Category: Movies

Unfriended

grouchyeditor.com Unfriend

 

For anyone who’s ever been creeped out by an anonymous lurker, or a troll, on the Internet, Unfriended will hit home at least for the first half of the movie, in which a small group of tech-savvy teens find their Skype call invaded by an unwelcome visitor. Unfortunately, events that follow – involving a ghost and some vicious online behavior – grow more and more ridiculous. If nothing else, the movie, which occurs entirely online, is a good primer for novice users of Instagram, Facebook, and other sites where the kids hang out.  Release: 2015  Grade: B-

 

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Kingsman: The Secret Service

grouchyeditor.com Kingsman

 

A street kid is recruited by an international spy (Colin Firth) to combat an evil billionaire (Samuel L. Jackson) who plans to dramatically reduce Earth’s human population – ostensibly to combat global warming. This British spy movie is more in line with the sillier James Bond adventures starring Roger Moore than with the more recent, dead-serious Daniel Craig outings. The plot is outlandish and the villains cartoonish, but hey, that’s what we paid for. And besides, who doesn’t want to “do it in the asshole” with Swedish actress Hanna Alstrom? Release: 2015  Grade: B

 

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Mad Max: Fury Road

grouchyeditor.com Fury

 

Director George Miller returns to post-apocalyptic Australia to deliver a two-hour cartoon that looks really cool, but which has very little to engage the mind. That’s a fine thing if you’re 12 years old, but some of us geezers recall a time when big-budget action flicks at least made a token effort to provide the semblance of a plot, or one or two characters who do more than grunt their lines. But if all you require is a movie with spectacular chase scenes and things that go boom, this ought to more than satisfy you.  Release: 2015  Grade: B-

 

*****

 

Black Sheep

Sheep

 

Genetic engineering goes wrong, turning thousands of harmless sheep into bloodthirsty beasts as they run amok in the New Zealand countryside. It’s not quite as funny as it sounds – there’s too much emphasis on gore and special effects, not enough on the (sorry) sheer lunacy of actual sheep on a killer rampage. Then again, the image of hundreds of corpulent sheep congregating on a hilltop, preparing to attack like the schoolyard crows in The Birds, still brings a smile to my face. Release: 2006  Grade: B-

 

*****

 

The Imitation Game

grouchyeditor.com Imitation

 

After watching this movie and then doing some research on the real-life people and events that inspired it, I felt much the same way that I felt years ago after reading James Frey’s infamous “memoir,” A Million Little Pieces: Yes, it was a bummer to learn that the film (or book) took so many liberties with reality – but I liked it anyway.

Is it fair to criticize the makers of The Imitation Game for altering the story of Alan Turing, the gay, brilliant mathematician who was instrumental in cracking a Nazi code during World War II? I think it is, especially when the movie opens with the standard “based on a true story” tagline, and especially when the names of real people are retained. If you can shrug off that “artistic license,” though, Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as Turing and the inherent suspense of the story make for a touching, powerful drama.  Release: 2014   Grade: B+

 

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Ex Machina

grouchyeditor.com Machina

 

Take “Hal” from 2001: A Space Odyssey — or any of the replicants from Blade Runner — toss him (or her) into the plot of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and you’ll get something akin to this cautionary tale about a reclusive genius and his latest project: a doe-eyed android named Ava. The question is: Just how “human” is Ava?

Writer-director Alex Garland (Sunshine, Never Let Me Go) delivers a visually striking, dreamlike motion picture — although the characters are a miserable lot, the tone is oppressive, and at times the story drags. Still, this is thought-provoking science fiction, mostly because it’s such a plausible glimpse at our future.  Release: 2015  Grade: B+

 

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**

 

Phoenix

grouchyeditor.com Phoenix

 

A presumed-dead Holocaust survivor (Nina Hoss), shot in the head, has facial reconstruction surgery and returns home to her husband – but he fails to recognize her. Oh, and he might have betrayed her to the Nazis. Absorbing and suspenseful, Phoenix raises memories of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with its haunted tone and themes of fantasy and identity.  

