Video review: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"

Apparently, it takes an animated superhero to defeat Disney/Pixar.

I don’t mean to imply that the animation giant from Mouse House is deserving of villain status. Far from it. But they’ve dominated the Academy Awards category for best animated feature and short for a dozen years at least. It was time for new blood.

That’s why I think it’s great that “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” won the animated Oscar. Aside from simply being the best animated feature film of 2018, it also has a welcome theme about how anybody can find their inner superhero.

The idea is that several alternate universes collide, bringing a half-dozen or so different versions of Spider-Man into this existence. Peter Parker is still around, but as a burnt-out, middle-aged and paunchy version of himself.

The real star is Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore), an Afro-Latino teenager who finds himself manifesting the same Spidey powers. Other iterations include a couple of spider-girls, a film noir version (Nicolas Cage) and even a pig version named Spider Ham (John Mulaney).

They’re all battling Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), who’s building some kind of massive collider machine, along with a host of other reimagined Spider-Man foes: Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, etc.

Told in a cool visual style that feels like flipping through a comic book, this is one new take on a well-worn hero story that’s truly fresh.

Video bonus features are sumptuous. Aside from the lack of a filmmaker commentary audio track, it’s just about the whole hog.

“We Are Spider-Man” is a deep-dive documentary into how anyone can find the hero inside them. “Spider-Verse: A New Dimension” looks at the film’s signature visual style.

Other features focus on the voice actors cast; a tribute to Spidey creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; an Easter Egg challenge; character designs; “Alternate Universe Mode” with alternate and deleted scenes; music videos; and an all-new short, “Spider-Ham: Caught In a Ham.”

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Review: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

One thing I don’t get: why does the new Spider-Man wear sneakers? Wouldn’t that mess up his ability to stick to walls and such?

Oh, well. If that’s the worst complaint one has about “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the retconned spinoff of the Spidey franchise, they’re doing alright.

After all, this is a story that brings in a half-dozen or so Spider-people from other dimensions, all battling their common nemesis, Kingpin. One’s even a pig in a miniature version of the iconic red-and-blue outfit named Peter Porker.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about yet another version of Spider-Man, with yet another actor inhabiting the role. And an animated film would make it seem too much like a TV show, I feared.

What the filmmakers have delivered is an incredibly fast-paced movie that plays like a cinematic version of flipping through a comic book, with inset images and freeze frames intruding upon the normal imagery. It seems aimed at older kids (age 8 and up, I’d guess), though it’s an enjoyable experience the whole family can enjoy.

The notion here is that in our universe, Spider-Man/Peter Parker is killed by Kingpin (voice of Liev Schreiber) at age 26 after 10 years wearing the costume. This is witnessed by Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a gawky Afro-Latino teen who has just been bitten by a radioactive spider himself and started to exhibit the same powers.

Kingpin had been building a massive collider device to breach dimensions, and as a result of the experiment several other versions of Spider-Man are sucked into Miles’ reality. They range from the creepy to the comedic, starting with Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), the aforementioned porcine knockoff. Nicolas Cage does the voice of Spider-Man Noir, who is from the 1930s and wears a trench coat and fedora hat, and even is rendered in black-and-white.

There’s even two females: Gwen Stacy/Spider-Girl (Hailee Steinfeld), who wears a cool white costume, and Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a Japanese girl from a distant future who wasn’t actually bitten by the spider, but instead became friends and together they battle crime in a spider-robot.

The first one Miles runs into is a version of Peter Parker (Jake Johnson) who’s pretty close to the “normal” one, except life hasn’t gone so well for him. He’s about 40 years old, graying and a bit paunchy, divorced from Mary Jane and only fighting crime sporadically, mostly just handing his apartment eating pizza and feeling sorry for himself.

Miles forms a bond with this Peter, who after some kvetching is eventually persuaded to act as a sort of mentor/teacher. He helps Miles bone up on the Spidey powers, as well as discovering a couple Miles has that he doesn’t: the ability to turn invisible and emit electrical charges through his hands.

I liked the colorful, perspective-bending look of the movie, which combines elements of German Expressionism, steampunk, Japanese anime and probably a few others. The film was directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman, the latter of whom also co-wrote the script with Phil Lord (“The Lego Movie”).

For example, Kingpin is so big that his head appears on the front of his massive body, a few feet below his shoulders. Green Goblin is reimagined as a reptilian titan, and Doctor Octopus (Kathryn Hann) is a woman who sort of resembles Professor Trelawney from the Hatter Potter movies, less ditzy and more diabolical.

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” takes a Cuisinart to the hero’s mythology, cutting everything up into bits and reassembling the pieces into other configurations. It’s a lot of fun, even if I still don’t get the shoes.

Review: "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"

An interesting idea that turned into a rehashed sequel that now is a bona fide animation franchise desperately in need of a stake through its cold, black heart, “Hotel Transylvania” is the undead visitor that arrives every third year for an unwanted visit, thrilling your kids but leaving you groaning.

Or, slumbering: I fell asleep during the screening. Several times. Not for long, I think, but propriety requires that I disclose this is a review of only about 96% of the movie.

You know the setup: Dracula (voice of Adam Sandler) has traded in blood-sucking for running a posh hotel for monsters, who have come out of the darkness to live (mostly) in harmony with humans. To wit: his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) has married goofy human Jonathan (Andy Samberg) and produced a half-vampire grandson, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff).

