The Drop

Posted on September 11, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Author Dennis Lehane writes about a world of desperation, fear, and damaged people inflicting further damage. His novels have been filmed as “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone.” And now his short story, “Animal Rescue,” has been turned into “The Drop,” about a “drop bar,” a dingy place with dingy regulars, a bitter former owner still resentful of the thugs who took it over, a soft-hearted bartender and the dog he rescues from a garbage can, and lots of cash, dropped at the bar by racketeers to be picked up by bigger, tougher, racketeers. You know what that means: colorful, highly euphemistic dialog said by top-notch actors doing their best to play hard, hard men. Very little is said in this world but a lot is understood.

Fortunately, here that means we get James Gandolfini in a beautifully nuanced performance that makes us miss him even more sharply. He plays “Cousin Marv,” whose name is still on the bar, but no longer on the deed. Now he’s just the manager, and he quietly but meaningfully tells Bob (Tom Hardy), the bartender, to take down the Christmas decorations (“It’s December 27th!”) and stop running a tab for the flowsy barfly at the end of the counter. Oh, and no more rounds for the boys at the bar, even though they are observing the 10th anniversary of a friend’s death. We will learn later that there is more significance to the last two items than losing the revenue on a few drinks.

On his way home, Bob hears a noise in a neighbor’s garbage can. It is a badly injured puppy. The wary neighbor is Nadia (Noomi Rapace), who insists on taking a picture of Bob’s driver’s license on her cell phone and sending it to four friends before she will even talk to him about the puppy. She helps him clean it up and reluctantly agrees to care for it for a couple of days so he can decide what to do. He adopts the puppy and names it Rocco. And she offers to care for the puppy while he is at work to make some extra money.

For a moment, things are looking up for the lonely Bob. But not for Cousin Marv’s or for Cousin Marv. Marv and Bob are held up at gunpoint by two guys in masks who may not be entirely unknown to them. The owners are tough Chechen gangsters who expect them to get the money back and who give them a glimpse of some guys they are in the middle of torturing just to make sure the message is received. And Cousin Marv’s is set to be the drop bar for the biggest betting night of the year, the Super Bowl. A cop (John Ortiz of “Silver Linings Playbook”) is nosing around. And there is pressure on Bob as well. A very unstable guy in the neighborhood, reputed to have killed a guy, says he is Rocco’s owner and he may have some feelings of ownership toward Nadia as well. Also, there is a body part formerly belonging to someone who was formerly alive, and it will need to be disposed of.

The storyline is all right, but what matters here is the mood, and that is excellent, with Gandolfini, as always, a master class in acting. There are so many layers to his performance, whether he is answering his sister’s question about dinner or refusing to look inside a bag that clearly cannot contain any good news. His expression in his very last scene of the film is particularly compelling.

Hardy’s quiet power is beautifully restrained. Ann Dowd as Marv’s wistful sister and Matthias Schoenaerts as Eric, Rocco’s volatile former owner are also very good. In some ways, Eric is the most revealing character in the story. Asked what he wants, he isn’t sure, except that he doesn’t want Bob to think he has anything over on him. People want money, of course, and power, and to be left alone. But what drives them really nuts is the fear that someone has more than they do and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Parents should know that this plot concerns various crimes and attempted crimes including extortion, robbery, torture, and murder, with many characters injured and killed, as well as some graphic and disturbing images, drinking, smoking, and constant strong language.

Family discussion: The original title of the story this film was based on is “Animal Rescue.” Would that have been more appropriate for the film? Why did Bob stay at the bar?

If you like this, try: “Killing Them Softly” and “Get Shorty,” both featuring James Gandolfini

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The November Man

Posted on August 27, 2014 at 10:57 am

Pierce Brosnan knows what it is like to play a spy in a big-budget, glamorous, blockbuster. He was the most urbane of Bonds in four movies. He knows what it is to play a seedier spy in a prestige, mildly meta movie, the 2001 film “The Tailor of Panama” (with Daniel Radcliffe in a pre-Potter role). So perhaps he thought it was a good idea to produce and star in “The November Man,” a spy story set mostly in Eastern Europe, based on There Are No Spies by Bill Granger. It was not. “The November Man” barely reaches the standard of a generic throw-away thriller, with a sub-par storyline and painfully tiresome dialog.

It begins in 2008 Montenegro, as a venerable CIA operative named Peter Devereaux (Brosnan) sees his young padawan smooching with a pretty girl at an outdoor cafe and harshly explains that personal relationships are out of the question in their line of work. He indicates a guy with a telephoto lens at a nearby table. “Us or them?” the spy-in-training asks. “How the F should I know? Does it really matter?” the world-weary sensei responds. This brief exchange tells you pretty much everything you need to know, or, rather, will find out whether you want to know it or not. Do you think that Devereaux will have some personal entanglement of his own? Do you think the question of who is “us” and who is “them” will provide the twist so unsurprising that even the idiot with the roller bag who wanders out of the hotel elevator without noticing that everyone around him has guns could figure it out? Are the answers to these two rhetorical questions obvious? Well, so is the movie.

