By Zev Burrows

A Michael Bay film without explosions is still a Michael Bay film. Wait, I misspoke. A Michael Bay film with only one explosion is still a Michael Bay film. That explosion comes in the middle of Pain & Gain, where a car is blown to high heaven in a public parking garage.

Don’t however, let that one fact mislead you. Bay is still one of the most infamous and hated directors of recent years, if not, of all time. And to say that his new film Pain & Gain is his best film to date is still not saying a whole lot. The film does suffer from the usual misfortunes and problems that plague the director’s work, but unlike his previous effort, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, there seems to be something at work here: it is more tolerable than any of the Transformers films. And the only reason I went to see this movie is because it went to number one at the box office, and I take it upon myself to stay up on the latest hits.

The film is based on a true story. In late 1994 to mid 1995, body builder and personal trainer Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) and his two body building buddies, Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) and Paul Doyle (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), carried out a serious of crimes that involved kidnapping one of Lugo’s clients (Tony Shalhoub), weaseling away his entire fortune, doing a fair amount of cocaine, and killing two innocent people. We all know more or less exactly where this film is going to end up: the police, along with the aid of private detective Ed DuBois (Ed Harris), catch the three criminals.

Look, I said that the film is Bay’s best yet. That doesn’t mean it’s a good film or one that I’d recommend. The director has often been criticized by many people (not least among them Mike Stoklasa, aka Mr. Plinkett of RedLetterMedia) as showing nothing but contempt for audiences. The amount of that has been reduced from his previous films thankfully, but it probably was not Bay’s intention. The film still looks somewhat ugly, but thanks to a change in cinematographers from Transformers: Dark of the Moon, it is not downright hideous.

What surprised me about Pain & Gain was the fact that the performances given by the three main actors aren’t bad. Wahlberg, Mackie, and Johnson get by just fine with an otherwise lacking screenplay, and they help bring life to the film. The standout obviously, is Wahlberg, who is quite good at playing shallow muscle boy jerks that screw up big time.

The film falters where Michael Bay films usually do. I have already mentioned the cinematography, but that’s probably the least of my issues. Like most of the director’s work, the film is downright misogynist. One of the trademarks in Bay’s films is having an absurdly large amount of models acting like sluts on camera, and to add insult to injury, not one of these female characters (with perhaps the smallest exception of DuBois’ wife, who gets maybe three lines and five minutes of screen time) is in any way intelligent.

My biggest problem with the film however, lies in its execution. There are many instances where we sympathize with jerks that practice violence (Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is an excellent example of this, where a tormented and jealous boxer flies into rage in the ring). But Bay leads it in exactly the wrong direction. There isn’t any torment or motivation for these criminals other than just money. A few years ago, the Coen brothers directed a film involving a heist and jerks after the same reward. That movie was Burn After Reading, which is a modern-day masterpiece, and a film that I encourage everyone to see. But that film made fun of its characters in every way it could, becoming one of the top comedies of the past decade. Unlike Pain & Gain, it is a great satire.

In Pain & Gain, we aren’t supposed to like any of the guys that are committing these heinous crimes, but Bay wants us to do so. I’m sure he doesn’t mean to do this, but through this film, he promotes not only that women are just objects, but that it’s cool to commit atrocities, just so long as you keep those perfect biceps.

Somewhere underneath all of the hate and misery, there is a good film here, one that could have easily tried to sympathize more with the Shalhoub character when he is thrust into a world of freakish pain. I’m sure with the right director, there would be a fun satire made out of tragic events. But I can’t beneath the fact that Bay just doesn’t seem to get past his childish mannerisms. His overt obsessions with over-the-top masculinity and misogyny get in the way of a film that needn’t be as bad as it is. Yes, I know it’s based on real life events. But couldn’t there have been the slightest attempt to make an audience not feel quite so unclean?

