Non-Stop Rise of an Empire: A Bon Temps Double Feature

Prior to yesterday, it had been three years since I'd last done a big screen double header. Last time, the selections were Safe House and The Grey, and they made for a bummer of an afternoon. Safe House is one of the many compelling arguments for why you should not ask Ryan Reynolds to float any script weightier than Just Friends, and The Grey (SPOILER) ends with Liam Neeson getting eaten by wolves. It was no way for the man with a particular set of skills to go down. I've taken my movies one at a time since.  

Eventually, though, a day comes when a man must get back on the horse if he is ever to ride again. Yesterday was that day. Armed with a large popcorn and diet Dr. Pepper, a formidable sidekick in Justin Parker, and an eagerness to acquire rewards points at *the people's theater*, I hunkered down for Non-Stop and 300: Rise of an Empire in succession. Here's how it all went down. 

Non-Stop

There's those skills he was talking about!

Non-Stop is the Toyota Camry of action thrillers. Not flashy and certainly not over-burdened with originality, it gets the job done, and gets it done well. This is not a movie that wastes motion or forces its audience to think hard (or at all). It's just here to show you how bad-ass Liam Neeson can be at 35,000 feet. The picture above pretty well captures what you'll be dealing with.

Above all else, the cast is what makes Non-Stop work. Neeson is drunk/broke/Troubled with a capitol T United States air marshal Bill Marks, a character that feels written with him in mind. No one pulls off harried, reluctant hero quite like Neeson on today's action movie landscape. He is in Non-Stop as he is in Taken, an otherwise good guy beaten down by the world, rage boiling just below the surface. There's a believability to his characters, all of them grizzly bears poked a few times too many. Neeson is human, as opposed to actors like Jason Statham, who take on similar roles. Statham isn't human. In his heart of hearts, he's always The Transporter.

Bringing similar quality to the table is Julianne Moore, who plays a sweet, sassy foil/sidekick against Neeson's perpetual tension. She's almost too cheerful, given the circumstances (I don't think I'd be flirting and breaking off one-liners if people were dying all over coach class on a flight I was on), but she's charming just the same, and gives the movie some brightness it desperately needs. Too often, thrillers blast their audience with an overdose of serious. The Grey committed that sin severely. Non-Stop, if only just, acknowledges that its premise is a little silly, and deserves to be treated as such.

The glimmer of cinematic hope you see on the horizon? That's blockbuster season, now less than two months away! Until it arrives, enjoy movies like Non-Stop. They're not much, but they'll help you through these dark hours at the box office, since you've probably (SHOULD HAVE) already seen The Lego Movie.

Directed By: Juame Collet-Serra, who's previous work includes House of Wax and The Orphan. He's getting better, guys!

Starring: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, one of the ladies from Downton Abbey, Scoot McNairy (Scoot!).

You Should See it if: You enjoy LIAM NEESONS like I do.

300: Rise of an Empire

This fuckin' guy. 

If I could type this review in slow-motion, I would. That's the signature effect of the 300 franchise; bloody battles punctuated with kill shots so tempo reduced there's no WAY you could miss how epic that spear to the chest was, bro. In the original, it works, mostly because director Zack Snyder hadn't had a decade to overuse it in movies like Watchmen and Sucker Punch yet. 300: Rise of an Empire, produced by Snyder and directed by someone named Noam Murro (???) is clearly done in Snyder's vision, just a more boring version of it. 

Neither a sequel nor a prequel, Rise of an Empire takes place simultaneous to the original 300, unspooling the story of what the hell the rest of Greece was doing while Leonidas and his Spartans held down the fort against the invading Persian army. Mostly they were having a lot of naval battles with Eva Green. 

Your new sword-and-sandals lead is Themistocles, an Athenian war hero played by Sullivan Stapleton. Who is Sullivan Stapleton? Good question! Not Gerard Butler, that's for damn sure. He's not bad at his job, but he can't chew up lines (or hit the fucking GYM) the way Butler could as Leonidas. Every word resonated with the confidence that the latter could beat wholesale ass on the Persian forces if need be. Stapleton just doesn't have the oomph, let alone the gravity, to anchor this tempest. 