Tagging along are buds Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi), Murray the mummy (Keegan-Michael Key), and Griffin the invisible man (David Spade).

Things are pretty hectic running a hotel and watching over a passel of monsters, who come in sorts of shapes, colors and sizes. So Mavis decides the family needs a vacation aboard the Legacy, an ocean liner catering to their kind. Stops include an underwater volcano and Atlantis, which has risen from the sea in the form of a tawdry waterlogged version of Las Vegas.

Dracula soon finds himself directing his killer gaze at Ericka (Kathryn Hahn), the human captain of the ship. He’s been a widower for more than a century, but is surprised to find he can still “zing” -- the monster term for falling instantly in love.

But Ericka has some not-nice hidden motives, which are demonstrated by suddenly scowling while her face is underlit with red light that appears from nowhere to let you know she’s thinking evil thoughts.

Mel Brooks plays Drac’s dad Vlad, an old-schooler who eventually came around on not biting people. He gets some of the film’s best laughs strutting around in a tiny bathing suit, proudly flaunting his 500-year-old body. The gaggle of witches are appreciative, though.

The heavy is Van Helsing, Dracula’s old nemesis who is still kept alive through a steampunk contraption that animates his head and hands, along with a few struggling organs in jars. He’s voiced by Jim Gaffigan, doing his best impression of Bill Hader.

There’s a lot of colors, and boingy action, and spontaneous dancing. They even revive a couple of tunes from the last movie; I guess the filmmakers didn’t want to shell out for another songwriter. There’s even a DJ contest late in the game where they dust off “Macarena” as the epitome of all that is good and positive. Well.

Kids will probably enjoy “Transylvania 3,” but for anyone over the age of 10 it’s a sack of garlic, a beam of sunshine and a wooden cross all rolled into one.

Video review: "Flower"

Erica is 17 years old and a certifiable “wild child.” Played in “Flower” with verve and confidence by Zoey Deutsch, her M.O. is to party all the time and manipulate everyone she encounters. Her favorite scam is enticing older men into sexual encounters, having her friends film it and then blackmail them by threatening to release the video.

Director Max Winkler, who co-write the script with Alex McAuley and Matt Spicer, manages to present us with some great characters, but then isn’t sure what to do with them.

Kathryn Hahn plays Erica’s mom, a bawdy woman bitter about her own misspent youth. She’s now taken up with a nice guy, Bob (Tim Heidecker), who mortifies Erica on a daily basis with his hopeless normalcy. Even worse, as the story opens his 18-year-old son, Luke (Joey Morgan), is returning home after spending time in rehab.

Relishing the chance to have a torrid liaison with her stepbrother and shock everyone, Erica is miffed when Luke turns out to be a painfully shy, overweight lad who is completely resistant to her sexual overtures. Things start out rough between them, but eventually an unexpected friendship starts to blossom.

Arriving late in the game is Adam Scott as Will, an older man (to Erica) that she and her friends play around with lusting after when they encounter him at the bowling alley. It turns out Will and Luke have an unexpected shared past, one filled with pain and misery for the both of them, which will get explored with some grim developments.

The best reason to watch this movie is to enjoy Deutsch’s performance as a young woman who has many deplorable qualities, but is one some level admirable -- or, at least, enviable -- for the way she attacks life like an opponent that must be defeated.

“Flower” is an uneven but bracing portrait of an American original.

Bonus features aren’t extensive, being limited to a feature-length commentary track featuring Winkler and Deutch. I think the best commentaries include both members of the creative team and crew, so it’s nice to see director and star collaborating.

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Review: "Flower"

Zoey Deutsch gives a colorful, vibrant and ultimately wasted performance in "Flower," a movie that keeps steering into thematic dead ends.

She plays Erica, a 17-year-old wasting her life in a nonstop party with her closest buds (Maya Eshet and Dylan Gelula) doing the usual teen stuff -- roaming malls, taking selfies, imbibing chemicals they oughtn't to. Typical acting out, you might say, except they finance their exploits by enticing men into receiving oral sex from Erica, documenting it and then blackmailing them for dough.

Erica certainly doesn't lack gumption; as the story opens, they are executing their latest scam on no less than a deputy sheriff (Eric Edelstein) in his patrol vehicle. The man's abject humiliation as he hands over the cash from the ATM and begs them not to put the video online almost makes us feel genuinely sorry for him.

Almost.

Does luring their targets into scuzzy/criminal behavior absolve Erica and company from their own scuzzy/criminal behavior? That would be an interesting subject to explore, but unfortunately director Max Winkler and his co-screenwriters, Matt Spicer and Alex McAuley, always seem to turn away from the harder questions, preferring to focus on the vagaries of Erica's moods and outbursts.

Erica and her mom (Kathryn Hahn) think they have a good relationship -- one of those "we're just two semi-crazy girls trying to get by!" kinda things. But Erica is a taker, treating every interaction as a transaction in which she must come out ahead. She's upset because mom has taken up with a monstrously "uncool" guy, Bob (Tim Heidecker), moving into their physical and emotional space.

Her own dad is currently incarcerated for some kind of casino business, and we sense she's more her father's daughter than her mother's.

