LOOPER: A Compellingly Crafted Time Travel Thriller

Now playing at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

LOOPER (Dir. Rian Johnson, 2012)

At first, it’s a bit jarring to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt made to look like Bruce Willis via prosthetic makeup. But Gordon-Levitt, has so got Willis’ mannerisms, and soft spoken voice down that the impression works, that is, until the real Willis shows up and it’s a little jarring again. However, it still works.

Set in Kansas City in 2044, Gordon-Levitt, as he tells us in his opening voice-over narration, is a low-level “Looper,” a hit-man who kills people that the mafia in 2074 sends back via illegal time travel technology. To close a looper’s contract, they send back the older version to be killed by their younger selves, and are paid off with gold bars. It’s a job that doesn’t attract “forward thinking people,” Gordon Levitt notes.

A frantic fellow looper (Paul Dano), when confronted with his older self, is unable to “close the loop,” as they call it, he goes into hiding in a floor safe in Gordon-Levitt’s apartment. A bearded wizened and jaded Jeff Daniels, as a gang boss from the future, offers a deal in which if Gordon-Levitt gives up Dano’s location, he can keep all the silver he’s been saving up. Gordon-Levitt takes the deal, but then finds out that his own loop is set to be closed.

Willis is able to escape from his younger self, upon appearing from the future, but not long after that they have a face-to-face at a diner, and Willis speaks of how, in 30 years, his wife (Qing Xu) will be murdered love by a powerful villain called “The Rainmaker.” Willis came back in time to kill the child who will grow up to be this bigwig baddie.

Did you get all that? Yes, it’s a movie in which the convolutions swirl around you, but you can’t help to get caught up in them. Even when the film downshifts from the expected, yet still engrossing action sequences (shoot-ups, chases, fight scenes, etc.), into a quieter second half that takes place on a farm owned by Emily Blunt, who just may be the mother of the future “Rainmaker,” its spell still holds you.

Willis doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, and doesn’t need much, but what he has, like when he talks of the woman whose life he’s trying save, he really sells. Considering his younger self to be a self absorbed junkie, Willis provides a gruff contrast to Gordon-Levitt’s stoic smoothness.

The rest of the well-chosen cast have their moments. Daniels basically has one major speech to give before spending the rest of the movie as an order barking heavy, but he pulls off both superbly.

Blunt, could be seen as a gratuitous love-interest for Gordon-Levitt, yet her frightened eyed delivery is “on,” and it’s fun to see her smoke an invisible cigarette (another thing to look forward to in the future).

A few of Daniels’ thugs are notable too - Noah Segan, as a clumsily trigger happy goon, and Garret Dillahunt as a much more professional assassin.

With its superb sci-fi premise, exemplary effects, and top-notch performances, Rian Johnson, who directed the brilliant BRICK (also starring Gordon-Levitt), and the not-bad THE BROTHERS BLOOM, has compellingly crafted a well above average action thriller. Its ending might feel a little off, but the fact that it doesn’t allow easily for a sequel makes it all the more refreshing.

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As Dracula, Adam Sandler Is Required To Suck

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 

(Dir. Genndy Tartakovsky, 2012)

Those who have been waiting for a new fix of animated Adam Sandler hi-jinks - it’s been ten years since EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS after all - will surely overdose on his hammy take on Dracula in HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, the new 3D CGI spectacle from the studio that brought you THE SMURFS.

Sandler, who also executive produced, does the typical Bela Lugosi impression for the voice of the famous vampire, except that he denies ever saying “bleh-bleh-bleh,” plays the ukulele, and can bust out a rhyme, you know, if the occasion calls for MC Dracula.

As the owner and creator of the lavish Hotel Transylvania, a vacation place only for monsters, Sandler’s Dracula is preparing for the 118th birthday of his precocious daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), when trouble arrives in the form of an airheaded backpacking teenager named Jonathan (SNL's Andy Samberg).

