Run All Night

Posted on March 12, 2015 at 5:24 pm

Two guys with the understanding of what they have lost and what they have paid to be where they are that only comes with sit opposite each other, drinks on the table between them. They must, at last, reckon with the truth that can no longer be avoided. That would be Ed Harris and Liam Neeson, who must be asking themselves how two such accomplished actors in so many prestige projects got stuck in this dumb bang bang crash bang of a movie that only takes time away from its various dumb shootout scenes for its various dumb talking scenes. We already knew from the use of a mournful soloist singing “Danny Boy” in the trailer — for a movie about Irish guys and crime? How refreshing! — that this was going to be a tired old retread. But it’s a very, very tired old retread.

Harris and Neeson play Sean and Jimmy, two old Irish guys from New York. They are lifetime friends who literally know where the bodies are buried. They have both sinned in order to survive, betraying those closest to them. Both sinned to prevent the greater sin of not being able to care for their families. Now Sean is prosperous and powerful, still paying off most of the local police force to stay out of his way. Jimmy is a burn-out, still under Sean’s protection because of old times. Sean promises Jimmy that at the end they will “cross the line together.”

Both men have grown sons. Sean’s son Danny is a cocky cokehead who is trying to persuade his father to to business with some Albanian drug dealers. Sean says he is now completely legitimate and turns them down. Danny, who clearly has not ever watched “The Godfather,” disagrees with his father in front of the Albanians. He has also already not just taken money from them to make this deal, he has spent it.

Jimmy’s son Michael (Joel Kinnaman) is a law-abiding citizen, who wants nothing to do with his father. He has a beautiful pregnant wife and two adorable daughters, just to ramp up the emotional heft in as obvious a manner as possible. He ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, seeing the wrong things. Danny tries to kill Michael, so Jimmy kills Danny to save Michael’s life.

Sean tells Jimmy that he is going to “come after Michael with everything I got.” Once Michael is dead, he will kill Jimmy, too. So, the rest of the movie is basically just run with a gun stuff.

The shootouts are staged pretty well, but yikes, they cannot stand up under the constant intrusion of a string of you-gotta-be-kidding-me moments. I’m not talking about details like where the endless ammo comes from, or how Michael got to be adept at using a gun. I’m talking about the detour to visit someone in the hospital, or the isn’t-that-convenient discovery of an old photo of trip to the kind of remote location you might send someone to get away from danger with the address helpfully written on the back. And then there’s the way Jimmy snaps back into super-assassin mode despite being severely impaired and near delirium tremens only an hour before. And there’s a weird John Henry vibe when Jimmy has go up against a high-tech hitman with all kinds of nifty laser aiming devices, plus flack gear and bluetooth police channel receiver, and all Jimmy has is a shotgun that might have been left behind by Daniel Boone.

Harris and Neeson look exhausted. It is not because their characters are worn down by all the bad choices they have made or by how much their sons hate them, or because the actors had to work so hard to make any part of this dumb mess watchable. The most the accomplish is making their previous AARP action films like “Taken,” “Man on a Ledge,” and even “Non-Stop” look better by comparison.

Parents should know that this film has very strong and graphic violence, with many characters injured and killed, disturbing and bloody images, fire, drinking, smoking, drug use, drug dealing, car chases and crashes, and very strong language with crude sexual references.

Family discussion: Sean and Jimmy both have regrets about their choices. How do they respond differently? What could Sean have done to prevent what happened to his son?

If you like this, try: “John Wick” and “Taken”

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Action/Adventure Crime

Unfinished Business

Posted on March 5, 2015 at 5:59 pm

“Unfinished Business” is a story about three renegade renegades from bureaucracy going up against The Man and the importance of the individual in an era of soul-grinding corporatism. But the movie itself is clearly the product of institutional over-management, as though it was put together by a committee and then circulated for sign-off through a dozen different divisions. The result is a weird and sadly sour mash-up of wild, raunchy comedy, underdog triumph, and treacly family story about how much daddies love their children. Plus random switches of location, tired jokes about glory holes in gay bars, and stunningly off-kilter “humor” about developmental challenges. And much assumed hilarity about someone’s funny name, which is not even that funny. Vince Vaughn looks tired throughout and not just because his character is exhausted. The original title, “Business Trip,” would have better described the storyline. The current title better describes the film.

