The Babadook

Jennifer Kent’s debut film is a psychological horror film more than a literal one, but is as scary as any.

the-babadook-posterThe monster inside us is often the scariest of all. What are we capable of if pushed to the edge? What demons are we harboring? And can we ever escape?

Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook” is one of the best horror movies in a decade. The monster at its center is a personal demon, not quite a literal one. The thrills and scares come early and often, but the monster itself remains dormant beneath a veil of family drama and psychological turmoil.

Amelia (Essie Davis) is the single-mother to her 7-year-old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a precocious young boy but one who finds it hard to be around other children. He doesn’t see monsters, but he believes in them more than the usual child, to the point that he creates makeshift weapons to stop would-be intruders and takes up the defensive immediately for those who would insult or harm his mother. It gets him into trouble, both at school and with his aunt, who no longer wants to be around Samuel and his habits.

Amelia is suffering through a job at an old folks home and is struggling to find a new school for Samuel once his antics get him dismissed. At the same time, she has a recurring dream of her husband’s death in a car crash, who died on the day Samuel was born no less.

All these problems begin to burrow deeper under Amelia’s skin after Samuel finds a sinister looking children’s book called “The Babadook”. There’s a long history of horror movies summoning monsters by reading the pages of an old, ancient book, poem, or diary, but Kent has a visual style that doesn’t linger on the rhyming words and mantras so many other films default to.

Kent’s style is aural editing, with each cut punctuated by each noise, creak, or flourish that seem to resound inside Amelia’s head like a migraine. “The Babadook” is gray and flush of color, but as Amelia’s stress grows more weary, Kent finds a way to sap it of additional light, even going as far as to bend the proportions of their English cottage to surreal angles. There’s a scene at a birthday party in which Kent frames Amelia opposite five leering housewives in a domineering arc. Who are the real monsters and villains of this story?

Perhaps most fascinating is how Kent allows us to get inside Amelia’s head. There are moments of relief for her, like when she takes off work and finds a moment of solace while eating an ice cream cone. The shot is luminous and a dreamy moment of escapism, all before we come crashing down to reality. Kent even toys with our sense of reality, particularly in a scene where Amelia scrambles to patch a hole filled with cockroaches, only to find when guests arrive that the hole was never there.

How do fear, guilt, and frustration with the many nuisances and challenges in our lives begin to mount? “The Babadook” is terrifying for sure, but it’s a drama of depression first, and how when all these stresses come together in a perfect storm, it can be self-destructive.

Essie Davis above all leads Amelia’s mental breakdown and transformation. It’s a jaw-dropping performance that escalates to enormous volumes in the film’s climax. Davis becomes so dangerous and so unpredictable so organically that we hardly see it coming. Her decline and her anger seem so natural, despite how quickly monstrous her actions become, and it’s truly scary.

The film’s ending is perhaps the most polarizing aspect, but it’s a perfect one. “You’ll never get rid of The Babadook”, the book taunts. For Amelia, she’s coping with the grief of losing her husband, even seven years removed from the accident. That pain never goes away, but you have to feed those demons to tame them, and they can overcome you when things get bad.

Most dramas are hardly this perceptive of human nature, let alone indie horror movies. “The Babadook” is so unsettling because it’s so familiar, and it spawns a fear you can’t erase.

4 stars

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

The fifth in the MI franchise, Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise have elevated the series to James Bond status

MI5PosterDaniel Craig and the new James Bond left a campy-sized hole in the hearts of many an action movie lover. The films became so polished, so good and even so plausible that while no one was clamoring for a throwback to Pierce Brosnan ice palaces and invisible cars, there’s a sense that spy stories could be a little less serious.

Enter “Mission: Impossible”, which five entries in has shed its TV adaptation roots and finally taken Bond’s place on the franchise throne. Previously the “MI” series has been a malleable Tom Cruise vehicle: a Hitchcockian thriller in the hands of genre stylist Brian De Palma, a visual showcase in the hands of John Woo or a dense conspiracy caper in the hands of J.J. Abrams. The fourth film, “Ghost Protocol”, was so delightfully cartoonish (in the hands of none other than Pixar’s Brad Bird making his live-action debut), that even dangling Tom Cruise off the tallest building in the world was not the most outrageous part.

So what is ironically fresh about the latest and fifth entry, “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”, is that Director Christopher McQuarrie isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. The film has not taken on yet another new life in the hands of a new director but has found a comfortable groove that combines the best of all four previous films.

The most notable trait of course must be Tom Cruise, who continues to impress and prove why he’s a bankable star despite never once setting foot in superhero spandex or body armor. In purely Bond fashion, Cruise opens “Rogue Nation” with an incredible set piece detached from the plot of the main film. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt leaps aboard a taxiing plane and hangs on for dear life even after the plane takes off.