Rating: 4/10

Related Posts:

• Film Review: Argo
• Film Review: End of Watch
• Film Review: The Avengers
• Found-Footage Films: CHRONICLE and PROJECT X
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review

By Zev Burrows

I have said a few times in the past that we live in a very cynical age with several cynical filmmakers. As a result, many audience-insulting films are green lighted, produced, and released with the sole purpose of talking down to audiences who shut their brains off when going to the movies. When thought, care, and dedication are removed from a screenplay, we end up with films like Identity Thief. It is a sad thought that the best thing about the movie for me was sitting through a trailer for Jurassic Park 3D.

Identity Thief is an awful movie. Worse still, it is the kind of movie that could have been directed by Robert Altman and would still sink like the Titanic. There are no fresh ideas, original thoughts, or any other kind of imagination put forth. The only reason that Identity Thief exists is to show people that getting punched in the throat a few times is in some way or another, funny.

We open with the following scenario: Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Jason Bateman) receives a phone call from an anonymous caller (Melissa McCarthy) about protecting his identification. Like an idiot, he proceeds to give her his Social Security number, full name, and number. Like a true identity thief, the woman (we don’t know her real name for most of the film) makes fake credit cards with Sandy’s money and proceeds to live it up.

Meanwhile, Sandy gets in major trouble with the law from events that never happened to him, and the detectives and cops where Sandy lives in Denver determine from a mug shot of the woman taken in Florida (where she lives) that he is, in fact, innocent. For some odd apparent reason, they can’t do anything about it; they can’t even notify the police of the specific city in Florida. So, Sandy decides to go down to Florida personally to bring the woman back to Denver to clear his name once and for all.

Among the very first things that happen once Sandy meets the thief is a punch to the throat. Sandy then follows the woman to her home and smashes her in the face with a guitar. The amount of catastrophe that follows is pretty unbearable. I am not particularly bothered by the amount of violence in the movie, but more of how it is handled. Getting smashed in the face with a guitar works in a cartoon with Bugs Bunny or in Tom and Jerry because cartoons allow for reality to be in some ways suspended. It simply does not work with living human beings.

The film is essentially a buddy comedy with a few bad guys on the trail of its two heroes. I’ve seen a fair amount of buddy comedies, and this is quite low on the list in terms of quality. Of course there is going to be room set aside for drama, but it is stuck inside a completely dreadful screenplay. Jason Bateman looks like he is trying his absolute hardest not to have a mental breakdown, and Melissa McCarthy, while she may have some talent, makes your flesh crawl with her role.

Now getting back to the cartoon violence: at one point McCarthy’s character gets hit by a car, blacks out for a few seconds, then gets up like nothing happened. The amount of fakeness that the movie pushes on us is appallingly high, and it becomes a level of despair that no one should ever have to sit through.

One of the running gags in the film is this whole thing about having a guy named Sandy, because isn’t that just so funny – a guy with the name of Sandy? The main character unconvincingly tries to show that it’s a guy’s name as well as a girl’s by stating Sandy Koufax, but no one in the film really cares.

Overall, Identity Thief is a particularly nasty movie. To be more precise, it is a cynical, vulgar, vile piece of junk that is a waste of both time and money. If you think getting hit in the face with a guitar, punched in the throat, or hit by a car and shaking it off is funny, I fear for you.

Related Posts:

• Film Review: Django Unchained
• Film Review: The Hobbit
• Film Review: Silver Linings Playbook
• Film Review: Wreck-It Ralph
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review

By Zev Burrows

To say that Quentin Tarantino is a fearless filmmaker is quite the understatement: he makes movies that dare to challenge our stance on several pressing issues. In his latest film, Django Unchained, he takes the deep south of 1858 and turns it into a thrill ride that is humorous, violent, and painful all at the same time.

The movie begins with several male African-American slaves being transported across Texas by two brothers. Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Basterds), a German dentist and bounty hunter, stumbles upon the group, kills one of the two brothers, frees one of the slaves, Django (Jamie Foxx), and leaves the other wounded brother to be destroyed by the other slaves.

