“The Upside” is a film of modest ambitions but obvious charms. It stars Kevin Hart doing his adorable false bravado thing, though with a role boasting more shadings than he’s been given before. And it shows off the under-utilized comedic skills of Bryan Cranston, best known for his dramatic roles. (This despite first coming to fame as a sitcom dad.)
Cranston plays Phillip Lacasse, a billionaire investor-turned-author whose life has been on a downward spiral the last few years, losing his wife to cancer and his mobility to a leisure sport accident. Worse yet, his will to live is at a low ebb, despite the bucking up of his faithful executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman), who runs his enterprise and watches out for him.
So when it’s time to hire a new “life auxiliary” -- aka personal assistant -- Yvonne knows right away that Dell Scott (Hart) is all wrong for the job. An ex-con who’s only halfheartedly looking for a job; he says and does all the wrong thing. But he impresses Phillip with his attitude, and lands the gig.
You can probably guess where things go: initial disaster followed by bare competence, which grows into a budding friendship that’s due for a major fracture right at the end of the second act. Director Neil Burger and screenwriter Jon Hartmere play things strictly by the numbers, with story beats and emotional catharsis timed down to the audience-tested minute.
And yet, it works. The trio of main actors share genuine warmth with each other, playing character who each have trouble connecting with the greater world in some way.
“The Upside” is a prototypical laughter-and-tears dramedy, a remake of a better French film. It won’t surprise you, but it will entertain.
Bonus features are middling-to-good. They include deleted scenes, a gag reel and five documentary shorts: “Onscreen Chemistry: Kevin and Bryan,” “Creating a Story of Possibility,” “Bridging Divisions,” “Embracing Divisions” and :Presenting a Different Side of Kevin Hart.”
I did not expect to enjoy "The Upside" as much as I did. It's an American adaptation of one "The Intouchables," of the highest-grossing French films of all time, which in turn was inspired by a documentary about a real wealthy man who is quadriplegic and bonded with a caretaker of African descent with a troubled past.
It's been "Hollywooded up" to the nth degree, filled with easy emotional entry points and cathartic moments you can almost time with a stopwatch.
And yet, doggone it, I couldn't help being engrossed by the story.
It stars two accomplished funnymen, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston, who are at different stages of seguing into more dramatic material. Cranston was known -- and dismissed -- for years as "the dad from 'Malcolm in the Middle' before going dark in "Breaking Bad." After a recent Oscar nomination, he's now pretty much universally regarded as a serious actor.
Hart is just taking his first steps along such a path, but I like his stride so far. I wonder if he would ever completely leave behind his stand-up comedian roots in the way that, say, Robin Williams did. I tend to doubt it. But I liked watching him stretch for something more than a laugh.
Hart plays Dell Scott, who's been in and out of prison most of his life. He's currently half-heartedly looking for a job. Asked at a burger joint what his greatest accomplishment is, he says getting out of bed this morning. He's more interested in collecting signatures to prove to his parole officer that he made an effort than actually securing employment.
He wanders into a swanky apartment building after a janitor job and winds up in the penthouse, where billionaire investment expert/author Phillip Lacasse (Cranston) and his right-hand executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman), are interviewing candidates to be his "life auxiliary." This is fancy rich-people talk for a 24/7 caretaker, who will do everything from dress, bathe and feed Phillip to being his companion when he goes out in public in his high-end electric chair.
Phillip became a quadriplegic years earlier in a parasailing accident -- if ever there was a quintessentially wealthy person's endeavor, it's parasailing -- and lost his wife to cancer around the same time. Although he has an incredible penthouse, a best-selling book ("The Lateral Way"), a garage full of fancy cars and every wall has expensive art on it, Phillip doesn't have much zest for living anymore.
He impulsively hires the puckish Dell because he's the worst person for the job, and Phillip is looking to die. He instructs Dell about his DNR, immediately followed by explaining what a DNR is.
Dell is an interesting character. He's a guy who has never had much demanded out of him in life, and has fallen down to people's expectations. He's estranged from his son, Anthony (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), and ex-wife, Latrice (Aja Naomi King). Kicked out of his pad and way behind in child custody payments, he steals a book from Phillip's library to give to his son for his birthday.
"Which one?" Anthony demands, knowing that his father probably isn't even aware when it is.
Things go from there. Phillip and Dell slowly form a bond based on harsh truth-telling, which goes both ways. Phillip introduces him to opera and Dell helps him get funky. Yvonne is the hardcase looking for any excuse to fire Dell, but gradually warms up.
There's an implication of a potential romance between Yvonne and Phillip, which they both strenuously deny. The movie, directed by Neil Burger from a screenplay by Jon Hartmere, toys around with the idea without ever giving it a complete workout. I'd like to think they could share a deep and abiding friendship without there having to be romantic entanglements involved.
Meanwhile, Phillip does have a female pen pal he corresponds with, exchanging lovely poetry and sentiments. Phillip dubs it an "epistolary relationship," which is how smart, rich people pronounce "pen pal." Dell encourages him to take the friendship to a new level, but he worries that she'll be put off by "the chair," as he calls it.
Being a famous mega-wealthy billionaire is kind of a hard thing to hide from Google, which Dell is quick to point out. If it's possible to really like a movie without necessarily respecting it, then "The Upside" is it. I recognize its shortcomings and lack of higher ambitions. But Cranston, Hart and Kidman are marvelous together. There's genuine chemistry and, eventually, affection between them. I think of the scene where Phillip has been persuaded to attend his own birthday party, and Dell coaxes the wallflower Yvonne to dance.
The look on Phillip's face as she comes out of her shell is one of pure joy. Rather than lamenting his inability to join in (other than a little melodic wheeling), he's filled with happiness for her chance to express herself in a way normally denied her. It's hard to be happy for yourself if you can't be happy for others. Even a modestly agreeable flick like "The Upside" understands this.
An animated film that is most definitely not for children, “Isle of Dogs” is the second foray into stop-motion animation by writer/director Wes Anderson. I run hot and cold on Anderson’s filmography -- adore “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel;” would require a lobotomy to get me to watch “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” again -- so I’m happy to report I’m pretty warm on this one.
It’s a Japanese-themed story set a couple of decades in the future, when the Prefecture of Kobayashi has banished all dogs to the island where they dump their trash, which is soon renamed for its canine inhabitants. It turns out there was an epidemic of deadly flu attributed to the dogs some years back.
But one boy, Atari (Koyu Rankin), who is the nephew of the evil mayor, resolves to undertake a rescue mission to retrieve his beloved pooch. He crash-lands on the island and is helped by a pack of mutts, led by Rex (Edward Norton) and also including Chief (Bryan Cranston), a grizzled fighter.
