Review: 'Mortdecai,' starring Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ewan McGregor

So look at here: We are starting out 2015 with a new Johnny Depp as a crazy character movie, huh? This time it’s supposedly for adults with the whole R-rating thing. I guess he just has no interest in playing someone regular again. Oh well, he was quite good at it at one point in time.

So what is this movie? It’s called Mortdecai. It’s based on a series of comedic thrillers from author Kyril Bonfiglioli that I clearly have not read. Also starring in this is Gwyneth Paltrow as Johanna Mortdecai, Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany, and Olivia Munn. I guess their goal was to make a really funny British style comedy for American people but it seems like they failed on both sides here.

So what is Mortdecai about? It’s about this dandy-like British art smuggler by the name of Charlie Mortdecai (Depp). He bubbles around as he’s trying to get money to pay his 8 million pounds in taxes. A famous art restorer is murdered for this famous Goya painting and his old Oxford rival Inspector Martland (McGregor) asks him help them find the murderer and the painting. This takes Mortdecai and his manservant Jock Strapp (yes that is his name, and he's played by Paul Bettany) all over the world trying to find this painting. Total hijinks ensue ... I guess. The B-plot is Mortdecai having marital issues with Johanna, his wife, because of his new mustache that he loves so much and she hates.

You know the thing with this movie is that it’s not good but it really doesn’t suck enough to hate. Mortdecai just washes over you in uninterestingness. It seems like they were trying make something in the old Peter Sellers Pink Panther lane of comedy but it never catches on. In a lot of ways the pacing and the structure feels like it would be a really good animated movie. I’m thinking with the way the performances are and the costuming being so over the top, this would’ve been great as a cartoon. The movie really relies too much on weird facial expressions and goofy pratfalls. The cinematography really isn’t anything to talk about other than these silly over-CGI-ed transitions from city to city.

The real saving grace to this whole thing is Paul Bettany as Jock Strapp. He’s hilarious during the whole movie as Mortdecai's tough guy/ladies’ man manservant. Watching makes you think this story would be a lot more interesting if it were from his perspective rather than Mortdecai's.

Another funny thing with this movie is the two stars of it are American actors doing English accents, whereas everyone else is actually English; it's a bit disjointing. I don’t know if Gwyneth Paltrow’s accent always works.

But seriously, this movie really isn’t something to go out and see in the theater. It might be something fun to watch at home. As I said earlier, it isn’t good enough or bad enough to even get a real reaction. I think Mortdecai is something to pass on and instead just go catch up on Academy Award nominees.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Guttenbergs

Read More

Review: Sean McNamara's 'Spare Parts'

They say there's only something like 7 different stories you can tell when you break it down. If that's true one of the seven has to be the underdog story...actually, even as I type this I realize the obvious David and Goliath. It's undeniably true that there are only a limited number of base stories you can start with, star crossed lovers, prodigal son (or daughter), etc, which is why it always bugs me when people blast movies for being unoriginal, it's all in the details folks. That being said the last thirty years has seen so many "underprivileged or inner-city school kids rise to a level they were told they never could" movies that I can understand why people get peeved at the similarity. The simple fact is that this plot has become a parent genre unto it's own, generally breaking down to one of two sub-genre's, sports themed ala Coach Carter or Glory Road and academic themed like Dangerous Minds, or Lean on Me. Spare Parts falls into the latter category and is based on the true story of a group of students from Carl Hayden High School who, with the help of a substitute teacher (who happened to have a Ph.D), take a minuscule budget and a whole lotta can-do attitude to a underwater robotics competition in 2004 and end up defeating well funded collegiate level teams including the defending champs from M.I.T.. The contemporary edge this film brings is that the students here are all undocumented illegal immigrants which gives us a look into something that most of us hear plenty about but know very little of. It's also worthwhile to mention that Spare Parts is the first film in a media deal struck by George Lopez with Pantelion films which will branch Lionsgate films with Televisa, a huge Mexican media corporation.

Yes, this film is very cliche at times, yes you know what's going to happen (even if you hadn't been aware of the true story beforehand), but does that make this film throwaway or forgettable? Not in the least, while it won't sit among the titans of it's genre like the aforementioned Lean on Me, which is the penultimate movie of this kind in my humble opinion, it delivers the kind of warm fuzzies these films are designed to give without overdoing it. The film, while uplifting, does not go out out of the realm of the real world to do so. All to often films of this nature, most of which are based on a true story, can feel so impossibly sweet that any attachment to the real world is lost, Spare Parts manages to not just keep you in the real world but also give you , what I assume, is a real look inside a world most of us know very little about, the life of a teenager raised in this country but saddled with that illegal tag. The flim walks a tightrope between warming and depressing, undoubtedly what gives it that real feeling I keep alluding to.