I do have two minor complaints.  The plot suffers from what I call Agatha Christie Syndrome:  People who really ought to recognize someone, do not (or vice versa). And I don’t understand why romantic mood-pieces like this one, which cry out for a musical score, eschew them. Release: 2014  Grade: B

 

**

 

Welcome to New York

grouchyeditor.com Welcome

 

Abel Ferrara’s thinly veiled account of the alleged sexual assault of an immigrant chambermaid by French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn is an intriguing, if not particularly powerful, docudrama. It’s not easy to be repulsed by a hedonistic, unrepentant rich man when he’s portrayed by an actor as charming as Gerard Depardieu. But it’s always fascinating to see how the world’s elite behave and misbehave – whether or not that behavior is real or the product of a screenwriter’s imagination. Release: 2014 Grade: B

 

**

 

American Sniper

grouchyeditor.com Sniper

 

I lost all faith in the veracity of war movies “based on a true story” back in 2003 when the military and NBC (Saving Jessica Lynch) sold us a bill of goods about the saga of Jessica Lynch, so I have no clue how faithful Sniper is to the life of Navy sharpshooter Chris Kyle. I doubt that the real Kyle was as charismatic as Bradley Cooper is in this controversial take on U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But old pro Clint Eastwood knows how to stage a tense, suspenseful battle sequence, and his movie is certainly thought-provoking. Release: 2014 Grade: B

 

**

 

The Girl

grouchyeditor.com Hedren

 

Toby Jones is superb as Alfred Hitchcock and, surprisingly (to me, at least), Sienna Miller is more than his match as Tippi Hedren, the Minnesota model whom Hitchcock turned into a movie star, in the process becoming dangerously obsessed with her. I have no idea how closely The Girl adheres to reality, but as a beauty and the beast docudrama, it’s much better than I expected.  How does it compare to Hitchcock, the Anthony Hopkins vehicle that also came out in 2012? This is better because, like so many of Hitchcock’s movies, it’s absorbing and deliciously twisted. Release: 2012  Grade: A-

 

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grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

 

And now for something completely different …

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

 

Once upon a time, Your Humble Reviewer lived in a strange kingdom called Texas. One lonely night he imbibed too much mead and found himself staring at a late-night movie on Cinemax. The movie had lots of nudity and sex, and the story was very silly. Alas, the nasty mead eventually caused Your Humble Reviewer to drift off into dreamland, until …

 

… the following morning, when bits and pieces of the Cinemax movie began to crop up in his foggy memory bank. The film had been called Cinderella, and indeed it featured wicked stepsisters and a fairy godmother and a carriage ride to the big ball. But it also had sex scenes. And music and dancing. Disco-flavored music. Most perplexing of all, it seemed to Your Humble Reviewer that the movie … had not sucked.

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

 

Many moons later, in the year 2015 and while he dwelled in a new kingdom called Minnesota, Your Humble Reviewer once again watched Cinderella, which had recently been issued on DVD. And lo and behold, it still didn’t suck. Quite the contrary; parts of this soft-core-porn-musical-comedy were actually a hoot, and the songs and choreography were, well, quite good.

 

The plot:  What, you don’t know the story of Cinderella? The plot in this version is the same, albeit with adults-only alterations. The fairy godmother, for example, is played by black actor Sy Richardson who, as a fun-loving thief, steals every household good in sight and every scene he appears in. The handsome prince, in his quest to find the enchanting Cinderella, slips more than a shoe onto comely maidens. Oh, and then there is the “snapping pussy” ….

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderellagrouchyeditor.com Cinderellagrouchyeditor.com Cinderella

grouchyeditor.com Cinderellagrouchyeditor.com Cinderellagrouchyeditor.com Cinderella

In an inexplicable, bizarre dream sequence, this creepy geezer squeezes poor Cinderella’s breasts until they squirt milk.

 

Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith plays the beloved lead, which in this telling of the fairy tale requires her to be gullible (check), cute as a button (check), personable (check), and often naked (check and check again). Sadly, Smith’s real life was apparently no fairy tale. According to her Wikipedia biography, a few years after Cinderella, Smith became addicted to heroin, which eventually led to a pair of prison stints and her death from liver disease and hepatitis at age 47.

It’s not likely that NBC will be inspired to produce this version of Cinderella as one of its live musical holiday specials. Along with the voluminous sex and skin, this is a low-budget affair, with bad dubbing, cheesy sets, and dime-store special effects. On the other hand, this 1977 oddity boasts music and songs by Andrew Belling with witty lyrics, an energetic cast, amusing 1970s pop-culture references, and some numbers that are better than what you’ll find in many “legitimate” musicals. It’s all very good-natured and fun.