Schultz reveals to Django that he freed him for a reason: as a bounty hunter, the doctor seeks out a trio of killers named the Brittle Brothers, and he discovers that Django knows what the brothers look like. Schultz then makes the former slave a deal: in exchange for aid in the business of bounty hunting, Django will be freed and Schultz will assist him in finding his wife, Broomhilda. They eventually locate her in the ownership of a sadistic yet elegant plantation owner named Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). And the rest of the film involves the plan to rescue Broomhilda.

As expected, Tarantino takes many, many risks with this film. Had it been in the hands of another director, Django Unchained would have been a convoluted yet enormous mess. Having the deep south in the 19^th century turn into a western with comedy is especially dangerous. But for the better, Tarantino keeps the comedy to a minimum.

Consider the scene (one of the best in the film) when the Ku Klux Klan storms upon Schultz and Django’s resting camp: one of the guys is upset because he can’t see well through his bed sheet. Turning one of the most hated and feared organizations into a farce-like cartoon is dangerous, but Tarantino writes his dialogue as though it runs freely that it sounds funny when the KKK contradicts their own costumes.

As much as the film is good (and it is a very good film, by all means), it is riddled with problems. The first is that it is entirely too long. The editor on all of Tarantino’s previous films, Sally Menke, died in 2010, and the new editor is Fred Raskin of the first three Fast and the Furious films. No disrespect whatsoever, Raskin did an adequate job. But you can feel an obvious difference between this film and Pulp Fiction, in that the editing in the latter was brisk and made for a shorter and less agonizing picture. In addition, there are a few scenes (particularly the ones with Django having visions of his wife everywhere, or some of the flashbacks) that could have been cut and it would not have made a bit of difference.

Another problem comes in the third act: from the moment where we enter the life of Calvin Candie until about the last 15 minutes of the film, much of the attention that was given to Foxx in the first two acts is taken away and he becomes increasingly less significant compared to Candie, Schultz, and Candie’s personal favorite slave, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). To be fair though, high attention is given to the points where Django’s blood runs cold with anger.

The third and biggest problem with the film is Leonardo DiCaprio. His character, Calvin Candie, is one of the most interesting individuals in any of Tarantino’s films; a brutal yet stylish slave owner whose after-dinner entertainment involves watching two male slaves beating each other to the death. Now DiCaprio himself is a fine actor, but there is almost nothing new to this performance that we hadn’t seen in some of his past performances. He can play villains, but his performance lacks here, unlike that of his great role in as the mentally retarded boy in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?

Even though the film has some negative qualities, there is a lot to admire in Django Unchained. As it is a film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, you should expect some great dialogue. And while it does not match the immaculate screenplay of Pulp Fiction (one of the most perfect ever written for a film), it is undeniably well written and well executed, thanks to the great performances by Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson. On one hand, Waltz is such a good actor that you almost forget he was a ruthless Nazi in Tarantino’s previous effort, Inglourious Basterds. On the other, Jackson gives one of his best performances since his role as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, playing the master-loving butler to a degree of almost hatred for his own people.

I have one last thing to say about Django Unchained, and it is a peculiar one: the majority of the white people in the film are negative, evil beings, with the exception being Dr. King (Quentin, you rascal, you!) Schultz. But this serves as historical accuracy, as this is the deep south just before the American Civil War. Is this to say that all American white people of that time were evil? The problem that exists in Django Unchained is that we only get a view of the whites of the south. It is well-known that the North was not squeaky clean of its racism at the time, but as we know, by that time slavery was abolished in that part of the country, and the film takes place only one year before John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry (which the film does not cover).

As a fan of Quentin Tarantino, I must concede that while he has made a very good film, he has made more satisfying and less agonizing films (by less agonizing, I mean in terms of running time, as Django Unchained runs at about 2 hours and 45 minutes). It does not have the great dark comedy feel of Pulp Fiction (his masterpiece) or Inglourious Basterds, but to say that it is a lesser Tarantino effort is not a big statement. Django Unchained is still an extremely entertaining work, even if it is ribboned with flaws.

