HAIL, CAESAR!

Nostalgia can be both good and bad, bringing folks back to a seemingly better time while often tempting folks to just live in the past instead of doing something great for the present.  The latter is, alas, the trap Joel and Ethan Coen fall into with their new film Hail Caesar!

It's the 1950s, and Eddie Manniz (Josh Brolin) is an executive fixes at Capitol Studios.  His job, which extends into all hours of the day and night, is to oversee the studio's assorted films and to fix the problems the actors get into.

And there are plenty of problems.  Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is starring in the studio's big religious picture Hail, Caesar! but he has an older scandal hanging over his head; he also gets kidnapped by a group called the Future.  Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is a Western movie star whose country accent is terrible in his high society movie, driving director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) crazy.  DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) faces the scandal of being a single mother, leading to the solution of having her adopt her own baby.  Mannix also has a possibly better job offer from a military company, and his battle with smoking leads him to confession every day.  There are also cameos by Channing Tatum as a musical's star singer-dancer Burt Gurney, Jonah Hill as studio legal patsy Joseph Silverman, and Tilda Swinton as identical twin gossip reporters Thora and Thessaly Thacker.

The Coen brothers have a great reverence for the 1950s movies, whether it's the snippets of the fake movies or the chain-smoking tough guy Mannix doing what he has to in order to keeps the wheels of the studio running.  Unfortunately, there's not more to Hail, Caesar! beyond this superficial adoration of the time period.  The truly stellar cast isn't given any real depth for any characters, and there aren't enough laughs or amusing scenarios to make this an effective comedy.  There are potentially interesting threads (the religious imagery and themes alongside the Communists) but they're given zero development.  Hail, Caesar! is ultimately nice to look at but not much more.

Overall grade: C
Reviewed by James Lynch

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Did you know that folks at Wall Street can be greedy, hedonistic, and criminals?  If you didn't know that, you've probably been living under a rock for a few decades.  If you did know that, there won't be much new for you in The Wolf of Wall Street, which tells a story so familiar even Martin Scorcese can't add much to it.

Based on the biography of the title character, The Wolf of Wall Street follows Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a Wall Street titan of industry and of appetite.  Belfort simply wanted to be rich, and he had the misfortune of getting his broker's license on the day the stock market crashed; this also led to his Manhattan employer going under.  Belfort wound up working from a brokerage in a Long Island strip mall, where he sold penny stocks (cheap stocks for barely-existing companies, sold to lower- and middle-class people) at an amazing rate.

Belfort became so successful he started his own company.  His employees were mostly drug dealers, along with his odd neighbor Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), who quit his job to work for Belfort as soon as he heard how much Belfort made in a month.  With Belfort's script and never-take-no-for-an-answer approach, soon Belfort made so much he moved to a Manhattan office, then a bigger Manhattan office.  He also turned work into a circus of excess, with everything from hookers to midget tossing to truly massive amount of drugs.  Belfort also "upgraded" from his wife Teresa (Cristin Miloti) to a hot blonde named Naomi (Margot Robbie).  And there was plenty of insider trading, getting the attention of everyone from the SEC to honest F.B.I. agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler).

The Wolf of Wall Street is surprisingly flat, given its director and star power.  DiCaprio does what he can with the role -- the scene where he motivates his staff to pitch the IPO his company controls is inspiring -- but a lot of the movie is just him talking about how much he spends and how great his life is.  The movie may not endorse greed, but it certainly wallows in showing off the excesses of Wall Street, from conspicuous consumption (Belfort's mansion and yacht) to obscene amounts of sex (this movie has the most female nudity you'll see outside of porn) and drugs, to the reckless partying that killed many of the players and kept the others entertained.  Given the movie's almost three hour running time, a lot of this should have been cut.  The Wolf of Wall Street has its moments -- especially and oddly primal scene where Belfort and Azoff, high on drugs, crawl around and slur-yell at each other -- but we've seen it all before, often done better.

Overall grade: C-
Reviewed by James Lynch

THIS IS THE END

It's fairly common for actors to play comic, unflattering, or excessive versions of themselves, but This Is the End takes that practice up several notches by having the whole cast parodying themselves -- and during the apocalypse too!

