Tag: Jude Law

Spy

Melissa McCarthy reteams with her Bridesmaids director Paul Feig for their latest spy spoof.

SPY_1SHEETPaul Feig’s “Spy” bills itself as a spy movie parody right in its title, but it veers closer to a traditional action-comedy vehicle for Melissa McCarthy than an out-and-out spoof. The elements are all there for a classic, but it lacks the tongue-in-cheek homages to cinema and zaniness of the OSS:117 movies or the sheer stupidity of even the Austin Powers movies. That said, Melissa McCarthy might be a shoo-in for the next James Bond once Daniel Craig steps aside.

Feig starts to reinvent the spy genre by imagining the other side of James Bond’s innate talents. Bradley Fine (Jude Law, donning a convincing American accent against expectations) is the suave CIA operative leading a sting on a Russian terrorist wielding a nuke. But he only manages to get so far because of who is speaking in his ear, Susan Cooper (McCarthy). Susan is Chloe O’Brien if she was stuck in Michael Scott’s office, where even at the CIA there are rats pooping through the ceiling and co-workers having loud birthday parties in the break room while Fine faces life and death stakes.

The Russian agent’s daughter Rayna (Rose Byrne) takes possession of the nuke, murders Fine and reveals she knows the identity of every other in-the-field CIA agent. Feeling responsible for his death, Cooper volunteers herself to track Rayna and intercept the nuke in her possession, with the hope she can remain anonymous.

It’s maybe more plot exposition than a spoof like this actually needs, but Feig quickly gets to the juicy spectacle of seeing McCarthy act. Some of her roles, even her breakout role in Feig’s “Bridesmaids”, have seen her go broad, vulgar and aggressive to a fault. But in “Spy” she plays the chipper and naïve Midwesterner that gives McCarthy her star power off screen. It’s that much more of a shock when she flips a switch and effortlessly hurls insults about people looking like a bag of dicks or dead hookers.

As Genevieve Koski put in her Dissolve review, it’s more than “fat lady go boom” jokes as the trailers have made it out to be. But Feig still offers up a bad mix of lazy stereotypes of slimy, Italian misogynists as well as gags simply at the expense of McCarthy’s ludicrous disguises.

As with many of these films, it’s the supporting cast that does all the heavy lifting. Rose Byrne continues to be a standout, earning the line of the movie when she flatly declares at one of Susan’s worse puns, “What a stupid fucking retarded toast.” Jason Statham as a rival agent arguably gives his most intense performance to date, endlessly one-upping himself with increasingly ridiculous secret agent feats he can’t seem to actually perform. And British comic Miranda Hart is poised as the breakout, a goofy looking best-friend type with about a foot on Rebel Wilson but all of her awkward charm.

“Bridesmaids” opened doors for actresses like McCarthy and Byrne to do just about anything, including make a goofy spy movie previously reserved for men. But then “Spy” isn’t exactly “Bridesmaids”, and Feig might’ve just gotten more mileage out of “Bridesmaids 2”.

3 stars

Side Effects

Steven Soderbergh’s movie “Side Effects” may just be his last film. Hopefully that’s not true, as this coldly clinical, but limp conspiracy thriller would be a disappointing way to end a great career.

“Side Effects” is supposed to look like a Zoloft commercial, correct? Steven Soderbergh’s film, which I hope is not his last despite his hints, sustains a flat, picturesque aesthetic resembling a medicine ad in a magazine or on TV. It’s designed to make the characters appear phony or untrustworthy, but the unfortunate side effect, for lack of a better term, is that the whole film falls limp in the process.

That you can’t trust these people or their actions is about all the hint I can give you without treading in spoiler territory. It involves the months after Martin (Channing Tatum) has just been released from a white-collar prison to his wife Emily (Rooney Mara). His presence, though loving and supportive, causes her to try and commit suicide shortly thereafter. A doctor named Jonathan (Jude Law) agrees to release her from the hospital on the condition that she come in for treatment and therapy, both of which will eventually lead to Emily’s mental breakdown, a lawsuit, some jail time and a conspiracy.