Obvious, that is, when it isn’t just being stupid. Throughout the film, shoot-outs, car chases, and explosions occur almost constantly and yet none of the extras ever seem to notice and no one ever calls the police.

The sidekick trainee is David Mason, played by Australian actor Luke Bracey with a blankness that may explain why he was cast as Johnny Utah in the unnecessary upcoming remake of “Point Break.” Bill Smitrovich is, as always, just fine as Dvereaux’s spy boss. Brosnan, even with all of his movie star charisma, cannot make this tired storyline or pedestrian action scenes hold our interest. It is all as pointless as the explanation for the title — a character explains that was Devereaux’s office nickname because after him, there’s nothing left. Huh? After November is, well, December, and Christmas, and then a whole new year. Pondering the meaning of the nickname, though, was much more entertaining than the film.

Parents should know that this film has extensive spy-style peril and violence including some graphic and disturbing scenes, guns, explosions, chases, torture, with many characters injured and killed, also rape, child prostitution, terrorism, drinking, smoking, drugs, sexual references and situation, and very strong, offensive, and crude language.

Family discussion: How can we balance the need for national security with the need for accountability? How did Mason decide who to trust? What does the reveal about the villain tells us about contemporary geopolitics?

If you like this, try: Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond films and “The Matador”

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Action/Adventure Spies Thriller

Coherence

Posted on June 19, 2014 at 5:47 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Pervasive psychological horror and some violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 20, 2014

Seriously, don’t read this review until after you’ve seen the movie. The less you know, the more you will enjoy this nifty thriller, which craftily makes the most of its micro-budget to maximize a deliciously mind-bending story. As in all great thrillers, the scary stuff is not what’s on the outside, but what the stuff on the outside does to the stuff in the inside, meaning not just the inside of the characters but the inside of the audience.

James Ward Byrkit, who wrote “Rango” and created the visual design for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies (all with Gore Verbinski), wanted to take some time away from seven-figure-budget blockbusters and create something small and intimate. He literally shot it in his living room, with a cast of vaguely familiar looking but under the radar actors. As the movie begins, eight friends are getting together for a dinner party. We get some sense of the relationships and some tensions as they gather. They engage in routine dinner party chat, mentioning in passing some news about a comet due to pass overhead along with the usual updates and gossip. And then the phones stop working. And then the lights stop working. And then someone says he’d better go outside to find out what is happening. And we’ve all seen enough movies to know that this is probably not a great idea.

What happens next is not a plot twist but a plot Rubik’s Cube, an ingeniously plotted infinite regression of meta-realities. To say any more would be to spoil the movie’s best surprises.

Parents should know that this is a psychological thriller with a pervasive sense of dread and some violence. Characters drink and use drugs and there is strong language.

Family discussion: What decision do you wish you could go back and do over?

If you like this, try: “Identity”

Godzilla

Posted on May 15, 2014 at 6:01 pm

All the basic ingredients are there for a slam-bang summer monster movie. We have people in helmets and hazmat suits running to try to get away from something scary. We have a scientist pleading with a military officer to trust him and the guy in camo responding that he can’t take that chance. We have a guy everyone thinks is crazy who turns out to be right. We have mumbo-jumbo about radiation and bio-acoustics. We have a tentacle(?) tease 40 minutes in. We have a corporate/government cover-up. People say things like, “There’s been a breach,” and “I can prove to you and the world that this was not a natural disaster.” Oh, and “I’m going to find the truth and end this, whatever it takes.” And “It’s going to send us back to the stone age.”

Buildings will be destroyed and a bridge will collapse. People will be told to stay home and then traffic will be at a standstill as they all ignore directions. We have a lot of globe-hopping so that international forces can be involved and iconic skylines can be trashed. And, most important, we have a very, very big monster to do the trashing. Enormous ships will be tossed around like a rubber duckie in a bathtub.

What we don’t have is a very good story. And for a movie with a lot of destruction, not enough of a sense of real investment in the outcome. The good news about CGI is that you can make anything happen on screen. The bad thing is that everyone knows you can make anything happen, so at a fundamental level, it does not feel real.

“Godzilla” begins promisingly, with a terrific opening credit sequence over “archival” footage and glimpses of redacted government reports. And ash, lots of ash, detritus from atomic fallout, pretty cool in 3D. Then there’s a little backstory. In 1999 we see the discovery of a skeleton in a Philippine mine. The rib cage is the size of an apartment building. And there’s goop! If there’s one thing we’ve learned from monster movies over years, it has to be DON’T TOUCH THE GOOP.

Meanwhile, still in 1999, we get our introduction to the adorable family — there always has to be an adorable family — living near a nuclear energy plant in Japan who will provide the emotional core of the film. There’s loving American father (Bryan Cranston) Joe Brody, distracted by some inexplicable but rhythmic tremors. There’s loving French wife (Juliette Binoche), who also works at the plant. And there’s a son, cute tyke Ford. “Earthquakes are random, jagged,” Joe explains. What he is hearing is “consistent and increasing.” We know he will have a hard time persuading his bosses, but we know he is right. And soon tragedy strikes and the cooling towers collapse. The entire community is contaminated and shut down.