Things grow worse when Bob's 18-year-old son, Luke (Joey Morgan), is released after a year in rehab. Erica, who uses her sexuality as the coin of the realm, is hoping for a hot future stepbrother she can carry on a shocking affair with. But she's miffed when Luke turns out to be timid, socially paralyzed and, worst of all, fat.

Erica's idea of comforting Luke after a panic attack is to offer -- to insist, actually -- on giving him a blowjob. When he refuses, she insults him as being either gay or under-endowed. A real winner, this one.

Part of the film's failing is never providing us a wide enough opening into Erica's vulnerabilities, assuming she has any cracks at all.

Eventually, Erica and Luke warm up to each other a bit more, and Luke opens up about his harrowing journey. I don't want to give away too much, but suffice it to say that it involves Will (Adam Scott), the "old hot guy" -- he appears to be in this 30s -- who Erica and her friends have been crushing on while hanging out at the bowling alley where he plays in a league.

At least, we think they like him. In Erica's world, where nothing is taken at face value, you can never tell if something that falls out of her mouth is meant the way it seems. Often not even by Erica herself.

Things go from there. This movie is billed as a comedy/drama, but it's neither particularly funny or momentous. Even at a brisk 93 minutes, it often drags.

I enjoyed Deutsch's energy and Morgan's genuineness. I'd love to watch their two characters in almost any other story, to see how they'd fare.

It was also a bit interesting to see Scott, who's made his career playing earnest dweebs, get a meatier role. We're never quite certain about Will, whether he's really a disturbed individual or an unfairly maligned one. Erica vacillates between trying to entrap him and being authentically attracted to him.

The final act goes on a bit of a bender, which felt more like where the screenwriters wanted to take their story rather than where it organically would go. "Flower" is a story about a wild teen sexpot blowing past boundaries -- the sort of thing an all-male creative team dreams up and then doesn't know what to do with.

Review: "Captain Fantastic"

“Captain Fantastic” is about a rebel who learns the limits of rebellion. Viggo Mortensen plays Ben Cash, who long ago gave up on Western civilization and is raising his six kids in the woods like primitive American Indians.

They grow or hunt their own food -- the opening scene is of his eldest son tackling a deer and slitting its throat, thereby marking his ascension into manhood. They keep some books and musical instruments to feed their minds and souls, and have an old tour bus for rare trips into town for mail, phone calls and to barter their handmade goods.

Otherwise, they’re doing the Thoreau thing to such an extreme even Bernie Sanders might find their liberalism in need of watering down. They celebrate Noam Chomsky’s birthday instead of Christmas, for God’s sake.

Then Ben’s wife, who has been hospitalized for some time with mental illness, dies, and he and the children undertake an adventure to attend the funeral in New Mexico and see that her last wishes are honored -- namely, cremation and flushing down the nearest toilet. Mom (Trin Miller, glimpsed only in flashbacks and visions) may have been schizophrenic and depressed, but she did not lack a sense of humor.

This means confronting modern American society, which to the kids is as alien as Jupiter, with its heffalump-sized people, violent video games and obsession with material stuff. Representing the epitome of The Man is Ben’s father-in-law (Frank Langella), a rich and connected fellow who has forbidden the motley clan from attending the burial ceremony.

The two men, representing arch extremes of the American Dream, are set up for an inevitable showdown.

If this were all there was to the movie, then I doubt I would’ve admired “Captain Fantastic” as much as I did. Sure, Mortensen has a sly, dry charisma to his performance, the kids are distinctive and authentic, and there’s plenty of comedic material in their encounters with everyday awfulness.

“What’s cola?” one munchkin asks during an impromptu (and abortive) visit to a diner. “Poison water,” Ben deadpans.

But writer/director Matt Ross -- who won the director award at the Cannes Film Festival -- takes the next, more ambitious steps. Without giving too much away, the movie shows the supremely confident Ben confronted with his own ego. He’s forced to recognize that the super-kids he’s raising are still just children, and have needs beyond the intense home-schooling and survival skills he imparts with a stern hand.

The relationship between Ben and his children is at the heart of the movie. Each child actor shines, creating a distinct personality that stands out while assimilating into the group’s commune existence.

George MacKay plays Bodevan, the eldest. (All the children have unique names, so they’re the only one of them in the world.) Though he’s smart enough to get into every Ivy League school -- applications made without his father’s knowledge -- Bo finds he knows little of the real world, especially young women.

Kielyr and Vespyr (Samantha Isler and Annalise Basso) are the red-haired voices of reason and contemplation. Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton) is the tween and resident rebel, and the most eager to leave the cloistered home. Zaja (Shree Crooks) is 8 years old but can already give an insightful overview of the Citizens United Supreme Court case. Nai (Charlie Shotwell) is the youngest and most mercurial, having to be reminded to wear clothes at meals.

(Though Dad also needs such reminders, as we see in a brief encounter with Mortensen breaking his fast.)

“Captain Fantastic” is a very entertaining film, but I was impressed by its willingness to question its own premise. Here is a family with its own very radical interpretation of independence, finding that true wisdom isn’t relegated to a single place or creed.

Video review: "Tomorrowland"

The most disappointing films are usually not aggressively bad, merely forgettable. Though it has been but four months since I saw “Tomorrowland,” I can barely recall the plot without reading my own summary of it.

With director Brad Bird at the helm -- a man whose previous worst film was merely “very good” -- and an intriguing premise, “Tomorrowland” seemed to have all the makings of a sci-fi fairy tale. But the movie gets bogged down in a convoluted plot, and even George Clooney seems grumpy and fuzzy about what’s going on.

