Video review: "Band Aid"

“Band Aid” has a clever hook: a married couple who can’t stop fighting start a band as an outlet for their frustrations and resentment. They’re still screaming at each other, but through the prism of rock ‘n’ roll songs, and it has a strangely positive effect on their relationship.

It’s a delicious and strong filmmaking debut by Zoe Lister-Jones, who wrote, directed, produced and co-stars in the romantic dramedy, which reportedly used an all-female crew. Adam Pally plays the husband, and the movie doesn’t short-shrift the male perspective like so many other films balanced in the opposite direction.

Lister-Jones plays Anna, a former writing prodigy who these days drives for Uber and frets about how all her friends are having babies… and feeling the pressure to do the same. Pally is Ben, a freelance graphic designer (when he cares to work, which isn’t often). He seems to spend most of his days playing video games and not cleaning the house.

Part of them wants to have kids, part of them resents being forced into that role, and they direct their negative feelings over that conflict into each other. Already amateur musicians who cut up at birthday parties and such, they dust off their old instruments and start to pound away in the garage. Fred Armisen plays their creepy neighbor, a recovering sex addict who gets recruited as the drummer.

The songs (written by Lucius) are catchy and fun, and the movie boasts plenty of hilarity peppered with some deeper scenes that reveal the extent of the main characters’ anger. At the core of their struggle is what they don’t want to face: the feeling they’re thirtysomethings who failed to launch.

Smart and insightful, “Band Aid” looks at married life from an authentic vantage point, where all is not bliss and the power chords are sometimes painful to hear.

Bonus features are OK. They include seven deleted scenes, outtakes and a music video that’s part song and part comedy.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Band Aid"

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a smart romantic dramedy from a distinctly feminine perspective that also gets its male character down to the ground.

Zoe Lister-Jones wrote, directed, produced and co-stars in “Band Aid,” a desperately funny and surprisingly insightful look into the marital gender wars. Anna (Lister-Jones) and Ben (Adam Pally) are thirtysomething marrieds with dead-end jobs and a quickly shrinking roster of friends who don’t have kids.

They’re getting the pressure from all sides to procreate, but what they actually spend most of their time on is fighting.

One of the things they do for fun is play music at kids’ birthdays and such. After one particularly bad row, they pull out their guitars from the garage and start goofing around, carrying on their arguments through rock ‘n’ roll verses.

Their songs are duets of pure anger and resentment about the things that vex them: the dirty dishes in the sink, the lack of sex, his laziness, her neediness, their fear that they’re really losers and too afraid to admit it.

Ben has a sort of dreamy/schlubby thing going on, a mix of animal magnetism and puckish insouciance. Pally’s rakish hair, are-they-real eyelashes and very ordinary physique give a sense of a high school loverboy going slowly to pot. Ben is the kind of guy who may not seem like there’s a lot there, but the waters run deeper. He’s is a work-at-home graphic artist who can barely be bothered to respond to his client’s requests.

Anna was a writing prodigy in college who briefly had a book deal -- if you didn’t know, you can be sure she’ll tell you. Now she drives for Uber and frets about falling behind her friends, who all seem to have fabulous careers and/or adorable moppet kids. Anna wears prim outfits, almost Amish with Adam’s Apple-high top buttons, her hair pulled into a severe topknot.

Their relationship has its ups and downs, mostly downs lately. They’d probably be heading for the divorce if not for the songs providing an outlet for them to scream their frustrations at each other without the other taking it (too) personally. Once they start performing for audiences, the thrill also puts some zip back into their love life.

There are a few recognizable faces in supporting roles, including Retta (“Parks and Recreation”) as their disengaged therapist. Fred Armisen plays Dave, the creepy next-door neighbor who gets recruited to be their drummer because, well, they don’t really know anybody else. He turns out to be a recovering sex addict who has a lot of very cute “best friends.”

Ravi Patel, Brooklyn Decker, Hannah Simone and Susie Essman round at the cast as friends, relatives and best friends. Lucius provides the snappy songs.

It’s a strong debut for Lister-Jones as a writer/director. Her comedic voice recalls that of Tina Fey, a blend of robust feminist authority and nutty neuroticism. She writes a lot of biting things for Ben to say that no man should ever say to his wife, though virtually everyone has wanted to. She and Pally also have good onscreen chemistry; I totally bought them as a couple.

I also appreciated how story flirts with the obvious plot possibilities -- a sudden pregnancy or surprise record deal -- before returning back to Earth.

I spent such good time with these characters, I’d actually love to see a sequel one day. Maybe five years down the line, when Anna and Ben have a rugrat or two, and actually have something to fight about.

