A Bunch Of Blu Ray Blurbs For February

It’s time once again to tackle the growing stack of new release Blu rays that are cluttering up my desk. With a few exceptions, these are mostly titles that had a limited theatrical release accompanying their availability on VOD. These are films that slipped through the cracks of 2015, and mostly for good reason, but I enjoyed a few of them. One of them I liked quite a bit. Read on to find out which.

First up, I saw Peter Sollett’s sincere piece of Oscar bait, FREEHELD, when it played briefly at the Rialto in Raleigh last fall. It didn’t make much of an impact on me or audiences apparently so it came and went pretty quickly. Maybe it was too soon after seeing Julianne Moore deteriorate from Alzheimers in STILL ALICE, which she deservedly won an Oscar for, to see her grapple with another disease – this time cancer.

Anyway, in this well meaning drama based on real events, Moore plays Laurel Hester, a New Jersey cop who fights the Ocean County Board of Freeholders to have her partner of five years, Stacie Andree (Ellen Page), inherit her pension after she dies. A no nonsense Michael Shannon plays Moore’s supportive longtime police-force partner, a flamboyant Steve Carrell joins in as a gay rights sctivist, and Josh Charles rounds out the cast as one of the conflicted board members.

FREEHELD isn’t a terrible movie, it’s just like a Lifetime TV movie but with big names. The cast is good (Shannon stands out but then he always does) and it’s certainly a noble effort, but it’s a bit bland and forgettable. However, what is notable is that Cynthia Wade’s 2007 Oscar-winning documentary short (also with the same name) that it was based on is included on the Blu ray/DVD edition of the film. In 38 minutes, the doc sums up everything much better than the full length feature and serves as a better tribute to Hester, who died in 2006.

Next up, horror meister Eli Roth brings us KNOCK KNOCK, which has been billed as a “erotic thriller,” concerning Keanu Reeves as a nice guy family man architect who makes a sexy mistake. That is, he is seduced then terrorized by a couple of young girls (Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas) who show up out of the blue when his wife and kids are out of town for the weekend. The film is a remake of a schlocky ‘70s exploitation flick called DEATH GAME, which had Seymour Cassell getting seduced then terrorized by Sandra Locke and Colleen Camp (Camp is one of the remake’s producers and puts in a cameo).

Roth’s take on the material is initially intriguing but becomes tiresome and as tortuous as the situation Reeves is enduring. Izzo and De Armas are more annoying than scary or sexy for that matter, and their moralizing motives for ruining Reeves’ life, and destroying his posh Hollywood house, are hardly convincing, particularly their taunts that he’s a one-percenter that needs to be taken down. I simply could not see the point of any of this ordeal. Also the movie gets major marks off for using the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind” for the climax. It’s such a lame steal as the song was so definitively used as the ending of FIGHT CLUB that when it started up in this I was expecting to see buildings fall down. Maybe this is the film that confirms what I’ve suspected before – Eli Roth’s films just aren’t for me.

Funnily enough, “Where is My Mind” is also used in the next film I’ll be babbling about, Ben Palmer’s MAN UP, but it’s a distinctly different version – a piano instrumental – so doesn’t take you out of the movie as much. MAN UP is an affable British rom com that pairs Lake Bell, doing a fairly decent English accent, up with Simon Pegg, for a blind date. The thing is, the date was supposed to be Pegg being set up by his friends with another woman (Ophelia Lovibond), but Bell, happening upon their meeting place at Waterloo Station, is mistaken by Pegg for Lovibond, and Bell decides in the moment to go along with it. The couple hit it off over beers and bowling, but a run in with one of Bell’s old schoolmates (Rory Kinnear) threatens to blow her cover. Bell agrees to kiss Kinnear so that he won’t tell her stolen date, but when Pegg catches them (in the ladie’s room no less), the gig is up and Bell comes clean.

That’s not as much of a spoiler as you would think because it comes shortly after the half hour mark. So whereas usually the leads in these type movies start out hating each other and then gradually fall in love, this has them bickering and getting all competitive after the setup of them actually liking one another. Bell and Pegg have ample chemistry and although you know after some wacky mishaps they are going to finally come together at Bell’s parents’ (Ken Stott and Harriet Walter) 40th anniversary party that the film has been not too slyly building towards, it doesn’t take anything away from the movie’s abundance of charm. Kinnear’s hammy shenanigans did grate on me a little, but overall this is the rare rom com keeper.