Meanwhile, back on the mainland an American exchange student (Greta Gerwig) is leading a rebellion of sorts against the mayor and the scientists he keeps under his thumb.
I should mention that the humans mostly speak Japanese, and no subtitles are provided. The dogs do speak in English, voiced mainly by American and British actors, which we are to understand is translated from bark.
It’s a weird, often wonderful movie that has no real point of comparison. You can’t point to another film and say, “It’s kinda like that.” “Isle of Dogs” isn’t for everyone, but for anyone who appreciates a bold splash of imagination, it’s the cat’s meow.
Bonus features are decent. There is a gallery of images from production and six making of featurettes: “Animators,” “Isle of Dogs Cast Interviews,” “Puppets,” “An Ode to Dogs,” “Magasaki City and Trash Island” and “Weather and Elements.”
Watching trailers for “Isle of Dogs,” I didn’t quite know what to make of it. Now I’ve seen it… and I still don’t quite know what to make of it.
This weird, whimsical and often wonderful concoction from writer/director Wes Anderson is his second step into stop-motion animation after “Fantastic Mr. Fox” from 2009. A critical success but commercial flop, it intertwined Anderson’s sardonic, twee sensibilities with bright visuals and cuddly critters.
Having adored “Fox,” I had high hopes for “Dogs.” But it soon became clear after the opening minutes that we were in store for something decidedly different. Not awful, just… different.
Set against a Japanese backdrop in the fictional Prefecture of Kobayashi 20 years into the future, it’s about a city that has banished all its dogs to the distant island where they dump their trash. A 12-year-old, Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin), undertakes to rescue his beloved pet, Spots, instead falls in with a distaff crew of mutts, which sets off a whirlwind of adventure and political intrigue with Atari’s uncle, the mayor (Kunichi Nomura), as their nemesis.
(After his parents were killed, Atari was taken in by his “distant” uncle, one of the film’s running jokes.)
The canines all speak English (as translated from bark, an introductory scroll informs us) while the humans largely speak Japanese, usually without the benefit of subtitles or translation. So the proceedings often have a kabuki theater feel to them, aided by the percussion-heavy musical score by Alexandre Desplat, which employs traditional Japanese drums.
The dogs are all voiced by recognizable American actors, many of them Anderson favorites: Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, F. Murray Abraham, Harvey Keitel, Frances McDormand. Newbies to the Anderson troupe include Greta Gerwig, Bryan Cranston and Yoko Ono… yes, that Yoko.
The story starts out pretty simple, but grows increasingly complex. Atari crash-lands on the Isle of Trash (now renamed the Isle of Dogs), getting a propeller clutch stuck in his brain for his trouble. He’s taken in by a troupe of mutts, ostensibly led by Rex (Norton), though all critical decisions are put to a vote. They’re all former pets, except for Chief (Cranston), a mighty fighter with a surly attitude, especially toward humans.
“I bite,” he often growls.
They determine to help Atari find his long-lost pet, and set off to discover the unexplored mysteries of the island. Meanwhile, back on the mainland the mayor is accused by his scientist rival of various evil machinations, including manufacturing the “dog flu” and “snout fever” that served as the pretext to banish all the pooches in the first place. Tracy Walker (Gerwig), an exchange student from Ohio, rallies the student newspaper to take up the cause.
“Isle of Dogs” is an absolute visual marvel. Occasionally I even found myself so ensorcelled by the look of the film that I realized I hadn’t been following the dialogue so closely. The dogs and humans are simultaneously hyper-realistic and cartoony, with big, wet eyes that seem to stare into souls. I loved all the little old-timey animation flicks, like masses of string used to simulate smoke, or the way the dogs’ fur sways with just enough movement to make it believable.
Warning: This is definitely not a flick for kiddies. It carries a PG-13 rating, mostly for gross and/or graphic imagery of dogs eating or fighting. Some of the canines used to be the subject of gruesome scientific experiments, and there’s some stark imagery of them with missing limbs or eyes.
I enjoyed “Isle of Dogs,” as one of the most inventive and offbeat movie-going experiences I’ve had in a while. It’s nice to encounter a film so different there’s nothing to compare it to. If I have a substantial criticism, it’s that the movie could have benefitted from a pared-down storyline and cast -- too many extraneous humans in tale that’s all for the dogs.
Despite boasting some big names, “Last Flag Flying” hasn’t made any kind of impact during the awards cycle, and quickly disappeared from theaters after a holiday release. That’s a pity. It may not be the best film by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the script with Darryl Ponicsan, based upon his book. But it’s a worthy look at men weighing their lives, recalling their misspent days of youth while sitting upon the precipice of old age.
Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston play Vietnam veterans who reunite in 2003 to bury the son of one of them after he died in the Iraq war. They haven’t kept in touch in the intervening years, so they’re getting together again for the first time in three decades.
They have undergone changes, of course, and the spaces between them have grown larger. The one who seems the most different from his past is Richard Mueller (Fishburne), who was a rampaging he-man nicknamed “the Mauler” back in the day, and now is a dignified country preacher. Though we soon learn he still has some bite left.
On the flip side, Sal (Cranston) is still the caustic, hard-drinking, hard-partying womanizer he was back in the day. He’s just exchanged his battlefield habitat for the bar scene. He keeps things moving with his constant observations and confrontational quips, mostly directed at Mueller.
Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Carell) was the young, quiet kid in Vietnam, and he’s grown up into a quiet, seemingly meek man. There was some bad business that left Doc in the Navy brig for a couple years, a hazy matter in which they were all complicit but for which he took the fall.
Out of a sense of guilt over the past misdeed, Sal and Richard agree to accompany Doc on his mission to bury his son. The movie becomes a physical and existential journey as they travel by car, train and bus to see this last bit of military service done. This is very much Linklater’s version of “The Last Detail.”
“Last Flag Flying” has a caustic political bent, but in the end, it’s more about these specific men than a broader indictment of war or “the system.” I, for one, enjoyed spending time with them and hearing their stories.
Bonus features are a mite slim. There’s a making-of documentary short, a featurette on Veterans Day, outtakes and deleted scenes.
I am a virgin to “The Room,” at least the movie from end to end, though it exists as such a monumental cultural touchstone now that it’s impossible to be totally ignorant of its sideways charms.
Often called “the Citizen Kane of bad movies,” it has gone on to become a cult hit for its atrocious acting and nonsensical plot, with people packing midnight screenings to howl in laughter and shout out the dialogue in unison with the film, the same way their parents did for “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Google it and you’ll find a multitude of gifs and memes, often centered around writer/director/producer/star Tommy Wiseau’s hilariously inept line delivery (“You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!”), vague Eurotrash accent and odd looks -- like an ‘80s hair band singer unaware of the passage of time and the fading of fame.
