Review: "Churchill"

“Churchill” shows the great man not at his zenith, but at his lowest. Having led Great Britain valiantly through the darkest days of World War II, his nation almost single-handedly defying Hitler for more than two years, the prime minister shown here is aged, worn down, dyspeptic.

As played by Brian Cox, Winston Churchill is resentful of other Allied leaders who have arrived to supplant him, especially Dwight Eisenhower (John Slattery). In the days leading up to Operation Overlord -- or D-Day, as it would come to be known after -- Churchill is the thorn in everyone’s side, insisting the plan is ill-thought and will lead to slaughter.

He draws up alternative plans for Overlord, undermines the operation through his connection with the king, and even prays to God for poor weather to cancel the expedition. The movie, directed by Jonathan Teplitzky from a screenplay by Alex von Tunzelmann, implies that Churchill does so not out of an abundance of caution but because he is haunted by his own wartime experiences sending young men to their death in Turkey during the Great War.

Much like a certain politician of more contemporaneous vintage, this Churchill is incapable of not making everything about him.

Cox doesn’t particularly resemble or sound like Churchill, but manages to suggest the soul of a man who can inspire others even as he is paralyzed with fear and loathing. Jowly (with prosthetics), borderline decrepit and eternally smoking his totem-like cigar, Cox strappingly evokes the iconic image of Churchill.

It’s definitely a post-modern depiction of a historical figure, as focused on showing his weaknesses as his magnitude.

It’s also, from what I’ve gathered, a rather ahistorical musing on the man. While it’s true that Churchill opposed an Allied invasion of German-held Europe when it was first proposed in 1942, by the time June 1944 rolled around, he was fully supportive of Eisenhower’s plan. A number of historians have attacked the film for its inaccuracies.

I suppose if you took “Churchill” as the unornamented recital of historical events, you might find its depictions more egregious. But this is historical fiction, much in the mold of “The King’s Speech,” which was set in roughly the same time and place. It is the very definition of something that is meant to be taken seriously but not literally.

The movie closes with a text scrawl in which Churchill is described by many as “the greatest Briton ever,” so its intent seems clear to me: piercing the myth of the man, rather than exalting him.

Miranda Richardson plays Clementine Churchill, his long-suffering wife who at times seems barely able to stand the man she married. Her unofficial position is to smooth the rends Winston makes in his dealings with others. Their own fractious relationship is always relegated to the back burner. When he screams at his young new secretary (Ella Purnell) for typing his dictation single-spaced instead of double, it’s Clem who defuses the situation, taking the PM aside for a scolding -- because she’s the only person permitted to do so.

James Purefoy plays King George, who is easily swayed by Churchill’s words -- at least initially --- having depended on him so long. He gets a nice speech about upholding one’s duty, even if it runs counter to your own instincts. Richard Durden plays Jan Smuts, the prime minister of South Africa and Winston’s old comrade, who acts as a sounding board and runs interference with other bigwigs. Julian Wadham is Bernard Montgomery, Britain’s greatest (and prickliest) general, who struggles to hide his contempt for a man he regards as belonging to the past.

Think of “Churchill” as a sister film to “Steve Jobs,” starring Michael Fassbender as another titanic figure who evokes conflicting opinions. These are historical ruminations, not recitations. The Winston Churchill played by Brian Cox may well bear little resemblance to the actual man. But it’s a fascinating portrait nonetheless.

Review: "Pixels"

"Pixels" is the dream revenge movie for pretty much every kid who came of age post-1980: the world needs a hero, and it can only be someone who wasted countless hours and a Smaug-sized pile of quarters playing primitive arcade games at the Electric Dreams Factory (or whatever it was called in your town).

Isn't this the ultimate geek fantasy? To have the skills that were laughed at as a kid suddenly become valued in society the same way throwing deceased porcine hide is?

Since this is a geek movie, we've got to have some geeks to cheer for. Enter Adam Sandler, Josh Gad, Kevin James and Peter Dinklage. All were video game superstars circa 1982, culminating in a championship marathon in which one emerged as the victor, his exploits recorded on video for posterity and sent into space.

Unfortunately, alien boogums found the video and mistook the old-school games -- Pac-Man, Defender, Centipede, Joust, Frogger, Q-bert, etc. -- as a challenge. They whipped up some versions of these digital "warriors" and sent them to Earth to do battle with humans.

They even look like the old 8-bit versions of the arcade characters, crude and seemingly pixilated when blown up to giant size. Though not as big as you might think: the poster shows a behemoth Pac-Man slurping up San Francisco in one gulp, but in the movie he's about the size of a smallish RV.