The plot is pretty simple.  Seth Rogen (who co-wrote and co-directed This Is the End, along with Evan Goldberg) picks up his good buddy Jay Baruchel at the airport in L.A.  Jay hates the whole Hollywood scene and just wants to hang out with Seth.  But Seth takes him to a big party at James Franco's self-designed house.  And it seems like everyone in Hollywood is there, from musicians to comics to an obnoxious Michael Cera.

When Seth and Jay leave the party to get some smokes, things get weird.  Beams of blue light drag people into the sky! Objects come crashing down, killing people!  A huge sinkhole in front of James Franco's house drags almost everyone at the party into it!  Soon Hollywood is a burning wasteland, with monsters and death.  Is it the Biblical apocalypse?  An alien invasion?  Global warming?  Anyway, after the night a few survivors are left at the house: Seth, Jay, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, and Danny McBride (who crashed the party and fell asleep upstairs).

This Is the End is very dark and silly at the same time.  There are plenty of disturbing things -- from severed limbs to a head used as a kickball to cannibalism -- but it's all so over-the-top that it's hard to take seriously.  The same can be said of the actors, who enjoy spoofing themselves.  Has Jonah Hill really become ultra-nice after the success of Moneyball?  Does James Franco really shift so easily from pretentious artist to stoner ready to do Pineapple Express 2?  Is Danny McBride really that obnoxious?  Is Jay genuine, or just a poser?  None of it really matters, as the actors all riff on each other, throw parties, wonder if they deserve to survive, and have very explicit arguments and discussions.  (One between Franco and McBride is amazingly disgusting -- and laugh-out-loud funny.)

There's no real depth to This Is the End, but it's a very funny movie (and a nice contrast to the pre-2012 end-of-the-world disaster flicks we got).  There are numerous terrific cameos, plenty of bizarre interactions, and finale that's so silly it must be seen to be believed.  This Is the End could have been a self-indulgent pile of incoherent silliness, but it manages to be a bit more than that -- and pretty hysterical too!

Overall grade: B+
Reviewed by James Lynch

THE WATCH

The aliens are coming, the authorities don't believe it, and it's up to a ragtag bunch of amateur heroes to save the day! While this may sound like a children's action movie, it's more one with grown adolescents in The Watch. This movie has big star power but doesn't add much original to the very overdone formula.

Evan (Ben Stiller) is the ultimate fan of his suburban town of Glenville, Ohio. He manages the local Costco store, loves forming assorted groups in the town, and doesn't share the enthusiasm his spouse Abby (Rosemarie Dewitt) has for New York City. When Costco security guard Antonio Guzman (Joe Nunez) is brutally murdered at the store after it closed, Evan feels the local police (Will Forte and Mel Rodriguez) aren't doing enough to find the killer -- or worse, suspect Evan. So Evan does what he thinks he does best: form a new group, this time a neighborhood watch.

The response to Evan's call to arms doesn't get the best applicants. Bob (Vince Vaughn) is more enthusiastic about drinking and having a good time than fighting crime; he's also obsessed with his teenage daughter's social life. Franklin (Jonah Hill) is a young adult who was rejected by the police force and who tends to play with a knife. And Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade) is a cheerful Brit who joined the group with a specific erotic fantasy in mind. The police mock them, teenagers throw eggs at them, and the guys seem to party more than stop crime.

Oh, and there are aliens. A car crash has the guys finding green goo, and then they find a metal sphere that shoots destructive beams of energy. It's not long before deadly humanoid aliens start popping up; and when one says they've infiltrated humanity, the Neighborhood Watch starts, well, watching the neighborhood. Is Evan's creepy, overly friendly neighbor an alien? What about the obnoxious teen dating Bob's daughter? Or the various weirdos at Costco?

There's a lot of potential humor about life in the suburbs and how aliens would fit in there -- and all of that is completely skipped in The Watch. Stars Stiller, Vaughn, and Hill play the same sort of characters they always play; Ayoade is terrific, but he gets much less screen time than his American counterparts. The humor tends to go for "ironic" slow-motion scenes set to rap music, lots of profanity, and (near the end) action movie heroics. There are several gaps in logic near the end, but in this sort of movie there's no attempt (or, really, need) to resolve them. There are some laughs among the stars, but The Watch settles for strictly superficial humor.