And that’s Cruise’s career in a nutshell: trying so hard and still able to hold tight against all odds even as every young teen star takes flight.

Here Cruise’s Ethan Hunt undergoes the Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon” treatment, being suspended from the ceiling and beaten and tortured, only to acrobatically crack some skulls and escape. He’s on the run after coming across an agent he believes to be the head of The Syndicate, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). The Syndicate is a shadow organization made to destroy the IMF, and which Hunt believes was behind several global accidents he and the IMF were been unable to avert.

Lane’s frail, crippled tone behind glasses, a German accent and a short haircut make him sound like a man struck by lightning as a child. He’s a convincing ghost, and one of the franchise’s more memorable villains, if still behind Philip Seymour Hoffman from “MI:3”.

But the IMF is also facing a challenge from the CIA and their operation head, played by Alec Baldwin. The CIA is in denial that any Syndicate even exists, and the IMF’s biggest lead is a double agent named Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) who they first encounter attempting to murder a German chancellor.

It’s enough spy mumbo jumbo to keep the wheels moving and not too much to overwhelm the story in Macguffins and pseudo-science jargon. And the help of returning cast Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames continue to keep things light and tongue-in-cheek.

Because part of what makes “Rogue Nation” so refreshing, and for that matter all the “Mission: Impossible” movies, is how outlandish and oversized the film’s various set pieces can become, and yet are never once CGI maelstroms. One scene takes place in the backdrop of an opera in Vienna, and to say it’s magnificent, musically edited, and operatic is an understatement. Then there’s an underwater scene where Cruise has to hold his breath for three minutes while avoiding rotating gears and security blocks. It’s preposterous and near impossible to describe or rationalize, but in 2015 it’s more memorable than any horde of disposable robots.

These are traditional action movies after all, but when Bourne has gone gritty, the “Fast and Furious” movies have grown into their own superhero films, and John Wick has gone downright minimal, it’s nice to see that Ethan Hunt’s missions still look impossible.

3 ½ stars

Rapid Response: Wet Hot American Summer

David Wain’s summertime parody was far ahead of its time, even in the early 2000s.

WetHotAmericanSummer14 years is an awful long time in the 21st Century. In 2001, the first iPod would just be released, and the memes, texts, emojis and general sense of irony we now freely use as communication were hardly even a concept. “Wet Hot American Summer”, David Wain’s cult comedy debut from 2001, may have been released in the new millennium, but its reception was pure ’90s, practically unprepared for the style of irreverence Wain brought to the table. Roger Ebert turned his review into a cheap rendition of “Camp Granada”, while others simply found it profoundly unfunny, if not disturbing.

Thankfully, Wain’s film has aged better than anyone could have anticipated, to the point that just this month an extended TV series set on the first day at Camp Firewood rather than the last day, was released on Netflix. It’s an incredible feat namely because of how the massive ensemble cast has ballooned in fame and popularity in those 14 years: Janeane Garofolo, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, Christopher Meloni, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, Elizabeth Banks, Bradley Cooper (are you kidding me?)! I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.

But “Wet Hot American Summer” is random, meta and absurd in a way that never fit the template of the times and could only exist in an Internet age. It’s an assortment of characters, vignettes and broad set pieces that don’t add up to a complete plot, but it doesn’t play like a sketch movie in the slightest. It doesn’t play like a “Family Guy” half hour of cutaways, one-liners and non-sequiturs. And it isn’t even pure anarchy (well, for most of the run time).

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One of the most revealing scenes in all of Wain’s film takes place on a trip into town away from camp. An ’80s rock song plays over a montage as the counselors and teens tag along in the back of a pick-up. It’s a fun, shooting the breeze diversion from the rest of the film, with a few quick glimpses of everyone dancing and eating burgers and smoking weed. Without a moment’s change in tone, the image on screen devolves into chaos. The kids are buying cocaine, then have transformed into skinny, lifeless junkies shooting up heroin in a random shambles of an apartment. The song ends, and so does the scene. Things return to normal, and no one bothers to comment on what we’ve just seen.

Throughout “Wet Hot American Summer”, Wain realizes he can play with genre and tone with no consequences. As long as the flow and the spirit of this otherwise wholesome movie never wavers, he can show whatever he wants, whether it’s a gay sex scene between Cooper and Showalter, or a “Rocky” training montage between Meloni and Showalter. Shannon’s character seems divorced from the movie entirely, with her classroom of arts and crafts students coaching her on the verge of a nervous breakdown over the behavior of her husband.

There’s a rule in improv that you must never say “no”, or the scene stops. “Wet Hot American Summer” seems to say “yes” and “no” simultaneously. The movie can do whatever it wants, and the character personalities and expectations don’t necessarily matter 30 minutes after they’re introduced. But the film never seems erratic. It makes a point to stay constant to what Camp Firewood is, and to the moment in the ’80s the film is sending up.