It's the humanizing, real world scenarios that help you to understand the plight of these kids, imagine living in a place, seeing all it has to offer, feeling a part of it, then being told that though you are a part of that place for all intents and purposes, technically you are not so there are things you can not do. Immigration is a hot button issue, and there are plenty of arguments that can be made on both sides of the fence, BUT, as with most situations, that all falls on the adults. It's the children who are hit hardest as they A. don't know anything different than the American lifestyle and B. are outside the law through no fault of their own. The student who kicks off the whole thing, Oscar Vazquez (Carlos PenaVega), highlights this so perfectly it hurts. The catalyst for him becoming involved is finding out that his dreams of enlisting in the Army are impossible due to his illegal status. George Lopez, who also produced the film, plays Fredi Cameron, the team's coach/mentor, with the exact right amount of warmth. The rest of the team, Lorenzo, Cristian, and Luis, are all surprisingly well-played given their somewhat limited cumulative acting experience. As the icing on the top of this happy ending cake (get your minds out of the gutter) you have Jamie Lee Curtis who brings some welcome funny as the school's principal.

At the end of the day you are not going to be surprised by anything you see in Spare Parts, but you will get another spoonful of that hope flavored ice cream. Unlike some of the less well thought through films of it's kind this pint of ice cream comes off as just the right amount of sweet, not to rich and definitely not bitter.

3 Out of 5 Guttenbergs

Read More

Review: Tsui Hark's 'The Taking of Tiger Mountain'

The Taking of Tiger Mountain. Doesn’t that sound like pure fire? You see that trailer and it just sounds and looks like some extra gully Hong Kong experience. See, The Taking of Tiger Mountain is an adaptation of the novel 'Tracks' in the Snowy Mountain. It’s the story of People’s Liberation Army versus a Bandit Gang during the Chinese Revolution. The director is Tsui Hark, a director with a great legacy in Hong Kong action cinema. If you haven’t seen classics like Once Upon A Time In China or Legend of Zu you need to fix that.

Here’s the thing with this film though. It’s long, like LONG. It felt like watching a whole war. The pacing is totally off. This felt like they took what should’ve been some miniseries or two movies and crammed it in a really long movie. Some of that caused me to lose track of some of the characters, or really just their names. The characters are pretty amazingly costumed into these really cool and distinct looks. At times it's like watching a cool Tekken movie.

Now I don’t want to seem like a Debbie Downer because the one thing that is cool to see in this is the action. For those not up on Hark’s work he is like a god of what's called wire fu in martial arts flicks. He’s been doing this for close to 4 decades so now with technology out here his set pieces go pretty far insano. Take all that cool stuff from his kung fu with flying into trees and punching so hard the wind hurts and what not and apply that to soldiers fighting battles. You have tanks and planes and machines guns, you have hero soldiers bouncing bullets off of helmets to take guys out and stopping grenades with other grenades, complete insanity. If this movie was shorter it would’ve been worth every penny.

I can’t really say if the performances were great or not. They are kind of generic to be honest. Like there is a dude named Hawk and he has a hawk, I don’t know what truth there is to pull from that. No lie, the whole thing feels like I was watching some fairly average anime but all with real people instead of animation. Like it was some super form of cosplay. Now I know this sounds very harsh, I have to say I’ve seen better from Hark and I was really excited to see this but was profoundly disappointed. So The Taking of Tiger Mountain is something you should really not go out of your way to see, it’s probably worth looking for the English translation of the novel or if you can read mandarin read it that way.

Read More

Review: ‘Penguins of Madagascar,’ starring Tom McGrath, John Malkovich and Benedict Cumberbatch

I have seen Dreamworks Animation’s “Madagascar” films and barely remember them, and I’ve never seen an episode of “The Penguins of Madagascar” television show on Nickelodeon (how has it been on for five seasons?!), so clearly I am not the target demographic for “Penguins of Madagascar,” the spinoff film meant to tide us over until 2018, when “Madagascar 4” is released. And yet there are still some jokes here that work for the casual viewer, some sly pop-culture references that aren’t too on-the-nose, and some solid (if not totally inspired) voice acting from the likes of John Malkovich and Benedict Cumberbatch. “Penguins of Madagascar” isn’t all bad, even if it doesn’t really make a case for why it should exist in the first place.

Because at this point, there are nearly 150 episodes of the “Penguins” TV show, and so what goes on in this film isn’t that groundbreaking or forward-thinking. The foursome of penguin friends have distinct, definitive personalities at this point, and those aren’t really going to change: authoritative Skipper (voiced by Tom McGrath), clever Kowalski (voiced by Chris Miller), rowdy-yet-nonverbal Rico (voiced by Conrad Vernon), and adorable Private (voiced by Christopher Knights). The crisis they deal with in “Penguins of Madagascar,” from a vengeful octopus bent on transforming cuteness into ugliness, won’t have long-lasting effects, because why do anything to mess with a television show that is currently running and a future sequel that already has a release date?

