"The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run" is the first feature film since creator Stephen Hillenburg passed away, and I couldn't help notice this one is markedly kindler and gentler than the previous movies and TV iterations. Even the perpetually scheming evil Plankton is mostly helpful, and crotchety crustacean Mr. Krabs spends a lot more time loving on ol' SpongeBob than berating him.
This is also the first SpongBob movie to use all CGI instead of the traditional flatter-looking 2D animation. The last movie, subtitled "Sponge Out of Water," only employed it for the scenes where SpongeBob and the gang go onto land.
It's definitely a different look, and takes some getting used to for SpongeBob veterans. (As the father of two young boys, I count myself in this group.) I found the fuzz on the head of Sandy Cheeks (voice of Carolyn Lawrence) distracting, and they apparently did a total reboot on King Neptune, now called Poseidon -- although he's still the same vaguely dictatorial big green dude.
But the voice actors are all the same, as is the zany-yet-wholesome feel, and I soon settled in for an enjoyable SpongeBob adventure.
The story is that SpongeBob's longtime pet/pal, Gary the Snail (Tom Kenny, who also does SpongeBob) has been snail-napped by local mad scientist Plankton (Mr. Lawrence) and delivered into the hands of King Poseidon, who uses his snail secretions to keep his 5,000-year-old looks looking their best.
So SpongeBob sets out on a quest to rescue him, with loyal dimwit/best bud Patrick Star (Bill Fagerbakke) in tow, of course. The rest of the gang -- goodly scientist Sandy, restaurateur/money-lover Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown), cynic/clarinetist Squidward Tentacles (Rodger Bumpass) and even Plankton -- eventually tag along, too.
Their journey will take them to the Lost City of Atlantic City, an underwater metropolis of flashing lights, greed and over-consumption. There's a stopover in the desert (possibly a dream) where we encounter some live humans, including Snoop Dogg as a gambler, Danny Trejo as the dastardly El Diablo and Keanu Reeves as Sage, a wise spirit guide who resides inside a tumbleweed.
I was pleased to see some divergence from the usual SpongeBob plot revolving around Plankton trying to steal the secret formula to the famous Krabbie Patties that SpongeBob spends his life cooking up for the hungry undersea denizens. We've had 20 years of all sorts of superspy contraptions and plots to get his hands on a burger, when all Plankton had to do was hand some kid $20 to go buy him one.
Here the theme is more about loyalty to friends, so Krabs and Plankton set aside their beef (har, har) and get on board the rescue-Gary plot.We also get some flashback scenes to learn how all the major characters met each other, centering on adventures at Kamp Koral in the wayback time when they were kids.
(A new TV series looking at SpongeBob's "Under Years" launches the same day as the movie.)
New character include Otto (Awkwafina), a robot whipped up by Sandy who proves to be less than helpful; Tiffany Haddish as the showstopper emcee in Atlantic City; and Reggie Watts as Poseidon's barely-civil chancellor, doing more babysitting than kowtowing to his monarch.
We get several musical numbers, plenty of slapstick and the usual SpongeBob fascination with bodily fluids, odors and sounds. Straight to the giggle center of my kids' brains. (And mine, too.)
"Sponge on the Run" may not have quite the edge of earlier SpongeBob efforts, but watching it is still a a big, warm and wet hug for the whole family.
As a teen I really loved "Robocop" and Robert Heinlein's classic science fiction book, "Starship Troopers," so I remember being very excited when it was the announced that Paul Verhoeven, the director of the former, was tackling a screen adaptation of the latter along with screenwriter Edward Neumeier.
Then the movie came out and I (along with not a few others) thought it a total piece of garbage.
It was an expensive flop and, along with the failure of "Showgirls" two years earlier, knocked Verhoeven off the A-list of directors after a decade-long run noted for pushing Hollywood's boundaries for violence and nudity. He's since returned to his roots of European art films ("Black Book," "Elle") and I think we're all better for it.
Turns out the project was not actually launched with the Heinlein book in mind. A spec script called "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine" had a lot of similarities to the Heinlein novel -- perhaps too many to be a coincidence -- so the studio bought the rights to the book and the script was rewritten combining elements from both.
Verhoeven hated the book and even confessed he was never able to finish reading it. It's been controversial since Heinlein published it in 1959 because of its embrace of an overtly militaristic, and some would even argue fascist, future. In the novel only those who have served in the military, aka Federal Service, are eligible to become "citizens," endowed with full status and the right to vote. Things like extreme corporal punishment (whipping, etc.) and preemptive attacks are looked upon favorably.
I was particularly dismayed that the power suits worn by the intergalactic soldiers in the book were jettisoned. These allowed them to make leaps of tremendous distance and even drop mini-nuclear bombs, essentially turning each of them into a low-grade Iron Man. Instead the movie just has regular field infantry with body armor and machine guns, not terribly different from what the modern U.S. Army wears.
It's understandable why the filmmakers did this. It would have made the $105 million budget, already bloated for its time, even bigger and forced them to hide all their beautiful actors behind helmets and armor. It does make you wonder, though, how hundreds of years into the future humanity has managed to conquer space travel but still relies on an M-16 clone.