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Granted, the film has plenty of other less cerebral pleasures. Poehler and Cooper are damn near incredible, so passionate, involved and overly dramatic. Poehler has become the winning and cheerful Leslie Knope but this film is a reminder of her more cutting side while still being endearingly lovable (“Am I watching the Cleveland Playhouse?”). Meloni’s Gene is outrageous, so committed to his midriff, scruffy facial hair and trademark bandana that he can get away with the lunacy that is talking about dick cream, chatting with a can of vegetables (H. Jon Benjamin, no less) and best of all, humping a fridge.

It’s material so silly and often so clueless and offensive (the first time Paul Rudd threw a kid out of his moving van, it seemed despicable. The second time, I howled) that it’s easy to see how the film can be so misunderstood. What’s more, Wain hasn’t necessarily struck lightning a second time since, despite never truly breaking his own rules. But while this film aimed to capture the ’80s, it captured the pulse of 2015, and today feels timeless.

Thoughts on Jon Stewart’s final episode of ‘The Daily Show’

Jon Stewart’s final show on The Daily Show leaves much to say about the comedian’s legacy.

Stephen Colbert’s last episode of “The Colbert Report” ended with a cavalcade of celebrity guest stars, an obscure ‘40s crooner that only the real Colbert would know, and a send off not to Stephen Colbert but to “Stephen Colbert”. His gathering of guests sang “We’ll meet again some sunny day”, full well knowing Colbert’s bright future. Meanwhile, the Stephen Colbert character departed our world in the only way that was fitting for such an amalgam on television: climbing into Santa’s sleigh and sailing off into the moonlight with Alex Trebek, only before throwing back to Jon Stewart to reveal that the entire series run of “The Colbert Report” was actually Stephen on assignment for “The Daily Show”.

For one of TV’s most egocentric characters, the Colbert finale was all about him, with a knowing wink that even the fake Stephen Colbert owes everything to his nemesis Jon Stewart, and it was perfect.

For Jon Stewart, “The Daily Show” has never been about him. It’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and soon it will be “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”, as weird as that now sounds. So for Jon Stewart, the only way he could really end was to make it a show for everyone else.

The finale was self-deprecating, it was honest straight-talk, it was a celebration of the enormous cast and crew who have rocketed to comedic and dramatic stardom because of Stewart, and it all felt important. In addition to a goofy role call of his correspondents performing corny, scripted shtick, he also assembled a long line of politicians and pundits glad to give him the heave-ho (Bill O’Reilly has a great line, but my personal favorite has to be Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: “Who has 9 ½ fingers and won’t miss you one bit? This guy!).

But he also found time for one last trip to Camera 3, speaking candidly with a thesis that could serve the last 16 years: Bullshit. Unlike Colbert’s meta parody and Jon Oliver’s in-depth journalism, Stewart broke down the bullshit every night on his show by scrutinizing the media and Washington. He deconstructed the mounds of bullshit that kept the world full of outrage. In 2010 he held his Rally to Restore Sanity but never needed to restore anything because “The Daily Show” already was a bedrock of sanity. “The best defense against bullshit is vigilance. So if you smell something, say something,” Stewart said in his final monologue.

Stewart also gave David Letterman and Foo Fighters a run for their money by recruiting, who else, The Boss. Despite the shorter length of his tenure, Stewart really is an institution of comedy as much as Letterman, but the thing about Stewart is that he’ll never admit it.

Because most importantly about the finale, Stewart was trying so hard to be humble. Colbert took over the reins from Stewart and made him sit and listen to praise, despite his squirming in his chair, saying, “You said to me never to thank you because we owe you nothing… We owe you because we learn from you. You were infuriatingly good at your job.”

For me, losing Colbert and Letterman and now Stewart all in under a calendar year was like a premature blow to my nostalgia. Stewart and Colbert in particular were a fixture of my college experience. Whether or not what I was watching was news, I learned about the world and gained a real perspective on everything from politics to culture to media.

For a decade Stewart has been downplaying “The Daily Show’s” influence on people’s lives. In fact, one of the most telling episodes of Stewart’s opinion of the show’s legacy came not in the finale but in his penultimate episode. Despite his nightly “eviscerations” of every major institution, things have arguably only gotten worse and more polarized since he took the air, with only the Mets’ first place standings to show for his hard work.

But even if FOX News still holds unbelievable sway, and even if no one has been held accountable for the financial crisis, and even if Arby’s is still in business, Jon Stewart’s real impact lies in more of Stephen Colbert’s last words: “All of us who got to work with you for the last 16 years got better at our jobs because we got to watch you do yours. And we are better people for having known you.”