Overall grade: C

Reviewed by James Lynch

MONEYBALL

Plenty of baseball movies feature an underdog team whose pluck and determination enable them to come from behind and claim victory -- but what about when the deciding factors are money and computers? Moneyball -- based on the real-life 2002 baseball season -- is a drama that's as much about the structure of professional baseball as it is about playing the game.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), general manager for the Oakland A's, is tired. The A's just lost the division playoffs to the Yankees (who, not coincidentally, have a budget more tha four times greater than that of the A's). Beane also knows that his three best players are leaving the A's for teams that can offer them a lot more money. And team manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has made it no secret that he'll be looking for another manager job.


Beane finds help from an unlikely source: Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a low-level employee for a rival team. Brand believes a team can be put together not with traditional player scouting, but with mathematical formulas based on player stats. He also believes players that are undervalued for a number of reasons -- age, personal scandals, even looking funny -- can bring value for a fraction of the cost of star players. Beane hires Brand and makes him the assistant general manager, and they put together their "team of misfit toys." But they face skepticism across the board -- from the scouts who say baseball can't be reduced to just math, to the numerous fans blasting the A's on radio call-in shows -- and the losses in the early season don't help.

Moneyball is an interesting sports movie, as we see the impact of money on the game -- and a radical new theory that challenges that factor. From the beginning to end, we see how the A's don't have a budget remotely close to the other teams, yet are expected to compete on an uneven playing field the same way they do. "Reducing" baseball to player stats analyzed to construct a team goes against most fans' feel for the game -- but how else to compete with teams that can easily buy the best players? The result isn't a cliched "heart and spunk bring victory" but rather a look at the stress of not just going for a championship, but doing it in a way no one else believes in. And the script, co-written by Aaron Sorkin, has some pretty sharp dialogue.

Moneyball is, for the most part, a two-person movie -- and they have two very good people for the roles. Brad Pitt does fine work as Billy Beane, a long-time player (flashbacks show the young Beane as being recruited rather than accepting a college scholarship -- then bombing on the field) who loves the game but is clearly tired of losing and (seemingly) not having the resources to win. Jonah Hill is best known for comedy, but he does a good job as Peter Brand. If Beane is the heart of the team, Brand is the brains, the man with the plan. Hoffman is decent as the clearly self-serving team manager, and Kerris Dorsey provides a sympathetic voice (and one of the few female characters in the movie) as Beane's concerned young daughter.

Moneyball is a very good drama, looking at a fundamental shift in playing America's pasttime. The cast is good, and the drama comes as much off the field as during the pivotal games.

Overall grade: B+

Reviewed by James Lynch

Superbad (2007)

There are plenty of teen comiedies about trying to get laid and trying to party hard. The bad ones are juvenile and exploitative, the good ones make us laugh, and the great ones seem to speak for their generation. Superbad, co-written by Seth Rogen (who wrote The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up), is the latter type of movie: a sensitive, crude, hysterical, and honest portrayal of teens.

It's two years before high school graduation, and teenage buddies Evan (Michael Sera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) are ready to party and get laid. Evan is polite, nervous, always apologizing, and infatuated with Becca (Martha MacIsaac), whose flirtations he is oblivious to. Seth, an overweight kid who curses and talks more trash about women than any movie character since Jay in Clerks, has the hots for Jules (Emma Stone). Unfortunately, Evan and Seth have very few friends apart from each other, spending most nights in Evan's basement drinking beers and watching online porn. And with them going to different colleges in the fall, they feel the stress of their upcoming separation.

Evan and Seth see a big chance for sex and partying when Jules invites them to her party. The two friends start planning, helped by their annoying friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) whose fake license leads Seth to promise Jules that he'll bring the booze for the party.

But the course of teenagers never does run smooth. Fogell's fake I.D. only says "McLovin" and when Fogell is buying the booze he winds up in the middle of a robbery and the new best friend of two party-animal cops (played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogen) who take him all over town. Meanwhile Evan and Seth wind up at an adult party surrounded by strangers, as they try to procure the promised alcohol for the party.

Superbad is a wonderful movie. The characters are all very believable, dealing with the stresses and promises of being a teenager. (The two cops are very over the top, but they still supply lots of laughs.) The movie is both funny and honest, as Evan and Seth try to live up to all their big talk while dealing with who they really are. And the laughs come from beginning to end. Superbad will be a classic about what it is to be a teenager -- and what a great comedy is.

Overall Grade: A

Reviewed by James Lynch