So the urgency here is totally lacking, and “Penguins of Madagascar” doesn’t strive to be a film that has a real emotional message (in contrast to this year’s “Big Hero 6,” for example) or any kind of teachable moments (like Dreamworks’s own “How to Train Your Dragon 2”). Instead, get ready for a barrage of fart jokes (why else name a covert spy group the North Wind if not to wring every bathroom-humor opportunity out of it?), cinematic references (from “Planet of the Apes” to “Life of Pi”), and chaotic chase scenes that are, admittedly, a riot of color and design. As exhausting “Penguins of Madagascar” is because of the speediness of its storytelling, at least its pacing will keep younger audiences interested.

The film begins with backstory, presenting how Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico became friends and how they saved the cuter, younger Private from certain doom; over the years, they then traveled the world together, showed up in the “Madagascar” films, and became residents of the Central Park Zoo. All the while, they’ve operated like mercenaries or commandos, conducting super-secret missions that belie their sense of self-importance—until an infiltration of Fort Knox so they can obtain their favorite cheesy snack is foiled by Dave the Octopus (voiced by John Malkovich), an eight-tentacled, purple mollusk looking for revenge.

Dave has been resentful for years that when they were all at the Zoo together, the penguins stole his adoring crowds, and he’s come up with a plan to get rid of cutesy penguins forever: blasting them with a ray gun full of Medusa Serum, which will turn them ugly, deformed, and unlovable. (Yes, this is essentially the same plot from “Despicable Me 2,” where the minions were turned into out-of-control monsters.) Skipper et al. won’t stand for this, so they decide to take Dave down—until they’re undermined by the North Wind, a secret animal crime-fighting society. Led by a wolf who goes only by the moniker Classified (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), the North Wind have better gadgets than the penguins, more professional strategies, and an even more inflated sense of importance. Whether the penguins and the North Wind can actually work together is an important question, and whether they stop Dave in time is another.

How much more bare bones could the plot get? Not much. There is a sole female character who is supposed to be a super spy but only succeeds in being desired by Kowalski. Skipper wants Classified’s respect and Private wants Skipper’s respect, but that’s about all the self-reflection these characters do. And with all the visual gags (the fact that penguins can’t fly is used again and again) and action sequences (a chase scene through the canals of Venice is very nice, but a long stop in China feels like pandering to the international box office), there isn’t much time to explore any vaguely serious themes. Unless you count making fun of old people being confused by Skype, or joking about National Public Radio pledge drives, or mocking French tax law as sophisticated concepts. And if you don’t, well, there’s always Rico’s ability to eat and then regurgitate everything in sight!

The humor aimed at adults is certainly strange, the characters don’t grow in any way, and there are no stakes to speak of, but there are enough sight gags and silly jokes in “Penguins of Madagascar” to make children laugh. But a generation-spanning film, this one isn’t. 

 Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Read More

Review: The Farrelly Brothers' 'Dumb and Dumber To'

1994 was a hell of a year for Jim Carrey. In the span of 12 months the, then, relatively unknown actor released 3 $100 million dollar films with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber. Time would prove Dumb and Dumber to be the most memorable and re-watchable film of the group. I’m struggling to think of a single scene that didn’t contain a quotable line. Fun fact, most of that was improvised by Carrey on set including my favorite, “We LANDED ON THE MOON!”. Twenty years and one horrible prequel later we have this weekend’s Dumb and Dumber To. This could have gone one of two ways, hilarious or dreadful, there was no middle ground. Thank the comedy Gods, Harry and Lloyd came back with a BANG! Twenty years after having his heart broken by Mary Samsonite (I’m still amazed by how well the throwback jokes worked) Lloyd is in a nursing home, having been there since the events of the last film. Harry (Jeff Daniels) has dutifully visited his buddy every day since. On the visit that starts the film we find out the Harry will no longer be visiting Lloyd as he has a medical condition that requires a kidney transplant, at which point Lloyd yells “GOTCHA!”…yup, he’s been faking a catatonic state for 20 years just to prank his buddy. The guys get right back to their old tricks and head out to find Harry a family member to donate a kidney. Their first stop is Harry’s parents where he finds out that his two Asian parents are not his biological parents and that he was adopted. Lucky for him they give him a 22 year old post card from Ms. French Tickler herself, Freida Felcher, saying that she’s pregnant. That’s where the road trip starts to find Harry’s illegitimate daughter.