Showbiz people have long been fascinated by “The Room” and Wiseau, and indeed “The Disaster Artist” begins with a montage of (mostly) recognizable celebrities talking about how gobsmacked they were by the film. Director and star James Franco, along with screenwriters Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter, have clearly created their movie as combination homage to/mockery of Wiseau.
He may have been a ridiculously inept filmmaker, but nobody can deny the man his commitment and passion, reportedly sinking $6 million of his own money into the project. No dummy, Wiseau has spent the years since “The Room” came out proclaiming that he meant it to be a comedy all along.
James Franco nails Wiseau’s Schwarzenegger-meets-Phonics speech patterns and odd affectations, and we get a great deal of amusement out of him and the film. I’m not sure if the movie ever truly gets us deep inside his head and reveals what makes him tick. As the closing scroll reminds us, to this day nobody is exactly certain of where Wiseau is from, how he got his fortune or even his real age.
Tommy befriends a wannabe teen actor, Greg Sestero, played by Franco’s real-life brother, Dave. Together they move to Los Angeles to be struggling young actors… although they don’t really struggle too much, as Tommy drives a white Mercedes and already had an apartment in L.A. in addition to the one in San Francisco. He resists any questions about his background, claiming to be from New Orleans, or the source of his prodigious wealth.
Greg is tickled to have someone supporting him financially and emotionally, and the pair set about the usual round of auditions and agency interviews, with hilariously predictable results.
At an acting class, Tommy is distraught when the teacher tells him he’s a natural screen villain, refusing to be laughed at or placed in a box. To buck him up, Greg says he should make his own movie, and we’re off to the races.
Tommy cranks out a script, drops a load of cash on a fourth-rate movie studio and hires a bunch of film veterans before they’ve barely finished their introduction. Seth Rogen gets in a lot of comic digs as the script supervisor who often acts as the de facto director, as Tommy’s on-set antics and abuse continue to spiral as the shoot goes along.
June Diane Raphael, Ari Graynor, Josh Hutcherson and Jacki Weaver play members of the cast, actors who desperately want a paying gig on a feature film but soon recognize they’ve signed up for a one-man disaster parade. They’re the real unsung heroes of “The Room.”
The primary dynamic of the movie is the relationship between Tommy and Greg, who gets cast as the second lead in “The Room.” Greg gradually begins to realize he must separate himself from Tommy’s chaotic influence, helped by the urging of his new girlfriend (Alison Brie). The Franco brothers play off each other very nicely, keeping things comedic without tipping over into daffy.
Bad movies are not exactly a novel concept for good filmmakers. Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood” lampooned a man far weirder than Wiseau. “Troll 2” might argue about which film truly deserves the crown of “Best Worst Movie,” as it also had a documentary made about it that used that title.
“The Disaster Artist” is a very fun and entertaining film that amuses and informs, without every truly getting below the surface of these characters. Purely on amusement factors, I give it Hi Marks.
Just a short review today, as I'm in the midst of the holiday/awards season rush and watching movies at a brisk pace.
"Last Flag Flying" is pretty much writer/director Richard Linklater's attempt to do his version of "The Last Detail," the seminal 1973 film that helped launch Jack Nicholson's career about a pair of soldiers taking a comrade to military prison. It's a physical and metaphysical journey. Though instead of young bucks, we follow a trio of former Marines 30+ years after they served in Vietnam.
Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston all give very naturalist, lived-in performances as once-close buddies who have gone their separate ways. Larry "Doc" Shepherd (Carell) was the youngest of the bunch (he technically served in the Navy) and the meekest, and still is. Richard Mueller (Fishburne), once known as "the Mauler" for his outrageous behavior, has become an easygoing reverend with a bum leg. Sal (Cranson) is the least changed of the bunch, a party animal and womanizer who is constantly cracking jokes and drinking.
The reason for their ad-hoc reunion is tragic: Doc's only child has died while serving with the Marines in Iraq, and he wants his old buddies with him to pick up the body and bury him. The story is set in 2003, and there is a caustic political tinge that marries the two wars -- how the government uses its fighting men poorly, then lies to their families about the true nature of their mission and their deaths. Darryl Ponicsan, upon whose book the movie is based, co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater.
The movie is essentially one freewheeling two-hour-long conversation, as the men make their way by car, train and bus on a circuitous trip to and from the military base. They talk about their lives, their marriages and relationships, their disappointments. Old memories are shared with warmth and laughter, like good scotch swirled in a favorite tumbler.
Much is spoken, but much is also left unsaid. There was a terrible event that occurred during their service, which resulted in another Marine dying and Doc serving time in the military brig for two years. The details are left hazy.
Cranston has a lot of fun with his part, the extroverted loudmouth who spends much of the early going trying to get a rise out of the good reverend. (He does.) He leans a little too heavily on a stumblebum accent replete with "deez" and "doze."
Carell is the polar opposite, quiet and polite, though he shows some determination with regards to the disposition of his son's resting place. Fishburne is charismatic and centered, and the film lets him talk about his faith without the usual winking or mockery.
J. Quinton Johnson plays Washington, a young Marine who served with Doc's kid and ends up accompanying them on part of their trip. Yul Vazquez plays the colonel in charge of the grieving detail, whose politeness masks other impulses.
"Last Flag Flying" was touted as a contender for the awards season, and while I liked it quite a bit I don't see it as being in that stratosphere. It's a sad, funny portrait of soldiers still coming to terms with who they were as youngsters, and the old men they are slowly becoming. It's intimate, insightful and never hits a false note.
I was not a fan of “Kung Fu Panda 2.” It seemed like an indulgent sequel made for the sake of having a sequel (not to mention critic-proof box office $$$). I enjoyed being able to brag that I’d never walked out of a movie or fallen asleep during one; after “Panda 2,” I could no longer assert the latter.
So I’m happy to report “Kung Fu Panda 3” is a return to joyous form. Perhaps because it’s been nearly five years since the last one, the filmmakers took a little time to figure out what they wanted to do on a third go-round. Here Po (Jack Black), the tubby bear who became the unlikely choice to hold the mantle of the mighty and beneficent Dragon Warrior, gets to rediscover his roots and find his true inner panda.
If you’ll recall (I didn’t), at the end of “2” we see an older panda in a remote mountain village having a transcendent moment: “My son is alive!” Now the old man turns up in Po’s village looking for him, voiced agreeably by Bryan Cranston. Of course, because these movies are comedies first, the two don’t recognize each other -- despite being the only pandas around.