Vaughn plays Daniel, who in a “Jerry Maguire” moment begins the film by quitting his job as a salesman for some faceless conglomerate that sells something. His boss, Chuck (Sienna Miller, very funny and underused) has told him he has to take a pay cut. So he walks out, and two men come along. One is old and bitter (Tom Wilkinson as Timothy). One is young and naive (Dave Franco as Mike). But they have grit and dreams and determination. A year later, they have just one last chance to keep their enterprise going. The deal has been approved. They just need to fly to Portland, Maine for the handshake. Yes, a handshake is all it takes to shake that money tree. We won’t waste time on the sloppiness in the portrayal of “business” in this film, except to note that it is consistent with the lack of energy throughout.

At first it seems there will be some connection between the bullying issues faced by Daniel’s children and his relationship with Chuck. Instead, we get to hear Timothy whine about his bad marriage and how much he wants to have sex, wheelbarrow style. Or another joke about Mike Pancake’s last name or his inability to master basic vocabulary (while somehow doing an excellent job putting complicated pricing figures together).

But before they can get to the handshake, they have to get through Chuck, who is there chatting up the client with jokes that are just smutty enough to make her look like a “cool girl,” and undercutting their prices to drive them out of business. This means they end up going to Germany for yet another meeting, so that lots of things can go wrong in ways that are supposed to be funny along the way. The car flips over. A crucial agreement cannot happen unless they track down a female colleague in a co-ed spa, who of course insists that Daniel remove his clothes to show his, uh, commitment or something. The guys end up at a gay bar, a youth hostel, an anti-G8 demonstration, and a very revealing art installation, as Daniel tries to re-do his numbers to undercut Chuck and keep up with some bullying problems his children are dealing with at home. At one point, he ends up walking (and then running) around in teal eyeshadow, and we perk up for a moment, thinking something that isn’t banal and formulaic is going to happen, but no such luck. The storyline, like the comedy, is unfinished, too.

Parents should know that this movie includes constant very strong language, extended male and female nudity, very explicit sexual references and situations, drinking, drug use, bullying, and comic peril and violence.

Family discussion: Why did Daniel have trouble with the homework assignment? Should he have told his wife the truth? How did he help his children?

If you like this, try: “The Hangover” and “The Big Kahuna”

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The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Posted on March 5, 2015 at 5:55 pm

A documentary called “Young @ Heart” had a choir of singers in their 80’s performing contemporary rock songs. The very fact of their age and experience gave an unexpectedly profound meaning to the words. And in “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” a plot that ranges from silly to very silly still resonates, because the people in the silly situations are running out of time. And because they are played by actors of such superb skill that they give power even to fortune-cookie aphorisms like “There is no present like the time.” The characters in this film have more romantic complications and far more opportunities than the average teen sex comedy — and a lot more sex, too. But their situation gives it all grace and poignance.

You could give Maggie Smith “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and she would make it sound like repartee written by Oscar Wilde. Here, she has a couple of very good insults and delivers them with wit as dry as a martini made of gin over which the word “vermouth” has just been whispered. Just listen to her crisply explain that tea is an HERB requiring boiling water to release its flavor. No tea bags limply dipped in lukewarm temperatures for her. “How was America?” she is asked on her return. “It made death more tempting. I went with low expectations and came back disappointed.”

In the original The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a group of expatriate Brits came to India, mostly because they could no longer afford to live in the UK. The energetic and eternally optimistic young owner of a dilapidated hotel decided to “outsource old age.” Just as he saw the beauty of the ancient, crumbling building, he saw the grace, and the revenue stream, of people no longer valued in the place they had lived their lives.

This sequel, with all of the surviving main characters returning, takes us from Sonny’s engagement party to the family party, and then the wedding.

As it begins, Sonny (Dev Patel) and Mrs. Donnelly (Smith) are driving through California (in a convertible!) to make a pitch for financing to Ty Burley (David Strathairn), so the hotel can expand. Burley promises to send an undercover inspector to check out the hotel. When an American named Guy Chambers (Richard Gere) arrives, Sonny assumes that he is the inspector and lavishes attention on him, ignoring another recent arrival, Lavinia Beech (Tamsin Greig of “Episodes”), who says she is checking out the place for her mother.