The story centers on a bright young teen, Casey (Britt Robertson), who finds herself transported into an amazing future world whenever she touches a mysterious pin. It’s all an illusion, sort of, but leads her to the door of reclusive inventor Frank (Clooney), with the help of an enigmatic British girl (Raffey Cassidy).

Things go on from there, which are hard to describe without ruining the movie’s (attempted) allure. Suffice to say they end up on a Da Vinci Code-like ride, finding clues to the Tomorrowland in famous places. They eventually reach it, but of course there’s more to the futuristic fantasyland than meets the eye.

A well-meaning film loaded with stellar talent, “Tomorrowland” is the proverbial sleek rocket that never gets off the launch pad.

Bonus features are excellent, though you’ll have to spring for the blu-ray combo pack to get most of them. One of the neatest things is production diaries by Brad Bird. There are three, though the DVD edition only comes with one of them. It also has “Blast from the Past,” a fictional commercial for Tomorrowland.

With the Blu-ray combo pack, you get all the diaries, eight deleted scenes, four Easter eggs, three making-of featurettes, a fictional children’s show, “The World of Tomorrow Science Hour” with futurologist David Nix, and an animated short, “The Origins of Plus Ultra.”

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Review: "The Visit"

Time turns on, whether we acknowledge it or no. In my mind M. Night Shyamalan is still the young wunderkind who dazzles us with dark, artful dodges of cinematic confection, the master of mind-rocking plot twists. He feints here, we look there, he wallops us backside of the head, and we are grateful.

Of course, Shyamalan's star has been falling almost since it first shone, his punches becoming more telegraphed and his storytelling frameworks ever more rickety. Alerted to the certainty of a surprise, audiences got better at sniffing them out beforehand.

People began to greet the arrival of his films not with anticipation but a sigh of awaited disappointment. His last two forays were into big-budget science fiction, a place where he knows the words but not the music, and the results spoke for themselves.

So here we are in the second week of September, filmdom's arid purgatory, and Shyamalan is back in his familiar territory of dread-filled mysteries with a supernatural bent. The setup is that two precocious teens are meeting their grandparents for the first time, staying a week at their remote Pennsylvania farm, and the oldsters turn out to be a bit strange, and then more than a bit.

It's an intriguing premise, and the actors playing the grandparents, Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie, are sly and scary, and even silly when called for. The kids aren't bad, Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould, though memories of Haley Joel Osment leave most child actors seeming a pale gossamer.

The movie's biggest failing is falling back on the now-moldy canard of "found footage." We're expected to believe that everything in the film was shot by the characters as they experienced it. It was a groundbreaking idea in 1999 when "The Blair Witch Project" first did it, subsequently copied endlessly, with more recent iterations including the "Paranormal Activity" series and "Unfriended."

Of course, the question at hand is always why the people keep filming themselves when they're being chased by a witch or chainsaw-wielding madman or whatever. Shyamalan's footage looks way too polished and high-definition to be the jittery recordings of teen amateurs, so the effect never really takes hold. It ends up seeming like a tacked-on gimmick.

Here, the 15-year-old, Becca (DeJonge), is a budding filmmaker who's making a documentary about meeting their grandparents, and also discovering what caused the terrible break between them and her mother (a vibrant Kathyry Hahn) years ago. The days are announced in title cards, with what we're seeing consisting of what was shot the day before as the girl edits it.

Becca's brother, Tyler (Oxenbould), is a 13-year-old wannabe rapper whose slams are mostly theoretical boasts about his finesse with girls and sports. In reality he's a bucktoothed loner who froze up during his last game in peewee football.

They all settle in for a nice week at Nana and Pop Pop's big country house, with the only rule being that the kids are not to leave their room after 9:30 at night. Of course they do, and observe grandma acting strangely, scampering about in her nightie (or less), moaning and vomiting. Grandpa explains that this is "sundowning," a common malady of the elderly in which they become agitated during the transition from day to night.

She also cooks a lot, and has the unfortunate habit of asking Becca to physically climb into the oven -- all the way, dear! -- to clean it. Could she be pinching their arms on the sly? "I have the deep darkies" is all she'll say.

Pop pop's got his own foibles. He seems preternaturally strong for a man over 70, heaving hay bales like Styrofoam packing. He avoids looking people in the eye, gets confused easily, accosts strangers he imagines are following him, and tells unnerving tales of glimpsing "a white thing with yellow eyes" in the factory, but nobody believed him.

Things go on from there, which obviously I'll not reveal. Here Shyamalan is consciously working against the audience's expectations, not trying to hide the fact a big twist is coming but keeping us guessing about what form it'll take.

"The Visit" is engaging enough as a mood piece, more about generating a pervading sense of dread than truly scaring us. If this is to be Shyamalan's last shot as a celebrity filmmaker, he could do worse.

Review: "Tomorrowland"

Maybe you’ve seen the trailer for “Tomorrowland,” in which a young woman touches a pin and is instantaneously, breathtakingly transported to another place. Like me, you probably found it highly intriguing, but after watching it you didn’t really feel like you had any idea what the movie was about.

Well, I’ve seen the whole film now – and I still don’t have a clear picture of it.