Needless to say, the reunion gets happier from there. Though not for Po’s goose adoptive dad (emotively voiced by James Hong), who feels threatened by a competing paternal figure. Especially when Po decamps to the hidden panda village to learn the secret of controlling his ch’i.
That’s the Chinese word for the energy source for all living things, which according to legend the pandas used to heal the sick and wounded -- in between downing mountains of food. (Think “The Force,” but with dumplings.)
They need a master of ch’i because there’s a new baddie on the horizon: Kai, a power-mad bull who was banished to the spirit realm 500 years ago by Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), the turtle kung fu master who first anointed Po. Snortingly voiced by J.K. Simmons, Kai has found a way back to the mortal world by stealing the ch’i of Oogway and the other masters.
Other familiar characters return, notably the Ferocious Five (now simply called The Five): stern Tigress (Angelina Jolie), wisecracking Mantis (Seth Rogen), as well as Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan) and Crane (David Cross), whose personalities sort of get pushed to the sides. Wise-but-crotchety Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and his pupils try to make a stand against Kai, but like the others get their spirit absorbed by him and turned into jade zombies, which Po quickly dubs “jombies.”
Directed by Jennifer Yuh and Alessandro Carloni from a screenplay by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger – who have been script men for all three films -- “Kung Fu Panda 3” has the same nice mix of martial arts action, humor and tugging emotions as the first movie.
For instance, one of the running jokes is that Kai announces himself wherever he goes as this infamous world-conquering destroyer, but nobody’s ever heard of him. And, of course, there are plenty of bits about Po’s fellow pandas being self-indulgent feasters and slackers -- they prefer rolling down hills to walking.
When Po sees even the little pandas putting away the grub he quips, “I’ve always felt like I wasn’t eating up to my full potential.”
This is one of those animated flicks intended for kids but with enough cleverness and little flourishes to keep the adults fully engaged, too.
It’s only been four months since the (latest) remake of “Godzilla” hit theaters, but already the movie has recessed into the dim fog of memory one keeps for so-so flicks.
This was one-half of a terrific summer action movie. Once big G finally arises from the ocean and starts laying the smackdown on his equally huge bat-like foes, “Godzilla” is as fun and entertaining a film as we saw all season. But you have to wade through the dreary first 60 minutes to get to the good 60.
Bryan Cranston plays a scientist whose life was turned upside by a deadly seismic event 15 years ago. Now he’s a loony loner spouting conspiracy theories, and is estranged from his son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a resolute soldier. But when monsters start wreaking havoc on cities in Japan, Hawaii and San Francisco, they put aside their differences to answer the call.
The middle section is truly stultifying, as talking-head generals and politicians debate the scientific and geopolitical repercussions of skyscraper-sized beasties doing a WWE imitation on their population centers.
Eventually “Godzilla” finds a sense of fun, but you may not find the wait worth it.
I would never advise people to buy a ticket to a movie but not walk in until the halfway point. But on video… well, let’s just say that if, during the early going, your finger gets a little jittery hovering over the Chapter Skip button of your remote control, I won’t judge.
The video comes equipped with a nice host of extras, divided into two sections. “The Legendary Godzilla” looks at all aspects of the production, from special effects to casting the actors, and creating the look of the M.U.T.O.s, Godzilla’s ancient enemies.
“MONARCH: Declassified” is supposedly a host of “evidence” showing how the governments of the world hid knowledge of Godzilla’s existence for decades. Fun, quirky stuff.
Features are the same for the DVD and Blu-ray combo pack versions.
"Godzilla" takes its sweet own time about getting to the Big G himself -- exactly halfway through the movie, to be exact. Though it's a bit of a slog reaching that point, from there to the end is exactly the big, loud summer thrill ride you've been expecting.
After starring in many low-grade Japanese films back in the day and a few half-hearted modern revival attempts, the radiation-feeding dinosaur is back after a lengthy hiatus. Instead of just being the heavy who smashes buildings and sends humans screaming, he also gets to fight against some other critters in his own considerable weight class.
Godzilla looks as nasty as ever, re-imagined with huge spikes on his back that resemble an outcropping of moving hills when he's swimming half-submerged in the ocean. He's got that big blunt head, the fire/energy breath, and that roar that sounds like a cross between an elephant and an air horn.
(He's also appearing a might chunky through the hips, though whether that's from age or artistic license is a matter for debate.)
Director Gareth Edwards helms just his second feature film; 2010's low-budget "Monsters" was essentially training ground for this flick. The story is told (screenplay by Max Borenstein) through the eyes of the humans, as they watch Godzilla and some vaguely bat-like foes battle it out through Japan, Hawaii and San Francisco.
This is a shame because, well, the people aren't nearly as interesting as the monsters.
It starts out OK, with Bryan Cranston playing a scientist who was at the helm when mysterious seismic activity destroyed the nuclear plant where he worked, claiming the life of his wife (Juliette Binoche) in the process. Flash forward 15 years, and now he's a lonely kook with some crazy theories about what caused the disaster.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson -- one of the few Brit actors who can do a convincing American accent -- plays his son Ford, now a Navy bomb expert with a wife and kid of his own. She (Elizabeth Olsen) plays a nurse because, have you noticed in big disaster movies the hero always makes desperate phone calls to check on his family, and the wife is always a nurse or doctor, thus requiring her to be at the center of the danger?
Ford bounces around from one action set piece to another, following the monsters and their wake of destruction. My favorite was a disturbingly quiet encounter across a long train bridge, with a bunch of soldiers trying to sneak across.
The plot is some ridiculous contraption about luring the monsters to the middle of the ocean with radioactive material, which for some reason involves transporting nuclear missiles from Nevada to the coast, instead of just unloading some from a submarine or what have you.
The second act is a chore to get through, with a bunch of scientists and soldiers (Ken Watanabe and David Strathairn among them) spouting gibberish about the origins and intentions of Godzilla. We learn that all those nuclear bombs the Americans and Russians set off in the oceans during the 1950s were not tests, but attempts to off him.
Once the title fight finally begins, though, it's off to the races.
This isn't a bad film, but it could have been a much better one. I don't know why all our new superhero and monster movies have to take themselves so darn seriously. This type of filmmaking is all about having fun, which "Godzilla" gets around to, eventually.
Television is in a really good place right now, with many people thinking the “small screen” offers more serious, ambitious content than do movie theaters. That’s true only if everything on TV were as good as “Breaking Bad.”
The reality is you don’t see a whole lot of truly awful movies these days, the harsh studio system weeding out anything not guaranteed to carry at least some audience appeal. Whereas television is best seen as an island of coal with a few diamonds peeking out here and there.