The End of the Tour

Jason Segel, alongside Jesse Eisenberg, shines as ‘Infinite Jest’ author David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s latest.

In Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” the young writer Gil asks Ernest Hemingway if he would offer an opinion on the book he’s writing. “My opinion is I’ll hate it. If it’s bad, I’ll hate it because I hate bad writing, and if it’s good, I’ll be envious and hate it all the more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer. Writers are competitive.” It’s not a real Hemingway quote, but it feels like one, and it gets at the dilemma of another great writer, David Foster Wallace.

In “The End of the Tour”, Director James Ponsoldt (“Smashed”, “The Spectacular Now”) documents the last few days of Wallace’s book tour for his American literary classic “Infinite Jest”. Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky planned to spend a few days with Wallace and pick his brain, but the two are each insecure and in awe of the other. Their competition and their conversation gets the better of them, and in their pursuit to tell a good story, they realize they’ve created more conflict than this story deserves.

Ponsoldt’s film might be the best movie about writing since “Almost Famous”, and it avoids the trap of actually being forced to sit through the tedious visuals of writers writing. Jason Segel is wonderful as Wallace, and “The End of the Tour” recognizes that the best writing isn’t always about the story itself, but the details.

Ponsoldt opens the film with Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) learning of Wallace’s suicide in 2008, acknowledging that there’s a hint of grief and pain hanging over Wallace’s character and why Lipsky feels in part responsible. It then flashes back to 1996, shortly after “Infinite Jest” was first released. Lipsky picks up Wallace’s book, and like the writer he is proclaims, “Shit”, at just how good it is.

Lipsky himself is a struggling novelist in addition to his work as a journalist, and he feebly offers Wallace a copy of his own published work, expecting to be humbled by the opinion of a literary genius. Lipsky is so in awe and generally polite he praises Wallace’s winter view in Southern Illinois. “Thanks, I can’t take credit for it,” Wallace says thanks to Segel’s wonderfully understated and amicable tone. But while they talk of the fear of the rise of technology, of writing and of issues of fame, Lipsky is shocked at how easily they’re able to shoot the breeze. Together they eat baloney sandwiches after discussing existentialism. They confess their love for Alanis Morissette. Wallace tells an embarrassing story about being a pool towel boy for a writer he just sat on a panel discussion with, before Lipsky flips a switch and asks about Wallace’s suicide attempt. Their conversation is pretty and profound in a sloppy, ultimately human way.

What’s most revealing and honest about the story however is that there isn’t really much of a story here in the first place. Lipsky thinks Wallace is playing down his brilliance in a way that’s not only guarded and false, but also condescending. Lipsky’s editor even urges him to push Wallace for details about his past suicide attempt and rumored drug addiction.

The reality however, something Ponsoldt captures in his plain, intimate cinematography and Segel nails in his quietly deep, yet charming and relatable performance, is that he’s not faking it. There’s not a genius here but a person. When he wears a bandana, he’s not doing it as a “trademark” but because it’s a “thing” he likes. There’s no hidden mastery behind this guy who teaches English in Southern Illinois, and that shouldn’t change his achievement. We want the person on screen or on the page to be larger than life, and Ponsoldt and Segel help bring it down to size.

With all three of his previous films, Ponsoldt has found the modesty in his characters to flesh out their humanity. With “The End of the Tour”, he’s made a film about such modest proportions and demonstrated its value.

3 ½ stars

The Overnight

Patrick Brice’s ensemble comedy is a movie truly for adults, with Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling and Jason Schwartzman.

TheOvernightPosterMaking friends as an adult is hard. This much we know. Sex can be complicated, and awkward. This much we all know very well. But when posed with the challenge of making friends and breaking out of your shell despite all the misgivings of being socially or sexually awkward, it can be extremely challenging.

“The Overnight” pushes those adult challenges to the limit in a film that gradually becomes more surreal, stylish and engrossing. It’s a small ensemble comedy with some surprising twists that does some impressive gymnastics and social maneuvering to keep from going crazy and ending things on the spot. It asks the question, “Is being curious as an adult a bad thing?” And never does Patrick Brice’s film, despite how outrageous and strange it becomes, cross that line that would make you think otherwise.

Part of what makes “The Overnight” work so well is that it really is an “adult comedy”. Unlike the Seth Rogen movies of the world, the characters of “The Overnight” really are adults, and not just oversized man-children. Alex and Emily (Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling) are parents of the pre-school aged RJ but are also new to the Los Angeles neighborhood. At a party for a friend of RJ’s, they hit it off with Kurt (Jason Schwartzman). Kurt seduces them effortlessly with his sophistication and cultured charm, but Schwartzman’s performance, an actor who began his career in “Rushmore” as someone mature and adult beyond his age, is balanced enough that Kurt seems effete without ever appearing insincere.

