A tale of two McCarthys

Posted on June 5, 2015 by reelentropy

Scorsese casts Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in all his movies, Feig casts Melissa McCarthy. There really is a world of difference here. Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.

At Spy’s world premier in May, star Jason Statham called writer/director Paul Feig “The Scorsese of comedy.” To really understand the gravity of this comment, you have to take the time to watch all those classic Scorsese/Statham collaborations. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Spy stars Feig’s muse, Melissa McCarthy, as Susan Cooper, a CIA analyst who works with Bradley Fine (Jude Law), watching his back through missions via satellite and drone and keeping him safe. Despite her best efforts, Fine is killed early in the film by Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), doughter of a multi-national terrorist kingpin with a tactical nuke for sale. Cooper gets her chance to prove her mettle in the field tracking Boyanov, since she knows all active operatives by name and face. Rick Ford (Statham) scoffs at the decision, and tails her through her reconnaissance mission.

At the start, it’s a clever spy satire brought down by more of the same from McCarthy. The Bond aesthetics are on point, and Ford and Boyanov are perfect spoofs of the stereotypical spy movie hero and villain, respectively.

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Show about vanity and entitlement becomes movie about vanity and entitlement

Posted on June 3, 2015 by reelentropy

Phone calls! Damn, I knew there was something I forgot to count. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Entourage is the whitest, broiest TV show that ever bleached a white bro’s bro-hole, and anyone expecting anything different from the movie was setting themselves up for disappointment.

The movie picks up with Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) partying after annulling his series-ending marriage, since, who needs a ball and chain, right? After bringing the entourage onto his giant sex boat, he gets a call from agent-turned-studio head Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) offering him a role. To shake things up, Chase requests to direct.

An immediate eight month timeskip robs viewers of seeing this process, though they do get a long middle finger in the form of a 10-minute exposition newsreel. No, this isn’t a movie about Chase struggling with new challenges and evolving as an artist and a character. Instead, it’s a movie about financier Travis McCredle (Haley Joel Osment) being jealous of his awesome sex life, among many other subplots to make the other characters seem important.

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San Andreas toppled by wobbly foundation

Posted on June 2, 2015 by reelentropy

If nothing else good can be said about the movie, it was at least a huge victory for Dwayne Johnson, who has finally proved indisputably that he can bring in upward of $50 million basically by himself. Photos courtesy Warner Brothers Pictures.

San Andreas gets immediate points off for opening with the Warner Bros. logo transitioning into the New Line Cinema logo, triggering traumatic Hobbit flashbacks.

It follows this up at once by making viewers listen to most of Taylor Swift’s “Style.” This movie has, dare I say it, a very shaky start.

San Andreas mostly follows Ray Gaines (Dwayne Johnson) through an agonizing 45-minute act one, then through multiple earthquakes stemming from California’s San Andreas Fault. Gaines’ wife, Emma (Carla Gugino), has left him for real estate mogul Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffuld) and has already moved into his castle-like mansion with their daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario), though she waited until early in the movie to serve him divorce papers for the audience’s convenience. A rescue worker with more than 600 confirmed rescues, Ray Gaines is on his way to help relieve a smaller, related earthquake in Nevada, inexplicably unaccompanied in the world’s worst helicopter, when The Big One hits Los Angeles. Gaines gets a call from his wife, gives her terrible earthquake safety advice, then completely abandons his duty to rescue her. From there, they head to San Francisco to rescue their daughter, who was laying over in the city with Riddick on her way to college.

Meanwhile, California Institute of Technology seismologist Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti) develops and proves a reliable method of predicting earthquakes a full half a minute in advance, which is actually a cool and interesting accomplishment, but doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with the rest of the movie.

First thing’s first — let’s go through all the terrible, stupid things characters do in this movie. These actions and statements make these characters unsympathetic, and can make viewers not care what happens to them.

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There are reasons to remake Poltergeist, but this remake doesn’t use them

Posted on May 27, 2015 by reelentropy

With modern, high-resolution TVs, your little girl can interact with even more creepy ghost hands! Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Poltergeist is a successful update that incorporates modern technology, background and tropes into an old movie, but you still have to wonder, “why?”

The remake follows the Bowens, who move into a new house that’s a step down for them due to father Eric (Sam Rockwell) being out of work. However, they got a great deal on it, as the neighborhood was mostly forclosed on in the housing crisis. Unfortunately, Indian burial ground shenanigans that mysteriously don’t affect the rest of the neighborhood kick in immediately, climaxing in young daughter Madison’s (Kennedi Clements) abduction into her closet. The signature tree and clown scares move to the opening haunting sequence and there are some adjustments to make the fracturing family subtext more obvious, but it mostly goes through the motions of the 1982 original.

It’s by no means a shot-for-shot remake. Modern effects are used to explore the netherworld in depth, where it was all offscreen in the original. Benevolent old psychic lady Tangia Barrons becomes Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris), an Irish ghost hunting TV star with black battle scars and grizzly, smoldering sex appeal. The daughter who spends all her time on the phone, Kendra (Saxon Sharbino), now spends all her time on her smartphone. It’s clever. It really brings the story into a 2015 setting.

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Tomorrowland gets A for ambition, C- for execution

Posted on May 27, 2015 by reelentropy

While many trailers have focused on George Clooney, even at the expense of co-star Britt Robertson, almost none tease Hugh Laurie. He’s a bit more popular than that, I think. Photos courtesy Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios.

Tomorrowland is a movie you want to like because it tries new things, an all-too-rare venture in Hollywood, but it doesn’t quite put them all together.

After a much too long layover in 1964, the plot starts with genius miscreant Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) finding a mysterious pin that transports her to a pocket dimension called Tomorrowland. After discovering a world still excited for new technology, Newton is desperate to return, and starts on a journey to do so with the help of Tomorrowland’s android recruiter, Athena (Raffey Cassidy), and now exiled golden son Frank Walker (George Clooney, Thomas Robinson in the 1964 scenes).

The movie’s got some pretty interesting storytelling concepts going on. It starts with a double narration — first from Walker talking about an apocalyptic future decided by greed, politics and willful ignorance, despite being raised in the ’60s when “The Future” was something out of The Jetsons. He’s interrupted by Newton, arguing for that limitless future, despite being raised in modern times when “The Future” always has something wrong with it. It’s an interesting dynamic that’s sadly dropped as Athena takes a more prominent role.

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