Fifteen years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick-Ass”) is coming back from a military deployment where his job is “stopping bombs.” After he has an adorable reunion with his own adorable wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son, he gets a call. Joe has been arrested in Japan, where he is still obsessed with finding the truth about what happened. He has a crazy room with walls covered in clippings connected by string to show the various conspiracies. Ford thinks his dad is nuts. He’s about to find out that he is right.

I don’t want to give away any monster spoilers here, so I’ll just say that there are some surprises for anyone not thoroughly immersed in “Godzilla” lore. I liked seeing the creature pop nuclear warheads into his mouth like Popeye knocks back spinach. And it steps things up nicely when the monster’s power charge shorts out the grids. The special effects are excellent, though only a high-altitude/low opening parachute jump makes full use of the 3D. But the story is weak and the characters are cardboard. The original 1954 “Godzilla” resonated because it personified (monstronified?) our then-new fears about the atomic age. With so many contemporary scares about environmental damage, they should have been able to find something equally potent.

Parents should know that this is a sci-fi movie in the tradition of all monster movies, with extensive mayhem,scary surprises, some disturbing images, and many characters injured and killed. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: What made the scientist and the military come to different conclusions — information or training? What was the significance of the pocket watch?

If you like this, try: the original Japanese “Godzilla” movies

Transcendence

Posted on April 17, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Think of it as “Her 2: The Revenge of Him.” Or Samantha infected by Heartbleed.

Just as in last holiday season’s Her, “Transcendence” is the story of an artificial intelligence contained in a computer program that becomes or is seen as human consciousness. Instead of the warm, affectionate voice and bubbly laughter of Scarlett Johansson, we get the portentous monotone of Johnny Depp, as a scientist murdered by anti-technology activists, whose mind and memories and personality are uploaded to a mainframe before he dies. Apparently he has time to read the Oxford English Dictionary aloud, too, so his voice can be preserved.

Cinematographer Willy Pfister, best known for working with Christopher Nolan, turns to directing for a story set in the world of the highest of high tech but grounded in hubristic themes that go back to Icarus and up through “Frankenstein,” and “The Unknown Known.” Even with Nolan as producer, however, he is weak on narrative, pacing, tone, and working with his talented cast. Morgan Freeman, Clifton Collins, Jr., Kate Mara, Paul Bettany, and Rebecca Hall have never appeared so toned-down and disconnected, just plain under-used. Depp appears mechanical even when he is still human. And the film has the unmistakable flavor of a recut following disappointing early audience responses.

A promising premise gets bogged down right from the beginning when Max Waters (Bettany) introduces us to a post-apocalyptic world where traffic lights no longer work and discarded keyboards are used to prop open the doors of bodegas that are out of more items than they have to sell. The grid is down. It has been down for a long time. And no one knows when it will be back.

We go back five years earlier to meet the brainy, gorgeous, and so-in-love couple Will and Evelyn Caster (Depp and Hall). Here’s how adorbs they are; in her beloved garden (hmmm, Evelyn — is she Eve?) he is installing a copper canopy, to cut them off from cell phone signals and other technological intrusions). They are on their way to present their work to donors, where he explains that she is the one who wants to change the world. He just likes to work on cool stuff.

When he is fatally injured in an anti-technology attack led by Bree (Kate Mara) — we know she is up to no good because of the heavy eye liner — Evelyn decides she can keep him alive in some sense by uploading his consciousness to the mainframe. Max helps her, but when it works, he immediately sees that it is a problem, and Evelyn, furious, tells him to leave. Evelyn is so happy to have Will back in any form that she is happy to follow his directions. Soon, his intellectual capacity is increasing exponentially and she is following his directions to take over a remote, all-but-deserted town, install a football field-sized solar panel energy generator and a five-stories-below-ground lair a Bond villain would envy. She walks through endless corridors like Beauty in the castle of the Beast.

“It’s like my mind has been set free,” the computer-Will tells Evelyn. The combination of the human urge for learning and growth and the unlimited capacity of the computers leads to problems that are only evident when Will is too big to stop. Somehow, even his infinitely magnified intelligence and endless capacity to snoop do not make him capable of understanding women. “Your oxytocin and serotonin levels are off,” he tells her tenderly, if a bit robotically), “I’m trying to empathize.” This becomes extra-creepy (as in “Her”) when he tries to come up with a way for them to be together physically,

Will figures out a sort of 3D printer of any kind of cell, including human tissue. He is able to cure any illness, heal any wound. Without asking or even telling the patients, he tweaks them all as well, inserting himself into their brains. Those anti-technology activist/terrorists are looking pretty smart now, but perhaps not as smart as the government, who allies with them only so they will have someone to blame.

We know where this is going because we saw the beginning of the movie, just two hours earlier. Just to remind us, we get to see the exact same images all over again, but instead it reminds us we have not seen very much in between.

Parents should know that this film includes bloody violence with guns and heavy artillery and some disturbing and graphic images, some strong language, and some sexual material.

Family discussion: Was the computer consciousness Will? Did it stop being Will? What is the significance of Will’s name?

If you like this, try: “Her” and “12 Monkeys” (rated R)

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Science-Fiction Thriller