MOVIE REVIEW
White House Down (2013)
Reiner Bajo/Columbia Pictures
First things first: Is “White House Down” essentially the same movie as “Olympus Has Fallen”? The answer is a resounding yes. Here you have Channing Tatum standing in for Gerard Butler as the unlikely (read: non-Secret Service) saver of the day. Then you have Jamie Foxx stepping into the Aaron Eckhart role of the incorruptible president of the United States. Richard Jenkins is the Morgan Freeman House speaker/acting president. As Mr. Tatum’s daughter, Joey King here functions as the adolescent liability much like the president’s son in “Olympus” played by Finley Jacobsen.
Beyond the two films’ obviously shared premise of a White House under siege, their villains are similarly motivated by the prospect of controlling America’s nuclear arsenal. Then again, both are basically “Die Hard” set inside the White House, so it’s not like “Olympus” could lay claim to originality just for hitting the multiplexes three months earlier. The most pronounced difference between the two movies is a political one: Whereas the antagonists in “Olympus” were North Koreans, in “White House Down” they are radical right-wingers, racist zealots, wanton hackers, cracked soldiers and the entire military industrial complex at large. So which of the two you would find more enjoyable is dependent entirely on whether you’re a hardcore xenophobe or a hardcore liberal.
Continue reading “Olympus Has Fallen Into Habit” »
MOVIE REVIEW
This Is the End (2013)
Suzanne Hanover/
Columbia Pictures
When two Jewish filmmakers decide to make a comedy based on the biblical Judgment Day, questions about their motives naturally arise. After all, this isn’t nearly as benign as Barbra Streisand recording a couple of Christmas albums. While comedy in any form has often been a taboo-slinging free-for-all, what Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are attempting with “This Is the End” could easily be perceived as sacrilegious. On the flip side, they could be accused of heresy if they were outright singing the Christian gospel.
Continue reading “Flirting During Disaster” »
MOVIE REVIEW
World War Z (2013)
Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures
The movie adaptation of Max Brooks’s “World War Z” has lowered expectations time and again. For starters, Hollywood’s indisputably most overrated director, Marc Forster — fresh off ruining James Bond for everyone — was attached to the project. Extensive rewrites and reshoots then followed, resulting in a bloated budget and a yearlong delay. All indications were that it would turn out terrible, so it’s a relief that the film is even remotely watchable. This is not to say “World War Z” isn’t the embodiment of filmmaking-by-committee of the worst kind. In fact, it is pretty much the cinematic equivalent of a zombie: brain-dead, soulless and merely going through the epileptic motions.
Continue reading “Nighness of the Moviemaking Dead” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Heat (2013)
Gemma La Mana/20th Century Fox
Even though the buddy-cop subgenre gets an estrogenic makeover with “The Heat,” it’s no less chauvinistic — unless your idea of gender equality is that men shouldn’t have the monopoly on assholery. Look, it’s certainly a woman’s prerogative to be deplorable if she chooses. To think otherwise would be quite sexist itself. But “The Heat” derives its comedy from the most grotesque stereotypes imaginable of careerist women, as if the moral of the whole story is that women who are capable of being collegial while juggling family and ambition could never amount to anything.
Continue reading “White Chicks” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Internship (2013)
Phil Bray/20th Century Fox
“The Internship” reunites Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn eight years after the Frat Pack blockbuster “Wedding Crashers.” Instead of crashing weddings for free food, free booze and hormonal women, this time they are crashing Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus for prospective employment and, O.K., free food. The freewheeling naughts have made way for the fruitless teens. Even those perpetual slackers who talk a good game can’t talk their way out of the paper bag that is unemployment nowadays. In the face of the rippling foreclosure and broken marriage, though, the Frat Pack keeps its sunny side up: Who cares if the Google internships are only open to college students? Let’s enroll in the University of Phoenix!
Continue reading “The Pursuit of Haplessness” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Some Velvet Morning (2013)
Rogier Stoffers/2013 Tribeca Film Festival
After working as a director-for-hire on a couple of Hollywood productions, Neil LaBute is back to the playwright-turned-filmmaker niche he carved out for himself 16 years ago with “In the Company of Men.” A two-player chamber piece, “Some Velvet Morning” is indeed very theatrical — perhaps more so than all eight of his previous film efforts. In what some – though perhaps not all – will find a welcome move, he’s returning to the provocative and foul battle-of-the-sexes arena that is his wheelhouse.
Continue reading “The Shape of Flings” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Michael H. Profession: Director (2013)
Yves Montmayeur/2013 Tribeca Film Festival
“Michael H. Profession: Director” documents the working methods of every cinephile’s favorite Austrian sadomasochist provocateur, Michael Haneke, at arguably the peak of a long-lauded career. One of the very first scenes in the film treats us to Mr. Haneke playing out that now-famous nightmare scene in “Amour.” It’s a breathtaking moment, seeing him standing in for Jean-Louis Trintignant in what was likely a blocking rehearsal which was then remade shot-for-shot for the actual film. In the ensuing interview, he commented that although his films aren’t autobiographical, his personal experiences do inform them.
Continue reading “Goad Unknown” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Rocket (2013)
Tom Greenwood/2013 Tribeca Film Festival
“The Rocket” has claimed three of the top prizes at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, winning the World Narrative Competition, Best Actor and the Heineken Audience Award. Set in rural Laos, the film revolves around a family curse brought about by the birth of Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe). The misfortune that kindles the plot is a major dam construction project that displaces Ahlo’s clan. And that relocation has a domino effect all its own. Ostracized by even his own grandmother, Taitok (Bunsri Yindi), the 10-year-old Ahlo gravitates toward his friend Kia (Loungnam Kaosainam) and her outcast war-veteran uncle Purple (Thep Phongam). In hopes of proving his worth and finally breaking his family’s string of bad luck, Ahlo wants to compete in a local rocket festival, aided by Purple’s wisdom and know-how.
Continue reading “Rescue Pawn” »
MOVIE REVIEW
All Is Bright (2013)
Niko Tavernise/2013 Tribeca Film Festival
Phil Morrison made an auspicious directorial debut in 2005 with “Junebug.” Eschewing easy stereotypes, it masterfully painted a portrait of a sleepy American South haunted by a painful legacy and its people’s resignation to lives unfulfilled. The film also garnered the then-unknown Amy Adams an Oscar nomination and propelled her to overnight stardom. Given the eight years in between, expectations are naturally high for Mr. Morrison’s sophomore effort, “All Is Bright.” Regrettably, it falls short in every way imaginable.
Continue reading “The French-Canadian Connection” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Prince Avalanche (2013)
Scott Gardner/2013 Sundance Film Festival
David Gordon Green’s recent mainstream oeuvre has resulted in one hit (“Pineapple Express”) and two duds (“Your Highness” and “The Sitter”), in both the commercial and the critical senses. So a return to his indie roots would appear to be a welcome development for a director who initially carved his reputation out of the Malick-esque “George Washington.” But upon closer examination his latest, “Prince Avalanche,” is not unlike a bromance straight out of the Apatow clique that Mr. Green has ingratiated himself with via collaborations with Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill. But then you discover “Prince Avalanche” is actually just a remake of the 2011 Icelandic film “Either Way” by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, and you wonder if Mr. Green could sink any further.
Continue reading “All the Real Bros” »