(Consider: for many years, “Two and a Half Men” was the top-rated comedy.)
The brainchild of Vince Gilligan is the ultimate gone-bad story. Over the course of five seasons (with the last actually split into two eight-episode runs), average milquetoast high chemistry teacher Walter White turns into the biggest methamphetamine dealer in the U.S.
Splendidly acted by Bryan Cranston -- who will eventually need a wheelbarrow for all his Emmy Awards -- the show was a prime example of a convoluted but intricately plotted story that could only be done in the “long form” of a TV series.
As one of the many people who caught up with the show by streaming it on Netflix, I will commit an act of heresy by saying that “Breaking Bad” probably is better experienced in languid regular stops than a massive binge. When you undertake the latter, certain defects in the plotting become apparent, such as an overreliance on happenstance and character behavior that varies with the needs of the storyline.
(Such as: Walter’s D.E.A. officer brother-in-law, Hank, failing to notice any of the 250-plus clues of erratic behavior by his wife’s sister’s husband.)
Still, a few weaknesses aside this was a truly audacious show, wildly ambitious and nearly always worthy of the high praise heaped upon it. With its heavy doses of symbolism, trademark innovative camera work and host of plot twists, “Breaking Bad” was television doing what TV does best.
Now you can own the entire 62-episode journey for yourself. “Breaking Bad: The Complete Series” features the entire show in a 16-disc set that includes nearly 50 hours of commercial-free episodes, plus 55 hours of bonus material. Or, if you prefer, just “Breaking Bad: The Final Season.”
Among the many video goodies is “No Half Measures,” a two-hour documentary on the making of the final eight episodes. There are also personal reflections by the cast and crew, profiles of fan favorites like slimy attorney Saul Goodman, storyboard comparisons, season retrospectives and much more.
"Argo" is not a deep movie, but it is an extraordinarily well-crafted one. It's a political thriller in which we go in knowing the outcome, but the film continually surprises us and keeps us dancing on a razor's edge of suspense.
After "Gone Baby Gone," "The Town" and this film, director/star Ben Affleck has established himself as a serious artist behind the camera -- a weighty counterpart to the flighty star-making roles of his youth and tabloid twisting of his personal life. His direction is subtle yet impactful, touching the audience's emotions without seeming like he's trying to wow us.
Everyone knows the story of the 1979 uprising in Iran that deposed the U.S.-installed despotic shah in favor of a Muslim theocracy. The American embassy was overrun and dozens of diplomats held hostage for 444 days, being released on the day of the inauguration of Ronald Reagan (whom the Iranians feared would turn their country into a parking lot).
A largely forgotten footnote is that a half-dozen diplomats escaped the embassy and hid out in the home of the Canadian ambassador. They were smuggled out in January 1980 by the CIA, which concocted a convoluted and seemingly ludicrous cover story.
To wit: the American spies faked the commissioning of a science fiction adventure movie titled "Argo" -- such cheap knockoffs of "Star Wars" were not uncommon in those days -- even going so far as to option an existing screenplay, hire some veteran Hollywood figures as faux producers and stage a media event to announce their plan to shoot in Iran.
Then Tony Mendez (Affleck), the agency's top "exfil" man, would fly into Tehran, meet with the Iranian culture ministers, and fly out with the ambassador's "houseguests" posing as a Canadian film crew.
Even Mendez himself, a laconic sort not given to hyperbole or excessive speech, acknowledges that it's a long shot. But it beats the other plans on the table: having the diplomats ride bicycles 300 miles to the border, or pose as agricultural officials come to help the local farmers grow crops -- in the dead of winter.
"This is the best bad idea we have," Mendez' boss (Bryan Cranston) announces to the top brass.
The story segues into a fun 'n' games section, where John Goodman and Alan Arkin play showbiz old-timers who are just cynical enough about moviemaking to sign on. Goodman's character, John Chambers, was a real Oscar-winning makeup artist -- he did Spock's ears on "Star Trek" and the gorilla masks on "Planet of the Apes" -- who also helped out the CIA from time to time by disguising spies.
Arkin's character is a composite, but he gets some of the movie's best lines. "John Wayne's in the ground six months, and this is what's left of America," he snorts while watching TV footage of the American hostages.
Screenwriter Chris Terrio, adapting Mendez' book about the operation, shuttles back and forth between the action taking place in Tehran, Washington D.C. and Hollywood, building tension block by block. Especially effective is the cross-cutting between two press conferences, one in which the producers announce the production of "Argo" and the other where the revolutionaries spew vitriol, labeling all of the diplomatic staffers spies. (In fact, only three were.)
Also compelling is the painstaking reconstruction of secret documents that were shredded in the moments before the embassy fell, which are stitched together piece by piece by a small army of Iranian children and female weavers. We watch as these papers, including photographs of the missing diplomats, are slowly reconstituted, and it serves as the sands of an hourglass counting down the time they have left before discovery.
"Argo" is visually arresting, both for cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's washed-out colors and the grooming styles of the Americans. It's a litany of Cheetos mustaches, huge owlish eyeglasses and bowl haircuts that would seem like exaggeration -- until we see photos of the actual people during the end credits and discover the resemblance is spot-on.
Everything in "Argo" fits together with clockwork precision; there is not a second of flab in its two-hour running time. The award season's first lock for a Best Picture Oscar nomination has announced itself.
I didn't think it was possible, but they've actually done a remake of "Total Recall" that is a less contemplative movie than the 1990 one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This is not an insult.
This redo starring Colin Farrell is a slick and expensive-looking chase movie that never really lets up. It doesn't amount to anything more than one big long chase, so if you're looking for freaky-deaky ruminations about the metaphysics of implanted memories, you'd best move along.
But the actions scenes are crisply staged, Kate Beckinsale makes for one of the best female cinematic villains we've seen in a while, and the visual backdrop of the cramped, dystopian future is pretty ambitious -- even if director Len Wiseman did crib at least 75 percent of it from "Blade Runner."
The new "Recall"and the old are both based on Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," with both movies taking extreme liberties with that short story. Dick was a fecund talent who wrote about the intersection of technology and alienation, and his characters fretted constantly about whether their own thoughts were falsified or compromised by scientific "progress."
The first movie version, directed by Paul Verhoeven, was horrifically violent R-rated action/adventure built around the star persona of Schwarzenegger. The Austrian ironman had done a couple of comedies by then poking fun at (or making use of) his mechanical acting abilities and warped pronunciations, and that smirky tilt got folded into the mix. The film generated several of the most memorable "Arnie-isms" -- "See you at the party, Richter!" and "Consider that a divorce" being the most often quoted.