In the end, of course, they all fuck happily ever after. Merry Christmas.   Grade: B

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

Elizabeth Halsey rides the prince while Linda Gildersleeve, also in her birthday suit, looks on.

 

Director: Michael Pataki   Cast: Cheryl Smith, Yana Nirvana, Marilyn Corwin, Jennifer Doyle, Sy Richardson, Brett Smiley, Kirk Scott, Brenda Fogarty, Elizabeth Halsey, Linda Gildersleeve, Mariwin Roberts, Roberta Tapley  Release: 1977

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

 

Watch the Trailer (click here)

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

This female extra was either the victim of budget cuts (no money for knickers!), or she was married to a producer and had an exhibitionist fetish.

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

Cinderella (right) and the girls check out the prince’s family jewels.

 

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

grouchyeditor.com Cinderella

 

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Miss Meadows

Meadows

 

One odd duck of a movie, part quirky black comedy, part vigilante crime drama. There’s a fine line between lovably eccentric and flat-out annoying, and Katie Holmes can’t quite pull off the former as a troubled schoolteacher who divides her time between correcting strangers’ grammar and mowing down neighborhood thugs. Not sure who thought that mixing this tap-dancing, pistol-packing Mary Poppins with creepy sex offenders was a good idea, but I couldn’t wait for the end credits so I could say “toodle-oo.”   Release: 2014  Grade: D+

 

*****

 

John Wick

Wick

 

A retired hit man (Keanu Reeves) goes ballistic when gangsters snuff out his mutt and steal his car in this mindless shoot-‘em-up for people who are too lazy to play video games. Clunky dialogue and an impressive waste of acting talent (Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane, Michael Nyqvist) also distinguish this mind-numbing waste of time. Hey, I don’t like it when they kill the dog, either, but this is ridiculous.  Release: 2014  Grade: F

 

*****

 

Black Sea

Black Sea

 

Jude Law plays a recently fired salvage skipper who leads a band of miscreants on a risky mission to steal gold bars from a Nazi submarine resting on the bottom of the Black Sea.  It’s a decent little thriller, and proof that you don’t need a big budget to make an exciting action movie – just some good performances and a script that isn’t too far-fetched. Release: 2015  Grade: B

 

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Martian1

 

Normally, I’m a sucker for castaway movies, and I’m also a fan of space-travel adventures. That should land me squarely in the target audience for The Martian, especially since I loved the book it’s based on. But my reaction to Ridley Scott’s big-budget science-fiction thriller was … well, it was OK. I guess.

Matt Damon, presumably cast as an astronaut accidentally stranded on Mars because Tom Hanks was too old to play the part, gives an engaging performance. The scenery and special effects are suitably Mars-like. And the screenplay is certainly faithful to Andy Weir’s novel. But my overall impression of the film is lukewarm. Maybe director Scott (Alien, Blade Runner) has simply lost his outer-space mojo. Maybe the problem is the story itself, which is too futuristic to conjure the fact-based drama of Apollo 13, yet too “hard science” to deliver goofy good fun like, say, Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Instead, The Martian resides in a science-fiction no-man’s land:  too pokey and clinical to generate much suspense, too matter-of-fact to be much fun.

 

Martian2

 

Damon is fine as wise-cracking, marooned Mark Watney, but the mood of his isolation is undermined when the film keeps cutting back to NASA scientists on Earth, who are scrambling to find ways to rescue him. It would be akin to cutting away from Hanks’s lengthy sojourn on his deserted island in Cast Away to scenes of fretting FedEx executives back at mainland headquarters.

Pare back on those NASA scenes — including unnecessary business with big names Jeff Daniels and Kristen Wiig — and you’d have a tighter, more dramatic film.  At 2 hours and 15 minutes, the movie is often like Watney’s tenure on Mars: overlong and occasionally tedious.     Grade: B

 

Martian3

 

Director: Ridley Scott  Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Michael Pena, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie  Release: 2015

 

Martian4

 

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

 

Martian5

Martian6

 

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Philomena1

 

Ordinarily, if you tell me to check out a movie because it’s “heartwarming,” or “great for the whole family,” I grab my Howard Stern books and run for the hills. I do that because, nine times out of ten (OK, 9.7 times out of 10), that description is code for “sappy and crappy.” But then along comes an exception like Philomena, which is part comedy, part road movie, part tearjerker and yes, “heartwarming and great for the whole family.”