Meanwhile, Sonny is frothing with jealousy over another arrival, a friend of his fiancee’s brother who is handsome, wealthy, and very attentive to Sunaina (Tina Desai). Evelyn (Judi Dench), who has not quite managed to move things ahead with Douglas (Bill Nighy), is so successful in her free-lance work as a scout for textiles that she is offered a big promotion. Madge (Celia Imbrie, whose lush figure prompted Helen Mirren’s call for “bigger buns” in “Calendar Girls”), is happily “dating” two wealthy men and having trouble deciding between them. And in the silliest of all of these flyweight storylines, Norman (Ronald Pickup), who is trying out monogamy for the first time, thinks he may have accidentally put out a hit on his lady friend Carol (Diana Hardcastle). There are some nice, quiet touches, though, as we see our friends more at home in India, including interacting more with the locals for friendship, business, and romance.

The movie gently disrupts all of the happy endings of the first film just enough to allow for some minor misunderstandings, some pithy and pointed commentary, and another round of even happier endings, leaving, I hope, the possibility of a third chapter. Fans of the first film will arrive with high expectations and come home happy.

Parents should know that this film include brief mild language and many sexual references including infidelity and multiple partners.

Family discussion: Why was it difficult for Evelyn and Douglas to reach an understanding about their relationship? What was Sonny’s biggest mistake?

If you like this, try: the original “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and “The Lunchbox”

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Posted on February 12, 2015 at 5:55 pm

“James Bond? Jason Bourne?” Our hero is being asked for the inspiration for naming his dog JB. “No,” he explains, “Jack Bauer.”

This is a cheeky, nasty, meta, po-mo update of the spy genre, self-aware enough to name-check not just Bond, Bourne, and “24,” but also “Nikita,” “Trading Places,” “Pretty Woman,” and “My Fair Lady.” I also caught a reference to the 60’s television show “The Man from UNCLE,” about to get its own big-screen reboot later this year.

Some of the core elements of the sophisticated spy story are here, from the elegant suits to the very specific cocktail order, as well as the super-cool weapons and gadgets we will have the fun of seeing deployed later on. And the villain has an assassin/sidekick who goes one, or maybe two better than iconic characters like Oddjob and Jaws. Spanish dancer Sofia Boutella plays the acrobatic Gazelle, who runs on Oscar Pistorius-style blades as sharp as scalpels. She can slice a man in half lengthwise with one slash of her leg. And does.

Other aspects of the usual spy story are tweaked or outright upended. That old favorite, the talking villain, who has such a profound need to explain the genius of his nefarious plan that it gives Our Hero time to thwart him, is explicitly disposed of. The look of the film is as sleek and sophisticated as the score from Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson.

Colin Firth is sleekly perfect as Harry, also known as Galahad, part of an elegant, upper-class cadre of international gentleman spies operating in total secrecy and using pseudonyms based on King Arthur and his knights. Their made to order suits are both exquisitely tailored and bulletproof.

He points to a wall of framed newspaper headlines about triviality — political squabbles and celebrity scandals — explaining that while these things were going on, he and his fellow Kingsmen were repeatedly saving the world. The person he is explaining it to is Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a possible new recruit. Eggsy is a smart, tough, brash kid who grew up in what the British call council houses and we call the projects, the son of a widow whose second husband is an abusive thug. Eggsy’s late father sacrificed himself to save Harry and other members of the team, so Harry feels a sense of responsibility — and a suspicion that Eggsy might have inherited his father’s courage and sense of honor.

While they had previously limited themselves to the wealthy upper class, Harry persuades the Kingsman’s leader (Michael Caine as Arthur) to allow Eggsy to compete for a spot on the team. The competition is tough and the tasks are tougher, the most imaginative and entertaining section of the movie. Then of course comes our supervillain, Samuel L. Jackson as Valentine, a lisping technology billionaire whose frustration with the failure of the world to reckon with global warming has led him to devise some drastic plans. Once he gets involved, the self-aware air quotes get less interesting and so does the storyline. “Bond films are only as good as the villain,” he says. True, and he is no Goldfinger.