In this vision humanity has been united in their opposition to the "bugs" -- insect-like aliens that fly toward Earth on massive meteors. So far all the experts have regarded them as mindless drones, though in the course of the story we discover otherwise.
(I still wish somebody could've come up with a better moniker than "brain bug.")
I have no doubt in my mind that 1979's "Alien" and other films were inspired by the book, and in turn those movies helped shape the chitinous, bulb-headed look of the "Starship Trooper" bugs.
Seeing the movie for the first time in two decades provides a moment for reassessment. I still don't think it's a very good flick. But it's interesting how much of the social satire of "Robocop" carried over into this movie, especially the cringe-worthy TV newscasts, as well as its prescience about how digital communication would come to dominate our society.
There are a number of fake ads to join the military spread or updates on the war spread throughout the movie, always ending with the query of, "Do you want to know more?" It's quite possible that "Starship Troopers" was the very first cultural artifact to envision clickbait. There's also video conferencing, tablet computers and other tech that we now take for granted.
Verhoeven, who knew something of actual Nazism, made what is essentially a spoof of both fascist tendencies and science fiction. It goes through the motions of celebrating these soldiers blasting aliens apart while at the same time making the entire undertaking seem utterly preposterous. Of course, the irony flew right over the heads of many who saw it.
The movie's essential weaknesses, though, remain. It has a cast of gorgeous, then-unknown actors who are given a bunch of ridiculous dialogue to say, which they issue with varying degrees of sniggering and/or woodenness. It's notable that of all of them, only Neil Patrick Harris as psychic/intelligence officer Carl was the only one to break out into a high-profile career.
Perhaps that's unkind; showbiz is fickle and anyone who can continue to work as an actor for decades already sits toward the top of a very steep heap.
Denise Richards (as ambitious hotshot pilot Carmen Ibanez), Dina Meyer (sexually aggressive tomboy soldier Dizzy Flores), Jake Busey (goofy fiddle-playing comrade Ace Levy), Seth Gilliam (bully-turned-lackey Sugar Watkins) and Patrick Muldoon (full-of-himself antagonist and competitor for Carmen's affection Zander Barcalow) have all enjoyed busy careers doing TV, voice work, video games and B-movies.
Gilliam might contest Harris' crown for top alumnus, going on to play the formerly fraidy-cat preacher in "The Walking Dead" and a prime role on "The Wire," aka the GOAT TV series.
And, of course, Clancy Brown and Michael Ironside were already grizzled veterans playing crusty officers who whip the kids into line as, respectively, Private-nee-Sergeant Zim and Rasczak, the recruits' former high school history teacher and wartime leader of the howling Rasczak's Roughnecks. Brown and Ironside are both science fiction/horror immortals.
At the top in terms of billing but at the bottom of the totem pole talent-wise sits sad Casper Van Dien as protagonist Johnny Rico. It seems clear Van Dien was chosen more for his looks than any innate acting ability. His Rico is so clean-cut and sharp-featured that he practically seems molded out of plastic.
Imagine James Dean, but with good posture and straight from an aggressive barber. (Indeed, Van Dien had just played Dean in a television movie.)
As a main character Johnny is a total zero. He joins the Mobile Infantry because that's what Carmen wants, only to find them separated when she has the math scores to make it into the Federation Fleet, essentially the Navy of this story. They eventually rejoin, though now separated by the enmity between the military branches. "M.I. does the dying. Fleet just does the flying!" Johnny says, echoing a common refrain.
It should be noted that the book and the movie posit all the youngsters as coming from Buenos Aries, and I don't think there's a legitimate Latino in the bunch.
The special effects looked cheap even in 1997, and are comically outdated now. The nascent CGI for the bugs isn't awful, just stiff and superficial-looking, but the space travel stuff was already at least two decades past its prime.
Of course, Verhoeven opted for his usual all-you-can-stand buffet of gore and violence, with literal rivers of viscera -- human and alien -- splashed across the screen.
Interestingly, probably the most talked-about scene at the time was not any of the many bloody battles but the coed shower shared by the M.I. recruits. It's a throwaway scene of little value other than to show off the bodies of the actors. According to lore the cast refused to film it unless Verhoeven would also get nude, and he readily complied.
"Robocop" actually predated this with its police locker room shared by both men and women, with the gals nonchalantly showing their upper-body wares. "Troopers" goes one better with a fully nude open-air shower room where everybody enjoys a comradely chat about their budding military careers while sudsing up their nethers. The camera is carefully framed not to show too much, and the whole thing is so goofy and jovial that it turns into a (literal) ass-slapping yuk-fest.
I'm not sure how such a scene would play today, with our fretting over who's using which public restroom and some feminist insistence on an omnipresent threat of rape. Beyond the leering voyeurism of the scene, though, it contains a hopeful message about the genders being able to relate to each other as true equals without the burden of always-on sexual dynamics -- a future I fear will remain a pipe dream.
Twenty-plus years on, "Starship Troopers" still plays as an ill-thought bit of escapist gore porn, but with a subtext of social satire and insight that I perhaps didn't appreciate then. I'll say this: the movie has more ambition than I had credited.