It's a goofy premise, courtesy of screenwriters Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, based on a short film by Patrick Jean. It's kind of a rip-off of "Ghostbusters," with brainy losers vaulted into champions, but the notion still holds appeal.

Directed by hitmeister Chris Columbus, "Pixels" is breezy, dimwitted, action-filled and goofy. I certainly was never bored, though some of the gags and story threads were better left snipped on the editing room floor.

For instance, we're supposed to believe that James' character, Cooper, has grown up to be the President of the United States. Except he's not some competent, savvy politician, but the standard doofus Kevin James character he plays in every movie. Not surprisingly, his POTUS has become a laughingstock.

It's hard to believe anybody would ever vote such a guy into the highest office in the land... though I should note as I write this, Donald Trump is leading in the polls.

Brenner (a bored-looking Sandler) had the most natural talent of any gamer, but his confidence was shot when he lost the championship. Now he's become a Geek Squad-like drone who sets up tech for other people. Getting tapped by his best buddy in the White House to lead the fight against the invaders starts his underachiever-cum-savior journey.

Gad plays Ludlow, a wallflower who grew up to be a conspiracy theorist. He gets some of the best lines in the picture, and the "Book of Mormon" star also gets to belt out a tune for no good reason, other than it's nice to listen to.

Michelle Monaghan shows up, because the studio honchos felt we needed a pretty girl to look at. She's a military officer who takes an instant shine/dislike/maybe love? attitude toward the Sandler character.

Dinklage steals most of his scenes as Eddie, aka "Fire Blaster," an egocentric gamer who won the '82 championship (and also gave himself that nickname). Sporting a ferocious mullet and Southern-fried patter of quips about how awesome he is, Eddie is a despicable hoot. Actually, with the hair and self-puffery he reminds me of Donald Trump, though reportedly Dinklage based him on a real-life jerk seen in the excellent video game documentary, "The King of Kong."

Arriving as the summer movie season is cooling down, "Pixels" is clearly third-string fare, the sort of thing you go see while waiting for the movies that came out in May to hit video. It's decently entertaining, though it needed less Sandler and more mullet for the win.

Review: "The Campaign"

"The Candidate" really slows down in its last half-hour or so, as this raunchy, no-holds-barred take on modern politics pulls up its pants, gets a little serious and tries to say Something Important. But the first hour or so is loose and carefree, and is as gut-bustingly funny as anything I've seen in awhile.

Call it two-thirds of the funniest movie of the year.

There's one scene that nearly made me cough up a lung. Marty Huggins, the prissy Christian family man played by Zach Galifianakis, is telling his clan the sort of scrutiny they can expect now that he's running for Congress. He asks them to lay any embarrassing secrets out on the dinner table so they can confront them. The two cherubic young boys and his prim wife proceed to lay out a litany of scatological transgressions that would have Dante warming up his inferno.

His opponent, four-term incumbent Cam Brady (Will Ferrell), gets into plenty of his own hilarious escapades. One involves babies, and in his zeal to beat out Marty to lay some kisses on them in the time-honored political tradition, he ends up ... well, kind of the opposite of kissing the baby.

Much of the humor is over-the-top and zany, and bears no relation to even the worst antics we've seen in this or any election cycle. (Thought Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got pretty close with his line, "He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain.")

Later on, though, things go from crazy-funny to crazy-implausible -- such as when one candidate shoots another during a hunting "accident," or another seduces his opponent's wife, tapes it, and uses the footage as the basis for a campaign ad. In both instances, their poll numbers go up.

These moments pierce the bubble of carefully cultivated disbelief, and the movie just becomes one big goof job.

Finally, there's the schmaltzy finale, in which we're asked to believe that one candidate would take an action that has never been performed in the history of politics, and probably isn't even legal. Also, oddly, that both campaigns would share the same hall for their victory parties. All to set up a big moment where things get tender and teary.

You can practically hear the windbag gas escaping.

Director Jay Roach and screenwriters Chris Hency and Shawn Harwell are careful to keep the political barbs nonpartisan, or more accurately multi-partisan: everybody comes off looking bad.

In a bit of a switch, it's the Democrat Brady who's a boozing, corrupt tool of the big corporations, represented by the not-even-slightly subtle duo of super-rich brothers named Motch. They're played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd, and their presence mostly serves to remind us that Aykroyd is now old enough to play the aged evil tycoons he battled in "Trading Places."

Huggins, meanwhile, is the humble do-gooder who's chosen to run as a patsy, and even has to take lessons on how to appear more manly from his appointed svengali, played by Dylan McDermott. With his Cheetos mustache and slightly swishy manner, Galifianakis paints a complex comedic portrait of a man who doesn't really fit into any neat box.