The remake diverges in many ways from the 1990 version -- no doubt you've heard about the most noticeable way, in that the action never takes our hero to the planet of Mars, his lifelong wish. But Wiseman and screenwriters Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback take pains to offer up several visual and dialogue cues as a nod to the first film.
The infamous three-breasted prostitute is here, and a certain big-boned woman with red hair is conspicuous at a security checkpoint. (I remember how strange and unlikely that idea seemed two decades ago -- being scanned and prodded and questioned, just to travel from point A to B. Now we accept it as a matter of course.)
Farrell also utters another Arnie line verbatim -- "If I'm not me, then who the hell am I?"
The basic setup is the same. Doug Quaid is a shmo blue-collar worker who dreams of traveling to Mars, but lacks the dough. He goes to a dream factory to have some memories of adventures as a secret agent implanted -- but something goes awry when their scans reveal he actually is a secret agent. Doug takes out an entire squad of police, then returns home to find his loving wife Lori (Beckinsale) is a plant tasked with watching over him.
Doug killed Lori in the first movie pretty quickly, but here she's turned into his tireless nemesis. Despite her willowy physique, Beckinsale is convincing as an acrobatic ass-kicker, and the relentless nature of her pursuit gives her an almost supernatural aura.
Instead of mutants on Mars, Doug fights for the rebels in The Colony -- once the nation of Australia but now once again a vassal of the English empire, reborn as the United Federation of Brittania. Most of the world is a toxic wasteland, the Brits need some elbow room, and the Colony has it.
Perhaps the most amazing feature of this world is The Fall, the only mode of transport between Europe and Australia. It's a massive elevator that passes right through the core of the Earth, with the gravity reversing itself halfway through. The first time we see this, we know it will be a plot point later on.
Also cool are the synthetic policemen, who sort of resemble Robocop if he'd become a dancer in "The Black Swan" and gone on a starvation diet. There's some subplot about a "kill code" that will instantly shut down all the robots at once, but we're not sure if that's a ruse or a part of Doug's false memories.
Jessica Biel plays Melina, a rebel girl who has a thing for Doug. Her character doesn't make as much of an impact as Beckinsale, but it does give an excuse for several girl-on-girl fight scenes, which the filmmakers happily obliging.
Bryan Cranston plays the head poo-bah of the Federation, and he cackles and snarls and taunts with obvious relish. This is the second movie this summer in which Cranston, who's become something of an acting demigod for his work on that TV show "Breaking Bad," plays a tawdry villain, and both are pretty one-note performances with a heavy pinch of schmaltz. Someone, please find this man better film roles, now!
Bill Nighy appears as the head of the resistance, and I'll save you the trouble of wondering by stating that he does not emerge from some other guy's potbelly.
The violence in this "Total Recall" is rather aesthetically pure in a decidedly PG-13-rated way. Both Farrell and Biel get kicked and punched in the face so much their heads should've swelled up to the size of watermelons, but instead they get a bunch of small facial cuts that bleed profusely and then disappear two scenes later. (Except for one on Doug's right ear that appears to be "sticky.")
Is this "Total Recall" decidedly better or worse than the other one? Not really. And I'll cop to missing Schwarzenegger's dominating, grinning, vowel-strangling presence.
But it's a fun, fast-moving story that will entertain and occasionally amaze you. That already puts it into the "save" pile, ahead of many other movies I'd like to be able to hit a button to forget.
"Rock of Ages" is a soundtrack with a visual component tacked on. It's not so much a musical movie as music, with a movie.
Based on a Broadway show, "Rock of Ages" is virtually non-stop singing. The story is told through the lyrics and tunes of 1980s rock hits, sometimes intermixed with each other. Occasionally the characters will cease singing long enough for a few lines of dialogue -- but even then there's a beat going in the background, and you know the talkie part is just setting up the next number.
The experience of watching it is akin to listening to a runaway jukebox stuck in the 1970s and '80s, except the voices are replaced by those of actors who can't sing as well as the original artists.
Not that some of them aren't good, and occasionally really good. Among the latter is Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx, a wastrel rock god who's part Iggy Pop, a little bit Axl Rose and a smidge of Brett Michaels (at least the hat). Cruise's pipes are surprisingly good, doing an impressive rendition of the keening wail beloved in that era.
In fact, Cruise is the best thing in the show. It's a shrewdly comedic performance, part celebration of '80s rock excesses but with a heavily ladling of satire. One scene where he seduces a Rolling Stone reporter (Malin Akerman) is the movie's rollicking high point.
Even though it's technically a supporting part, Cruise steals every scene he's in, and whenever Jaxx disappears for too long the film deflates.
Certainly the main characters are dreary. Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta play Sherrie and Drew, youngsters who dream of making it big in the music biz, but end up working at the fictional Bourbon Room in Los Angeles. Of course, it's only a matter of time before they get to take the stage themselves.
Neither actor is a particularly adept singer, and Hough has one of those pinched little-girl voices that sounds like she's singing through a keyhole, a la Britney Spears. She even imitates Spears' colossally annoying affection of starting every stanza with a little croaky sound.
Sherrie is the prototypical small-town girl from Tulsa, living in a lonely world, and Drew is a city boy, so of course their signature song is "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey, a band that gets a heavy rotation throughout the movie. Other tunes include ones by Styx, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison and other acts Generation X-ers like myself grew up on.
I find it amusing that back in the actual '80s, these songs were disdainfully described by our elders and betters as representing the nadir of rock 'n' roll, a glammed-up shadow of the good ol' days. And now they're being held up as paragons of the genre.
I take note that in the time this story is set, 1987, the '50s were seen as the heyday. No doubt in 25 years today's Millennials will be middle-aged sell-outs looking back on the halcyon days of Lady Gaga and Kei$ha, God help us.
Alec Baldwin plays Dennis, the owner of the Bourbon, which has rock 'n' roll soaked into its timbers but is perpetually on the verge of going out of business. It's being helped in that regard by the new mayor (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who's leading a Tipper Gore-esque crusade against smutty rock 'n' roll. Of course, she does so via singing and dancing, and is ultimately and unsurprisingly revealed to be a former Stacee Jaxx groupie.
Russell Brand plays Lonny, Dennis's right-hand rocker, and they share a romantic musical interlude that manages to be funny without being homophobic. Paul Giamatti is agreeably sleazy as Jaxx's mercenary agent, who robs the Bourbon of the take from Stacee's farewell concert.