In the last half hour, things really go off the rails. The carnage is balletic and portrayed as darkly comic but it is still disturbing, particularly the involvement of a specific real-life world leader. The humor is not just dark; it is crude for the sake of being crude and seems rather desperate. A film that began with a confident sense of sophistication, wit, and edge knows what it is not (“This is not that kind of movie”) but not what it is.

Parents should know that this movie is extremely violent, with hundreds of characters injured and killed and many exploding heads. Characters use very strong language and drink alcohol. There are explicit and crude sexual references and brief nudity.

Family discussion: Which of the tests would have been the hardest for you? What did they prove about the candidates?

If you like this, try: the James Bond films

Fifty Shades of Grey

Posted on February 12, 2015 at 5:50 pm

The Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy by E.L. James became an international blockbuster best-seller because it satisfies the deepest, most passionate, most secret longing of the female spirit. It has nothing to do with being tied up or spanked, but it is about domination.

I am not referring to the domination in the bedroom — or the red room of pain. I am referring to the fantasy of having a bad boy love you so much he turns into a pliable good boy. As a friend of mine once put it, “A lot of women dream of marrying Han Solo, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to turn him into Luke Skywalker.” From “Beauty and the Beast” to “Jane Eyre,””Wuthering Heights,” “Gigi,” “Jerry Maguire,” and “Pride and Prejudice,” the fantasy is of the female beauty and purity of spirit that are strong enough to tame a cold-hearted man (whose cold heart is of course the result of being lonely, misunderstood, and never having met the right woman, not in any way because he is a psychopath, a sociopath, or just a terrible person).

Beauty and purity are here in the person of the lovely and virginal Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), an English lit major about to graduate from college. The role of The Beast is taken by uber-taker Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), handsome, wealthy, successful, and equally adept at piloting a helicopter and playing classical piano. Ana arrives at Christian’s office with a list of questions from her roommate, who was scheduled to interview him (for an allotted ten minutes) but who is home with a bad cold. Though she trips over the doorway and forgot to bring anything to take notes with, Christian, a self-described superior judge of people, immediately and accurately spots some, well, steel in Ana. It is not her weakness that attracts him; it is her strength. “I Put a Spell on You” we hear sung over the opening moments, “because you’re mine.”

Who is the “I?”

Ana.

After one “vanilla” sexual encounter and a signed non-disclosure agreement, Christian shows Ana his special chamber stocked with every possible kind of whip, riding crop, handcuff set, and binding material, explaining, “I do this to women, with women, who want it.” He offers her a detailed contract spelling out the duties and restrictions expected of a submissive. Ana shows that, sexual inexperience aside, she and Christian have a lot in common. Their highly charged but playful “negotiation” in an office conference room is more erotic than the many sex scenes.

Ah, the sex scenes. Very Skinemax, very perfume commercial, not very non-vanilla, not, to my mind anyway, very exciting. Dornan never seems particularly passionate or tortured. Even the big whipping scene (six lashes, discreetly portrayed with no images of the whip hitting the skin or any marks left) comes across like another item to be crossed off a busy executive’s to-do list. For most of the movie, the porn-iest parts are the loving depictions of the trappings of wealth. Christian has a spare but luxurious office, staffed with women built like human whippets, all with tight blonde ballerina buns and impeccably tailored grey suits. His cars, his apartment, it’s all like the pages from a glossy shelter magazine. There’s a lot more kink in any given episode of Dan Savage’s podcasts, and more intensity, too.

Dornan has some appeal but never makes Christian seem dangerous. Johnson is the movie’s greatest asset. For a role that requires a lot of lip-biting, she has the two most important qualifications — a lovely lip and the ability to make biting it look natural. She has a natural warmth, intelligence, and humor that come across on screen and go a long way toward making the movie less silly than it could have been.

Parents should know that this movie includes very frank and explicit sexual references and situations including domination, bondage, and infliction of pain, nudity, drinking and drunkenness, and very strong language.

Family discussion: What made Ana different from Christian’s previous girlfriends? What do their names tell us about the characters? How can giving up control feel freeing?

If you like this, try: “9 1/2 Weeks” and the books by E.L. James

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Based on a book Drama Romance