Review: "Flag Day"

 

What a small, lovely and exquisitely human film.

Most people will go into "Flag Day" knowing that it was directed by Sean Penn, who stars alongside his own kid, Dylan Penn, as they play a real-life father and daughter with a fraught relationship. Penn's son, Hopper, also appears in a smaller role playing the son. You don't often see parent-child acting combinations in movies, but when you do ("On Golden Pond") they tend to be indelible. 

This one certainly is.

When I say the movie is small, that is not meant as diminishment. Little movies can often have the biggest impacts. By small I mean it doesn't look or feel like a big Hollywooded-up production. 

Read the rest on Substack!

Video review: "The Angry Birds Movie"

“The Angry Birds Movie” is an exemplar of the generational divide: I loathe it, but my kids love it.

Since the Blu-ray showed up in the mail, my 5-year-old has watched it twice and asked about a third, at which point a parent’s protective instincts kick in. The quality of entertainment for children has gone through the roof since my day, so lazy and inept stuff like this is even more egregious.

People like to disparage movies based on video games as dredging the bottom of the cultural barrel. But Angry Birds isn’t even a real video game, in the same way that tic-tac-toe bears little resemblance to Monopoly. It’s a smartphone app in which birds hurl themselves via a giant slingshot at the buildings and other structures of evil green pigs.

(Oddly, no one has ever thought to question why none of these birds have functioning wings. I mean, you figure any multicultural bird community is going to have a few penguins, ostriches and the odd emu here and there. But 100% flightless? Darwin says, “Uh uh.”)

Directors Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly and screenwriter Jon Vitti give us a paint-by-numbers cast and story. Red (voice of Jason Sudeikis) is a bird with anger management problems and the ostensible hero. His buddies include Chuck, a motor-mouth yellow guy voiced by Josh Gad, and Bomb (Danny McBride), who does as his name implies when he gets excited.

There’s also Terence, a massive red fellow who just growls at everyone, never speaking. He’s voiced (if you can call it that) by Sean Penn.

When the pigs land on bird island, they befriend the locals before making off with all their eggs. Bill Hader does the voice of Leonard, their smarmy leader. It’s only a matter of time before Red and company follow them back home and start slinging themselves at piggy places.

Perhaps the film’s only genuine laugh is provided by Peter Dinklage as Mighty Eagle, the mascot/mythical protector of the birds, who lives the high life up in his eyrie.

The rest is a generic jumble of fart jokes and zippy pratfalls. It’s just lazy moviemaking.

But enough parents got dragged to the theater by their kids to make this a huge hit, so get ready for the sequel. In the meantime, “The Angry Birds Movie” is the sort of thing you set your little guys up with in the living with some popcorn, and go get 97 minutes to yourself.

Bonus features are middling. With the DVD there is a single deleted scene; the Blake Shelton music video, “Friends”; character sketch gallery; music vignettes with composer Heitor Pareira; and a “symphony mode” where you can watch the movie with only music.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version and you add five making-of featurettes; more deleted scenes; several mini-movies featuring the Hatchlings characters; and the short film, “The Early Hatchling Gets the Worm.”

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Review: "The Angry Birds Movie"

Movies fail for all kinds of reasons. Poor casting, bad story structure, uninspired direction -- even the music can ruin a moment. I’ve seen it all, and generally don’t hold it against the filmmakers. They swung, they whiffed, maybe they’ll do better at their next at bat.

The one reason I can’t abide, though, is sheer brute laziness.

“The Angry Birds Movie” is a merchandising opportunity in search of a movie. It’s based on a video game, and the batting average for that conversion is still .000. And the Angry Birds games aren’t even really games, they’re apps -- ways to pass the time on your smartphone while you’re waiting for the dentist.

There are no characters, no story, no drama. You just plink bird ordnance at pig structures to smash them. Ostensibly it’s because the pigs stole the birds’ eggs and they’re angry about it… but you never even get to the eggs.

You might as well try to make a film out of tic-tac-toe.