The filler moments, though, are Rise's biggest weakness. Every scene that isn't about violence and/or sex suffers under the weight of turgid dialogue and wooden performances. Really, any time Eva Green (who is excellent and deserves bigger/better movies) isn't on screen, you can pretty much tune out. 

It bears repeating that there are essentially NO SPARTANS in this thing. 300 is the first movie in the series because that's the cool part of the story. Rise of an Empire is background noise. Save your money. 

Directed By: Noam Murro

Starring: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Cersei Lannister

You Should See it if: I genuinely cannot think of a compelling reason. 

The Lego Movie: Everything IS Awesome!

There are perfect movies. Not by any technical measurable of course; you can punch holes in anything if you look hard enough. But there are films that flawlessly execute their purpose. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a perfect summer blockbuster. Adventureland is a perfect coming-of-age love story. Se7en, while not exactly a horror movie, seeks to horrify, and does so with unmatched effectiveness. The Lego Movie is a visually dazzling, razor scripted, sweetly endearing movie ideal for kids, parents, couples, single twenty and thirty-something dudes and ladies, old folks with bitterness in their hearts, and people on drugs. The Lego Movie is perfect.

I would like all these toys immediately.

It's difficult to single out any single element of The Lego Movie that deserves praise above the rest. Calling it the best looking movie of the last year might not be fair since Gravity happened back in October, but it certainly gives Sandra Bullock in space a run for her money. The Lego Movie just doesn't look like anything you've seen before, and there's a lot to be said for that in an era when digital effects can make anything can happen on screen. The film is 100 minutes long, and everything that occurs within those 100 minutes manages to straddle the line between adorable and badass. If The Lego Movie were an animal, it would be a lab puppy sporting an eye-patch and a machine gun. 

The casting is just as strong. Chris Pratt has honed his dim-bulb nice guy shtick through six seasons of Andy Dwyering on Parks and Recreation, and he lends as much beautifully to Emmet Brickowski, The Lego Movie's nobody-turned-hero. The list of support players--Will Arnett as a douchey Batman, Elizabeth Banks as lady lead Wildstyle, Will Ferrell as villain President Business--is long and accomplished (that's what she said!...sorry). Chemistry among animated characters is not often a tangible thing. It is here.

AND THE SCRIPT. God, I love the script so much. It's a summer blockbuster hero's journey that's GOT JOKES. So many jokes. The Lego Movie is really, really funny. So funny that most reviewers are calling it a spoof on the blockbuster genre, but I don't read it that way. You could strip out the humor and the story would still be good enough to stand on it's own. This is not a parody of a blockbuster, it's a blockbuster disguised as a parody.

I'm out of good things to say. Watch it. Or at least watch this. This song is haunting my fucking dreams, and I do not care. Everything is awesome, guys.

Directed By: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Starring: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman, Alison Brie (who I am not nearly as married to as I'd like to be), Jonah Hill, Charlie Day, Nick Offerman, Channing Tatum, LIAM NEESONS, Shaq, Cobie Smulders

You Should See it if: I think I've been clear on this point.

Robocop

Among the many benefits of the all freedom lifestyle in which I'm currently indulging is lots of movie viewing time. Last weekend I saw (and failed to review, because hobo) I, Frankenstein, which is not not entertaining, but is really, really stupid. In short, it's demons vs. gargoyles, and has exactly as much gravity as you'd expect from such a film. This weekend was much better! Let's start with a police action.

Robocop

I should preface this with an embarrassing admission: I have not seen the original Robocop. The new one was my introduction to the franchise, and it left me wanting. Don't get me wrong, you could do a lot worse than Robocop if you're looking for a light weight action movie, but you could also do a better. If a reboot of 80s/90s super-cop cinema is what you seek, I highly recommend Netflixing Dredd before spending money here. Robocop is not the law. Judge Dredd is the law.