I wasn’t surprised that “Chappaquiddick” didn’t make more of a splash at the box office, despite being one of the best dramas of 2018 and a film that, if it weren’t for the bifurcated political reception it provoked, would surely be talked about as an early favorite for a raft of Oscar nominations.
The movie was picked up on by conservative media months before it got a general release, adding to the perception it’s the rare “right wing” Hollywood film. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This look at the events surrounding Edward Kennedy’s defining moment in 1969, in which he (mostly likely drunkenly) drove his mother’s car into a lake with a pretty young campaign worker inside, Mary Joe Kopechne, who died. Not only was unable to save her despite (he says) many attempts, he failed to report the accident until the next morning, sealing the woman’s fate. The evidence suggests she was trapped in the car for hours, and suffocated when her air ran out.
The film, directed by John Curran from a script by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, does not set out to vilify Kennedy as a heartless fiend. In a masterful performance by Jason Clarke, it’s suggested that he was a man who wore heavily the mantle left behind by his dead brothers, Jack and Bobby, and the expectation that he would run against Richard Nixon for the presidency in 1972.
The true evil occurred in the aftermath, as an armada of loyal Kennedy men descended on the sleepy town to manipulate events with one goal in mind: saving Teddy’s political career. I can think of no better cinematic portrait of the axiom that power corrupts -- for those who have it, seek it or try to hold onto it.
Funnymen Jim Gaffigan and Ed Helms give surprisingly meaty performances as hangers-on of the Kennedy clan who engage in the cover-up. Helms’ character, adopted son Joe Gargan, is the lone voice who begins to have moral quandaries about their actions.
Bruce Dern is mesmerizing as Kennedy patriarch Joe, withered by age and moral rot, who directs the machinations from his repose. Kate Mara has a small but vital presence as Kopechne, who was not just some feminine plaything of male politicos, but a resourceful campaign player in her own right.
There’s a lot of anger, but also a lot of insight in “Chappaquiddick.” It’s a film brave enough to look back at a political scandal from half a century ago that likely altered the course of the presidency, to penetrate the fog of history and render a proper reckoning for a despicable deed.
Bonus features are scant, being limited to two documentary shorts: “A Reckoning: Revisiting Chappaquiddick” and “Bridge to the Past: Editing the Film.”
“Chappaquiddick” is a mesmerizing portrait of evil -- not an evil man, but a deed that remains one of the most black-hearted acts in American political history.
I refer not to the abject cowardice of Edward "Teddy" Kennedy in the summer of 1969, when the Senator from Massachusetts drunkenly drove a car off a bridge into a lake, leaving a campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne, trapped inside.
Nor to the fact that Kennedy failed to summon help, walking past houses 150 yards away to instead trudge back to the summer cottage he had just left to call his friends, all married men who were partying with single women like Kopechne. Rather than phoning the police, they scrambled to protect Kennedy’s reputation.
Nor do I even refer to Kennedy returning to his hotel room, where he slept, ate breakfast with friends and failed to report the accident for nearly nine hours. His inaction most certainly doomed Kopechne, who likely survived for hours trapped in the car, succumbing not to drowning, but suffocation as she used up the small pocket of breathable air.
The real evil, the film argues, lies in what came after.
This is an angry movie, but also a probing one. Director John Curran and screenwriters Andrew Logan and Taylor Allen look at how the Kennedy family machine of advisors and lawyers sprang into action to protect a man seen by many as the frontrunner for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.
Arms were twisted, wheels were greased, outright fabrications passed off as accepted fact.
At the center of this storm was Kennedy himself, a flawed man and last surviving son of a political dynasty consecrated with the highest of blessings and laden with the darkest of curses. Played by Jason Clarke in a riveting performance that should be remembered during the next awards cycle, Kennedy is portrayed as someone torn by tidal forces of pride, shame, entitlement and weakness.
“I’m not going to be president,” is the first thing he says after the accident. Kopechne, still struggling for air in a submerged Oldsmobile, had already been consigned to death. Kennedy’s only thought was that his political ambitions not join in her obituary.
While the movie chastens him for going along with the elaborate plot to save his career, it does not condemn Kennedy as an irredeemable fiend. Rather, it asks uncomfortable questions about who among us would have followed a similar path, given the titanic expectations for the baby brother of Jack and Bobby Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy was unwillingly anointed as the keeper of the flame for an entire generation of dreamers -- and wanted desperately not to see that torch sputter out on his watch.
Kate Mara plays Kopechne, depicted as an earnest young woman a member of the “Boiler Room Girls,” a group of secretaries and strategists who gave their souls to Bobby’s presidential campaign, and were being urged to sign on for another one. The film, while slinging many barbed arrows, does not dispute the insistence that the party was a chaste one, though there is some suggestion of longing between her and Kennedy, a lifelong philanderer.
Ed Helms is terrific as Joe Gargan, adopted son of the Kennedy clan, the friend who’s always there to clean up their messes. At first Teddy’s most ardent defender, he eventually grows sick of the lies and manipulation. He finally snaps when Kennedy, who was completely uninjured in the accident, dons a neck brace for Kopechne’s funeral. “You’re not a victim, Ted!” he bellows.