At my first glance at the Blu ray box, I was like, didn’t Robert De Niro already make a movie called HEIST? Turns out, I was thinking about THE SCORE, a heist movie that De Niro made back in 2001, the same year that Gene Hackman starred in a similar film that was also named HEIST that I would mix up back then. As I see on IMDb, there have been a lot of movies called HEIST or THE HEIST throughout the years and I guess it’s fitting that this one uses the title because it’s such a generic by-the-numbers exercise that it really doesn’t deserve anything more original.

Despite that De Niro is prominently featured on the front and the spine of the Blu ray cover, the real star of Scott Mann’s HEIST is Jeffrey Dean Morgan who plays a casino card dealer who takes part in the robbery of a riverboat casino run by De Niro as a tough mob boss. Morgan reluctantly joins in the heist with his co-worker partners, headed by Dave Bautista, because his daughter is sick and needs expensive surgery. The plan doesn’t go off very smoothly and the crew are forced to hijack a city bus and take the passengers hostage. It’s pretty routine formulaic stuff, but it’s watchable enough I suppose for a C grade thriller.

Fairing much better is the horror comedy COOTIES, the directorial debut of Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott, mainly because of its extremely capable comic cast. Elijah Wood heads the ensemble as a substitute teacher who on first day on the job at his hometown elementary school finds that the students are turning into zombies because of tainted cafeteria chicken nuggets. Wood took the position to get close to his old high school crush (Alison Pill), but she’s dating Rainn Wilson as the creepy PE teacher. 

The teachers, including Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad, and Leigh Whannell (SAW co-creator who co-wrote this movie with Glee co-creator Ian Brennan, who also appears as the Vice Principal) are stranded inside the school and have to band together to fight the infected children. It’s a often violent and gory experience but it’s delivered with a goofball charm that’s pretty infectious (sorry). If you like the cast and have a thing for zombies, it’s a good bet. 

Elijah Wood also appears in Breck Eisner’s THE LAST WITCH HUNTER, a Vin Diesel vehicle that really bored me silly. Diesel potrays the immortal protagonist, who carries on his centuries old legacy of killing witches in modern day New York City, with the aid of Wood as the newest in a long line of Dolans (helper priests). Wood is replacing the retiring Dolan (Michael Caine, a welcome sight since I was unaware he was in the movie), but after Caine is mysteriously murdered the same day, Diesel and Wood, along with a friendly witch (Rosa Leslie) begin to unravel a plot by a squadron of supernatural witches to resurrect the Witch Queen or some such (my mind wandered). 

It’s a slickly made piece of horribly paced dreck, with no discernible spark to speak of. It also appears to take itself entirely too seriously in its misguided effort to form a franchise worthy mythology. Admittedly, Diesel isn’t my cup of tea (see my review of RIDDICK), but I’ll take another FAST AND FURIOUS sequel over this any day.

Finally, Jessie Nelson’s LOVE THE COOPERS, a Christmas ensemble comedy that made me cringe instead of crack up. It’s one of those all star dysfunctional family films, like the previous year’s THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU, that failed to make much of a splash in its theatrical release last November, and it’s not very far into it that you can see why. John Goodman and Diane Keaton play the parents whose Pittsburgh house the family, including Ed Helms, Olivia Wilde, June Squibb, Alan Arkin, and Marissa Tomei, gathers at on Christmas eve, but this year everybody has their own kooky issues that get in the way of the holiday cheer. 

It’s narrated by Steve Martin, in a sincere effort to add some zing but that sadly doesn’t help generate any laughs. Neither does any of the other dialogue which feels strained or cutesy (or both) throughout. So, yeah, I really didn’t LOVE THE COOPERS. It’s a mishmash of overly sentimental and tired rom com tropes, but since it was scripted by Steve Rogers responsible for such mush as HOPE FLOATS, KATE & LEOPOLD, and P.S. I LOVE YOU, that’s hardly a surprise.

More later…

TO ROME WITH LOVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

TO ROME WITH LOVE (Dir. Woody Allen, 2012)

This year’s Woody Allen film is a Rome-set ensemble rom-com, but you could probably guess that from its trite title. It’s a blend of several disconnected story strands, that comes off like Allen is cleaning out his notebooks of jotted down ideas without fully fleshing them out.

There is a bit of the winning charm of Allen’s last film, the hugely popular MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, mainly in a scenario which has a sly Alec Baldwin revisiting his youth through Jesse Eisenberg (a perfect fit for an Allen film) who finds himself in a love triangle with Ellen Page and Greta Gerwig.

And there’s some amusement from Allen, acting onscreen for the first time since 2006’s SCOOP, as a classical music promoter trying to make an opera star out of his daughter Alison Pill’s fiancée (Flavio Parenti) who can only sing in the shower.