Kurt invites them to a dinner party with his wife Charlotte (Judith Godreche) and open Alex and Emily up to a whole realm of adult “experimenting” as soon as the kids are in bed. What transpires is a mix of uncomfortable humor, free-spirited celebration and eventually, drunken, delirious tripping out.

Brice navigates these sudden twists in tone with the same hilariously awkward thud that Alex and Emily might be feeling, namely because Kurt and Charlotte are so confidently cultured and European. Their home is a modern fortress, and Kurt regales Alex with his work desalinizing water from feces, doing abstract artwork of people’s buttholes, and putting their children to sleep with synth-driven lullabies.

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Alex meanwhile is just trying to stay afloat, desperately treading water to make it seem like he and his wife are smarter than they are. Brice opens the film with their own marital struggles, having sex at the crack of dawn in a race to beat their son awake, and each furiously finishing on their own because of their inability to satisfy the other sexually. Their frustrations, inadequacies and embarrassment at the party is so relatable, in part because of Adam Scott’s clueless demeanor as he fast talks his way out of trouble, and Taylor Schilling’s over-enthusiastic smiles and hand gestures that show how desperately they want to fit in.

The characters are constantly pushing the limits of finding the threshold, the point when things simply get too weird and they force themselves to leave. At that point, the movie would be over, and while the characters constantly push the boundaries, the movie never gets there. Thankfully, it’s Alex and Emily who throw their hands up before we do.

“The Overnight” probes at challenging situation comedy and the difficulties of friendship, marriage, parenting and new experiences with equal parts grace and awkwardness. It’s never uproariously funny or a life changing few hours (actually, the film clocks in at a brief 79 minutes). But just as Alex and Emily will remember what happened here for a long time to come, so will we.

3 stars

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a fictional reimagining of real life events that became Psychology 101.

StanfordPrisonExperimentPosterThe Stanford Prison Experiment is Psychology 101. Introductory textbooks on the subject all make note of the events that took place at Stanford University in August of 1971, in which 18 college-aged participants and students simulated a prison environment as part of a psychological study by Philip Zimbardo. Half took shifts as ruthless, abusive guards, and the other half were punished, degraded, humiliated and malnourished as a part of their imprisonment. After just six days of an allotted two weeks, the results predictably did not end well. Students today look back on it as an example of a study gone horribly, ethically wrong, but also as an example of behavioral psychology.

The film adaptation of this, also titled “The Stanford Prison Experiment” and directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, should also feel like essential psychology. The film makes abundantly clear in a string of darkly tense, even twistedly funny set pieces, just what happened here and how much a situation like this could affect these individual’s minds. What’s more, Alvarez leaves morality out of the equation. There’s notable ambiguity as to whether such an experiment should’ve ever been conducted, or if it actually produced real academic results and lessons on psychology.

But Alvarez misses an opportunity. “The Stanford Prison Experiment” is a horror story, a terrifically acted and fascinatingly lensed experiment of its own. But like the prison experiment itself, the horrors Alvarez subjects us to are mostly one-dimensional.

In the film, Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) shares the goal that the experiment is designed to test how an institution affects an individual’s behavior. With that broad of a thesis in mind, any experiment could be a success, and the Stanford Prison Experiment would qualify as a rousing one. But it’s hard to know what, if any, academic value any of this actually had.

All Alvarez makes clear is that it has an impact, and that when pressed and put under certain institutional circumstances, you begin to play the part. Prisoner 8612 (Ezra Miller) is the first to break. He’s sarcastic and non-conformist, and leads a successful revolt on the second day to barricade the doors to their cells so the guards can’t get in. But when he’s locked in the hole and has his rebellion ignored and subdued, he quickly begins to believe his imprisonment is real. On the other side of the coin, the prisoners lovingly dub one guard John Wayne (Michael Angarano) for how he dons a Strother Martin in “Cool Hand Luke” impression whenever he disappears behind those one-way aviator sunglasses.

Alvarez’s film is a series of these grim prison set pieces. One of the film’s first and best involves John Wayne making the prisoners recite their numbers in a role call. The camera tracks swiftly down the narrow hallway as each prisoner rattles off their rank, and Alvarez finds an awful lot of room for motion and leering framing without sacrificing the claustrophobic space of the actual set.

These re-imagined moments of history, all of them highly accurate to the available footage seen online, are so calculated and choreographed that the deliberate pacing calls attention to the abuse of the task-master guards. They’re arduous, torturous, talkative set pieces in which time evaporates and the scene becomes truly, psychologically draining.

That illusion disappears however when we step into Zimbardo’s real world. These scenes watching Zimbardo and his fellow colleagues observe the prisoners are far more procedural without feeling notably academic or insightful in terms of the film’s themes. Zimbardo begins to look less deranged and consumed and more clueless, as everyone ignores obvious signs of abuse and madness to the prisoners as though they were just flukes.