Bruce Dern is unrecognizable and piercing as Joseph Kennedy, patriarch of the clan, now grown decrepit in body to match the withered soul. Face twisted into a rictus, barely able to speak or move, he treats Ted as the prodigal son he’d rather not see returned.
When Ted first calls to report his predicament, the elder Kennedy can only croak out one word: “Alibi.”
Other notable cast members include Jim Gaffigan as Paul Markham, Kennedy pal and obedient fixer; Clancy Brown as Robert McNamara, the former Defense Secretary who leads the heavy hitters during the cover-up; Taylor Nichols as Ted Sorensen, speechwriter and PR expert; and John Fiore as the pliable local police chief.
“Chappaquiddick” is a powerful and bracing look at how power corrupts -- not just its exercise, but in its pursuit.
“Stronger” is probably not the movie most people were expecting. They may know it’s the story of Jeff Bauman, perhaps the most visible victim of the Boston Marathon bombing. He became famous for a grisly photo of him being wheeled away from the carnage, both of his legs shattered by the blast into gruesome shards.
When he helped identify the killers, recovered from his wounds and eventually was able to walk again with the use of two prosthetic legs, Jeff became of the face of Boston’s defiance against the terrorists, a beacon of pride and bravery for millions.
Except, Jeff didn’t feel like a hero. He was a regular joe with challenges and problems, who folded under the pressure of having his body torn apart by strangers, while other strangers lauded him for the simple act of surviving.
Directed by David Gordon Green from a screenplay by John Pollono (based on Bauman’s book), “Stronger” could have been a very corny movie. I think most filmmakers would have gone a very standard route: inspirational dialogue, syrupy musical score, a big speech at the end where Jeff appears before a stadium full of Red Sox fans and is celebrated.
Instead, the incident at the baseball field happens midway in the movie, and rather than orgiastic joy, it’s a nightmare of stress for Jeff. He practically seems to want to shiver out of his own skin.
It’s another amazing performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, who continues to astound with bold choices in his roles. Here’s a guy who possessed all the tools for a standard-issue movie star career -- blockbuster franchises, $20 million paydays, magazine covers -- and instead he searches for little projects like this that challenge him as an actor.
Tatiana Maslany plays Erin, Jeff’s erstwhile girlfriend. They had broken up at the time of his injury, and we observe them as shame and guilt serve to string the relationship along – which turns out to be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Miranda Richardson and Clancy Brown play Jeff’s estranged parents, who react to their son’s sudden fame with motives both nurturing, and not.
“Stronger” is uplifting, but not because it puts Jeff Bauman on a pedestal. Instead, it tells the real story behind the headlines, of a human being found the weight of the world too much to bear.
Perhaps owing in part to the fact the film was not a big box-office draw, bonus features for the video release are quite slim. The only extra is “Faith, Hope & Love: Becoming Stronger,” a short making-of documentary.”
The record for movie adaptations of video games is just atrocious… and it’s not getting any better with the release of “Warcraft.” Fantasy movies don’t fare so well either, so it’s got the double whammy effect.
“Warcraft” has been in development for literally 10 years, when the World of Warcraft online game was just reaching its peak, with millions of people playing characters from a broad range of fantastical races and abilities. There are also some precursor strategy games, novels, collectible figures, replica weapons, and other offshoots of a multi-billion-dollar empire.
(And I know of which I speak. In the years B.K. – before kids – I was an 80 paladin/80 warlock/80 death knight/68 priest/59 rogue on the Kul Tiras realm of WoW.)
It’s not an overstatement to say that Warcraft is the first video game to become a cultural phenomenon. The movie, a $160 million extravaganza heavy on top-drawer CGI animation, became almost inevitable.
I wish it weren’t.
The movie has a slapdash, chaotic feel, as if the filmmakers were trying to stitch together footage shot during two or three different productions. There are continuity errors all over the place – one warrior is broken out of prison, given his armor back, and in the very next scene his armor is gone and he’s barefoot for some reason. Another major figure is revealed to be corrupted by dark magic… but when and how was he corrupted?
There’s missing backstory and motivations all over the place. We watch characters do things without understanding why.
Director Duncan Jones, a promising filmmaker who made the excellent “Moon” a few years ago, co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Leavitt, and I can only guess they were shackled by restrictions from Blizzard, the company behind Warcraft. I would posit they were given a checklist of story elements and characters and ordered to fit it all together somehow.
The story is set in the early days of the Warcraft mythology, when the bestial orcs first crossed over from their dying world into that of the humans, setting off battle. There are also quick nods to a few other races on the “Alliance” side of the game, notably elves and dwarves, but the Horde is just orcs. (Thankfully no pandas, at least!)
The orcs are a wonder to behold, painted with wondrous detail by the animators. They’re huge, seven feet tall and thick as oaks, with green skin and protruding tusks, and a vaguely American Indian style of adornment. A few of the nastier ones even have… other protrusions.
Toby Kebbell plays (through voice and motion-capture performance) the orc hero Durotan, a noble savage who fears for the plight of his people, including a newly born son. Their leader, Gul’dan (Daniel Wu), is a mighty wizard wielding a terrible green magic called Fel, which he uses to open a portal to the human world of Azeroth. But it requires a sacrifice of lives, not to mention poisoning the very land.