I honestly gave this film 0 chance of being good. I just KNEW that I was going to be let down and have to tell all of you that our favorite idiots should have been left in the 90’s. Boy was I wrong. The movie is downright hilarious giving more laughs per minute than I’ve witnessed in at least a year. Obviously the laughs come from a lot of off-color and bathroom brand humor, so if that’s not your thing then you probably won’t have the same experience as I had, but if you liked the first this one will be right up your alley. Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels pick right up with Harry and Lloyd as if there hadn’t been a 20 year break in between, other than the aging you’d think this sequel was filmed before the guys had a chance to get out of character. Every bit of the chemistry we saw before is there and in full swing. I could stop right there since everything else is inconsequential, side characters, plot, direction, these things could be lacking as long as Harry and Lloyd are on point. While you could definitely make an argument about the plot lacking (honestly…if you’re arguing plot you’ve already decided this movie isn’t for you) the side characters were surprisingly fun. Kathleen “I can’t believe I used to have a thing for her” Turner brings Freida Felcher out of her mysterious shroud and right into your face. Rob Riggle, who plays the villain (or is that villains), does exactly what Rob Riggle was made to do, play a supporting role that brings laughs from unexpected places…though I think his role was a bit more understated than usual as far as comedic content goes. The real stand-out among the new players had to be the adorable Rachel Melvin who plays Penny, Harry’s daughter and the end point of the plot. Her role, a pretty girl who is just as comically dumb as the leads, could have easily been immediately annoying had another actress taken it on. Melvin delivers the idiotic Penny to us in a way that is side-splittingly cute, like a puppy running full speed into a screen door. As a small aside to what the movie did right the throwbacks to the first film are done in such a way that feels organic, the way you may re-tell old jokes when hanging out with friends from your youth, as opposed to being in your face “Hey! Remember this!” moments. Honestly, that one aspect was one of the biggest accomplishments of the movie, I would have put money on them reusing all the old stuff and it just not working.

While I don’t really have anything bad to say about the film, at least not anything that should dissuade you from seeing it, there were a few things that I can’t put in the positive column. The first is just more of a depressing note and that’s how old the guys look, really more Carey then Daniel’s. Is that a critical assessment of the movie? No, but it is one of those realization moments when you look at yourself and say, “Damn…times they have a changed”. The second, also not a critical assessment, is that the film just doesn’t feel as iconic as the first. I probably laughed just as much and just as hard, but there weren’t many, if any, lines or scenes in which I thought “Yup, kids will be quoting that for years”. While I know audiences will have a great time with it, I don’t think there will be any of the cultural (or is that lack of cultural) impact of the first.

In a world where we are constantly disappointed by our fond memories coming back to life in ways far removed from what we remember I’m glad to say that Dumb and Dumber To does not disappoint. If you were even a casual fan of the first film you owe it to yourself to spend a quick 90 minutes with Harry and Lloyd. The only regret you’ll have will be the cramps you get from laughing so hard. 

Comedy Score: 4 out of 5 Guttenbergs

Film Score: 3 out of 5 Guttenbergs

Read More

Review: 'A Walk Among the Tombstones' starring Liam Neeson

I may as well get this out of the way, this is not Taken 3. I was actually preparing myself to go on a rant about how studios marketing Liam Neeson starring action films try to bank on that every time, so I went back and looked at all of the trailers again. What I found was that it wasn't the studios doing it, they put out pretty honest trailers, it was me equating Liam Neeson with a gun to Taken.

Now that we've got that out of the way let’s talk A Walk Among the Tombstones, the film adaptation of 1992 book of the same name by Lawrence Block. Neeson plays Matthew Scudder, a former NYPD detective turned private eye. The reasons for his retirement are revealed in depth throughout the film but on the surface we know that, while having a few shots of whiskey with his coffee, a bar he’s in is robbed and the bartender is killed. Scudder chases down the three assailants, kills two and wounds a third. After this he retires from the force and quits drinking. The film picks up seven years later, 1999, when Scudder is approached by a junkie who goes to the same AA meetings Scudder frequents. He takes Scudder to his brother Kenny, a prominent drug trafficker whose wife had been kidnapped and murdered. We soon find that this isn’t a garden variety business deal gone wrong, but possibly the work of a serial killer. So, there you see, not exactly what we may have been expecting as it’s not so much bad-ass Liam Neeson but more burnt out detective Liam Neeson with far more investigation than gun fire. But does it work? Partly, I won’t lie to you the film has its problems but I think by the end it succeeds in redeeming itself to bring a nice throwback to noir films of yesteryear with even a little bit of that Se7en feel thrown in. So what works and what ddoesn't Let’s get into it.

I’m going to get the bad out of the way. First and foremost, the film is slow to get started. The first 45 minutes seem to meander somewhat aimlessly. We get story details, and some investigation, but until that 45 minute point it doesn't even feel like Neeson's Scudder is all in…so why should we be? Which leads to the next and possibly biggest problem, Liam Neeson just seems tired. I know a lot of people will say he’s phoning it in, and maybe the two run parallel, but to me his character seemed like he was just getting to work after a night of hard drinking…ironic seeing as how he’s 8 years sober. This isn’t to say that Neeson doesn't still own the character, he does, so much so as to make me question whether Neeson was phoning it in or if Matt Scudder was just supposed to come off that way, after all it would kind of fit how a traumatized ex-alcoholic just trying to scratch out a living until he dies would act, right? Next is the adaptation itself, as I mentioned earlier this film was adapted from a book, when that happens the “adaptation” part is where someone takes the book and rewrites it to work on the big screen in a visual medium. I don’t think I’ve ever criticized this part of an adaptation before but there were several times when conversations played out on screen that something just felt off, it was as if nothing about the dialogue was changed of altered to fit a natural on-screen conversation. You could tell you were hearing good dialogue, but it was like two people reading to each other, it just wasn’t natural. Lastly, and this is such a tiny gripe I considered not including it, is the constant references to establish the year. The film takes place in 1992, then 1999, and for some odd reason they REALLY wanted you to know that, and they did so in the weirdest way. For 1992 it wasn't so bad, just a close up of Scudder reading the paper with a “Nolan Ryan throws shutout” headline…no big deal. The rest of the movie, however, decided to remind you about it being 1999 by dropping Y2K references all over the place. Again, not a big deal, just something that bugged me.

