Good Cop/Goofy Cop

COP OUT (Dir. Kevin Smith, 2010)




"It's a homage." So says goofy rubber faced plainclothes cop Tracy Morgan of his unorthodox interrogation methods to his partner of 9 years, a stonewalling yet smirking Bruce Willis.

These methods are going to be familiar to anyone who's ever watched 30 Rock - Morgan does his patented crazy shtick. As Willis watches through a one way mirror, Morgan freaks out their suspect by yielding a gun and yelling movie quotes like "they call me Mister Tibbs," and "these aren't the droids you're looking for" even going for "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!"

Willis, in his definitively detached manner, says: "I never saw that movie." If that sounds funny to you, ignore the rest of this review and go see this movie - more such supposedly uproarious self-aware referencing awaits.

Cool, now that those people are gone I can tell the rest of you that this is one painfully unfunny film. Though it wasn't written by Kevin Smith (the screenplay is by Robb and Mark Cullen) it feels like it was in the worst way - at Smith's most hammiest and hackiest. It strains with every cut to elicit laughs, but cringes are what result from this tired and truly tiresome material.

What there is of a premise involves Mexican gangsters headed by Guillermo Diaz, Seann William Scott as an annoying thief, and a stolen baseball card worth 80 thousand dollars. The card belonged to Willis, who was hoping to use it to pay for his daughter's (Michelle Trachtenberg) dream wedding. Otherwise Smith regular Jason Lee as Willis' wife's smarmy new husband will pay for it and humiliate him. Ho hum.

Morgan meanwhile deals with his wife's (Rashida Jones) possible infidelity with a neighbor by placing a nanny cam in a teddy bear in their bedroom. So both cops drive around Brooklyn from one poorly constructed plot point to another bitching about these hardships while barely creating an audible chuckle from the audience.

One of the only inspired elements present is the soundtrack. It was a savvy move to employ famed electronic composer Harold Faltermeyer to do the score. His "Axel F"-ish waves of synthesizer and jaunty rhythms work better than anything else in the film to capture the genre aesthetic.

A new Patti LaBelle song ("Soul Brothers") accompanying the end credits also hammers home the 80's mindset. You're better off sticking with watching Morgan on 30 Rock from which he even does some of the same lines ("you're sweet like bear meat") and renting HOT FUZZ if you haven't seen it. Now there's a sharp satire of the buddy cop action movies.

COP OUT is a lot like Morgan's misunderstanding (and mis-pronouncing) the word "homage" - it's not a send up or anything close to a fresh take on the formula, it's just formula.

More later...

Serious Series Addiction Part 2: Pedaling Through Lost

Last month I wrote about my New Year's resolutions of getting more exercise and watching all 5 seasons of The Wire. In addition to finishing that excellent show that absolutely earns its status as one of the best television series ever, I pedaled on my exercise bike to The Prisoner (the 60's one) and continued the long haul that is Lost.



We got a Roku - a digital streaming device that hooks up to our TV to broadcast Netflix Instant titles - for a wedding present last year and I've found that it's ideal for viewing full seasons of shows like Lost. Otherwise dealing with getting the many discs in the mail would be a hassle and I might've given up on the show during some of its lame story threads. 


The exercise bike helped to get through the convolutions and highly implausible patches by my pedaling harder as if I could speed up the show when it got too stupid. 


Seasons 3, 4, and 5 I quite enjoyed after the ups and downs of the first 2 seasons. A time loop episode involving the character Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) was a lot of fun and the Dharma Initiative in the 70's storyline had many merits as well. I got through all 5 seasons a few episodes into the current season 6. 


I had the shows recorded on our DVR but somehow the premiere episode was recorded over. Luckily it's available on Hulu (doncha love how many resources we have these days?) so I was able to watch it on my computer in my office. I really missed being able to pedal through it though. I thankfully watched the remaining ones back on the bike. 


Now that I'm caught up and can watch the final season in real time I can get back to seeing and writing about movies, but since this has been a down period for film (as it always is this time of year) I'm already looking for a new show to pedal through. 


Any suggestions? 


More later...

SHUTTER ISLAND: The Film Babble Blog Review

SHUTTER ISLAND (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2010)

"You act like insanity is catching", federal Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) quips to the Deputy Warden (John Carroll Lynch) while being shown the grounds of Shutter Island, the contained electronically secure mental hospital for the criminally insane.


It's a welcome one-liner as the introductory build-up to DiCaprio and his new partner Mark Ruffalo's entry is one of the most overwrought openers in Martin Scorsese's career. The score pounds in an over the top progression of fearful crescendos as the men enter the complex.


Once the uber-melodramatic music eases off we are led inside to meet and greet Dr. Cawley (the always ominous Ben Kingsley) and the premise: a female patient has gone missing and the facility is on lock-down. Kingsley cryptically explains: "We don't know how she got out of her room. It's as if she evaporated, straight through the walls."


With a stern look that keeps his worry brow constantly a-worryin', DiCaprio, still using his Boston accent from THE DEPARTED, has another agenda. 2 years ago his wife (Michelle Williams) died in a house fire and he believes the pyro-culprit is a patient hidden somewhere at the hospital. A World War II vet (the year is 1954), DiCaprio is also full of conspiracy theories about secret experiments and mind torture going down at the hospital - the presence of a German doctor played by Max von Sydow particularly sets him off - as hallucinatory visions of his wife and the horrors he experienced at war haunt him around the clock.


Based on Dennis Lahane's bestselling 2003 novel, SHUTTER ISLAND has a supremely effective first half. The second half falters because I believe many folks will see the end coming from miles away - I actually had an inkling of the conclusion when seeing the trailer months ago. The reveal is wrapped in exposition and once DiCaprio and the audience figures it all out, the film lingers too long.


However this doesn't completely ruin the movie. The dream/flashback/whatever sequences are beautifully shot recalling David Lynch's surreal palette.


DiCaprio's visions always have something falling and floating in the air around him. File papers, snow, and ashes fill the screen along with DiCaprio's angst. It's not the best film that DiCaprio and Scorsese have made together in their decade long collaboration (that would be THE DEPARTED), but it has a lot of strong searing imagery going for it, even if the narrative isn't as layered as it would like to be.


Acting-wise, it's Leo's show. Despite the solid supporting cast (including Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Hayley, and Ted Levine), Dicaprio carries the movie spending considerable chunks of the film alone with his demons. By this point, his 4th film under Scorsese's direction, he's not just an actor going through the motions; he's an embedded yet impassioned piece of the scenery.


By comparison Ruffalo comes off like he's playing a gumshoe in a Saturday Night Live sketch. So it's half a great movie - half is an absorbingly creepy character study, half a formula thriller frightening close to well trodden M. Night Shyamalan territory.


But half a great Scorsese movie is still a vital movie-going experience, you understand?


When speaking of Scorsese in an interview a few years ago, Quentin Tarantino said: "I'm in my church, praying to my god and he's in his church, praying to his. There was a time when we were in the same church - I miss that. I don't want to do that church."


In one of SHUTTER ISLAND's most powerful shots, Scorsese mounts a DiCaprio Dachau death camp recollection that blows everything in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS away. Sorry Quentin, but Marty's is the church I want to attend. 


More later...