On the human side is Lothar (Travis Fimmel), commander of the forces of King Llane (Dominic Cooper), who’s called upon to resist the orcish invaders. He’s an odd hero; he seems more peckish than resolute.
Ben Foster plays Medivh, the stern magical guardian of the realm, who mostly broods in his lonesome soaring tower, occasionally dipping into a pool of blue goo to revive his powers. Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) is the classic exposition character, a wayward wizard who turns up whenever the plot needs explaining or moving along.
Somewhere in the middle is Garona (Paula Patton, in heavy green body paint), a half-breed orc who’s captured by Lothar and recruited to their cause. The two start exchanging jungle fever-type stares, though Garona helpfully warns him that he would be injured if he tried to lie with her.
Question: if this is the first time the orcs have crossed over into this world, how did a human breed with one of them years ago to create Garona? If you’re asking these sorts of questions, you’re thinking too hard to enjoy this movie.
“Warcraft” is a great-looking flick that should have been a lot more fun, and a lot less silly, than it is.
“99 Homes” is an earnest little drama that focuses on the foreclosure craze during the Great Recession. It shows how the will to survive can be gradually bended into a willingness to exploit the tragedies of others for personal gain. It’s a deliberately discomfiting portrait of how the line between victim and victimizer can easily blur.
Andrew Garfield is solid and empathetic as Dennis Nash, the true-blue-collar guy who gets evicted from his house, then goes to work for the real estate mogul who threw him out, eventually morphing into his right-hand lackey and reflection.
But Michael Shannon utterly steals the show as his boss, Rick Carver -- a conniving, contemptible yet surprisingly human figure.
Rick’s a cannibal who feels compelled to justify his actions even as he’s employing his teeth to strip the bones. He’s part Donald Trump, dividing the world into admirable winners and wretched losers; part pathetic Willy Loman, so fearful of a fall from grace that he invites it; and part Blake, Alec Baldwin’s wolfen character from “Glengarry Glen Ross,” slavering for his prey.
This is a tiny picture that I hope Oscar voters will remember when it comes time for voting on nominations. Shannon assuredly deserves a spot on the supporting actors’ list.
The story is set circa 2010 in Orlando, Fla. -- my own hometown. I can remember people back home talking about seeing at least two foreclosure signs on every block, whether houses were in the $70,000s or the $700,000s. Places like O-Town and Phoenix, Ariz., were the hot spots for the real estate bubble, with overheated prices producing the most precipitous drops when the bottom fell out.
Dennis is a construction guy, single dad, who lives with his son, Connor (Noah Lomax), and mom (Laura Dern) in a low-roofed bungalow -- the sort of crowded, low-cost housing that fueled Florida’s population boom in the 1950s and ’60s. Work’s been scanty since the real estate bubble popped, so when they get behind on their mortgage payments the courts are quick to whip out of the foreclosure card.
In a harrowing scene, Dennis and his brood are summarily thrown out of the family dwelling, their stuff piled up on the lawn by riff-raff workers, with rent-a-cops warning them of a trip to jail if they don’t comply. Rick is calling the shots, though he pretends to be just the guy with the clipboard carrying out orders. The energy is real and nervy, with everyone resorting to that sort of false politeness – “Yes, sir,” “No, ma’am,” – when they’d really like to take a swing at each other.
They pack up their stuff to a rundown motel, which houses a thriving community of evictees, all convinced they’ll move back into their own home any day now. Dennis catches a break when he stumbles upon Rick and is offered 50 bucks to help out with a vacant property that has been befouled. He possesses enough self-worth left to haggle the nasty job up to two-fifty, and Rick recognizes a hunger he can harness.
“Don’t get emotional about real estate,” Rick intones. “They’re boxes.”
Soon enough, Dennis himself is the one holding the clipboard, running his own crews, talking people into easing their keys into his hand, waving in the police to strong-arm it when required. Rick shows him how to work the grayish angles between private commerce and government subsidy, snagging whopping checks from Fannie Mae by covertly shuffling around appliances and AC’s.
(Air conditioning, for those not in the know, is practically a religion in the Sunshine State, and all must tithe.)
Written (along with Amir Naderi) and directed by Ramin Bahrani, “99 Homes” gets a bit fat in the second half, as the plot plays out its preordained contretemps between diabolical mentor and soul-searching mentee. But it manages to powerfully illustrate the human toll of the foreclose-and-flip game, just as we’ve started to forget the shenanigans and, thereby, open the door to them again.
“When the Game Stands Tall” is a very good and very atypical sports drama. The hook is that it’s about the longest winning streak in American sports history, as the De La Salle High School Spartans from Concord, Calif., went 11 years without losing -- 151 wins in a row.
But the man at the middle of that story, Bob Ladouceur, seems almost embarrassed about the win streak. In fact, the sport of football is practically secondary to the lessons he’s trying to impart -- about giving a perfect individual effort, relying and being relied upon by those around you, and forming a bond of brotherhood that will help ease the journey from boyhood to manhood.