This flick was a weird one for me, there were a number of things that bugged me in the beginning but as the story sped up I grew to like. First and foremost is Scudders friendship with a tough street kid named T.J., in the beginning it comes off like the usual “Old white man helps disadvantaged minority” setups, and maybe it never changed from that dynamic but it definitely grew into something you could appreciate. T.J. who’s played rather well by former X-Factor contestant Astro, becomes something of a sidekick to Matt Scudder and while it is pretty cliché most of the time it does grow into something you can appreciate, you need to see that more human side of Scudder and that’s what T.J. brings out. Next up I have to congratulate the filmmakers on pulling off a good homage to one of my favorite genres, the noir detective films from the golden age of cinema. It doesn’t match perfectly but Scudders attitude, the atmosphere of the film which takes place in the dustier parts of NYC and is constantly soaked in rain, and even some slight nods in the music with a number of scenes backed by ominous tones accompanied by bells (I realize that’s not the best description of the music, but you’d know it when you heard it). So you've got noir blended with some of the 70s detective film tropes (think Dirty Harry) and you've got a winning setup for a detective story. Speaking of, how about that story?

I will say that the story itself is what keeps this film far outside the realm of something like Se7en, but it’s enough to keep you entertained. The murders are creative and the mystery surrounding it is sound, but something in the execution was seriously lacking. If I had to pick what I thought was wrong I’d say it was in the way things were revealed, the movie never makes a big deal out of a reveal. Even if something would have been shocking it’s introduced with so little flair that you don’t even realize something big just happened until you’ve had a minute to process everything. That being said there are two or three “Holy S&@T!” moments, and even if the story lacks punch it doesn’t lack substance. Hell, they even manage to throw in a few moments that are likely to make you laugh (intentionally).

Is A Walk Among the Tombstones going to be for Liam Neeson what Taken was so many years ago? Not likely, but it IS one of his more enjoyable films of the last five years and definitely worth a watch. I don’t know that I can give the full recommendation for seeing it in theaters. There’s not really anything that’s benefitted by the big screen so spending five bucks to rent instead of $20 for the theater is probably the better idea. Unless, that is, you REALLY want to see a good mystery flick this weekend because that is exactly what this film is.

3.5 Out of 5 Guttenbergs

Read More

Review: ‘Dolphin Tale 2,’ starring Nathan Gamble, Harry Connick Jr., and Cozi Zuehlsdorff

Dolphin Taleis not really a movie that needed a sequel, but here we are. It’s summer, parents need a family-friendly movie to take their kids to now that school is back in session, everyone loves dolphins. No real other explanation for Dolphin Tale 2 exists. Not really.

Everyone from the 2011 original film (which told the real-life story of the dolphin Winter, whose use of a prosthetic tail has made her an inspiration to disabled children and wounded veterans alike) is back for Dolphin Tale 2, but that reunited casting doesn’t make the film any less vanilla. The gist is this: Years after Winter was rescued, she’s beloved by practically everyone who visits her new home, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. The owner of the aquarium, Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.); his daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff); and the boy that found Winter when she was injured, Sawyer Nelson (Nathan Gamble), are the most constant people in Winter’s life, but when her female dolphin companion dies, they know they’re in trouble. It’s against the law for female dolphins to be unpaired in captivity, and if Dr. Clay doesn’t find another female dolphin soon, Winter could be removed from the aquarium.

This is devastating news, of course, not only for Sawyer (who is essentially Winter’s best human friend), Hazel and Dr. Clay, but also for the aquarium’s investors, who have been seeing dollar dollar bills, y’all, in revenue since Winter became famous. So there are competing motivations at play here regarding Winter’s future, and at the same time, Sawyer has been invited to a prestigious semester-at-sea program that could take him away from Winter … and Hazel, his sort-of-kind-of crush.

You know how this ends, right? Of course you know how this ends. So the point of the film isn’t the foregone conclusion, but the journey, which is … bland. In light of the documentary Blackfish, it feels like Dolphin Tale 2 has a lot of language about how dolphins are wild animals, but Sawyer and Winter seem to have a great time doing underwater spins and twirls together; you’ll have a variety of these inspirational swimming montages. Every so often the aquarium will save another animal, like a turtle, that will do absurd things for children to laugh at. And Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman are still lurking around, providing benevolent wisdom while collecting their paychecks.