Steve Coogan plays a disgraced BBC journalist who, in an attempt to resuscitate his career, agrees to do a human-interest piece about an elderly woman who, having lost touch with her infant son in the 1950s, hopes to find him again in America.

Martin Sixsmith (Coogan) and Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) travel to Washington, D.C., and their exploits are charming and unpredictable, not cloying or clichéd. If this movie was typical Hollywood fare, we would no doubt get scenes of Philomena learning to twerk, or performing a rap routine. Instead, Philomena gets laughs by defying our expectations with well-timed observations, or with gentle pokes at Sixsmith.

The screenplay, co-written by Coogan and Jeff Pope from a book by the real Sixsmith, time and again takes unexpected turns. When we at last learn what became of Philomena’s beloved son, it caught me off-guard – twice. Without giving away too much of the plot, let’s just say the boy’s adulthood involves Ronald Reagan and personal secrets.

Coogan and Dench are both understated and both very good. If the film has a flaw, it’s that the main villain, once revealed, is perhaps a bit too villainous – or at least this person’s motivations aren’t adequately explained.    Grade:  A-

 

Philomena2

 

Director:  Stephen Frears  Cast:  Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Mare Winningham, Barbara Jefford, Ruth McCabe, Peter Hermann, Anna Maxwell Martin, Michelle Fairley  Release:  2013

 

Philomena3

 

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

 

Philomena4

 

Philomena5

 

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Hausu

2

 

Seven schoolgirls visit an old woman’s house in the country and get more than they bargained for in this standard-issue horror film from Japan. Just … kidding. There is nothing “standard issue” or normal about this 1977 mind-fuck from director Nobuhiku Obayashi. I suppose it’s what you might get if you tossed Where the Boys Are, The Haunting, and an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon into a blender – and then dropped acid before watching the result. Release: 1977  Grade: A, B, C, D and F

 

*****

 

 Oslo, August 31st

Oslo

 

Absorbing drama about a day in the life of a drug addict (Anders Danielsen Lie), a young man on leave from rehab for a job interview and who decides to revisit old pals and haunts in Oslo. What keeps this compelling film from cinematic greatness is its tone of clinical detachment, which makes it difficult to care all that much about the young man’s fate. Release: 2011 Grade: B+

 

*****

 

Alone with Her 

.                                 Ana27Ana28Ana29

 

Déjà vu, baby. I’m pretty sure I saw this movie before, way back in 1982. Back then, it featured a film star’s son (Andrew Stevens, Stella’s boy) cast as a perverted loner who is obsessed with a beauty (Morgan Fairchild). He spies on her when she’s naked, attempts to ingratiate himself with her, makes her life a living hell, and is finally unmasked in time for a climactic showdown.

This go-round, in Alone with Her, the film star’s kid is Colin Hanks, son of Tom, and the victimized girl is Ana Claudia Talancon. But as was the case with 1982’s The Seduction, Alone is more unpleasant than suspenseful. Fairchild and Talancon take showers in their respective movies;  after watching this creep-out, you might need one, as well.  Release: 2006 Grade: C

 

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Byzantium

Gemma

 

It’s a vampire movie, and so parts of it are a tad silly, but when you have a skilled director at the helm and two actresses of above-average caliber in the leads, you get a movie that’s classier and more intelligent than most of its bloodthirsty brethren. Sultry Gemma Arterton and somber Saoirse Ronan play mother and daughter undead on the run from both human and nonhuman tormentors. Neil Jordan’s moody movie is so absorbing that it’s not until the end credits roll that you realize just how much of it strains credibility.  Release: 2013  Grade: B+

 

*****

 

Roger Dodger

Dodger

 

Who’s the real “ladies’ man” — smooth-talking, bar-hopping, misogynistic Roger Swanson (Campbell Scott), or Roger’s naïve, teenaged nephew (Jesse Eisenberg), whose innocence melts female hearts? We find out the answer, sort of, when 16-year-old Nick spends a wild night on the prowl in New York with his playboy uncle. Eisenberg is good in his first feature film, but Dodger is delicious black comedy mostly thanks to Scott, whose Roger is a pathetic-yet-fascinating train wreck.  Release: 2002  Grade: B+

 

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