Most of you are probably familiar with Robocop's premise (or can infer as much from it's dazzlingly self-explanatory title), but briefly- in the not too distant a future, a good Detroit cop named Alex Murphy is near mortally injured in an assassination attempt by some gangsters who want him to stop interfering with their gangster work. Omnicorp, a robotics company seeking to sway public opinion toward allowing robotic law enforcement entities in the United States (they're already being used in American military efforts abroad), saves his life by turning him into a cyborg in the hopes of giving said public a hero they can root for. It's a lot like Iron Man without Tony Stark inside the robo-suit.

Robocop's biggest weakness is that it just doesn't have enough fun with what should be a really easy premise to have fun with. Humor is sparse, and the shoot-em-up action sequences pack a lot more bullets (a LOT more bullets) than they do actual thrills. The characters are also insufficiently sassy. Director Jose Padilha wants to *say something* about corporate America/American imperialism abroad, and seems to think that the best way to do so is to have supporting characters just as robotic as the movie's titular lead. Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton do solid jobs with their respective roles, but there's just not enough meat in the script for them to really sink their teeth into. Robocop is a movie begging for a Shane Black re-write.  

There's really no area in which the film excels, but the plot is serviceable, and Abbie Cornish is adorable, so I guess that's something. Robocop isn't bad, it just isn't particularly good. You should definitely see The Lego Movie (to be reviewed tomorrow!) instead.

Directed By: Jose Padilha

Starring: Joel Kinnaman, (Swedish as hell) Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish

You Should See it if: You've already seen The Lego Movie and wanna watch some stuff blow up.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

January is terrible. Bad weather, rapidly reducing football, an awful slate at the theater--I have to comfort myself with ample beer and sausage because most of my other favorite things are diminished this month. It's so bad at the movies right now that I was legitimately excited for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. I'm pleased to say it didn't disappoint.

Could have been much worse!

Jack Ryan is a middling presence on the American Action-Hero landscape. He's no John McClane, and certainly no Indiana Jones. Jason Bourne is probably his nearest equal. They're both CIA, both in it to win for 'MERICA, and both have been played by multiple actors; Shadow Recruit's Chris Pine is the 4th iteration of Ryan, preceded by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck. He carries the mantle much as he did when entrusted with playing James T. Kirk: effectively, but not in a way that makes you forget that other men, namely Ford, have done it better.

Shadow Recruit is an origin story, a tale of how Jack Ryan becomes Jack Ryan. You learn why he joins the service (SPOILER: It's 9/11), and you get to go with him on his first mission as a CIA operative (he was originally shadow recruited to be an undercover analyst sniffing out terrorism funding on Wall Street). Unsurprisingly, said first operative mission goes deeply awry and Jack must save the day (despite limited field training!). 

While you're not going to see anything you haven't seen before in Shadow Recruit, it's an enjoyable ride to the finish. The tension builds nicely, and as action disaster stories go, the plot is borderline believable. It's been said before, and it's worth saying again: Sneaky fuckin' Russians, man. What's not super clear is why they're so upset with us in this movie, but hell, it's Russia. Using them as default baddie has been acceptable since the '50s.

Two major points of irritation worth noting: Kevin Costner, who plays Ryan's handler, is a bad actor. I guess a mediocre performance from the man who couldn't be bothered to do a British accent for fucking Robin Hood shouldn't be surprising, but his presence is grating just the same. 

The other problem is Ryan's fiance, Cathy (Keira Knightly). She has trust issues with Jack, which, yeah, he's in the CIA, so that he'd have been a bit secretive through the years fits. The problem is those trust issues come out in fits of irrationality not befitting a sane adult, and thus don't make a whole lot of sense, given that Cathy is not only supposed to be exactly such an adult, but a highly successful one as well. Is the troubled couple arc really a necessary wrinkle when the fate of the world is at stake?

