Tracy Bennett/TriStar Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
When the Game Stands Tall (2014)
“When the Game Stands Tall” centers on the real-life Spartans football team of De La Salle High School in Concord, Calif., under its legendary former coach Bob Ladouceur, here played by Jim Caviezel. It isn’t about how the team achieved its storied 151-game winning streak, however; but rather how it ultimately fumbled that winning streak and then recovered.
Frank Masi/20th Century Fox
MOVIE REVIEW
Let's Be Cops (2014)
The buddy cop subgenre has proven such a bankable formula in Hollywood — yet again by the success of “Ride Along” earlier this year — that some might now consider it a bona fide genre. The trope often combines varying percentages of thriller and comedy to mixed results. Some entries like “Lethal Weapon” skew more toward the thriller, while ones like “White Chicks” obviously yield to the comedy. Casting choices usually give a good indication which way it will turn out: If one of the partners belongs in the K-9 unit, you can be sure of the lowered stakes.
Besides the fact that neither of the main characters is an actual police officer, “Let’s Be Cops” feels unorthodox for defying these formulaic expectations the subgenre has been steadily creating through trial and error since its inception in the 1980s. The film actually has incredibly high stakes, like a much sillier “48 Hrs.” rather than a more thrilling “21 Jump Street.” If it’s any indication, Damon Wayans, Jr. plays the straight man to Jake Johnson’s instigator — complete with a reference to the Glover–Gibson dynamic.
Warner Brothers Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Into the Storm (2014)
“Into the Storm” imagines a tornado outbreak — including an EF-5 on the enhanced Fujita scale — wreaking havoc on fictional Silverton, Okla, in Tornado Alley. A team of storm chasers on a fruitless documentary project (among them Matt Walsh, Sarah Wayne Callies and Arlen Escarpeta) arrives fashionably in a Titus tank, while the vice principal of a local high school (Richard Armitage) attempts to locate a missing son (Jeremy Sumpter) and his classmate (Alycia Debnam-Carey).
We’ll leave film’s scientific legitimacy to professional meteorologists to assess, although the one played by Ms. Wayne Callies herein certainly casts doubts on the plausibility of this parade of cyclones. Since the film eschews the 3-D gimmick de rigueur for all Hollywood tentpoles, the only thing that separates “Into the Storm” from “Twister” made 18 years ago is its found-footage trope, utilized most memorably by “The Blair Witch Project,” “Paranormal Activity” and “Cloverfield.” As such, the entire endeavor is a total, um, disaster.
Anthony Nunez/Open Road Films
MOVIE REVIEW
The Fluffy Movie (2014)
A concert film documenting comedian Gabriel Iglesias’s two-night stand in San Jose, Calif., last year, “The Fluffy Movie” demonstrates just why the oversize top banana has cultivated quite the sizable following worldwide.
Andrew Schwartz/Screen Gems
MOVIE REVIEW
Deliver Us From Evil (2014)
“Inspired by the actual accounts of an N.Y.P.D. sergeant,” “Deliver Us From Evil” draws from the book “Beware the Night” by Ralph Sarchie, here played by Eric Bana. Three Iraq war veterans — driven by horrific impulses apparently unrelated to post-traumatic stress disorder — perpetrate some bizarre crimes in the Bronx.
Matt Kennedy/Screen Gems
MOVIE REVIEW
Think Like A Man Too (2014)
Steve Harvey’s 2009 book “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man” served as the dating gospel for characters in its movie adaptation, “Think Like a Man.” While the original cast and crew reunite for the sequel, “Think Like a Man Too,” they no longer seem to practice what Mr. Harvey preached. Oddly, the film is even more by-the-book — just not Mr. Harvey’s — than its predecessor.
Keith Bernstein/Warner Brothers Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Jersey Boys (2014)
Based on Des McAnuff’s Tony-winning musical about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, the big-screen adaptation of “Jersey Boys” under the direction of Clint Eastwood seems like the antithesis of Rob Marshall movie musicals. With the meteoric rise, rock-bottom fall and all the fourth-wall breaking, the book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice keeps hinting at its potential as the next “Casino” or “Boogie Nights.” But Mr. Eastwood seems oblivious to these thematic cues, and instead directs it in his typical B-movie low key as seen in “Million Dollar Baby.”
DreamWorks Animation
MOVIE REVIEW
How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
“How to Train Your Dragon 2” drifts even further away from Cressida Cowell’s book series: Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) and friends have grown up, while Vikings and dragons coexist peacefully in Berk. Valka (Cate Blanchett) — long presumed dead after giving birth to Hiccup — turns out to be some reclusive conservationist jungle woman. Meanwhile, renegade Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) has been assembling a dragon army to wage war on Berk.
James Bridges/20th Century Fox
MOVIE REVIEW
The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
At first glance, “The Fault in Our Stars” promises to give a tried-and-true daytime soap trope — star-crossed romance afflicted with terminal illness — the Y.A. novel treatment. One can almost picture a weepie making an auditorium full of Directioners tear up as if on cue. It’s difficult to fault someone uninitiated for making that assumption; yet at the same time, that would be underestimating the film.
Yaron Scharf/2014 Tribeca Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
Zero Motivation (2014)
Tribeca Film Festival winner for Best Narrative Feature and Nora Ephron Prize, Talya Lavie’s “Zero Motivation” is an absurdist comedy that readily plays with fire. Revolving around a hapless female troop stationed on a desert artillery base in the south of Israel, the film wastes no time in targeting the Holy Grail among taboos: making light of the Holocaust.
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