But mostly TO ROME WITH LOVE is a trifle; a fluffy only fitfully funny film. Yet it so pleasantly breezes along with such gorgeous photography of its Italian locales by Darius Khondji, that it’s still a likable lark.

Take, for instance, Roberto Benigni’s storyline - Benigni plays a man who wakes up one morning to find that he’s become the most famous person in Italy, but for no given reason. The press follows him everywhere, recording his every moment, much to Benigni’s bemusement.

Throughout his career, Allen has so much better satirized the media’s obsession with meaningless celebrity (see 1998’s CELEBRITY), than this silly go-round, but here he seems to be having such fun with it that it’s hard not to chuckle - even if it’s just a few mild chuckles worth.

Another strand, maybe the most sitcom-ish, concern Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi as newlyweds who have to separately deal with the sexual temptations of a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) and a famous actor (Antonio Albanese). The comedy in this bit creaks more than in the others, and the payoff is extremely predictable, but Cruz, stunning as she’s ever looked on the screen, still makes it pop.

I was happy to see Allen back in his familiar role as the neurotic nebbish, and married to Judy Davis (a veteran of 4 previous Allen movies), but wished he came equipped with better one-liners. It says a lot that the role he gave himself is as underwritten as everybody else's.

TO ROME WITH LOVE is an average later day Woody Allen film - it’s better than SCOOP, TO MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER, and WHATEVER WORKS, but not as good as VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS or MATCH POINT. For a 76-year old film maker who puts out a movie a year, that’s not a bad batting average.

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SUPER: The Film Babble Blog Review

SUPER (Dir. James Gunn, 2010)

Add The Crimson Bolt to the growing list of superheroes that aren't really superheroes.

Just like KICK ASS, this movie wonders out loud 'why don't people actually try to be superheroes,' gives us an ordinary schmuck who dons a costume, and has him get his ass kicked before he ultimately saves the day. However, the tone of SUPER is completely different. 


Rainn Wilson is our ordinary schmuck here, a short-order cook whose wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a slimy drug dealing kingpin played by Kevin Bacon. Rainn takes us into his deprssing existence by way of dry narration ("People look stupid when they cry" he says over a shot of him sobbing), with the film starting off darkly, but a blaringly bright cartoon credits sequence seems to announce that the film is going to be an outrageous romp.

It is and it isn't - there are some funny bits here and there, but once Rainn takes up bashing people's heads in with a wrench, the film's laughs get fewer and fewer.

As a comic book store clerk who is implausibly infatuated with Rainn, Ellen Page overacts like crazy, as if she's trying make us forget her graceful performance in last summer's INCEPTION. Page makes her own costume, which she poses in creepily, and despite Rainn's insistence that he needs no sidekick, asserts herself as "Bolty" - her Robin to Rainn's Batman.

  In one of many unpleasant moments, Page forces herself sexually on Rainn - why on earth did the film makers feel they had to go there? The pathetic duo arm themselves with heavy weaponry to take on Bacon's thugs, and the movie's final act is a ultra-violent shakily-shot shoot 'em up in which the film beats its premise into a bloody pulp. It's an unamusing assault on the senses with a flimsy conclusion. 


The only strength is Rainn's unwavering commitment to character. This guy definitely has more layers to him than Dwight Shrute, and Rainn fleshes them out intensely. It's a character that deserves a better more rounded narrative, not these worn out conventions.

On the sidelines Liv Tyler doesn't have much to do but look drugged out, Bacon seems to be having a ball probably because he could've done the role in his sleep, and as one of the heavies Michael Rooker just looks uncomfortable. Oh, I almost forgot the odd cameo by Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle) as a Christian superhero named the Holy Avenger that Rainn is inspired by when watching him on an religious cable channel. 


Really don't know what the point of that means either. SUPER is a tired take on superhero pipe-dreams that has nothing new to say satirically. I rolled my eyes more than I laughed, and I cringed more than I smiled. 


I guess those are fitting reactions to a film written and directed by the guy who wrote the live action SCOOBY-DOO movies. 


More later...

INCEPTION: The Film Babble Blog Review

INCEPTION (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010)


The buzz has been building for Christopher Nolan's followup to the THE DARK KNIGHT for some time now, and it's certainly going to get bigger as audiences see for themselves what this incredible mind bender of a movie is all about. What it's all about I'm still working out, but I can say that it's a vivid visual feast that's one of the best films of the year so far. 

