, half Vulcan outcast who becomes the first of his race to be accepted into the Starfleet Academy. Soon their paths will cross as they are assigned to the maiden voyage of the most advanced starship ever created, the U.S.S. Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood). On their first dangerous mission they will become the original intergalactic odd couple as they find a way to stop the vengeful Romulan villain Nero (Eric Bana with Mike Tyson-esque tattoos on his face) from destroying all of mankind.
With Star Trek J.J. Abrams has made the first great popcorn movie of the year. Notice I didn’t say sci-fi movie. Star Trek is a lot of things but despite all the talk of warp speed, black holes and time travel, it can’t be classified as science fiction. This is a character based space serial more concerned with the burgeoning relationship between Spock and Kirk than with photon thrusters. That may bother the purists and the Roddenberries but shouldn’t trouble anyone simply looking for a good time at the movies.
Abrams gets right into the thick of things, front loading the movie with two wild action scenes in the first ten minutes. It’s edge of the seat stuff that neatly gives Captain James T a back story and sets the tone for the rest of the film. It’s big. It’s loud. It’s bombastic. It’s also the best Trek since The Wrath of Khan.
Abrams succeeds because he isn’t precious with the source material. All the prerequisite catchphrases—“Live long and prosper”—are there, coupled with some sly homages to the show’s history—Trekkers will note the fruition of Kirk’s flirtation with the green Orion woman from the TV show—but he’s more interested in creating an overall entertainment experience than displaying reverence for Roddenbery’s creation. The subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) social commentary of the series has gone the way of the spent lithium crystals from season two, episode four, replaced by flat out action that engages the eye but not the brain. In terms of CGI Abrams has set phasers to stunning. It’s state of the art and will make your eyeballs dance.
Star Trek is an origin story that works. It has heart, ferocious CGI and is dead cool. It’s the best movie geek-out since Iron Man. In the words of Scotty (Simon Pegg), “I like this ship. It’s exciting.”
“Unstoppable,” the new true-life drama from Denzel Washington and “Star Trek” star Chris Pine is a heavy metal movie. It’s a story about 10,000,000 pounds of screeching, screaming metal careening out of control through the Pennsylvania countryside. No, it’s not the Mötley Crüe northeastern reunion tour, it’s about a runaway train and two brave men who bring the beast to a stop.
Story wise “Unstoppable” is pretty high concept. Due to human error (or perhaps just plain laziness) an unmanned half-a-mile long string of trains loaded with hazardous materials is let loose, barreling along the main rail track toward Stanton, Pennsylvania. It is, essentially, a missile the size of the Chrysler Building. Along the way it plays chicken with a trainload of kids and Denzel. Can they stop it before it causes a huge environmental catastrophe? Only Denzel knows… and he’s only half-way sure.
It doesn’t take long to identify “Unstoppable” as a Tony Scott movie. There’s his favorite star, Denzel, endlessly swirling cameras and about 75 edits per minute.
With the exception of Denzel, his trademarks have occasionally overwhelmed his movies. His high sense of style has frequently come before good old solid storytelling but with “Unstoppable” there isn’t much story to overpower so his wild flourishes really carry the day. The giant set pieces involving the train and the various attempts to stop it are exciting, edge-of-your-seat sequences. Add in Denzel playing a riff on his now patented old pro on the job / hero role (the one he’s been perfecting in movies like “Inside Man” and “The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3) and some good charismatic work from Chris Pine and you have a fun Saturday afternoon matinee movie.