It’s a weird cotton candy concoction. It wants to be fun and fluffy, but the film also has this determined air of mystery to it, like it resents sharing its secrets. And there’s some late portentous stuff that seems way too sour for what came before.

This is surely one of the most disappointing movies of the year, given expectations and the talent involved: star George Clooney, who seems to instinctively gravitate toward quality material or vice-versa; director Brad Bird, one of the top animation filmmakers (“The Incredibles”) who successfully made the jump to live action; Damon Lindelhof, co-creator of the TV show “Lost,” who wrote the script along with Bird.

I’m afraid this may also prove a disappointing review, since I feel like I can’t tell you very much about “Tomorrowland.” Its entire appeal is steeped in guarding its enigma, then slowly – too slowly – revealing itself. Even though I found the movie underwhelming, blurting out its secrets seems a disservice both to the film and its audience.

I’ll stick to things that are shown in the trailer, or you can figure out easily. Given the title and that it’s from Disney, you can guess that it has something to do with the utopian vision of the future from the ubiquitous theme parks. Touching one of these odd ceremonial pins immediately teleports you to a magical, soaring city of arches and scientific advancement -- at least for a while.

Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is a smart and gutsy teen who comes to be in possession of one of these pins, and tenaciously follows the thread of its mystery. This includes gaining the companionship of a strange young girl, Athena (Raffey Cassidy). She in turn leads Casey to Frank (Clooney), an isolated inventor who appears to be very, very angry at the world.

Together they have all sorts of adventures involving rockets, robots, cross-dimension travel and guzzling Coca-Colas. For a while it almost seems like a science fiction version of “The Da Vinci Code,” with famous locales and figures revealing long-shrouded purposes.

The movie takes a long, long time to get rolling. It feels like a roller-coaster in which two-thirds of the ride is clickety-clacking up that first big rise. The last 45 minutes or so are pretty engaging, but some of the twists are more jerky than thrilling.

Clooney is dyspeptic and missing his usual facile charm. Robertson is buoyant and enthusiastic, though the script often has her saying or doing patently ridiculous things. Young Cassidy has terrific screen presence; somehow she speaks in a very clear British accent, yet I struggled to understand her words.

“Tomorrowland” is a story for and about dreamers, those who dare to strive for something better and never give in to the naysayers. It’s a beautiful sentiment, but the problem with that is sometimes the naysayers are right. And though I dreamed of adoring this movie, I must say: nay.

Review: "This Is Where I Leave You"

I'm not sure if "This Is Where I Leave You" is the most original film ever made, but what it lacks in freshness it makes up for with delectable actors and snappy scenes. The Altmans are borderline crazy, self-obsessed and narcissistic, but somehow 103 minutes with them feels like time well spent.

Directed by Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum") from a screenplay by Jonathan Tropper, based on his own novel, the movie brings together the four adult children of the Altman clan after their father passes away. Mom Hillary (Jane Fonda) is a real piece of work, a showboating therapist who wrote a best-selling book, "Cradle and All," in which she spilled the intimate details of her kids' tumultuous upraising.

They have not, unsurprisingly, turned into well-adjusted adults. And they're none too pleased about their mom's insistence that they sit Shiva together for seven days, per their father's dying request. (This, despite being only partially and nominally Jewish.)

Judd (Jason Bateman) is the fulcrum, the character upon which all the others pivot. A successful radio producer and one of those guys who seems to have the perfect little life planned out, he's thrown for a loop when he catches his wife sleeping with his boss.

Sister Wendy (Tina Fey) is brittle and angry, mother to two young kids and married to an on-the-go businessman who can't put down the phone and work for even a few minutes, not to mention witness the miracle if his child's potty training.

Paul (Corey Stoll) is the oldest and most responsible, the one kid who stuck around in his hometown to take over the business from his father. He and his wife (Kathryn Hahn) have been trying without success to get pregnant, and the pressure and constant questions about their progress is like splitting a rail.

The baby of the clan is Phillip (Adam Driver), born years after the others and partially raised by them. A natural-born screw-up with an impish talent for needling others, Phillip is dating a much older woman (Connie Britton) who acts as his enabler and sugar momma.

The filmmakers essentially throw this grab-bag of resentment, sibling rivalry and neuroticism into a pot and set it to a slow boil. There are arguments, jokes, bonding, more fighting, and so on.

It doesn't sound like much, but the cast really drives the material to terrific heights. They click in a way that you rarely see large ensemble casts do; usually each actor is trying to accomplish their own goals for their character and sacrifice the group dynamic. This is the sort of movie that you can't imagine any other performers in those roles.

A few minor characters flit in and out of the foreground. Across the street is Hillary's dependable friend Linda (Debra Monk) and her son Horry (Timothy Olyphant), a former beau of Wendy's who suffered a terrible brain injury years ago. He sort of wanders around, helpful but forgetful, like a more verbally proficient Boo Radley.

Wade's estranged wife (Abigail Spencer) turns up, pleading for a second chance and with more drama to share. Penny Moore is a townie (Rose Byrne) who's stoked a long-burning fire for Wade, and he's at a low point where those glowing embers are looking pretty good. I also enjoyed Ben Schwartz as a young rabbi who can't outrun his horndog teen reputation and nickname.

Despite not a lot of screen time to spread around to every character's story, the film does a good job of making each of them distinct and relatable.