Related Posts:

• Film Review: The Hobbit
• Film Review: Silver Linings Playbook
• Film Review: Wreck-It Ralph
• Film Review: Identity Thief
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review

By Zev Burrows

Peter Jackson’s first-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel The Hobbit should be the film event of the year. And yet the world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air…

Okay, I’ll stop with the quoting. But in all seriousness, The Hobbit, perhaps the most anticipated film of the year, is one of the most disappointing. It does not live up to its hype, nor does it match The Lord of the Rings trilogy released between 2001 and 2003. The question is: why? Why does it pale against Jackson’s other directorial effort with Tolkien’s work?

The biggest problem lies in the production itself. When I heard that The Hobbit was being split into three movies, I could tell something was seriously wrong. I re-read the book over the last few weeks after seven and a half years or so, and wondered how Jackson and his crew could possibly accomplish three movies. It is true, the source material cannot cover one movie, but spreading it out to three makes everything all the worse.

The story is set 60 years before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, as Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) shows up at the hobbit hole of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and tricks him into becoming the burglar for a band of thirteen dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). They seek to reclaim the Kingdom of Erebor from Smaug the Dragon, who was drawn to the amount of gold the dwarves had collected over the years.

There is of course a side plot: Azog, an Orc leader who murdered Thorin’s grandfather in a battle and has been presumed dead, hunts the party, seeking Thorin’s own head. (The party being tracked by Azog is not in the book). And from the looks of it, I think Peter Jackson himself forgot what his orcs looked like the other films. Azog looks like one of the mutants from I Am Legend.

So why doesn’t this film work that well other than the decision to make The Hobbit a trilogy? One of the big problems was the cinematography and visuals: Andrew Lesnie, whose work on the first trilogy was superb and gave those films such a distinct and memorable style, just doesn’t seem to recall any of the old magic. The change to high frame rate 3D, a technique which heightens the quality of 3D footage, is astonishingly poor in recreating Middle-Earth, as opposed to the glorious look of the first trilogy.

Another problem is making some characters that are insignificant or otherwise absent in the book important in the film. Instead of short and straight to the point, we get a scene in Rivendell, an Elvish city, with Galadriel and Saruman (Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee reprising their roles from the original films) that “dramatically” foreshadows the events seen in The Fellowship of the Ring, and neither character appears in the book (probably a marketing strategy, but it was completely unnecessary). Radagast, a wizard who is mentioned once in The Hobbit, is given a significant role in giving sight that Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, may yet return. Why this is important is a mystery to me.

Yet another problem comes in the form of Gandalf himself. We can tell in the first trilogy that McKellen had a lot of fun as the wizard. But over the last few years, he must have gotten what I like to call the “Alec Guinness syndrome”: when Star Wars opened in 1977, Guinness liked the film. But when people started recognizing him solely as Obi-Wan Kenobi, he began to detest the whole idea of Star Wars, even throwing away fan mail from fans of the film without even opening it.

Now how does this apply to McKellen? Believe it or not, a friend of mine actually met the actor and got an autograph. But when he asked McKellen to say “Mordor” for him, the actor was disdainful. And viewing his performance in The Hobbit, I can tell that McKellen is so sick of being identified as Gandalf that it shows in his performance. I didn’t see anything tasteful in this side of the wizard.

So I’ve complained about the movie long enough. To tell the truth, there are many good things in it: Martin Freeman gives a wonderful performance as the hobbit who is unsure of himself and just wants to be by the fireplace in his hobbit-hole. And like in the book, he undergoes a “believing-in-himself” change to being a great hero. Richard Armitage is right at home as a dwarf who seeks what’s rightfully is, and Howard Shore’s score recalls some of the motifs heard in the original trilogy while adding some new flavors to his music.

Sadly however, the best thing about the film only gets about fifteen or twenty minutes of screen time; and as much as I detest major changes in film adaptations of novels, here’s one I actually wanted to exist: Andy Serkis as Gollum and Smeagol is as energetic and as entertaining as ever, and his performance shows it. His riddle challenge with Bilbo is honestly the best scene in the movie.