Alvarez isn’t interested in making a morality tale condemning Zimbardo or the students involved. This film isn’t a question of whether this study should or shouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t even contain the prison reform commentary that would eventually become part of Zimbardo’s later career. But if you’re not going to pose those questions about the academic value of such a study, why even include those scenes at all?

I imagine a Stanford Prison Experiment movie in which the Zimbardo character is completely absent, in which students get instructions from faceless figures, and the behind the scenes pulling of strings is as hidden to us as it is to the tormented and confused characters.

Alvarez really does manage to build a sense of terror and psychological dread. And the film is made up of an incredible who’s who of young actors, all of them standing out in individual set pieces, from Miller and Angarano to Tye Sheridan, Thomas Mann, Keir Gilchrist, Johnny Simmons, Nicholas Bruan, James Frecheville, Chris Sheffield and more.

But in just offering a historical document, Alvarez misses a chance to conduct his own psychological experience on his audience. “The Stanford Prison Experiment” is a powerful film, but perhaps not affecting.

3 stars

Magic Mike XXL

Channing Tatum is a true star in the sexy, super fun, bro-fest that is “Magic Mike XXL”.

MagicMikeXXLPosterThe first “Magic Mike” was a surprise not just because it was the start of the McConaissance and because it took a chiseled action hero with a square chin and turned him into a bona fide sex icon. The whole look and feel of Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 film made it feel more art house than sexploitation.

“Magic Mike” was Soderbergh tinkering with genre yet again. In “Haywire” he had people who could really fight, so he made them fight and shot them in a way that didn’t hide it. In Channing Tatum, he had a guy who could really strip, and he definitely didn’t hide anything. The film was an experiment. But it was a modestly budgeted experiment that made $176 million.

Despite “Magic Mike’s” massive success, that film school explanation wasn’t quite good enough for a lot of women who really just wanted to watch a bunch of dancing naked dudes.

Rest assured, “Magic Mike XXL” has a lot more of that.

Soderbergh has passed on directing duties to Gregory Jacobs, but stayed on as cinematographer (with the pseudonym Peter Andrews) to give “Magic Mike XXL” that same art house look of classic mid-range shots, clever mood lighting and sharp, alluring coloring. But it’s such a refreshing and scandalous blockbuster because it has turned the story of identity and a seedy stripping community into a bro-tastic road trip movie and movie musical. Ladies will like it just fine, but “Magic Mike XXL” is also wonderful counter programming to the bros who sat through the hateful, thick-headed misogyny of the recent “Entourage” movie.

That’s because the bros of “Magic Mike XXL” don’t strip just so they can bang chicks; they want to make these girls smile. The film does just that when Mike encourages his cohort “Big Dick Richie” (Joe Manganiello) to go into a gas station convenience store and get the attention of a sad looking employee. “That girl looks like she’s never smiled in her life,” he says, but she will if the right tune comes on and if he puts his heart into his moves.

“Magic Mike XXL”’s plot concerns the Miami boys’ “one last ride” (maybe this is good counter programming for “Furious 7” as well) to a stripper convention in Myrtle Beach, but the film is actually an assortment of creative set pieces and isolated vignettes. They stop at a burlesque home where Mike’s former boss Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith filling in nicely for Matthew McConaughey in the emcee spot) manages black male dancers for an almost entirely black female clientele. But in addition to a dance or a sexy song (from an excellent Donald Glover/Childish Gambino) they get some guys who will listen and for a moment make them feel loved. When they crash a party of the moms of some of their younger girlfriends, they get close to women who haven’t been touched or appreciated for their beauty in years. And when the boys party on the beach, they reveal all of their ambitions and dirty pleasures, whether it’s for making smoothies or watching Oprah.

These moments arguably have more sexual tension and chemistry than anything on stage. It makes for a wonderfully feminist movie that doesn’t detract from the bro love fest. And no one would expect a movie about strippers to be this perceptive.

And yet Magic Mike himself is the reason you’re really “coming”. Channing Tatum is such a star. David Ehlrich wrote in Rolling Stone that Tatum is “this generation’s Gene Kelly, and ‘Magic Mike XXL’ is his ‘Singin’ in the Rain”. In what might be one of the best scenes of the year, Mike is building furniture in his woodshed, and when Ginuwine’s “Pony” comes on, Tatum literally starts making sparks. He moves so easily, and with so much more than just sex appeal. He makes love to his workbench, and from that early moment you know it’s on. He also keeps up with one of the best hip hop dancers in the world in “So You Think You Can Dance’s” Twitch, who choreographed everything and appears in the film’s supersized final dance number along with Tatum.