"This Is Where I Leave You" plays out fairly predictably, but I didn't mind the lack of surprises because the journey getting there is so caustically funny and unexpectedly heartwarming. When the Altmans aren't verbally punching each other -- sometimes physically, too -- you want to give them all a good squeeze.

Video review: "Bad Words"

A lot of movies want to seem edgy and dark, but for the most part they’re pretenders, inching up to the line of actual rebelliousness and then backing away with a smirk. “Bad Words” is not one of them. It’s a pitch-black comedy that gleefully barrels into offensive territory, then dares you not to laugh.

It stars Jason Bateman -- who also makes his directing debut -- as Guy Trilby, a 40-year-old man who hoodwinks his way into the Golden Quill National Spelling Bee for eighth graders.

Competing against kids in the throes of awkward adolescence, he mocks, bullies and abuses them. He torments a heavy girl into quitting. He convinces another that he’s sleeping with the kid’s mother. He treats the parents and the adults running the competition with even greater contempt.

Guy is, in short, a tremendous jerk. Exactly how he got to be so and why he’s undertaking this strange mission are the central dynamic of this movie, which was written by Andrew Dodge.

What’s astonishing is that we end up caring about Guy, if not exactly endorsing his cryptic motivations. He even gets to show a poignant side in his relationship with a chirpy little Indian-American kid (Rohan Chand), which starts out with antagonism and morphs into something like tutelage.

If you’re up for a bracing film about the joys of being bad, this is it.

Video extras are short in quantity but long in quality. There are deleted and extended scenes, a making-of documentary titled “The Minds and Mouths Behind Bad Words,” and a feature-length commentary track supplied by Bateman.

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Video review: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” didn’t make much of a splash in theaters last December, but it’s the perfect sort of movie to find a second life on video.

Heart-warming, funny, with a few gentle life-lessons moments that aren’t too preachy, it’s the sort of movie that doesn’t aim very high but hits the modest mark it does set for itself. The film is pretty much a reflection of star Ben Stiller, who also directed from a screenplay by Steve Conrad based on the iconic James Thurber story.

Walter is a meek, reclusive photo editor for Life Magazine, which is about to print its last edition. He daydreams about a grander life full of adventure, mostly involving a co-worker (Kristen Wiig) he’s sweet on.

When the photo negative for the last magazine cover is lost, Walter sets out on an unlikely quest that will take him halfway across the world, and give him some approximation of the wild escapades he’s always envisioned. This includes jumping into shark-infested waters, skateboarding down an erupting volcano and tracking a rare snow leopard in the mountains.

Still being a comedian by background, this version is funnier than previous cinematic iterations of Thurber’s tale. This does have the effect of making Walter a little less sympathetic than he otherwise might have been. Though the laughs are probably worth it.

No one will confuse “Walter Mitty” with great filmmaking. But it’s an earnest, pleasing movie without a lot of fuss or pretension.

The movie is being released on video with an ample amount of extras. The DVD includes a comprehensive making-of documentary, including featurettes on the music, sights and sounds, plus a gallery of reference photographs.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you add five deleted scenes and eight extended scenes, plus a music video of “Stay Alive” by José González.

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Review: "Bad Words"

"So did your soul burst into flames?"

So asks Guy Trilby, the protagonist of "Bad Words," a pitch-black comedy in which there are no heroes. Jason Bateman, making his directorial debut, stars as a man seemingly without a good bone in his body. He is a racquetball wall of a man, returning contempt and abuse with equal or even greater force. To say he is unlikeable is to suggest that has ever contemplated the notion of seeking approval from others.

Guy is a cipher, a mystery man who appears seemingly from nowhere, 40 years old and untethered, taking a sabbatical from a dull job proofreading warranties to enter the Golden Quill National Spelling Bee. Of course, the $50,000 contest is for students eighth grade and below, but he exploits a loophole to force his way in, a middle-aged man among preadolescents.

And he does not just compete against cute kids, but dominates them, both emotionally and physically. He plays head games and cheats, taunting the heavyset contestants and convincing another that he has slept with his mother. Guy is, in other words, a colossal dick.

The fact that Bateman and screenwriter Andrew Dodge make Guy simply palatable as a main character is quite an achievement, and to say that we actually enjoy following along on his strange, dark journey is quite another.

Guy's exact reasons for taking on this challenge, absorbing untold abuse from parents and bee officials in the process, largely remain a mystery until near the end. Even then, his justification seems not to measure up to the ruckus he's caused, and I think he knows it, but he just wants to make a statement about who he is and how he got to be where he has arrived.

Philip Baker Hall and Allison Janney play the unctuous senior Golden Quill executives who are flummoxed to no end by the prospect of Guy hijacking their prestigious event on national television, and take steps to block his way to the championship.

Guy arrives at the national contest with a reporter in tow named Jenny (Kathryn Hahn), a flustered wreck who has plenty of issues of her own, starting with the fact that she keeps sleeping with the subject of her big story. Guy plays her just like he does the spelling bee, letting out only dribs and drabs of information.

The movie's most surprising turn is Guy's antagonism with an 11-year-old Indian-American boy named Chaitanya Chopra, played brilliantly by Rohan Chand. Chaitanya is chirpy and friendly, a geeky kid but a self-possessed one, who seems to take it as his own personal mission to befriend the middle-aged interloper, despite heaping helpings of politically incorrect insults directed his way. ("Point your curry hole back the other way," is one of the few riffs quotable in friendly company.)