Still, the total lack of a format means rookie directors Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly and screenwriter Jon Vitti had no structure to hold them back. They could make up any kind of scenario they wanted and inserted imaginative characters and situations into them. Totally free reign.

Instead, they slapped together a droning mélange of quips, crude body humor and zippy action. Entire scenes and exchanges of dialogue seem improvised on the spot, which is impressive (in a way) for an animated film with an estimated budget of $80 million.

Little kids may be carried along by the bright colors and goofy action. But this parent was bored nearly to the point of walking out.

Here the birds all live on one happy island, protected by legendary guardian Mighty Eagle, who’s more aspirational than operational these days. The one malcontent is Red (voice of Jason Sudeikis), a pugnacious bird with Groucho Marx eyebrows and a tendency to lose his cool. For his crimes he’s sentenced to anger management class, led by hippy-dippy chickie Matilda (Maya Rudolph).

His classmates are Chuck, a hyper-fast yellow bird voiced by the excitable Josh Gad, and Bomb (Danny McBride), a burly black fellow with a tendency to literally explode when stressed, though his body is only slightly singed in the process. (The movie’s metaphysics are suspect.)

Oh, and there’s a massive red bird named Terence the size of a blimp -- he mostly resembles Red on steroids, eyebrows and all – who only ever glares at people and grumbles. I’m astonished to learn he is voiced by Sean Penn, who has hereby accomplished the Method Acting pinnacle of getting paid to grunt.

Anyway, the green pigs roll up on the beach one day offering friendship, led by the officious Leonard (Bill Hader), and they quickly set about spoiling bird paradise with their machines and noise. It’s all an excuse to make off with the birds’ eggs for their feast … which they sure seem to take their time getting around to. (Three-minute boil, anyone?)

Eventually, an hour into the movie, the birds starting launching themselves into the pig town via a giant slingshot the pigs brought with them, also for reasons unknown.

Mighty Eagle makes an appearance, gallantly voiced by Peter Dinklage, having now gone to seed. His first undertaking, after Bomb and Chuck have bathed in the mystical lake on top of his mountain, provides the movie’s sole laugh-out-loud moment.

As I say, I don’t often get mad about bad movies. But when you can feel the people who made them not trying, consider my feathers ruffled.

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: "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.

Reeling Backward: "Bad Boys" (1983)

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.

3 stars out of four

DVD review: "Milk"

Sean Penn is just amazing in “Milk,” playing Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician elected to public office. What’s most incredible about his Oscar-winning performance is that it’s so different from anything he’s ever done before. Harvey Milk could fire up crowds in his call for gay rights, but he was not an angry man trying to buck the system. He was cunning and charismatic and delighted in co-opting the political machine, so that’s how Penn plays him: a subtle charmer.

Director Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black do a great job of showing Harvey’s political ascent – the scenes of Milk and his partner Scott (James Franco) building a political movement out of their Castro Street camera shop breathe with an organic authenticity, helped by an impressive array of supporting actors. The film is less successful at portraying Milk’s personal life; his relationship with a flighty Latino boyfriend is so underwritten as to become comical.

There’s a decent array of extra features on the DVD, but it’s notable for the total absence of participation by Van Sant and Penn. Although both are glimpsed in the bonus material, they never speak directly about making this movie, and there’s no commentary track. Three brief deleted scenes add little, though one where Milk dresses up as a clown for a publicity stunt is visually arresting.

Of the three featurettes, the best is “Remembering Harvey,” a 13-minute documentary in which many of Milk’s real-life allies depicted in the movie, including Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg, reminisce about the man and his legacy. Carol Ruth Silver, who co-sponsored Milk’s anti-discrimination legislation, starkly admits his death helped the gay rights movement: “It’s a sad thing to say, but martyrdom works.”

A 14-minute doc, “Hollywood Comes to San Francisco,” consists of the usual blather and self-hype from the actors and filmmakers; Josh Brolin lets us know that he think Milk’s sacrifices were akin to those of “Jesus, and Gandhi.” Well.

Movie: B-plus
Extras: C-plus