But Tatum is such a perfect Magic Mike not for his looks alone but for his goofy charms and immensely positive attitude. He loves his bros so hard, and rather than put downs and snarky one-liners he’s a goof who dishes motivational idioms to his buds and chats up the joys of eating Oreos to his girls. “Someone stole your smile,” he says to romantic interest Zoe (Amber Heard), “and you need it back.” SWOON.

The first “Magic Mike” was simply not a blockbuster, and it almost doesn’t make sense to compare the two films. “Magic Mike XXL” is on its own level, and even more so than blockbusters like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” or “Furious 7”, it deserves its XXL suffix. Because when you combine the dancing, the charm, the guys, and the style, “Magic Mike XXL” has one massive package.

3 ½ stars

Jurassic World

Colin Trevorrow’s update on Steven Spielberg’s classic “Jurassic Park” lacks the ideas and intelligence that made the original a hit.

JurassicWorldPoster“Jurassic World” grossed over $200 million domestically in its opening weekend, making it one of the highest opening weekends at the box office of all time. It further was one of the all time fastest to surpass $1 billion in the world, and has already earned over $500 million domestically in just three weekends. It would seem Americans don’t echo the sentiment heard early in “Jurassic World” regarding the poor performance of their theme park: “No one is impressed by a dinosaur anymore.”

And yet the film has found fierce criticism from those quick to label it misogynist or even racist, and sharp defenders quick to shut down anyone that could be too PC or too high and mighty of a critic. Matt Singer wrote a piece entitled “Stop Telling Me to Turn My Brain Off During Movies“, a plea for people to have higher expectations of their blockbusters than absolute zero. Like any major, unexpected hit, “Jurassic World” is the subject of a lot of talk.

The critics are right: “Jurassic World” is loud, cliche, badly written, and dumb, dumb, dumb. But it’s also fun, exciting, campy, cheesy, scary, and at times awesome. These are all things blockbusters have been, will be and arguably should be. But Steven Spielberg’s original “Jurassic Park” and Michael Crichton’s novel on which it is based were always stories of ideas. They were full of dreams and ambitions for science, but also fearful of technology, the power of man to wield it and the greater power of nature to put man’s hubris and greed in check. Spielberg managed to put all that into a movie with friggin’ dinosaurs spitting poisonous acid at Newman, raptors opening doors with their talons and a T-Rex eating a man cowered over a toilet.

What makes “Jurassic World” so frustrating and lazy because of all its flaws and in spite of its strengths is that it’s not trying to be anything more than a blockbuster. Colin Trevorrow’s movie isn’t a film of ideas but a copy of a great one and a genetically modified mish-mash of dozens of others. It’s a blockbuster by committee, complete with Hollywood’s biggest rising star, their finest display of special effects, a whole lot of nostalgia baiting, and a healthy dose of product placement for good measure. If it could’ve been all this and been a smart spectacle, then we would’ve really had something.

Set years after the events of the original “Jurassic Park,” Isla Nublar has not only somehow been salvaged from the destruction and chaos brought by the dinosaurs, but it has now been transformed into a thriving theme park far beyond the original vision. Leading the park is Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), a by-the-numbers, overly driven business woman with no time for anything but her work, least of all her two nephews coming to visit, the young Gray (Ty Simpkins) and the teenage Zach (Nick Robinson). Claire says that over time people and kids have grown bored of even seeing dinosaurs, and clearly she has as well, because she never sees these amazing creatures as anything more than assets. Her new plan to spike attendance is to create a new dinosaur, the Indominous Rex, a genetic hybrid designed to be bigger, faster, scarier (and presumably cost-effective as well?) and everything the park needs.

Chris Pratt Jurassic World

Owen (Chris Pratt) is the park’s raptor trainer brought in to survey the development of the new dinosaur, and having developed a rapport with his four raptors, he immediately understands how terrible an idea it is to create an unstoppable super dinosaur with no natural instincts to prevent it from murdering and eating everything that moves. The dinosaur is smart enough to trick the park owners into helping him escape, and still Claire refers to it as “just an animal”. These people are dumb enough that a chimp could fool them, let alone a genetically modified super reptile.

Claire is the worst kind of character type: the workaholic woman who projects confidence but is eventually humiliated by her lack of real-world skills and how she runs around in heels the entire film. It’s silly to throw around any “isms” and to assume ill will toward women by the filmmakers, but her character is beyond old fashioned. Howard plays her in the middle portion of the film as an Old Hollywood screwball type, but later turns into the action star luring T-Rexs with flares.

“Jurassic World” wastes far too much time with science and stockholders worrying about the park’s future in a way that was never filler in “Jurassic Park”. And there’s an absurd sub-plot regarding Vincent D’Onofrio’s plan to weaponize the raptors, with the pipe dream of teaching them to hunt and kill terrorists in the Middle East based on Owen’s command (call it “Zero Dark Raptor”).