When I first entered the theater, I expected to be disappointed, and disappointed I was. “But Zev,” you might say, “That’s the problem. You expected to be disappointed, and that’s why you didn’t like the film!” Ah, but you see, the decision made to split the book into three films is enough to ensure disappointment. When I saw The Dark Knight Rises earlier this year, I expected greatness because the first two Batman films by Christopher Nolan were superb; but I was heavily disappointed because it did not live up to my expectations.

So the question stands: is this a bad film? Well to be sure, it is not the film that everyone wants it to be. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the finest blockbusters ever made, and I’m sure that reputation won’t wear off anytime soon. The Hobbit is a grave letdown, but seeing as how I’m a fan of the first trilogy, I suppose I can do nothing more than to see the next two.

Related Posts:

• Film Review: Django Unchained
• Film Review: Silver Linings Playbook
• Film Review: Wreck-It Ralph
• Film Review: Identity Thief
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review

By Ian Janer

Silver Linings Playbook is certainly not a cliché. Starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, the film is about two mentally ill adults in suburban Philadelphia as they try to find themselves while living with their parents. It also happens to be a romantic comedy. And one of the best films I’ve seen in years.

It isn’t easy to write a comedy about the mentally ill. It has to be tasteful but not boring, relatable but not offensive, and sensitive but not depressing. More difficult, even, is the task of using mental illness to uncover something about humanity, and this is precisely what writer Matthew M. Quick and director David O. Russell set out to do.

The film opens on Pat Solitano (played by Bradley Cooper) as he returns to his family home in suburban Philadelphia. Pat had been in a mental institution for bipolar depression and is finally prepared to return to the real world. “Excelsior,” he reminds himself: it’s the Latin word meaning “forever upward.”  In other words, don’t let life get you down; rise above; find your silver lining.

To an extent, that is what the movie is about. Life happens… sometimes you don’t fit in or you make the wrong decisions, but if you do your best then good things will come your way. They might not be what you had envisioned, but they are there waiting for you.

That is where the beautiful and enigmatic Tiffany comes in, as portrayed by the remarkable Jennifer Lawrence. Pat’s friends set them up at dinner: who could be a better match than two mentally ill individuals?  Despite some hilariously embarrassing behavior on both sides of the table, Pat can’t seem to break away from Tiffany. There is something intriguing about her.

Pat is still obsessed with his estranged wife, however, so he begins to see Tiffany not romantically but as a business arrangement: she can help him get a letter to his wife, and in return he will dance doubles with her in a local dance competition. Sounds far-fetched? It is, and it’s utterly delightful.

What is spectacular about the movie is how real it is despite being, at times, completely absurd. The characters are so human that you get lost in them; you almost forget you’re watching a movie. The most amazing thing about Matthew Quick’s characters is the attention to detail: from Pat’s father’s (Robert DeNiro) obsessive betting habits to Pat’s mother (Jacki Weaver) offering up “crabby snacks and homemades” whenever they have guests in the house to Chris Tucker’s cameo as an former drug addict obsessed with his own hair, each character has his or her own distinct and recognizable set of traits. With all their carefully wrought virtues and vices, it is almost as though you’ve known the characters for years.

The acting is what drives the writing home. I am not ashamed to admit that I cried during Robert DeNiro’s speech, both times I saw the film, and Jennifer Lawrence is breathtaking as Tiffany. She manages to be both transparent and unpredictable, raw and cold, spontaneous and calculating, yet somehow still lovable. You find yourself rooting for her, even when she makes the wrong decisions. And near the end, when she sees Pat talking to his wife, you can feel her heart drop to her stomach and her throat choke up. She is the heart of the movie: when she is happy, the audience is ecstatic, and when she is sad, the audience is catatonic.