Ferrell, meanwhile, is mostly doing a takeoff on his caricature of George W. Bush, with a thick coating of North Carolina molasses. Think of a DNA splicing of John Edwards and Sean Hannity. (His motto: "America. Jesus. Freedom.")

"The Campaign" is definitely worth a ticket, though be forewarned the language and sexual terminology is about as nasty as you can get without an NC-17 rating. Keep the little ones at home, and keep your expectations low for the last act, and you'll have a good time.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Coriolanus"

Shakespeare has rarely translated well to film, and even when it does -- "Shakespeare in Love," "Romeo + Juliet" -- it's usually in a modernistic, revisionist way that steps outside the rigid confines of the Bard's plays. And the reason is simple: with nigh on half a millennium separating our version of the English language from his, it's very difficult for anyone who's not a PhD in literature to comprehend just what the heck the characters are saying.

"Coriolanus," based on one of Shakespeare's lesser-known works, lies somewhere in between classic and revisionist approaches. The dialogue is tweaked enough to make it so the layman can usually follow along, but the bones of the story is unchanged.

Ralph Fiennes, who also makes his directing debut, plays the title character, an over-proud general just returned triumphant to Rome. A rigid, inflexible man, he thinks his honor has won him the right to become consul, but the common people do not love him, and scheming politicians maneuver to rob him of the title. Enraged, Coriolanus joins forces with his mortal enemy to wage war against the empire.

It's grandiose, heavy stuff, and both Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave were passed over for Academy Award nominations they probably deserved. Gerard Butler plays Coriolanus' enemy Tullus Aufidius, and the cast is rounded out by Jessica Chastain and Brian Cox.

Bonus features are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions, and include a making-of featurette and an audio commentary track by Fiennes.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Video review: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

I'll admit, when I heard they were making a prequel to the "Planet of the Apes" series, and it was to be called "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," I LOL'd.

A cheesy, long-dormant franchise about talking simians rebooted? Starring James Franco, he of the seemingly stoned Oscar-hosting gig? And a title containing two clauses? (What's the sequel to this movie going to be called, I joked, "Return of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes"?)

Then I saw the movie, and the giggling stopped. Easily the best movie of this past summer, "RotPotA" is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking film -- goofy title and all.

Set in the near-future, the story entails a young scientist, Will (Franco), who develops a serum to cure Alzheimer's. He tests it on a chimpanzee, Caesar (Andy Serkis provides the voice and body-motion capture), whose intelligence soars.

As the ape grows smarter, he begins figuring out that taking orders from people isn't really his bag. After being imprisoned in a facility for apes run by some cruel humans, Caesar leads a revolt against their evil overseers.

With terrific CGI special effects, a lot of smarts and visceral appeal, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" doesn't monkey around.

Fortunately, "RotPotA" is getting a first-class video release, stocked with tons of extras -- though you'll have to buy the Blu-ray edition to get most of the goodies.

The DVD does come with some nice stuff, including about a dozen deleted scenes, and featurettes on the mythology of apes and another focusing on the work of Serkis, who's become king of virtual acting.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and you'll get eight additional featurettes covering everything from ape facts to how the filmmakers turned human actors jumping around in front of green screens into hairy gorillas and orangutans. There are also two separate commentary tracks by director Rupert Wyatt, and screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

What a jaw-dropper. We had to wait until the end of summer for the movie of the summer, and it came from a reboot of a moribund, cheesy film franchise that saw its heyday before the Bee Gees discovered bell bottoms.

I'll admit, I went into "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" with fairly low expectations. Oh, let's not kid around, I was quite sure this movie would suck a mighty wind. A prequel to "Planet of the Apes" set in modern times, with smartened-up chimps and gorillas depicted (mostly) through CGI?

And that title ... yuck! They might as well have called it "Precursor of the Planet of the Apes." (The movie poster tagline, which a colleague pointed out to me, is even worse: "It's our world, but their planet.")

The creative team's credentials aren't exactly promising, either: Director Rupert Wyatt's previous two features are unknown to me, or most everyone. And screenwriting team Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver last enjoyed a script credit in 1997 (and for "The Relic," which barely counts).

And yet Wyatt, Jaffa and Silver attack Pierre Boulle's novel with straightforward flair and storytelling acumen, taking the concept to its logical conclusion -- or, in this case, origin. It's a smart, contemplative movie that seems bound neither by the conventions of the science fiction genre or action/adventure tropes.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" doesn't get too bogged down in the minutia of the science -- a brilliant young researcher, Will (James Franco), has developed a serum to cure Alzheimer's, especially that of his father (John Lithgow). While testing it on chimpanzees, he discovers that it dramatically increases their intelligence.