For very young children, Dolphin Tale 2 will be fine; it has a straightforward narrative that’s easy to follow, and the dolphins are cute, and Florida looks very pretty. It’s an inoffensive-enough way to spend nearly two hours, and if you do, stay for the credits. The real-life footage of Winter and the aquarium employees that plays during the credits sequence is more inspirational and compelling than practically any of the other stuff that comes before it.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs

Read More

Review: ‘May in the Summer,’ starring Cherien Dabis, Alia Shawkat, and Bill Pullman

On paper, May in the Summer, the latest film from Amreeka writer/director Cherien Dabis, sounds like a Middle-Eastern version of Eat, Pray, Love. Woman struggling to figure out the next step of her professional life wonders if she’s found romantic fulfillment, and travels abroad to consider her options and herself. But where most other films would turn to clichéd Orientalism, cultural whitewashing, and heteronormative whimsy to construct a happy ending, May in the Summerpushes back against all that. It veers into silliness every so often, but the film knows where it’s going, even if it feels familiar.

Dabis, who writes and directs here, also stars in the film as May, a half-Palestinian, half-American woman living in New York City with her fiancé Ziad (Alexander Siddig), an expert on the Palestinian economy who teaches at Columbia University. She recently published a well-regarded and critically admired book linking Arabic proverbs with the history of and everyday life in the Middle East, and after years of living together, she and Ziad are finally getting married. But when she makes the trip to her childhood home of Amman, Jordan, alone, a month before the wedding, her family thinks something is up.

Younger sisters Yasmine (Nadine Malouf) and Dalia (Alia Shawkat) are confused about why she doesn’t seem that excited for her wedding, and why she’s letting Ziad’s mother plan an ostentatious, over-the-top ceremony that goes against May’s more low-key personality. And on the other hand, there’s May’s very-Christian mother Nadine (Hiam Abbass), who is shocked and disgusted that May is engaged to Ziad, a Muslim. It doesn’t matter to Nadine that May isn’t a practicing Christian or that Ziad isn’t a practicing Muslim; “Marrying outside of your religion, your culture, it’s all the same—it never works.”

Nadine is speaking from bitter experience: Her marriage to the girls’ American father, Edward (Bill Pullman), ended in divorce, after 20 years of Nadine suffering through Edward’s wandering eye and constant travel. The rest of May’s family also isn’t that supportive: At a family dinner, her cousin casually but confidently mentions that she’s certainly going to Hell for marrying a Muslim, and it doesn’t seem like her sisters have ever met Ziad, either.

The wedding seems like more of a question mark than an exclamation point—but so do other parts of May’s life, like her faith (she’s decidedly secular, but her mother keeps badgering her into being more religious), what her next book will be about (she’s had writers block for months, and practically has a panic attack whenever anyone asks, “What are you writing next?”), and her relationship with her sisters. She has something like annoyed contempt for Yasmine, who recently lost her job but is partying hard and hooking up with random guys, and bemused detachment for Dalia, whose sarcasm is certainly a defense mechanism. As May tries to discover who she is—not only on her own but also in this place, with this family, and with Ziad—the film balances your typical dysfunctional family drama with glimpses into life in the Middle East.

How often are there films about the differences between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East? We’ve had plenty about Muslims and Jews, but a film about Christians and Muslims feels inherently rare. What’s interesting here is the way the film sidesteps the basics of how Christians and Muslims must automatically hate each other in favor of exploring how people manifest their beliefs into layers of identity. Nadine doesn’t preach about how Jesus is everyone’s savior—well, not that often—but her Christianity is a way to connect with other people, to craft a social circle for herself after her divorce, to maintain her Palestinian heritage while being unable to ever go back there. She hasn’t taken the time to understand Ziad being a secular Muslim, but she doesn’t want to; anything that isn’t Christianity is a threat to her identity and a threat to her daughters’, too. That reaction isn’t unique and it isn’t treated as villainy here; it’s just treated as how May and her sisters grew up. The film’s light touch regarding what could be a tricky issue is welcome, and helps all the familial interactions maintain believability.

But May in the Summer isn’t as good when it comes to depth for all of its characters; Nadine is the most fully realized, but May, Yasmine, and Dalia are successful to varying degrees. Because May’s entire persona is wrapped in unease, her relationship with Ziad remains mostly a mystery, which is frustrating given how great of an actor Siddig is and how little he has to do. But there’s a familiarity between Dabis, Shawkat, and Malouf that makes their sisterhood work, even though Yasmine only has “big mouth” and Dalia only has “difficult alternative kid” as personal signifiers. They’re not particularly detailed characters, but the scenes of the sisters together—boredly browsing a lingerie store with their mother in tow; drunkenly eating falafel together; exchanging suffered looks while eating dinner with their estranged father and his new, younger wife; sharing secrets in a dark bedroom, smoking cigarettes out of a window—ring true.