Video review: "Battleship"

A light-in-the-loafers action flick with pretensions of becoming a serious drama, "Battleship" is half of a decent summer movie.

The second hour, in which Navy sailors go toe-to-toe with some evil creatures from outer space, is entertaining in a carefree way, even if it is totally preposterous. It ends with them pulling a retired World War II battleship out of retirement to turn its big guns on the alien ships -- which can fly but for some reason stay entirely over the ocean, making for convenient targets.

This film flopped here in the U.S. but did terrific business overseas. Perhaps foreign folks learned the secret to "Battleship" -- skip the first 45 minutes and you'll have a good time.

Liam Neeson was in all the trailers, but Taylor Kitsch is the star, playing a standard-issue bad boy who learns to calm his rebellious nature and work as part of a team. Somehow, despite being in the Navy for what seems like a minute and a half, he winds up commanding the battle against the buggy bad guys.

If only director Peter Berg and screenwriting siblings Erich and Jon Hoeber had been content to crank out a simple fun shoot-em-up instead of boring us with an overlong windup, "Battleship" would have packed more punch.

For the film's few fans, they'll at least be pleased to know it has been given a top-notch video release, especially if you opt for the Blu-ray edition.

The DVD version comes with two making-of featurettes focusing on how to turn a board game into a blockbuster. These include cast interviews with actors talking about how it felt to be in the middle of a (simulated) firefight.

Upgrade to Blu-ray, and you get plenty more goodies, including "Second Screen," an interactive viewing experience that works with a networked tablet or computer. This includes 3D modeling of aliens, spaceships and explosions.

Other extras include a tour of the U.S.S. Missouri, behind-the-scenes humor and a featurette on visual effects.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Battleship"

I don't have a problem with video game movies. I like video games, and I like movies, and despite the protestations of some cinematic purists, it's a natural fit for flicks that just want to give a good time.

The problem with "Battleship" is that it spends so much time denying that it's a video game before turning on the fireworks that everyone came to see. Yes, yes, the movie is actually based on the classic Hasbro board game, in which opponents try to blindly guess where their enemy's battleship is. (And, at least in my case, attempt to stave off mind-numbing boredom while playing it.)

But it's a big-budget special effects summer movie, make no mistake.

To those wondering what the heck the game has to do with the film: yes, there is a sequence about halfway through where the good guys use a clever trick using a grid-like pattern to track the alien boogums they're fighting. And, of course, nearly all the mayhem takes place aboard Navy vessels.

If you're looking for metaphysical ruminations about the first contact between man and an alien race, you won't find them here. The aliens come to Earth for purposes never really made clear, other than they're here to give humans something to shoot at.

They come out of the ocean in big seafaring hovercraft-y things that sort of jump around the water's surface and cfhange shape. Think "Transformers" meets "Independence Day" meets "War of the Worlds," and you've got a pretty good handle.

Eventually they do emerge from their ships, and are surprisingly un-buggy and humanoid. They could be first cousins to the blue dudes in "Avatar," but they favor mechanistic armor and weaponry over a biometric hair hookup.

Liam Neeson is featured prominently in the film's trailers, but it's just a walk-on role as the stern admiral, who promptly gets sidelined as soon as the sea spray hits the fan. The real star is Taylor Kitsch as Alex Hopper, a ne'er-do-well rebel who joins the Navy as a last resort, and somehow ends up commanding the battle against the aliens.

Kitsch has presence as an action star, but the wind-up involving Alex's transformation from zero to hero takes way, way too long. It's 45 minutes or so into the movie before the critters from outer space show up, and until then it's a bunch of familiar pabulum about learning to grow up, work as a team, etc.

Director Peter Berg and screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber cling so desperately to the idea that their movie is about the human element, when Alex and all the rest (including singer Rihanna) are really just arcade avatars ready to be put through their paces.

Brooklyn Decker plays Alex's love interest, who just so happens -- gosh! -- to be the daughter of the mean ol' admiral. Decker has the notable luck to be featured in two big Hollywood releases this week (the other is "What To Expect When You're Expecting"), but neither one is much to brag about.

Gregory D. Gadson, an actual Army veteran who lost both his legs in Iraq, has a solid turn as a disgruntled war veteran who rediscovers his inner warrior battling the aliens.

Now, the movie is named "Battleship," but of course battleships are military anachronisms -- huge, hulking behemoths designed to batter the enemy with its huge guns. The Navy prefers fast, nimble destroyers these days. There's a turn of events late in the going that rectifies the discrepancy, which is both extraordinarily unlikely and a cheap applause moment.

There are a few times in this movie to cheer and thrill, but the filmmakers don't seem to want to own up to its bubblegum nature. The worst kind of video game movies are those that pretend not to be.

2 stars out of four