There's more going on with Chaitanya than meets the eye, of course, foreshadowed by his volunteering that his favorite word is "subjugate." But things occur that are unexpected by both man and boy, a dizzy mix of hedonism and male bonding, that somehow feel just right.

Just so we're clear: this is a dark, dark film. It's often very funny, but in the sort of way where you feel bad right after you quit laughing. It's reminiscent in many ways of "Bad Santa" from a few years back, but it actually makes that film seem like a lighthearted romp by comparison.

(That query quoted at the beginning of this review is Guy's tutelage in the proper usage of expletives. Yes, not only do the adults in this movie curse in front of children, they elicit nasty words from the mouths of babes.)

As contests go, spelling bees rank somewhere just below the Westminster Dog Show in terms of the amount of attention given to something so profoundly useless and preposterous. Young students beat themselves to a pulp to learn to spell obscure words they will never employ in their entire lifetimes, at least not if they want to be understood by others.

(If inscrutability is indeed their goal, we save a few places in academia for them.)

In addition to his own poisonous personal reasons, Guy also seems to be pointing out to the world how ridiculous bees are, yet another way in which we push our children to be how we would like them to be rather than affording them the freedom to discover themselves.

That's a pretty sinister bit of subtext for a movie so deliciously good at making us feel bad, laughing all the way to the therapist.

Review: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

There’s a point in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” where the film pokes a little fun at “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a movie I’ve always felt deserved a little poking. The irony is that director/star Ben Stiller and screenwriter Steve Conrad are operating in much the same mode as that 2008 fantasy-drama, and pursuing a similar audience.

Based on the James Thurber short story but diverging sharply from it, this is a comfortable, life-affirming movie that doesn’t challenge audiences too much. Yet it’s still an enjoyable, heart-warming time. The movie starts slowly … okay, very slowly … but when it hits its stride it’s as engaging as anything I’ve seen lately.

Walter (Stiller) is a workaday drone at Life magazine, heading up the cave-like photo archive. He’s just turned 42, has no close relationships or connections, and seems to have had his personality slowly extracted out of him over time. He is also prone to fits of fancy – “zoned out,” his family and friends call his little spells – where he imagines himself living a life of notoriety and high adventure.

These days the chief object of his daydreams is Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), a new worker who plays a starring role in the movies playing inside his head. Mostly these involve coming to her rescue, or performing some kind of heroic deed, or otherwise impressing her enough to instantly ensorcel her into becoming his love-mate.

But disaster happens when the magazine is set to publish its final print edition, seguing over to an online-only production with most of the staff losing their jobs. (In the journalism game, we call this “transitioning.”) The changeover team is headed up by a colossal jerk (Adam Scott) who alights upon the mild-mannered Walter as his chief whipping boy.

They want to use a shot by legendary photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) for the final cover, and he’s sent Walter his last roll of film (he’s old-fashioned that way) with still #25 described as his best photo ever: “the quintessence of life.”

Trouble is, photo 25 is missing, so after some prevaricating Walter sets off on a journey to Greenland, Iceland and eventually Afghanistan in search of the elusive photo. He finds himself living exactly the sort of adventures he once only dreamed of: fighting off sharks, jumping aboard a helicopter with a really drunk pilot, etc.

There are a lot of things the filmmakers do right, and some they do wrong. Stiller being a comedian at heart, he inserts some obvious laugh moments to perk up the dreary parts. (The Benjamin Button scene is undoubtedly the funniest.) This has the effect, though, of making the tragedy of Walter’s humdrum life less tragic. We feel less for him than we might have.

I also disliked the fact the screenplay didn’t give Wiig more to do. As we’ve seen from her starring roles, she can be quite a distinct onscreen presence; here, she exists more or less as a vessel for Walter’s fantasies. Pity.

The cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh is just spectacular, as Walter careens on a skateboard toward an erupting volcano or traverses a high mountain ridge. (I think they used the same one from the “Lord of the Rings” movies, but it’s still impressive.)

The use of product placement in the film is bold, and interesting. Rather than having products and logos hanging around in the background as subliminal cues, Stiller & Co. bring it right to the fore, working company brands directly into the storyline. For example, Walter has a running conversation with an eHarmony consultant (Patton Oswalt) about beefing up his profile. And his teenage experience working at Papa John’s pizzeria comes in handy.

And of course there’s Life magazine itself, which is presented in the movie as a last bastion for vivid photographs and stories, a place where every employee embraces the company’s mantra as their personal mission. (I feel compelled to point out the real Life ceased publishing as standalone magazine 13 years ago.)

I enjoyed myself at this movie, even as I realized it didn’t quite hit the mark, and its aim was not all that high to begin with. It’s a perfectly agreeable film that perhaps, a few years down the line, another movie will gently mock, and we’ll smile.

Review: "Wanderlust"

"Wanderlust" has some wonderful casting, starting with Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston as George and Linda Gurgenblatt, a pair of hapless New Yorkers who find themselves homeless and bunking down with a commune of modern-day hippies. Both actors just exude an aura of niceness and likability, even when their characters are behaving like twits, which is often.