There's no reason not to make Jack Ryan movies forever. Spy/action thrillers are reliable money makers, and the character clearly works serviceably no matter who you've got in the part. Shadow Recruit isn't gonna blow you out of your seat, but it won't bore you either. Absolutely worth a look at matinee prices.

Directed By: Kenneth Branagh, who is apparently bored with being a renowned Shakespearean actor and now enjoys making kinda OK action movies.

Starring: Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Keira Knightly, Kenneth Branagh (doing a much better Russian accent than Sean Connery did in The Hunt for Red October, by which I mean he's doing one at all).

You Should See it if: You don't feel like you can wait for it start airing on FX or TNT.

Devil's Due: Satan Gets Sloppy

When it comes to high grade horror films, no villain has repeatedly gotten the job done better than *the Devil*. Satan plays foil in three of the genre's finest offerings: The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, and The Omen. It's rare a villain is featured in more than one classic; Michael Myers, Jaws, and the Overlook Hotel all had one iconic appearance before spinning into the dead zone of sequels and remakes. Lucifer simply has the most scare game.

Classics notwithstanding, the father of lies has also been responsible for some real shit burgers, like Damien: The Omen II, and The Devil Inside. Devil's Due deserves prime placement in the latter category.

Shit Burger

Devil's Due is the story of one poor woman's destiny to birth the Antichrist. Actually, per the opening credits it's not the Antichrist, it's just an Antichrist. Impressive twist, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett! Why should I give two shits about your story if there's gonna be another UnJesus born 5 blocks over? 

The plot is as follows: newly wed couple honeymoons in Central America, wife parties too hard, gets abducted by Satanists and light-raped by the Devil (seriously, he knocks her up by blasting her with a beam of hell light, as far as I can tell), demonic hijinks ensue. 

Devil's Due is rich in cliches. During her pregnancy, Allison Miller's Samantha exhibits super human strength and telekinesis, develops a taste for raw meat, and starts killing animals. In case that doesn't satisfy your taste for tired stuff you've seen before, the entire film is shot documentary style, a la The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. It's boring, but at least it doesn't look good!

How stupid Zach (Zach McCall), Samantha's husband, is also bears addressing. His freak out level at all the weird going down is grossly insufficient. I realize this is a sin frequently perpetrated by all sorts of movie characters, but seriously, his wife could be eating a dog alive in front of him and all he'd think was "she wasn't quite herself." That's his response to everything; "Samantha just doesn't seem herself." SHE GUTTED A DEER AND MURDERED A TEENAGER WITH HER MIND, MOTHERFUCKER. I know you were asleep when that was going on, but come on, there were hints!

I'm a defender of horror movies. I love them, and will love them forever, no matter how many times this happens. But man, Devil's Due is a brazen middle finger to fans of the genre. It shouldn't exist, and it certainly doesn't deserve your money. Do better things with your time.

Directed By: Matt Bettellini-Olpin & Tyler Gillett

Starring: Allison Miller, Zach Gilford (What's up QB 1!)

You Should See it if: Someone's kidnapped a family member and is demanding your viewing this as ransom.

Lone Survivor: Being a Navy Seal is a Tough Gig

Everything Mark Wahlberg does is pretty good. He's rarely great, although there are moments (The Departed, Three Kings) he gets close. It's similarly rare that he does terrible things (The Happening! But come on, that's M. Night's fault, not Marky Mark's). It therefore stands to reason that he'd produce and star in a very okay war movie, which is exactly what Lone Survivor is.

Maybe it's the trees again!

Lone Survivor is based on a book of the same name, a true story about a team of U.S. Navy SEALs tasked with the capture or killing of a high value Al-Qaeda target during the U.S.-Afghan war in 2005. Following a mission compromise (literally in the form of shepherds and goats, which is just attrocious luck), the team of four SEALs must fight their way to safety through a small army of Al-Qaeda soldiers. You can guess how many make it through.

I can't speak to the horrors of war. I have no military background. It's therefore difficult for me to comment on how right this movie gets the feel and intensity of combat. What it does do is its damnedest to show you the brand of punishment a Navy SEAL can handle, and it is a lot. The violence, and more the violence the film's heroes are capable of enduring, provide the film's most memorable moments. 