After an unpleasant incident at the lab, the program is shut down by the money-grubbing administrator (David Oyelowo) -- but not before Will sneaks out an infant chimp, whom he names Caesar. The years roll by, and soon Caesar has become a willful, juvenile ape who chafes at Will's benevolent but omnipresent yoke.

Caesar is a wondrous creation of live shots of chimpanzees, puppetry and computer-generated animation. He's a full-blooded creation, and by far the most relatable character in the film. It's the greatest marriage of performance and CGI since Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy -- which is no surprise seeing that Andy Serkis provided the motion-capture performance for both characters.

The movie really gets interesting when Caesar is separated from Will, Will's father and girlfriend (Freida Pinto) and placed in a facility with dozens of regular chimps, gorillas and orangutans. The honcho of this ape prison (Brian Cox) isn't really a sadist, but his son (Tom Felton) is, and seems to have the run of the place when the old man retires for the evening.

At first the ostracized outsider who gets pushed around by the local strongman ... er, ape, Caesar uses his cunning to take control of the situation and (literally) stand up to the man.

Yes, the movie dallies long enough for a few lay-ups miming dialogue and scenarios from the original movies -- e.g. Caesar's mother is called "Bright Eyes," the same moniker given to Charlton Heston (who pops up briefly himself) by his simian captors in the 1968 film. But these register as mini-homages rather than cheap in-jokes.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" emerges as the "District 9" of 2011 -- a seemingly silly flick that turns out to have more brains and pluck than anything around. No monkey business: this is the best movie of the summer.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Red"

"Red" is an agreeable piffle, a fun action/comedy that's silly without being moronic. When I found out it was about retired CIA agents being hunted down by their former agency, I immediately thought a better title would have been "Old Spies Like Us."

"Red" actually stands for "Retired and Extremely Dangerous" -- the designation given to characters played by Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren. They range in age from Willis' Frank Moses, who's probably in his mid-50s, to Freeman's Joe Matheson, who's 80 and dying of liver cancer to boot.

Freeman is aged up convincingly and looks a bit frail, but Willis is lean and sleek, and still appears capable of laying down some serious hurt. Why would the CIA forcibly retire someone seemingly still in his prime? The question is never asked or answered, but this is not the sort of movie to dally with logistics.

The film is based on a graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, though director Robert Schwentke and screenwriter siblings Jon and Erich Hoeber ditch the gritty tone for a light fun 'n' games feel. The comic book centered on Frank, but the movie adds new characters to make it an ensemble.

Malkovich plays Marvin Boggs, a wild ex-agent hiding out in the Florida swamps, whose paranoia about the government spying on him is tempered by the fact that he actually was secretly drugged with daily doses of LSD. Marvin has a nice bit where he squares off gunslinger-style with an opponent wielding a rocket launcher, and he shoots the missile out of the air.

Mirren is a delight as Victoria, a British retiree who breaks up her routine of gardening and cross-stitching with the occasional assassination contract. Mirren is kittenish and playful, and hell on wheels behind the eyesight of a large-caliber rifle.

Joe, meanwhile, fritters away his waning days in a New Orleans retirement home, ogling the nurses.

Frank lives in drab suburbia, putting up Christmas decorations simply because that's what his neighbors do. He receives monthly pension checks from the government that he rips up so he can call the accounting department to complain that they never arrived. This allows him to speak with Sarah, a worker drone with dreams of an exciting life.

Frank is sweet on her and longs for a normal life -- until a squad of black-ops types turn up at his home and try to kill him.

Sarah is played by Mary Louise-Parker in a turn so vibrant and likeable that it doesn't occur to us that her character is completely unnecessary to the story. After being kidnapped by Frank -- he figures if the government is gunning for him, they'll target Sarah, too -- she spends most of the movie literally standing around in the background while Frank, Victoria, Joe and Marvin ply their violent trade.

The plot is a twisting affair that you need not pay much attention to -- something to do with some nasty business down in Guatemala long ago. It's just an excuse to set up action scenes and humorous encounters.

Other figures in the mix include Richard Dreyfuss as a wicked arms dealer; Brian Cox as Frank's old Russian adversary; and Karl Urban as a young CIA agent tasked with taking down Frank, and finds himself getting schooled.

"Red" reminded me a bit of "Sneakers," a 1992 caper with Robert Redford about a bunch of washed-up, written-off spooks who get together for a new job. Both are well-made escapist entertainment, signifying nothing other than a good time.

3 stars out of four