I also liked Justin Theroux as Seth, the ostensible leader of the commune. He's sort of the Burt Reynolds of hippies, exuding a cheesy machismo that's potent but comes with a short shelf life. He talks dismissively about the technology and trappings of the world he left behind, but his references are all antiquated -- laserdiscs and Nintendo, etc. Even though he looks fairly young, we wonder exactly how long it's been since Seth last did anything besides strum a guitar in the woods.

And Ken Marino is a hoot as Rick, George's aggressively upper-middle-class brother from Atlanta who gives him a job after George's company is shut down by federal investigators. Rick makes a nice income selling porta-potties, drives a garish overpriced SUV, and owns a mini-mansion that seems to have a flatscreen television in every single room. His wife walks around in a daily fog of prescription medicine and veiled resentment.

"What did Mom do to you that she didn't do to me?" George asks after one of Rick's more egregious eruptions of assholery.

Other standouts are Alan Alda as the old lion of the commune he co-established 40 years ago; Kathryn Hahn as one of the more strident members, who seems to absolutely loathe George but desperately wants to share their free-love philosophy with him; Kerri Kenney as a babbling bother; and Joe Lo Truglio as Wayne, the commune's sole nudist, winemaker and wannabe author of political thriller novels.

(I should add that Truglio bravely attacks the revealing role in a, shall we say, direct manner. Although apparently he has nothing to hide, since he's blessed in the Michael Fassbender mode of Swinging Thespianism.)

There's so much good stuff happening in "Wanderlust" that it takes awhile to realize the moments that are generally funny are few and far between. This is the quintessential hit-and-miss comedy -- though when the movie is hitting, it packs a pretty potent laugh punch.

Rudd in particular gets to milk several scenes where he's just standing there reacting to the looneyness around him, pulling double- and triple-takes like a champion. His reactions are more engaging than most actors' actions. The sequence where George faces increasing sexual temptation from Eva (Malin Akerman) is like a master course in comedic tension.

Alas, as good as these pieces are, there just aren't enough strung together to recommend the movie.

"Wanderlust" is from the Judd Apatow movement, which seems to be taking over American film comedy with Borg-like inevitability. (Apatow serves here as executive producer.) David Wain directed and co-wrote the movie (with Marino). Wain is most known for "Wet Hot American Summer," an obscure 2001 movie that is regarded in today's Hollywood as some sort of Magda Carta of Funny. I tried watching it once, and wore out the fast-forward button on my remote before giving up.

I'm sure actors really like performing in these movies, because there's so much emphasis on ad-libbing dialogue and zany characterizations. Making this film was probably a blast, but that entertainment value got drained during the transition to the audience.

2 stars out of four

Review: "How Do You Know"

What a charming mess of a movie.

James L. Brooks doesn't make a lot of films, directing only six over the past three decades. But the writer/director's efforts are usually good ("As Good As It Gets") and sometimes great ("Broadcast News").

His latest, "How Do You Know," is a discombobulated casserole of attractive performers giving wry, clever performances. It's a classic love triangle, with a federal indictment and paternal conflict thrown in.

Since the cast is so likable, and Brooks is famous for his touch with actors, I'm left to conclude that the film's fatal flaws lie with the script. It feels less like a coherent narrative than a series of vignettes in which the characters say improbably witty things and act in ways that aren't tethered to rational behavior. We sense them performing for the camera.

Reese Witherspoon is an actress who an audience instinctively wants to hug. No matter the role she brings a plucky, sweet indomitability to her character. Something to do those big, guileless blue eyes paired with that stubborn chin of hers. "Spunk" is a word that was created with Witherspoon in mind.

She plays Lisa Jorgensen, a veteran of the U.S. women's softball team. But at age 31 she's lost a step, and soon finds herself without a job. Strapped of options, she agrees to move in with her new boyfriend, Matty, a professional baseball pitcher.

Owen Wilson plays Matty as a little boy who never grew up, though he's been infused with a good deal of juvenile libido and New Age-y malapropisms. Matty's not a bad guy, and he wants to treat Lisa right, but he's too used to having everything handed to him to be truly capable of thinking of another.

Lisa is horrified when, after spending her first night at Matty's swank Manhattan apartment, he offers a pink sweat suit to wear from a pile of them he keeps for just such occasions, in a variety of sizes. That's typical for Matty, who puts an agreeable spin on piggish behavior.

The X factor in her life is George, a corporate exec who is the target of a government investigation into wire fraud. A straight arrow, George has no idea what it's about, but the company gives him the boot and treats him as a persona non grata -- even though his father (Jack Nicholson) is the founder.

George and Lisa hook up on a blind date, just a night for each of them to get away from their troubles for awhile, and find a spark there. Even though he's morose and self-deprecating over his situation, George still impresses her as the sort of decent guy Matty only think he is.

George is played by Paul Rudd, a supporting actor who's finally getting his big shot in leading roles. Rudd smiles and kvetches, and somehow we like him for all his obvious weaknesses. (By the way, Witherspoon and Rudd were actually a cinematic couple before back in 1998's forgettable "Overnight Delivery.")

I liked all of the cast, even though I didn't really buy them as real people. Nicholson adds some droll moments as George's dad, who cares deeply about is son but is also working the angles to protect his own hide. And Kathryn Hahn is a delight as Annie, George's worrywart secretary and the one person from work who doesn't ostracize him when times get tough.

"How Do You Know" contains never a dull moment, but plenty of quizzical ones where we don't really understand what's going on or why the people we're watching do what they do.

2.5 stars out of four