Ultimately, though, while May in the Summerpaints a compelling family portrait, May remains a largely opaque character, so the film doesn’t totally deliver as a tale of her self-discovery. As an exploration of entrenched cultural identities or children-of-divorce sisterhood, though, it’s more convincing and more engaging. And a totally happy ending—that wouldn’t be realistic, would it? And if May in the Summer does anything right, it’s realism.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Guttenbergs 

Read More

Review: Lucy starring Scarlett Johannson and Morgan Freeman

The average person only users 10% of their brain, an interesting little trivia tidbit we’ve all heard before. It’s been proven incorrect by science but that’s beside the point…we don’t need science for our movie plots to work (I’m looking at you Jurassic Park franchise), also the film has a clever way to explain why this is different from the traditional 10% as they present it that we only use 10% of our brains capacity, simply meaning that we all use all of the parts of our brain, just not to the level or efficiency we could, similar to how my muscles have the same potential as a bodybuilders but are being held back by my comical aversion to physical activity. Enough preamble, let’s get to some plot, shall we?

Lucy (Scarlett Johannson) is a student in Taiwan with some questionable social circles. After being forced to deliver a suitcase to a crime lord by her obviously scummy boyfriend (seriously, in a movie with a telekinetic woman the fact that she’s dating this dude is the most unrealistic aspect), Lucy is kidnapped and drugged. She wakes to find that the bad guys have surgically implanted a bag of C4b3h2 (that’s a total guess, but it was something along those lines), a brand new designer drug, in her intestines. She’s then given a passport and ticket along with three other unwilling mules who will all be flown to different parts of Europe to distribute the drug. Unfortunately for Lucy the low level goons didn’t get the memo about a plastic bag of highly potent drugs being put in her stomach, so they proceed to kick her in the gut when she’s shackled in a holding room. The bag breaks releasing the drug in extremely high doses into her system, which causes severe toxicity leading to an almost immediate and painful death. Wait, that doesn’t seem right…OH, my mistake, she doesn’t die; she’s given superpowers as the drug unlocks the potential of her brain allowing her to use a higher and higher percentage. During all of this the film is intercut with scenes of Professor Samuel Norman speaking at a lecture on the potential of the human brain. Highlights include a step by step listing of possible abilities that come with a corresponding percentage, things like at 20% you can control your body completely, at 30% you can control other people, at 40% you can control machines and so on and so on.  Lucy becomes fixated on retrieving the rest of the drug packets and unlocking the full 100% as well as seeking revenge on the people that did this to her.

Scarlett Johannson is the shining light of this flick and it’s a good thing because without her there would be nothing. She actually gets to stretch some acting legs, believe it or not, as she goes from a convincingly trashy and unintelligent party girl to an intelligent robot on a mission. Maybe robot isn’t the best description for why her performance is something to see, as she begins starting to use more and more of her brain she adapts a performance style that seems very similar to how autism is usually portrayed in film with a far off look in her eyes that comes close to a blank expression but is different in a very slight way that makes you understand that she’s just got a lot more going on inside her head. The film plays quickly too, once the drugs enter her system the movie doesn’t slow down until the credits roll, which ends up being a saving grace since much of the movie makes little sense and doesn’t deliver on many of the promises made in the trailer. There is quite a bit of action but very little involves Lucy, once she becomes more powerful her interactions with the bad guys consist of waving her hand to make them all pass out, or levitate. There are some good gun battles involving the side characters and she does get to take the wheel in a car chase that Michael Bay would be jealous of, but that’s about it as far as ScarJo is concerned.

I think “weird” is probably the most apt description of the movie that I can come to, it’s not bad per say, it’s just very odd for the most part. I guess this is par for the course when you’re talking about a Luc Besson movie. The guy is heralded for his action and a good percentage of his films are widely enjoyed but there’s always an under belly of odd in his flicks. Look at The Professional, probably his most lauded film and for good reason, but at the base it’s a film about a hitman teaching his craft to a pre-teen girl whom he may or may not be in love with. To illustrate what I mean, one of the main “what?” aspects is how he intercuts scenes of nature to illustrate what’s going on in the story…so when Lucy is about to be kidnapped by the gangsters the film switches to a scene of an animal being stalked by a cheetah. Again, not a huge deal but it does take you out of the moment completely. Past that there are a number of logic jumps and missing points, such as how there’s zero learning curve with her new abilities and no “What’s happening to me?!?” moment, I guess that can be chalked up to the increase in understanding and brainpower or even something as simple as not slowing the film down. Lastly there’s the weird forced romantic angle between Lucy and the French cop who she’s paired up with in the second half of the film. Speaking of, the fact that she becomes a ruthless killer and breaks any number of laws including stealing drugs from the police, makes the ask no questions relationship between Lucy and the cop even more odd. I can forgive this kind of stuff with a movie like Crank that is, in no way, trying to be something serious, but Lucy is trying to say something profound…at least I think it is, honestly it’s kind of hard to tell. Let’s just say that the beginning and the end of the movie show a look at time from now to the first Neanderthal so at least the impression of something deep and large is there.