Mary J. Blige, the only real singer in the mix, has a nice turn as the manager of a strip club where Sherrie ends up during her inevitable down-and-out phase. Drew's pit of despair is much funnier, as he gets recruited into a pop boy band, complete with rainbow-colored gangsta preppy outfits.
Director Adam Shankman does much the same thing with "Rock of Ages" he did several years ago with "Hairspray," which was sort of a 1960s version of this. He supplies a lot of energy and color, but the whirlwind winds up being more exhausting than invigorating.
At 123 minutes, screenwriters Allan Loeb, Justin Theroux and Chris D'Arienzo (based on the musical book by D'Arienzo) seemed to have a hard time knowing when to quit while they were ahead. Since the story is built entirely around songs, cutting it down would've meant eliminating tunes, and one gets the sense the filmmakers spent so much energy getting the rights to the songs they couldn't bring themselves to lop a couple out.
"Rock of Ages" has a few genuine thrills, most of them centering around Cruise's fun, freewheeling turn as Stacee Jaxx. Most of the time, though, it feels like an iPod stuck in shuffle mode.
I have not been a fan of the "Madagascar" animated films, but the third one won me over. Perhaps it's a result of my becoming a parent, but I see now how the franchise's combination of kid-friendly boingy action, annoyingly catchy musical numbers and cutesy, simplistic life lessons is never dull to the kindergarten-and-down crowd.
After the packed screening I attended, literally dozens of tots were shaking their booties in the aisles as they imitated the tunes, especially a particularly egregious ditty called "Afro Circus," written and sung by Chris Rock. It consists of just those two words with a few "polka dot" throw-ins, but apparently to wee ones this is sublime comedic styling.
By all rights we should judge our entertainment by a higher standard than just keeping our offspring distracted for an hour and a half. But that's the yardstick by which "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" operates, and judged in those terms it's slickly effective.
As the story opens, the gang from the zoo finds themselves stuck in Africa, wanting to get back to their home in New York City. Their friends the penguins, who talk like spies out of the "Mad Men" era, have ditched them to play high rollers at the casinos in Monte Carlo, so that's where they follow.
The group dynamic remains virtually unchanged since the birth of the franchise. Alex the lion (Ben Stiller) is the ostensible leader, who puts on a brave face but has a neurotic craving for attention. His best bud Marty the zebra (Rock) is the goofy sidekick who sometimes yearns to be leader of the pack. Hypochondriac giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer) and groovy hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) have hooked up into an interspecies couple, the sheer mechanics of which beggars the imagination.
While in Monte Carlo they run afoul of Captain Chantel DuBois, head of the animal control unit. Voiced by Frances McDormand, DuBois makes for a dastardly Ahab-like villain who chases the gang all over the globe, jurisdiction be danged. With her hook-sharp nose, roomy hips and squared shoulders, DuBois is a formidable enemy.
Alex and the gang end up hiding out with the Circus Zaragoza, a motley collection of animals whose act has grown stale. Passing themselves off as fellow circus critters, the four friends resolve to add some Cirque du Soleil extravagance into the drab proceedings.
The new partners include Stefano, an exuberantly Italian sea lion (Martin Short) who dreams of being considered of average intelligence; Gia (Jessica Chastain), a feline trapeze artist who rests her hopes -- and affections -- on Alex; and Vitaly (an excellent Bryan Cranston), a Russian daredevil tiger and one-time star of the show, who got burned performing his signature act.
I should also mention Julien, the lemur king voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen, who's back to sing his "move it, move it" song again and supply some mildly suggestive humor.
The computer-generated animation is a smash, particularly a couple of the big circus show numbers, which grow pleasantly psychedelic for awhile.
Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, who co-directed the first two movies, are joined by Conrad Vernon for a threesome that knows this material and its limitations, and focuses on what it can do best. Darnell also handles the screenplay, joined by indie filmmaker Noah Baumbach, best known for eclectic fare like "The Squid and the Whale" and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." (Someone need a paycheck?)
I'm not sure if I'd call "Madagascar 3" good bad movie-making, or bad good. Either way, I grudgingly admire the way it expertly achieves its own low expectations. This positive review is not so much a recommendation as a surrender.
Director Nicolas Winding Refn won the best director's trophy at last year's Cannes Film Festival for "Drive," and it's not hard to see why. It's a highly stylized take on the traditional heist movie, with a protagonist (Ryan Gosling) who is never named and barely speaks.
There is dialogue in "Drive," most notably from Albert Brooks playing a local mob kingpin whose chatty, congenial surface hides a razor-ship killer instinct.
But for the most part, this is a movie built on visuals, where long gazes and pulsing music substitute a distinct mood instead of the characters explaining to us what's happening.
The driver works as a mechanic in a broken-down car shop run by Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who's got a gimpy leg and a chip on his shoulder. Shannon sets him up doing car crashes for Hollywood movies. On his own, the driver has his own side gig: wheel man for robberies and such.
Things grow complicated with the arrival of Irene (Carey Mulligan), the new neighbor in his apartment building. She's got a young son, a husband in jail, and trouble written all over her.
For a guy whose entire existence is about carefully managing risk, having his carefully ordered world twisted inside-out plays hell on the driver. His placid demeanor begins to crack, as he finds himself thrown off his own map.
The film feels unstuck from time. Driver wears a gold scorpion jacket that could have come from the late '50s, and Brooks' character could have been a contemporary of Bugsy Siegal. The music and credit titles are out of the 1980s, and the cars range from the muscle era to contemporary.
With its sleek throwback atmosphere -- think "Miami Vice" put through a time-warp blender -- punctuated by moments of horrid violence, "Drive" is a crime drama in overdrive.
Video features are decent enough, though one feels the filmmakers never made an effort to find their high gear when it came to giving the goodies to its audience.
There are four making-of featurettes: "I Drive," "Under the Hood," "Driver and Irene" and "Cut to the Chase." There is also an interview with Refn and ... that's it.
"Drive" is a movie stuck out of time. For at least the first 30 minutes, I was convinced the story was set in the 1980s. The plethora of vintage cars, an '80s-ish soundtrack and the gold-on-white scorpion jacket worn by the main character seemed to spring forth from "Miami Vice" crossed with "Less Than Zero."
Even the titles are in neon-hued cursive.
But eventually the presence of cell phones and a late-model Mustang clue us in that the time is the present. Director Nicolas Winding Refn constructs a world in which eras meld into each other, so mobsters seemingly from the 1950s do not seem out of place.
Like "Valhalla Riding," Refn's last film, "Drive" is long on mood and sleek visuals, and the narrative seems merely a slender frame upon which to hang the director's highly stylized dressings. It's basically a tone poem set against the backdrop of a fairly standard crime-heist-gone-awry frame, punctuated by over-the-top violence that burst a carefully-cultivated bubble of serenity.