That is where the film truly succeeds. As the story progresses, you stop seeing Pat and Tiffany as mentally ill and just see them as people, and then you begin to see from their point of view, which is where it gets really interesting. In our society, people who are labeled as mentally ill are often sidelined because of their differences. As horrible as that is, they also give us a lens through which to see the world differently. Societal norms are just norms, and you don’t find happiness by trying to fit in but by embracing the ways in which you don’t. At one point, Bradley Cooper’s character says, “I’m crazy too… But maybe it’s just that we know something you don’t.”

I think this is the point of Silver Linings Playbook: we are all a little bit crazy, some more than others, but we can make amazing gains simply by accepting ourselves. The film gave me hope: if we do our best, we all really do have a shot at a silver lining. Excelsior!

Related Posts:

• Film Review: Django Unchained
• Film Review: The Hobbit
• Film Review: Wreck-It Ralph
• Film Review: Identity Thief
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review

By Zev Burrows

I’m not much of a gamer. I didn’t spend half my childhood in a video arcade playing Pac-Man or Super Mario. But that didn’t stop me from looking at Wreck-It Ralph, the latest Disney animated feature, with an open eye. But since technically it is a 3D animated feature, I went in with biased feelings against it; in a nutshell, I was expecting to hate this movie.

When the film ended, I had a mixed reaction: I didn’t deplore it, but at the same time, Wreck-It Ralph is not exactly a film that ranks comfortably with some of Disney’s best. What we get essentially is a great-looking movie stuck inside one that’s been done a million times over with only a few pleasant (or negative) surprises.

For over 30 years, Ralph (the voice of John C. Reilly) has been the antagonist of a game called Fix-It Felix, Jr. at Litwak’s Arcade. At this arcade, once it is closed for the day, characters from all games can travel from one game to another, but they must be back in their game for the next day. On the day of his game’s 30^th anniversary, Ralph is not invited to a party with all of the other characters of the game, and when he finally makes his way in, one of the characters tells him that he will never be a good guy because bad guys never win medals.

While visiting Tapper’s game (one of the most impressive things about Wreck-It Ralph was asking gaming companies to loan out some of their characters, like was done with the cartoons seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit; so we get to see Bowser and Pac-Man), Ralph learns that winning a first-person shooter named Hero’s Duty will earn them a medal. So he leaves his game the next day to take the medal. He does this, but many things happen that transfer him to another game called Sugar Rush, lose the medal, and meet a girl named Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) who takes the medal to buy her way into a cart-driving race, even though the ruler King Candy forbids her from doing so.

What I really dislike about the story are its many references to several previous Disney animated features. There are moments that are taken directly from The Little Mermaid (the destruction of something most precious to the female), Beauty and the Beast (the transformation of one of the main characters into their original form), and Aladdin (the title character stealing food but giving it to those less fortunate than he). What it feels to me is unoriginal, and that is exactly what the film is: it is essentially a modern day CGI version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame from 16 years previously.

My other problem (and it is a significant one) is its voice cast. Sure, the actors give fine performances, but no one stands out or disappears into their role like what Jeremy Irons did as Scar in The Lion King. You can definitely picture in your mind someone standing or sitting at a microphone saying his or her lines dramatically, but it’s nothing too exciting.

However, this film is not entirely bad; in fact, there are a couple of significant redeeming qualities. Often times, I have issues with pop culture references in modern day animated features, but Wreck-It Ralph is set at a time where all of these references make sense and advance the plot. And there are times when they are funny (except for a complete knockoff of a scene from The Wizard of Oz).

One of the things that people remember Disney animated features by is their music. Let me be clear: this is not a musical. There are several pop songs that make their way into the movie, but there is no onscreen singing like you would find in the majority of these films. Does that make it bad? Well, there’s a Rihanna song. In a Disney animated feature. Think about it.

But then we have the issue of how the film looks. To be short, it is gorgeous. It has a sweetly sickening look (especially in the Sugar Rush world, where it could be something straight out of Candy Land), but the colors are vast and the animation is still as good as it was in something like Tangled. The character designs, while not as wonderful as something like those of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (a far superior film), are still definitely believable.