Played with a calm, almost monotone voice and personality by Jim Caviezel, Ladouceur was repeatedly courted by big college football programs waiving huge paychecks. But he chose to remain at De La Salle until his retirement last year, because he felt he had something to teach high schoolers that would be lost on men at university.
Upon hearing one of his players promise before a game that he would rather die than fail to give his best effort, the coach sternly corrects him and provides the sort of perspective you never hear in a sports flick: “Collapse -- not die. It’s a high school football game.”
He is in many ways the polar opposite of the central character in “Coach Carter,” which was also directed by Thomas Carter. While that coach was an immense personality who took the extraordinary step of benching his entire team of starters, Ladouceur is the sort of fellow who disappears in a crowd. He barely speaks from the sidelines during games, occasionally grabbing a player’s shoulder pads so he can whisper play calls into his ear.
The story, written by Scott Marshall Smith (“Men of Honor”) based on the book by Neil Hayes, follows the team through the tumultuous 2004 season, when a team of relatively unseasoned players blew the winning streak in their opening game and then lost their next game, putting not just their season but the entire identity of the school on the brink.
It’s an interesting and appealing twist on the old saw of taking a bunch of misfits and turning them into winners. Here, we glimpse the highs and lows of the sport, as winners become losers and must carefully, painstakingly earn their way back to the top.
The De La Salle program isn’t like most others. It’s a Christian school, so the players’ and coaches’ faith plays a pivotal role in their ethos. They literally walk onto the field hand-in-hand with each other, both as a sign of their fraternity and to psyche out opponents. Players are made responsible for each other’s performance, even writing out their goals for the next season and another teammate charged with holding them to it.
Challenges await as one season ends and preparation for another begins. A beloved player (a charismatic Stephan James) is murdered two days before leaving for college on a football scholarship. Ladouceur endures troubles on the home front (Laura Dern plays his wife, Matthew Daddario his son) and a personal setback. The team’s captain and star running back (a solid Alexander Ludwig) is ridden hard by his superfan dad (Clancy Brown), who pushes him to strive for the state touchdown record rather than leading the team.
I also enjoyed Michael Chiklis as Terry, Ladouceur’s jumpy assistant coach and best friend; Joe Massingill as Beaser, a stolid offensive lineman; and Jessie Usher as Tayshon, a lightning-fast but callow wide receiver who resists his coach’s altruistic teachings.
“When the Game Stands Tall” succeeds by shunning almost every trope of the rah-rah sports genre, celebrating selflessness and solidarity over outsized personalities and individual glory. This is a movie about what it takes to be great, rather than reveling in any one win, or many.
The title "Bad Boys" has come to be associated with the awful Will Smith/Martin Lawrence buddy-copy franchise, but it has always made me think of this gritty 1983 prison drama starring Sean Penn, which stuck with me from my youth.
It was Penn's first lead role, and after the tremendous success of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" the previous year, he could easily have been typecast in Spicoli-type jobs for the rest of his life. Yet Penn took a hard left turn by portraying Mick O'Brien, a truly depraved teen who, in the opening minutes of the film, busts in a car window to steal an old lady's purse, and then smashes in the face of the good Samaritan who pursued him.
In making this young, remorseless thug identifiable and even relatable, Penn showed the first glimmerings of his potential as a serious dramatic performer. Of course, he blossomed into one of the best actors of his generation, a
two-time Oscar winner before the age of 50, and seemingly destined for many
more important roles and accolades.
His performance is even more impressive in that the screenplay certainly doesn't give him a whole lot to work with. As written by Richard Di Lello, Mick is gutsy but not particularly intelligent, and is given little impactful dialogue to say. Penn's turn is based more on his screen presence than anything his character says or does.
The plot is pretty straightforward. Longtime petty criminal Mick finally gets nabbed during a drug deal gone bad. He had been attempting to rob Paco Moreno (Esai Morales), a rival from high school, when they were intercepted by a third gang. In the ensuing chaos, Mick's best friend Carl (Alan Ruck, forever Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off") is slain and Mick runs over Paco's kid brother while fleeing police.
He gets sent to juvenile prison, which is the usual jungle of barely-controlled outlaw behavior, with various cliques and power centers. Before long, Mick has climbed to the top of the hierarchical heap. At this point, Paco is sent to the same prison for raping and beating Mick's girlfriend. The last 45 minutes or so is one big (over)long buildup to their inevitable showdown.
There are a couple of truly gasp-worthy disconnects from logic in the screenplay. The first and most obvious is that the warden has to house Paco in the same cell block as Mick, knowing full well their violent history, because "all the other centers in the state are full." This is patently absurd. The idea that nowhere in the state of Illinois is a single bed available for a juvenile offender is just ridiculous.
In fact, we are told several times that Mick and Paco are housed in C-block. So what, there was no room in A or B block? If you were certain two inmates are certain to come to murderous blows, one would take every precaution to split them up -- even if that means one of them gets stuck in solitary isolation for a couple of weeks.