And yet, somewhere in the midst of the grit and the reality its trying to convey, Lone Survivor goes over the top. Whether or not the gun shot wounds and cliff jumps and all manner of balls out man-ness are factually based, their portrayal in the movie--fraught with slow motion and heroic fanfares--feel vaguely cartoonish. Director Peter Berg ultimately fails to make a movie that feels real by trying too hard to do exactly that.

This isn't to say Lone Survivor is bad cinema. It's entertaining, and well acted, and tense through-out. But ham-handedness is a problem it definitely suffers from, and it's a ham-handedness that permeates both the action and the film's emotion. It's worth a watch, but Saving Private Ryan it ain't.

Directed By: Peter Berg (Mr. Friday Night Lights)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, BIG TIM RIGGINS, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana

You Should see it if: You're in the mood for a war movie and B- sounds pretty good to you.

Holiday Movie Run Down!

I learned over Christmas that it is *hard* to eat cookies, drink wine, AND review movies all at the same time. Since I was doing the first two pretty much constantly, punching up pieces on everything I saw didn't come close to happening. Now that the holidays are over and I'm too horrified by how FATTY FAT FAT MOOOOOOO FAT I am to keep eating all those cookies, here's some bight-sized reviews of everything I did see!

American Hustle

American Hustle takes a meandering path to excellence. David O. Russell's latest is a rambling, tangential 70s crime story, fueled by superb acting, hot ladies (who do a great deal of said superb acting), and a gut punch of a sound track. Hustle is the best of the holiday Oscar grabbers, beautiful in and because of its imperfection. This is not meticulously made cinema; it's scattered, even frivolous in a few instances. But it's steadily fun and so, so pretty to look at. Treat yourself and see this.

The Wolf of Wall Street

I don't want to like The Wolf of Wall Street. I really don't, because I feel like Scorsese really lost his barings with this one. In Scorsese's last large-scale crime story, The Departed, the morality tale was overdone. Who was right/wrong/a rat was as in your face as a kick to the same region would be. In Wolf, where your villain should be just as clear, Scorsese seems to drift. Perhaps Jordan Belfort, the Wall Street swindler on whom the story centers, isn't so bad? Perhaps the Quaaludes and theft and exploitation really are just lots of good timin'?

If you're going to tell a story like Wolf wants to tell, which is ultimately to show the consequences of excess, those consequences need to be emphasized just as hard as the good times. I didn't leave this movie feeling like Belfort lost, or perhaps more importantly, feeling like he necessarily should lose. I left it feeling like I should go make billions on Wall Street and buy a yacht. Scorsese makes the good timing too fun, the evil too minimized. Some of this can be blamed on how charismatic Leonardo DiCaprio is, but ultimately the totality of the product falls on the director.

...and yet. And yet. God damn it is fun to watch. Go ahead and see it if you've got 3 hours to spare. Dubious morals notwithstanding, Wolf is a good movie, and absolutely worth your time.

47 Ronin

There's a reason Keanu is very not shirtless here.

And to round things out, a big bucket of shit! 47 Ronin looked so promising in the trailers, which is to say it looked like a clown-ass action movie. And it has *moments* of being that. Mostly, though, it's a dull stroll through feudal Japan with chubby Keanu Reeves. The days of Johnny Utah are long gone. Hell, the days of Neo are pretty damn gone too. Reeves the Ronin is scruffy and soft in the middle and dull at the edges, much like this script.

A brief summary: following her father's death, a princess is captured and needs rescuing. Said rescue is executed by Keanu and 46 other Ronin. There is a witch. You will take a nap. The end. Waste no dollars on this.

Holiday Re-Watch: Silver Linings Playbook

I like American Hustle. I love Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell's 2012 master work. Watch it and fall more deeply in love with mentally ill Jennifer Lawrence than ever before. Merry After Christmas!