I’m not entirely sure, however, what the motivation was in making Wreck-It Ralph. One of my least favorite things in contemporary animation is how much Disney has been trying to be either like its rival DreamWorks or its sub-branch Pixar. Here, it is trying to be like the latter: it is going for the emotional drama that made the Toy Story trilogy work, and also the wicked fast humor of The Incredibles.

But that being said, it is not a bad film. It has a lot of colorful energy that did keep me somewhat entertained, and there are some cleverly funny moments. Wreck-It Ralph is essentially Disney’s tribute to the video game industry. And while I will be questioning for years as to why they even made it, there is nothing truly offensive or outright awful. Gamers may have a lot of fun.

On a side note: Wreck-It Ralph is accompanied by a seven-minute black and white animated short entitled “Paperman,” which is nothing short of wonderful. It is a mixture of traditional hand-drawn animation and computer animation, telling the story of a man who is hit by a flying piece of paper on a platform belonging to a woman who accidentally dropped it. The same thing happens when the man loses a piece of paper and lands on the woman’s face, leaving lipstick marks. After that, the man is entranced, and though his work separates the two, he is desperate to find out who she is.

Even alone, this short is worth the price of seeing the film it is accompanying. The blend of these two kinds of animation is rather impressive, and the short plays out like a 1920s Buster Keaton comedy.

Related Posts:

• Film Review: Django Unchained
• Film Review: The Hobbit
• Film Review: Silver Linings Playbook
• Film Review: Identity Thief
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review

By Zev Burrows

I love films about filmmaking. When done well, films like Sunset Blvd. and Singin’ in the Rain can be among the most interesting movies you’ll ever see. Ben Affleck’s Argo is not necessarily about the process of filmmaking as it is about a crisis that involves the cinema, but the film has been marketed as a movie about filmmaking, and we are led to believe it. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

The movie is based on a true story. In 1979, the Iranian Shah (or King) is sheltered for medical reasons in a United States hospital, which leads to retaliations by the people of Iran. They stormed a U.S. embassy and captured more than 50 hostages. Six however, escape and take refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador to Iran. The crisis gets back to the CIA in the U.S., who keeps it a secret from the general public.

Tony Mendez (Affleck), a CIA specialist, is brought in to find a solution to get the six people home safely. He dismisses all of the ideas presented to him and is unable to find a solution of his own, until he is reminded of watching a movie called Battle for the Planet of the Apes with his son, and the idea comes to him: make a fake movie, or propose to make a movie, pass off the hostages as Canadian filmmakers (associate producer, director, etc.) to secure them safely, but not make the movie.

In doing this, Mendez teams up with a Hollywood makeup artist (John Goodman) and a film producer (Alan Arkin), and the three create a fake film studio, inform the press about the fake movie, hire the actors, and successfully advertise it as essentially a Star Wars rip-off. What’s the movie called? Argo.

Affleck has previously directed two films (both of which I have not seen), so I was a little bit doubtful about what the genius’ lesser friend from Good Will Hunting could do behind the camera. Well, thanks to an ingenious screenplay, all the doubt washed away. Argo is not only one of the best films of the year, but one of the most exhilarating films from a mainstream studio since Inception. To my surprise, there is hardly any violence in the picture, but that’s just fine. Sometimes the most heart-racing thing can come not from violence, but just the possibility of something going wrong that will lead to violence and bloodshed.

Another surprise is that Argo is a very funny movie, with some of the biggest laughs of course coming from Goodman and Arkin (they’re playing Hollywood businessmen, not escapees); but the film is also very serious when it needs to be. For example, when Mendez meets with the people in hiding and tells them the plan, they are uneasy. They want to get as far away from Iran as possible, but they also wonder why they are trusting their lives to someone who has never been in this kind of situation before. But with the guidance of Mendez and the dedication of the escapees, some miraculous thing happens.