The other big plot hole is the nature in which Mick ascends to being the "barn boss" of C-block. When he arrives Mick becomes the target of the two head inmates, "Viking" Lofgren (Clancy Brown) and "Tweety" Jerome (Robert Lee Rush). But he takes them both out in a tremendous brawl where he's armed himself with several cans of soda wrapped in a pillow case. After getting some time in isolation, Mick is named barn boss, receiving all the commensurate perks: assignment of prisoner work details, and a cut of the illicit cigarette trade.
Now think about that -- why would the prison supervisors allow positions of power to be determined by combat? That seems like a pretty laughably lousy way to maintain order. That approach is less rehabilitative than Darwinian.
These quibbles aside, I found the overall level of acting in the film to be as good as I'd remembered. Director Rick Rosenthal, who's spent most of his career in television, gets some very naturalistic, unornamented performances out of his young cast. (Most of whom, I should note, were in their early- to mid-20s playing teenagers.) I should also mention Eric Gurry as Horowitz, a brainy but disturbed kid who becomes Mick's right-hand-man. Gurry had a short but notable run of child acting roles in the 1980s.
What's most notable about "Bad Boys" is the level of authenticity the cast and director bring to the proceedings. These are not cutesy kids doing naughty things. Most of the inmates in C-block are serious offenders who have murdered, maimed and raped. Even the nerdy Horowitz killed three people firebombing a bowling alley. He was targeting some bullies who beat him up, and his only regret is that he killed the wrong three people.
This was the only produced screenplay by writer Di Lello, though he did have a story credit on "Colors," another Penn film. Despite the criticisms mentioned earlier and a certain predictability to the last third of the story, it's still a bold original work that takes the trouble to look at some disturbed teenagers with more than simplistic strokes.
Penn and Morales take on a noticeable change as they transition from the streets of Chicago to the inside of the prison. Penn takes on a thousand-yard stare common among the long-term incarcerated. And both actors swell with prison-forged physiques they did not have before -- the formerly skinny Morales' arms approaching Stallone-esque proportions.
I fondly regard "Bad Boys" among other films of the late 1970s and early '80s that formed deep impressions on me at a time I was first becoming seriously interested in movies. I've enjoyed these occasional visits down memory lane to catch up with these flicks and see how they stand up after so many years.
"Bad Boys" is seen in retrospect as a mostly forgotten but seminal movie that launched a lot of careers.
"Green Lantern" is one of the weakest comic book superhero adaptations we've had in awhile, but I still couldn't quite bring myself to hate it. Sigh with disappointment, maybe, but the strongest feeling I had was the lack of one: I was colossally indifferent to this movie.
Part of it is Ryan Reynolds. I've seen Reynolds do good work, but he's started down an unfortunate career path that I'm not sure he can pull out of. He always plays the glib, fast-talking charmer who comes to realize he's out of his depth, and (usually) rises to the occasion.
I've seen this guy many times now, and I don't like him.
Here he plays Hal Jordan, a reckless and cocky test pilot who encounters a dying alien who bequeaths him a ring of power. It seems the Green Lantern Corp patrols the farthest reaches of the universe, 3,600 of them in all, and Hal's been tapped to take over this neck of the woods.
Alas, Parallax -- the ancient enemy of the Corp -- is released and begins wreaking havoc, manifesting as a giant blob of space goo. Some of his space goo finds its way to Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard), a nerdy scientist and childhood friend of Hal's, causing his head to swell to melon size and gifting him with telekinetic powers.
With his ring Hal can fly and create objects out of green energy, which is the Force-like energy generated by the willpower of all living creatures.
I certainly don't have the willpower to sit through "Green Lantern" again.
Video extras are quite paltry for DVD, but improve quite a bit with Blu-ray. The DVD has only promotional pitches for you: a preview of a Justice League digital comic and another for the Green Lantern animated TV show.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack adds two making-of documentaries, one about the Green Lantern universe and another about casting Reynolds in the green-and-black suit. There's also an extended cut of the film and deleted scenes. The centerpiece is a picture-in-picture mode with video pods with tidbits about production.
Perhaps I was expecting too much out of "Cowboys & Aliens" ... or at least, I was expecting something much different.
For a summer tent pole movie with a title like that, starring two actors -- Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford -- who have played iconic action heroes, and directed by admitted fanboy Jon Favreau ("Iron Man"), I was expecting something loopier. Wacky hi jinks coupled with slick special effects.
What we get instead is a fast-paced Western oater in which the bad guys happen to be crusty boogums from outer space. Imagine "War of the Worlds," except the invasion happens during the days of six-shooters and saddles.
The result is a movie that takes itself way more seriously than any film with a title like "Cowboys & Aliens" ought to.
It's still a fun ride, and Ford gets to play a more multi-dimensional character than we've seen in awhile. Craig is less fascinating, squinting his way through the movie and stumbling through an unconvincing American accent.
The movie opens without preamble. A man wakes up in the desert, lacking boots, a weapon or even a memory of who he is. He's the epitome of the spaghetti Western Man with No Name, since he doesn't even know it himself.
He does have a strange metal doohickey attached to his left wrist, and when some cowpokes try to roust him, he discovers a freakish ability at hand-to-hand combat.