With the number of large budget, high-quality films out right now there’s no way I can, in good conscience, recommend you go to the theater for Lucy. It isn’t without its merits, and I do think some will enjoy it, but it’s strictly a rental. ScarJo is beautiful and talented so if that’s what you’re yearning for this weekend I’d say renting Under the Skin is a far better choice. 

2 Out of 5 Guttenbergs

Read More

Review: 'Hercules', Starring Dwayne Johnson, John Hurt, and Ian McShane

It seems that Greek mythology is in full swing this year in Hollywood. Everyone has heard of or knows of the legendary tales of Hercules, (the original Greek way of saying it is Heracles), the half-god, half-mortal son of Zeus. If you haven't heard of him, then you've probably been living under a rock, probably somewhere on Mars. Earlier this year, we were treated tortured with the Kellan Lutz version of the Greek hero. And because The Legend of Hercules was far (light years) from legendary, it's not surprising that Hercules, with Dwayne Johnson taking his turn in what is essentially a miniskirt, fares a bit better than the former, but that's not saying much, given the fact that the bar was set so low. 


The 12 labors in the film aren't myth but intertwine with the teasing nature of whether Hercules may or may not be the son of Zues. His nephew Iolaus (Reece Ritchie) is responsible for telling the tales of Hercules and the 12 labors everywhere they go, from placeto place, a mercenary getting paid for his services. Over the years, he's picked up his own posse (Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane, Aksel Hennie, and Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), with specialized fighting skills to go along with them. 

Three years prior to the current storyline, Hercules was banned from Athens by King Eurystheus (Joseph Fiennes) after being suspected of killing his family. Always seeking a good price for services rendered, Hercules and co. are asked by King Cotys (John Hurt) and his daughter Ergenia (Rebecca Ferguson) to help rid Thrace of a warlord named Rhesus (Tobias Santelmann). Hercules agrees to help, eventually realizing that he and his friends might be in way over their heads. 

We get glimpses of the famous 12 labors of Hercules, but nothing concrete. This is essentially a story that the filmmakers pulled out of their butts and thought it would make a good movie to attach Hercules' name to it. There's good action, and some humor, which is very welcome and which there should have been more of (especially from McShane and Sewell, who are really the highlight of the film), but the movie ultimately fails because of its lack of concrete narrative. Is Hercules the son of Zeus, or is he not? Why are we forced to question his lineage  to begin with? Perhaps it is to cover up the fact that the story isn't very inspiring to begin with, nor are the theatrical speeches that are dripping with mock seriousness and cheesy over the top lines being thrown here and there about heroes and fate.  

One of the more frustrating aspects of the film is that the only time they choose to show the wife of Hercules (Irina Shayk), it is in a sexual manner. She never speaks, just stands there looking beautiful in brief glimpses of the Greek hero's memory. Showing her slipping off her tunic before switching to a shot of something more brutal makes it look like eye candy that doesn't belong and feels more like a subliminal message. Hey, there's no sex in this movie, so let's show you a woman's behind for no reason. Truly inspiring. Please note the sarcasm.

It's disappointing that they don't really show us in detail any of the 12 labors. This is what Hercules is partly famous for in Greek mythology, and to this day hasn't been given any justice onscreen. The filmmakers choose to obviously ignore certain aspects of the Hercules stories and only pick ones they think would suit the story, which might have worked if their actual story had been more concrete.

In Braveheart, we stand behind Mel Gibson because we see his story develop. So that when he gives his speech, it's inspiring and a true rallying of his troops. I mention Braveheart because it feels like Brett Ratner and co. were going for that same kind of effect, but without much ambition or inspiration. The film starts out ok, but spirals shortly after. It doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Sometimes, it gets a bit serious and its serious tone is so sincere that it might make you laugh at its audacity. The film alleviates this by using humor, which isn't used often enough, making some parts of the film seem far too serious. 

There's no doubt that Dwayne Johnson is buff enough to be Hercules, but the capacity to tell the story of a man weighted by the events of his past and the responsibilities of his present isn't used to its full potential. Most of that blame can fall on Brett Ratner since his non-comedy films tend to be over-the-top and don't do a good job telling character stories (I'm looking at you, X-Men: The Last Stand). 

Will you still be mildly entertained? It's possible. But that still doesn't detract from the fact that  even the aspect of the Nemean lion is used to simply make Dwayne Johnson look cool and bad-ass, which he does, that can't be denied. The point here is that someone like Johnson could have been just as cool and bad-ass playing any character, without tainting the name of Hercules in the process. Sure, in the past, Disney's Hercules may have changed around the mythology of the Greek hero, but they made him someone you could root for and stand behind because he had the plight of any person. The last two Hercules films only create a hero who doesn't deserve the praise as easily as he receives it. 

Read More