The brilliance of the picture however, is rooted in its tension moments. There are several scenes where it may seem that everything will go horribly wrong and all six escapees (and Mendez as well) will be imprisoned or killed. One of the benefactors is the score by Alexandre Desplat, in one of his best and most interesting scores. Like in The King’s Speech and this year’s Moonrise Kingdom, Desplat is able to illustrate the drama without being too obvious or too bombastic. It is nothing short of brilliant.

And that’s essentially what Argo is. It is a great piece of cinema, something that I was not expecting from Affleck. At times it feels sort of like a film by the Coen brothers. Taking their work into account, I hope that Affleck continues to make more movies like these.

Related Posts:

• Film Review: Pain & Gain
• Film Review: End of Watch
• Film Review: The Avengers
• Found-Footage Films: CHRONICLE and PROJECT X
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review

Review by David Geraci

I’ve literally had to endure every Fast and Furious movie, because aside from Paul Walker’s baby blues, my girlfriend fancies David Ayer’s jacked up version of reality.  Hence, it was no surprise that when I suggested we see Dredd3D I ended up front and center for End of Watch. But by the movie’s end I had no regrets. Of course you can’t escape the trademark themes of David Ayer: gang violence, a kick ass crime-solving duo, and a gold plated AK-47 (coming to a gun rack near you). Yet the testosterone-heavy bravado of all those Vin Diesel films never quite made it into this one. Instead, Ayer evades the whole good cop, bad cop machismo mash-up and takes a more realistic approach.

Photo Credit: Scott Garfield

End of Watch is filmed primarily with a camcorder and hand-held camera by the officers, making it the latest film of the found footage genre. And we all know what this can do for horror films – now think of what it can do for films based on (or grounded in) reality. The effect is powerful; everything is intensified with an in-your-face urgency. This works duly for compelling dramatic scenes as well as gritty action ones. Of course this style of storytelling can be cumbersome; after all, you wouldn’t want to bring your hand-held into a burning house during a harrowing rescue attempt. So how else would you get the footage? And for that reason, Ayer explains why combining found footage with normal operating cameras was the logical move: “The script started as a pure found footage kind of thing. In pre-production, I gravitated very quickly towards augmenting that stuff with normal operating cameras. In editing, I had all this footage, which me and my editor built the movie out of, with never worrying about genre expectation.” And he was right not to worry – the movie worked beautifully without sticking to one genre. The pitfall with found footage movies is that it’s the chief selling point, and that leaves you wondering “who’s holding the camera now?” End of Watch avoids this by being indiscrete about it.

The movie takes place in South Central Los Angles, a predominately Hispanic environment plagued by poverty and violence. Police officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) are partners and BFF: pretty much sticking their damn crime-sniffing noses where they don’t belong. This inadvertently gets them into trouble with a Mexican drug/human trafficking cartel. When word gets out of their persistent – sometimes unauthorized – investigations into such matters, a bounty is placed over their heads. Essentially the crux of the film rests on the relationship between the two officers. It’s kind of like a cop drama bromance of sorts… with intervallic discussions of love, life, and relationships peppered in between.

There’s something poetically offhand about End of Watch. The candid bond between the two officers drives the movie, not the violence. This dynamic casts Ayer’s stylistic approach in a refreshing new light that transcends cop movie clichés. There’s nothing overreaching or gimmicky about the relationship, either. The kinship evolves naturally over the course of the film without twisting the viewer’s arm to like them.

End of Watch is a wonderful, well-crafted box office film. If you’re anything like me, and you use Rotten Tomatoes to gauge your viewing preference – no matter how low they rated your favorite movie – End of Watch scored an audience review of 92%. And if that’s not a deal maker, ask your girlfriend what she wants to watch.

Related Posts:

• Found-Footage Films: CHRONICLE and PROJECT X
• Film Review: Pain & Gain
• Film Review: Argo
• Film Review: The Avengers
• Five DJs Turn the Tables on the History of Music – RE:GENERATION Film Review