The stranger rides into town, where he is soon identified as Jake Lonergan, a notorious bandit with a $1,000 bounty on his head. He runs into trouble with the son of the local ranch boss, and finds himself arrested by the sheriff. There's also a strange, beautiful woman who knows how to use a pistol and seems very interested in Lonergan.
Things come to a head when Col. Dolarhyde (Ford), the ranch boss, arrives to spring his boy. He's a hardened Civil War veteran, takes guff from no man, and always gets what he wants.
It seems things will go very badly when suddenly the town is attacked by spaceships, which blow people to bits or lasso them with metal contraptions and carry them away. Lonergan's bracelet suddenly comes to life and shoots down one of ships, so he's recruited for the posse to track down the kidnapped townsfolk.
Things go on from there, and there wasn't much that was very surprising, although it was executed well. The secret of Lonergan's amnesia and laser bracelet are uncovered, the creatures reveal themselves in all their googly-eyed, crustaceous glory, and of course some American Indians will ride in as some sort of reverse cavalry.
Dolarhyde is the most interesting character by far, and the small army of screenwriters (six, including story credits) give him plenty of layers. At first he's just a hateful old boss, pushing people around with his wealth and gang of armed cowboys. But eventually we discover him to be more haunted than hateful, especially in his relationships with a longtime Indian employee (Adam Beach) and a young boy who tags along with the posse.
I enjoyed myself at "Cowboys & Aliens," but it's not the sort of experience that will linger in the memory. Instead of genre-bending kitsch, we got a gritty Western with creepy critters.
"Green Lantern" is one of the weakest comic book superhero adaptations we've had in awhile, but I still couldn't quite bring myself to hate it. Sigh with disappointment, maybe, but the strongest feeling I had was the lack of one: I was colossally indifferent to this movie.
Part of it is Ryan Reynolds. I've seen Reynolds do good work -- he showed great comic timing in the first half of "The Proposal" -- but he's started down an unfortunate career path that I'm not sure he can pull out of. He always plays the glib, fast-talking charmer who comes to realize he's out of his depth, and (usually) rises to the occasion. I've seen this guy so many times now, and I don't like him.
After the screening -- held on a Wednesday night specifically to preclude most print reviews -- one of my fellow critics commented that in many ways "Green Lantern" is strikingly similar to "Iron Man." The protagonist is a hedonistic playboy who cares not a whit for the rest of the world, until circumstances and a really awesome super-suit force him to play hero. It's attractive as a story concept, but is so familiar now I kept thinking Lantern's costume looked moldy.
In this case, the hero's powers do not actually reside in the suit, but in the ring that is bequeathed to him by a dying member of the Green Lantern Corp. There are 3,600 of them split up to guard the entire universe against evil, and the greatest of them, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), is fatally wounded in a clash with the Corp's ancient enemy, Parallax (voice by Clancy Brown). Parallax is released from his imprisonment on a distant planet, and turns into some sort of wandering space blob with a head that looks like one of the aliens from "Mars Attacks!"
Meanwhile, Abin Sur crash lands on Earth and orders his ring to find a suitable replacement, and Hal Jordan (Reynolds) is selected. He's a cocky test pilot haunted by the death of his father, another pilot who was consumed in a fiery blaze before Hal's eyes when he was a boy. This has given him, needless to say, issues.
There's an inevitable scene where Hal discovers his powers after getting jumped by some toughs outside a bar. As soon as the scene shifted to the bar, I knew some thugs would appear shortly to serve as Lantern tenderizer. It's practically encoded in the DNA of movies like this.
Then there's a long, unnecessary sequence where Hal travels to the Lanter Corp's home planet for training, and to be told by head cheese Sinestro (Mark Strong) that he's not good enough to wear the ring. A big burly Lantern appears to teach him "ring slinging 101," which seems like an unlikely name from such a hallowed crew.
In the grand tradition of poor super-hero movies that can't come up with a worthy antagonist, there is a second villain to buttress the space goo guy. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) is an introspective scientist brought in to examine Abin Sur's corpse, but he gets zapped with a bit of the space goo and his head swells to melon proportions. Oh, and he can move stuff with his mind.
The powers of Green Lantern are vague. He can create anything he can imagine out of the green energy harnessed by the ring, which is supposed to consist of the willpower of every living creature in existence. It's like The Force, except for some reason willpower manifests itself as neon-green energy on the Corps home planet of Oa. Even more powerful, but less stable is yellow energy, which comes from fear. That's space goo guy's stock in trade.
So Green Lantern conjures race cars, machine guns, swords, shields and all sorts of other things in combat. He can also fly and fire energy bolts.
The totally unneeded love interest is played by Blake Lively, a childhood friend of Hal's who now runs the big corporation he worked for (until he shoots down two of their super-duper new drone fighter planes). She does have one great line where Hal, after first appearing in the Green Lantern outfit, immediately recognizes him because he only wears a tiny mask covering his eyes. "What, did you think I wouldn't recognize you just because I can't see your cheekbones?" Fourth wall humor, but still funny stuff.
So space blog guy keeps getting closer to Earth, Hector's noggin keeps growing bigger, and Hal learns to focus his willpower and overcome his fears.
I'm bored writing about this movie, just as I was while watching it, so I'll stop now.