Dracula does what he can as an overprotective father to shield Mavis from the intruding human, but she feels what screenwriters Peter Baynham, Robert Smigel (a Sandler collaborator since their SNL days), along with director Genndy Tartakovsky who did a re-write, insist on calling a “zing” (love at first site) for the wacky kid. Not sure why, she’s a hundred years older than him and should know better than to fall for such a doofus, but, oh well.

The huge cast of supporting celebrity voices features Frankenstein's Monster (Kevin James) and his wife Eunice (a more annoying than usual Fran Drescher, but that description fits almost everybody here), Wayne and Wanda Werewolf (Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon), and the party-monster Murray the Mummy (Cee Lo Green).

There’s also Griffin the Invisible Man, voiced by Sandler’s old fellow SNL buddy David Spade, who is a good example of how each of the classic creatures are just one joke characters, and the joke isn’t funny in the first place.

In fact none of HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is funny, despite how energetic and over-the-top it is. It could have something to do with the sizable percentage of pee, poop, and fart jokes that take the place of wit. At least there’s only a few pop culture references, but the ones that are there (a Dave Matthews mention, a viewing of TWILIGHT on an iPad) are huge groaners.

The animation is fine but not especially inspired, and there’s no sense of stakes (I’m not making a vampire joke here) in the story-line, since we know Samberg’s Jonathan is no threat to anybody, and Sandler’s Dracula is really a good guy with a big heart who will see the light. Yawn.

By the way isn’t natural light supposed to kill vampires? The big over-caffeinated chase scene finale takes place in the pure sunlight of the morning, and Dracula only gets a little singed.

The ending has Samberg and Sandler show off their rap skills to a big obnoxious auto-tuned pop song, capping 90 minutes of crap aptly. My nephews (ages 8, 14, and 15), who I took to the screening, said they liked it, but I seriously doubt it will take up much space in their memory.

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The Cornball Charm Of TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE 

(Dir. Robert Lorenz, 2012)

Sure, every critic will mention it, but Clint Eastwood’s embarrassing crazy-old-man-yells-at-chair speech at the RNC a few weeks back doesn’t at all get in the way of his new film being a good old-fashioned cornball crowd-pleaser.

Eastwood, with his crotchetiness played to greater comic effect than say in GRAN TORINO, plays a baseball scout for the Altlanta Braves who is going blind, so he may be in his final season on the job. As his daughter, Amy Adams (also in THE MASTER opening today) joins him on the trip against his wishes, to help out.

Meanwhile, back at the home office, Matt Lillard, as obviously a jerk for the audience to hate, wants Eastwood out of the game, and his boss, a grimacing Robert Patrick, might agree. But luckily Eastwood has a friend in the Braves’ organization in the form of John Goodman pulling for him.

Another friend, Justin Timberlake as a retired pitcher now doing the scouting thing too, runs into Eastwood at a game, and immediately has eyes for Adams.

It’s a comfortable ole baseball glove of a commercial movie, where everything falls exactly in the place you’d expect. With only a few current topical references, its script, by first time screenwriter Randy Brown, feels like it was written in the ‘90s when old people were first becoming troubled by the idea of a computer run world. Clint’s line about the “interwebs” attests to that.

In that way it’s like a gruff counterpoint to last year’s MONEYBALL, in which old school on the spot skills are favored over statistical analysis. So much so that I expected Clint to take a baseball bat to a laptop OFFICE SPACE-style.

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, throws no curves story-wise, is full of cheesy clichés, and was completely filmed in Georgia, despite being mostly set in my home-state North Carolina, yet I still found it highly likable.

Eastwood’s growling and grunting through his part is amusingly affecting, and Adams, along with Timberlake both put in warm and fuzzy performances. And if you want your film to be more likable, casting Goodman is always a good idea.

Robert Lorenz, whose first film as director this is after many assistant directing duties, provides Eastwood and co. with a sturdy vehicle that has plenty of cornball charm, and isn’t too sappy. It’s not a home run, but it’s a perfectly pleasant stroll around the bases.

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