Ryan Gosling, as the never-named protagonist, utters very little dialogue. He's a mechanic who moonlights as a Hollywood stunt driver, and his other other job is wheelman for hire. He lays out his rules simply but with certainty: He will take his clients wherever they want to go and give them a five-minute window for whatever they need to do. He will carry no gun, and one tick on his watch after five minutes and he's gone.
The driver is very good behind the wheel of a car, of course, but we suspect there are others equally skilled. He also seems more than capable when a tussle is necessary, without knowing any fancy martial arts or hand-to-hand combat skills. No, the driver's main ability is to focus on whatever he's doing with a ferocious singularity, so that in that moment it is very hard for anyone to match against him.
Forty years ago, it's the sort of role Steve McQueen would've played.
Things seem to going well for the driver. He's got a good reputation on movie sets for getting the right crash shot without any wrinkles. And his boss at the garage, Shannon (Bryan Cranston), wants to set him up on the racing circuit with the backing of a benevolent local wiseguy named Bernie, played with chilling congeniality by funnyman Albert Brooks.
Then at his new apartment he bumps into neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a single mother to young Benicio (Kaden Leos). Their courtship, if you can even call it that, is a series of long glances and shy exchanges of pleasantries. Somehow, with a few slow-mo shots and evocative performances by his two stars, director Refn manages to imply a depth of feeling that isn't written down on any page.
Then Irene's husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison, setting up a series of debacles that put everything at risk.
The driver's smooth mien begins to crack, as his entire life is a series of highly calculated risks. But this new chaos is something new and troubling to him. It's something he can't control, and that unnerves him.
Hossein Amini wrote the script for "Drive," based on the book by James Sallis, unread by me. Somehow I suspect the text for this movie wouldn't have amounted to much without the sumptuous, occasionally distracting style of director Refn. It very much reminded me of the work of Michael Mann, whose visuals could overpower a bare-bones story.
(Refn won the best director award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.)
But this is the sort of film that says much more than the scant spoken words of its anti-hero. Like the scorpion totem he wears on his back, the driver cannot deny the hardened core of his nature. That allows him to accomplish things few men can, but the cost is exacted in doors that are forever closed to him.
Here's a movie for adults that's warm and enjoyable, but has brains and ambition. Because it stars two immensely likeable actors, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, you might think it's about two middle-aged people falling for each other. You'd be wrong.
Although "Larry Crowne" takes the form of a romantic comedy-drama, it is less about the intersection of these two characters than the people they discover themselves to be at this moment in their life's trajectory. Their coupling is a byproduct of their respective journeys, not the purpose behind it.
Hanks directs (and produces, and co-wrote with Nia Vardalos) with a soft touch but not a soft head. "Larry Crowne" is full of life lessons, but is clever about it, and flouts its characters' sense of shared community without going all it-takes-a-village muddle-headed.
It's like fancy French toast -- comfort food with a dollop of aspiration.
Hanks plays the title character, a fortysomething guy happily working as a low-level manager at Umart, meaning he wears a bright red T-shirt with his name on it and is called a "team leader." Unfortunately, Larry does not have a college degree -- he joined the Navy out of high school and retired after 20 years as a cook -- so his bosses decide that since he cannot advance any further, they have to let him go. The fact that Larry is a tireless worker who attacks his job with zeal does not matter. Somehow, the Umart folks think they are doing him a favor.
This may sound unbelievably absurd, but the capacity for ridiculousness of group decisions knows no bounds. I know a guy who got a job at a non-profit straight out of college, loved working there and over the course of 20 years earned his way up to the number two position. During some nasty political squabbles, the board approached him about jettisoning the executive director and moving this fellow up to the top spot. Taking a principled stand, he refused the promotion, saying it was not fair to accept a post currently occupied by someone else. After more deliberations, the board decided to keep the person they'd just been trying to give the boot, and fired him instead. The nature of the collective mind is inherently schizophrenic.
Larry takes it hard, especially when he finds the job market unwelcoming in the extreme. He's divorced but not bitter about it, and owes the bank a pocketful after buying out his ex-wife's half of the house.
So he decides to enroll at East Valley Community College. At the urging of the dean of students, who has more than a little huckster in him, Larry signs up for classes in speech, economics and composition. Master these three skills, he is told, and he can write his ticket.
The econ class is taught by a comically haughty professor (George Takei) who recites the same dry lessons year in and year out, and smiles because each student crammed into his massive classroom are required to buy his book. We never hear about the writing class, so all hope rests with the speech course.
The professor of Speech 217: The Art of Informal Remarks is one Mercedes Tainot (Roberts), who began bordering on burnout a few years ago, and is medium-crispy now. Her greatest hope is that the minimum 10 students will not show up, and she can cancel the class -- which Larry dashes by showing up late. Mercy's first instruction to her students is to care, but she obviously stopped awhile ago.
Mercy takes an anti-shine to Larry at first, thinking he's an old letch using the mid-life college shtick to hit on impressionable young things like Talia, an effervescent lass played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw in one of those performances that grab you and make you go, "More, please."
Truth is, Talia is more of a teacher to Larry than Mercy is, fixing the feng shui at his crowded home and giving his hair and clothes some zip. Mercy is perhaps biased because her husband (Bryan Cranston) really is an old letch, who gave up writing books to blog but really looks at porn all the time.
I have on occasion been accused of being too much of a literalist as a critic, and I will now demonstrate why.
Larry is very specific about being a 20-year military man, meaning he retired in his late 30s, presumably with a pension. Anyone remotely familiar with a career in the armed forces knows about the 20-years-and-out routine. Having known or read about people in this situation, and with a little research and conjecture, I determined Larry's payments from the Navy would be around 30 grand a year, plus free medical. That's not a ton, but should be enough for him to get by in the short run.
It's persnickety, I know, but I needed a line where Larry says something like, "And my Navy pension will barely cover the mortgage." Otherwise, don't introduce the 20-year thing without acknowledging the reality of it.
And on the question of Mercy's horndog husband, it is not really possible for any man to watch porn literally all day long. He could certainly see a lot of it, maybe even have a psychological addiction to it, but there would be spaces where, shall we say, his desires are at least temporarily diminished. It's just the way things work.
Things go on with Larry and Mercy, but I'll leave that for you to discover. They rotate in each others' orbits, with that gravitational pull always there but not shifting the heavens.
"Larry Crowne" is a romantic movie, but it's less about the familiar, tired tropes of cinematic love than the serendipitous passion we find in our lives when our plans end up in pieces on aisle 12.