A more experienced director than Trevorrow, with just the indie comedy “Safety Not Guaranteed” to his name, would’ve realized that we’ve come for the dinosaurs, or at the very least the suspense and build-up required to make CGI dinosaurs interesting. Spielberg managed to withhold the T-Rex and more of the awe-inspiring dinosaurs just as he did with “Jaws”. Trevorrow dilly dallies with exposition and clueless kids venturing where they don’t belong. It can be something of a mess, and the truly great moments, including a pterodactyl attack reminiscent of “The Birds,” a dinosaur scuff-up worthy of Japanese kaiju, and a giant aquatic dinosaur leaping out of the water like Shamu, can feel off in terms of pacing and anticipation.

“Jurassic World” is the perfect hybrid blockbuster worthy of one of the highest grossing movies of all time. But like the Indominus Rex, it’s an unholy mix of elements and bad traits that just makes you wish for something more natural.

2 stars

John Wick

Keanu Reeves is back in action movie form with Chad Stahelski’s and David Leitch’s debut film.

john_wick_xlgMost action movies are about putting the myth into the man, crafting a story and an iconic hero from action set pieces that in recent years has only come up with a short list of truly great action heroes. The best action stars are the ones that we can believe could dismantle just about anyone if given the opportunity. James Bond, Jason Bourne, and perhaps most recently Liam Neeson as whomever he plays, all come to mind.

“John Wick” puts the man into the myth, casting Keanu Reeves as a brilliantly blank slate completely convincing as a man capable of all the fear and badassedry we’ve come to expect of our cold-blooded killers. Chad Stahelski and David Leitch’s film starts by building up John Wick as that man capable of doing anything, of mowing down anyone who gets into his way, and then they deliver with a no frills, no nonsense action movie. It’s pure iconography and myth making to go along with the action. It’s a film that risks being all buildup and no payoff were it not for the elegant, minimalist style Stahelski and Leitch bring to every moment, but because they’ve done away with the more frivolous elements of standard action fare, it feels closer to all payoff.

When we meet John Wick, a man who almost always must be referred to by both syllables of his full name, he’s just lost his wife to an illness. Now he lives in an opulent, empty, sleek and modern house all alone until his wife leaves him a small puppy as a parting gift to keep him company after her death. He seems to have no job and no hobbies but can be seen performing insane donuts and burnouts with his vintage, pristine, 1969 Mustang. At a gas station, some Russian toughs ask him how much he wants to sell it for, and Wick, in Russian, lets them know it’s not for sale.

Later the Russians break into his house, steal his car and kill his new puppy, but leave him alive. Not a good idea. Until this point we don’t even know John’s full name, but his thieves soon do. A Russian mob king pin named Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist) learns his son Iosef (Alfie Allen) was behind the attack when an associate informs him bluntly, “He stole John Wick’s car and killed his dog.”

“Oh.”

Viggo tells Iosef of the old Russian fairy tale made to scare children, The Boogeyman. He even has a quiet little nursery rhyme. “He’s the one we sent to kill the fucking Boogeyman”. As a fearsome assassin, Wick earned his freedom by completing one of Viggo’s impossible tasks and subsequently building their empire. Iosef’s actions violated their deal, and now John Wick won’t stop until everyone is dead.

As Viggo strikes fear into his clueless son’s head, we see Wick pounding away at his garage floor with a sledgehammer, literally digging up his past. Reeves’s work, complete with so much darkly, unbridled rage in this moment, has in just a few minutes earned this vaulted presence before even shooting a bullet. This is his best role since “The Matrix”. He’s found his voice by minimizing it as an actor, allowing his actions to do the talking.

Wick as a character follows suit. He never kills with style, just simplicity and efficiency. When he catches a pleading victim spitting hate and four-letter words as he’s about to die, Wick doesn’t even stop for words before putting a bullet between his eyes. He finishes the job. This allows him to be brutal, but also stealthy, and Stahelski and Leitch echo this in an early raid on Wick’s house and Wick’s assault on a mob hotel and nightclub. This is hardly a calm action movie, but we’re never treated to a barrage of bullets, noise and testosterone either. Arguably Wick’s coolest kill comes when he punches a guy, reloads his gun and fires all before the guy can even catch his breath. Stahelsky and Leitch are directors who know how to make a long take count, and they earn Wick’s reputation as a result.

And yet for a bare bones plot, “John Wick” has a whole array of layered rules and principles to go along with its mob world mentality. Fellow killers all know Wick’s past, and they trade gold bullions for exclusive entry into select hideouts, each with its own set of rules and codes to live by.

There’s some serious world building at play here, and John Wick is fortunately a strong enough character that we dearly need a sequel.

3 1/2 stars