It's a difficult film to describe without giving away some of the pure pleasures of the plot so beware of Spoilers! Leo DiCaprio is a dream extractor - an expert in mind manipulation who deals in the underworld thievery of, well, parts of men's minds when they are asleep and dreaming. 

DiCaprio works with a team including Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a "point-man" and a dream "architect" played by Lukas Haas. We meet them in the middle of a job inside of the dream state of Saito (Ken Watanabe) - a powerful Japanese business magnate.

Turns out Watanabe is auditioning DiCaprio and his crew for a bigger job involving "inception" -that is the planting of an idea into somebody's head through the dream world. 

For the job they need a new architect so through DiCaprio's professor father (the always welcome Sir Michael Caine) they are joined by a snark-free Ellen Page. DiCaprio also recruits the slick Tom Hardy to act as "forger" for the team. Dileep Rao rounds out the team as their chemist.

The target for their mind crime caper is Cillian Murphy as Watanabe's corporate rival who has the fate of his family's fortune in his hands upon his father's (Pete Postlethwaite) death. Much like in his last film, Martin Scorsese's SHUTTER ISLAND, DiCaprio is haunted by memories of his dead wife (here Marion Cotillard). Unlike SHUTTER ISLAND however here it's impossible to guess where it's all going.

Despite that it's crammed with a lot of action movie clichés - shoot-outs, automobile crashes, explosions, and there's even a sci-chase with machine guns - it never feels contrived. Its endlessly inventive dream inside of a dream inside of a dream scenarios are spell binding, and genuinely scary at times, and the towering worlds of the CGI crafted dream set pieces are overwhelmingly beautiful. Nolan and cinematographer Wally Pfister really outdid themselves on every frame. Likewise for Hans Zimmer who provides one of his most solid scores, one that swells and swoons at just the right moments.

I'll leave other critics to make comparisons to everything from METROPOLIS to the THE MATRIX because it's obvious that the decade it took to finish the screenplay Nolan has woven many influences and ideas into the framework. What wins out is the film threatens to burst out of the screen into real life - just like the most lucid dreams.

DiCaprio skillfully maneuvers through the action with a layered performance that's nearly as complex as the movie that's surrounding him.. Gordon-Levitt has a lot of screen time in his secondary role and he owns it - especially in the stressful yet seriously fun second half. 

In one of the best bits of acting I've seen from the actress, Page makes us feel the wonder of being able to create an entire world with intricate acrchitecture and the thrill of manipulating it to your own desires. At one point when she is learning how to structure a cityscape with thought, I really thought she was going to say: "Wow! This is awesome!" Because, well, it really is.

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Roller Grrls - WHIP IT: The Film Babble Blog Review

WHIP IT (Dir. Drew Barrymore, 2009) The phrase "the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore" may not get cineastes excited, especially as the Oscar prestige season looms, but it shouldn't alarm or offend them either. Barrymore presents a surprisingly solid 80's style formula film that's cute enough to overshadow its ultimate predictability. Protagonist Ellen Page (JUNO), awkward instead of snarky, pines for a life away from the beauty pageants her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) constantly drags her to and her go nowhere job working as a waitress at Bodeen's Oink Joint. The answer to her angst is in Austin, Texas: a roller derby team that calls themselves the Hurl Scouts who Page immediately dubs her new heros. Without her parents knowing she takes the bus and joins up under the tutelage of "Mother Mayhem" (Kristen Wiig - so much better used here than in EXTRACT) who takes her under her wing. Page has an angry adversary in the form of Juliette Lewis as "Iron Maven" and a crush on a bed headed indie rocker (Landon Pigg). As Page's father, Daniel Stern appears to have the Alan Arkin part - the laid back parental figure that at first seems like an old fuddy duddy but in the end has a hip wisdom that wins the day. Barrymore gives herself a role as team mate "Smashley Simpson" who somehow isn't as obnoxious as she's set up to be. Rounding out the cast are Alia Shawkat (Maebe from Arrested Development) who gets to bring the snark as Page's best friend, stuntwoman Zoe Bell (KILL BILL, DEATH PROOF) struts her stuff, and Jimmy Fallon smarms it up as the master of ceremonies. Sure it breaks no ground as a coming of age story, the ending can be seen from a mile away and the wall to wall soundtrack of pop songs is overdone, but it's a big hearted movie that's hard not to like. With its wacky outtakes and bloopers over the end credits presumably to prove how much fun they all had making the movie, WHIP IT is without pretension or cynicism. It's just a sincere display of the power of friends, family, and fun and that's all it wants or needs to be. I mean for a first time directing effort nobody was expecting a CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND or even THAT THING YOU DO! from Barrymore, am I right? More later...