“Side Effects” is a film about the unexpected consequences of trying to do good. We look for a fix, or a cure, and more problems are borne out of it. Jonathan will drive himself insane trying to mend this problem he’s created in Emily, and he’ll eventually become a slave to his own medicine. Continue reading “Side Effects”

Anna Karenina

Is there something stopping Joe Wright from just making a musical? The production design in “Anna Karenina” is sumptuous in its color and glamour, but it’s out of place putting these Russian costume drama characters in an old-fashioned playhouse, a constant and misguided reminder that the whole world is a stage and we be but players on it.

Set in a rustic theater, Wright shuffles around sets and props on a single sound stage with balletic precision to transport Tolstoy’s sprawling novel to new places and move through the story at a brisk pace. It’s a daring approach, but Wright either needs to commit to his gimmick or drop it entirely. Seemingly at random we see a character in flowing evening ware clambering up back stage rafters. Sometimes a background figure will appear and perform a pirouette or strike up a tune on a tuba, and at other times the movie will forget the stage conceit altogether.

God knows this is a pretty film to look at, but boy is it garish. A curtain will rise and a multi-million dollar backdrop posing Anna as an angel in a Renaissance painting will be for nothing more than a momentary distraction. It indulges in undulating bodies during love-scenes and bathes its forbidden lovers in glaring doses of white. Wright’s long takes and wide shots are visually mystifying at times, but he chops the story up so much to account for the aesthetic.

It tells the story of Anna’s (Keira Knightley) affair with Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a decorated soldier once engaged to Anna’s younger sister. The two carry on without concern from Anna’s lifeless husband Karenin (Jude Law), but when she seeks a divorce and reveals she’s pregnant, the law prevents her from ever seeing her children again.

Even in a story of many characters and romantic threads, Wright’s approach feels thin, undermining the novel’s themes of forgiveness in love because his visual flourishes don’t say all they’re meant to. Knightley is typecast in roles like this, but she’s overacting in her attempt to be bigger than the scenery. It doesn’t help that Taylor-Johnson and his silly mustache are miscast.

I’ve been a big champion of Wright’s over-stylized departures into genre territory before (“Atonement,” “Hanna”), but this time he’s drawn too much spectacle out of the sport.

2 ½ stars

Hugo

Who other than Martin Scorsese could make a kids movie about the first pioneer of cinema and make it the most visionary, lovely and wondrous film of the year?

Scorsese’s “Hugo” is certainly a departure for the legendary director, and Brian Selznick’s equally imaginative children’s book would likewise be a hot commodity to many other directors, but few people other than Scorsese could wholly embody his love of cinema and general nerddom for silent films and trick artists like Georges Melies and get away with it.

That’s the selling point for me and other adults speculative about how Scorsese would handle a children’s film. “Hugo” could actually double as the biopic of Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley), the story of how as an adult the magician turned filmmaker who made the masterpiece “A Trip to the Moon” (1902) became a quiet recluse who never spoke of his films after nearly all of them had been forgotten and destroyed.

Scorsese worships the man, arguably the first auteur of film, and he honors Melies by literally recreating his films in stunning color and 3-D cinematography.

For all the movies being re-released and up converted into 3-D today, the last one I thought would get the treatment would be “A Trip to the Moon.” Yet I’m giddy at watching this fantastical mystery story for children simply dripping with film history, and there is something wonderfully fulfilling about seeing a moon with a rocket poking out of its eye floating mystically above the screen. Continue reading “Hugo”

Review: Contagion

Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise, engaging and squeamish thriller about living in the modern age.

In a modern age of Twitter, text messaging and round the clock news, information can spread like wildfire. In the epidemic thriller “Contagion,” it merely takes one blog post to incite riots and one text to put a life in danger. And you wonder why these things are called “viral.”

Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise thriller that charts the rapid spread of a highly contagious and lethal virus, one that jumps from Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) as she returns from Hong Kong to quickly spreading across the globe.

It’s an engaging and squeamish thriller that makes you anxious to touch your face or move your foot on the sticky movie theater floor. And it’s because this is the sort of mass panic that would happen today. Continue reading “Review: Contagion”