Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation pits Tom Cruise and his pals against SPECTRE KAOS HYDRA SMERSH COBRA FOWL VILE SCORPIO – aw, jeez, guys.  “The Syndicate?”  You’re putting them up against “The Syndicate?”  I could come up with five better names for evil organizations right off the top of my head:  1. SPAWN (Special Project for Anarchy, War, and Nachos (seriously, those things are really bad for you)); 2. OUCH (Organization to Undermine Capitalist Hypocrisy); 4.  MTI (Moustache Twirlers International); 5. The Bay City Rollers.  Honestly, this stuff isn’t hard.

Fortunately, choosing a boring moniker for the villains appears to be the only serious shortcut taken by this latest entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise.  Here’s a spy fantasy with a cleverly written script, well-shot action set pieces, cool gadgets, a beautiful heroine, and movie star’s movie star Tom Cruise busting his tukkas in one incredible stunt sequence after another.  This movie has exotic locales,  gymkata, motorcycle chases, gunfights, even a hacker character pushing a big red button – I mean, it has it all.  Best of all, it has laugh-out loud humor, a wonderful sense of fun, and absolutely world-class production values.  

While it can’t boast a sequence that tops the amazing Burj Khalifa bit from Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, this entry in the series delivers everything one could possibly hope for from this kind of film.  If you like this genre, I don’t see how you could possibly not enjoy Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

My Best Friend's Girl

MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL is an affront to God and man. It's a romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor funny.*

It's _Cyrano de Bergerac_ with Dane Cook as Christian, Jason Biggs as Cyrano, and Kate Hudson as Roxane. At least, that appears to be the structure that the film rips off. It deviates from the straight Cyrano story, which is fine, but it fails to give us any reason to care whether any of its annoying, shallow characters live or die, much less find love.

This film's cinematography is boring, its dialogue is boring, its story is boring, and its actors are boring.* I saw this movie for free (It was playing in the background in the place where I'm using the computer), and I still want my money back.

MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL can take a hike.

*Except when Alex Baldwin is onscreen. When did this guy turn into a comic genius?

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

I'm the only member of my family who didn't like MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA. My ambulatory kids danced along with the lion at the climax. My wife and sister in law nodded along happily. I sat there, bored at a commercial venture with as much heart as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Here's the setup: a bunch of anthropomorphic animals rehash the hit song from the first movie, then get on a barely functioning airplane for their trip to New York City. The plane goes down in an African game preserve, where the Mustafah ripoff is being challenged by the Scar ripoff. It's up to our favorite beasts to save the day, find self-realization, and sing and dance.

But nothing funny happens. The film celebrates a subculture (New York and New Yorkers) that doesn't capture my imagination (Maybe if my crash pad wasn't so close to the J Train). The whole thing feels like a rote recycling of successful elements from the first film, with no chances taken and every element audience-tested.

I don't hate this movie. It's not interesting enough to engender hate. I just plan to be out of the room the next time my kids spin this one up.

SpongeBob Square Pants: The Movie

So, here's the thing about SPONGEBOB SQUARE PANTS: THE MOVIE: it's not as bad as you think.

The picture begins with a pirate ship at sea. They spot a floating seachest, open it, and are delighted to find tickets to the SpongeBob movie. They break into a terrific chanty-style rendition of the SpongeBob theme song, and before you know it we're in Bikini Bottom, home of the titular sponge.

The story itself is your basic quest tale, with fun turns by guest voice actors such as Jeffrey Tambor, Alec Baldwin, and Scarlett Johansson. It's pleasantly diverting stuff, but there's something about it that both sells this movie and takes it completely over the top. SpongeBob has unmasked the villain, but the forces of evil are closing in on him anyway. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, he breaks into a rock tune (written and performed by Twisted Sister's Dee Snider), a guitar materializes in his hands, and before you know it, he's freeing the city by shooting laser beams out of aforementioned guitar while simultaneously rocking the house. This is bona fide silly fun, and I loved its audacity of concept and cleanliness of execution, right down to the sampling of David Lee Roth's scat from "Just a Gigolo."

I don't know if I'd call this a pleasant surprise: I expected it to be odious and it turned out to be only ok. Nevertheless, I'll chock this one up in the "win" column. Omilybooblyzeeblybop!

The Good Shepherd

Filmmaker Joe McDonald sent me his thoughts on the THE GOOD SHEPHERD. I enjoyed his writing so much that I thought I'd pass it along to you.

Believe the peanut gallery, "TGS" was booorrring: **. I am so glad, in hindsight, that you were so compelled to suggest "Rocky Balboa" when it was "TGS" that I really had my eye on last Christmas.

Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Yale graduate who, I believe, belonged to that same stupid secret society that Bush belongs to that signifies the beginning of a career of puppet-mastering in offices of power and prestige. At the cusp of graduation, Damon is approached by an army general (Robert DeNiro) to help form an organization that creates information and misinformation to assist the war effort during WWII, an organization we have come to know now as the CIA. And so begins a life of seven-day work weeks, talking in crypto-speak, a friendless environment, and alienating oneself from the family Damon loves. When he is approached by the same army general to head a similar peacetime organization to fight the Cold War, gee, how can he resist?

Why did this movie not work? There were no goals in this movie. I needed to see the value of having a CIA during World War II and thereafter. I needed to see Damon achieve a victory during the war that demonstrates his value to such an organization and seeing him get hooked. I needed to see some history and background of the CIA. This could have been soooo interesting. What I saw was the stoic faces, the subtextual conversations, shady characters, and close acquaintances getting killed during the war. I kept yelling at the TV for Damon to ditch the job, dump Angelina Jolie, and find that hot, deaf girl he was dating in college so that he can teach poetry at some northeast prep school like he wants to.

"TGS" looked fabulous visually, the cast is an all-star team of Oscar nominees and winners, the set dec and costumes are second to none. Hell, the screenwriter is Eric Roth ("Munich", "Forrest Gump", "The Insider"). What happened here?! Were all the good parts edited out? Is DeNiro a bad director?

What I do know is that I began to balance my checkbook at the halfway point of this movie. Pass on it.

The Departed

When THE DEPARTED’s final credit rolled, I looked at my watch and thought, “Where did the time go?” Scorsese’s film, which clocked in at over two hours, raced by and I enjoyed every single minute. And yet, much as I liked it (and I really, really liked it), I think INFERNAL AFFAIRS is a better picture.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS, the Hong Kong Thriller remade in THE DEPARTED, stars Andy Lau and Tony Leung in the Damon and DiCaprio roles, respectively. The movies are nearly identical, with one major exception: moral ambiguity. In THE DEPARTED, Matt Damon’s character is a gangster in his heart. His decisions come from a position of self-interest and cold analysis of his situation. In INFERNAL AFFAIRS, Lau’s character began as a gangster, but he’s spent so much time on the right side of the law that he’s no longer playacting: he has conditioned himself to goodness and there’s a very real part of him that genuinely wants to become good. In THE DEPARTED, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is noble at heart. He’s so filled with horror at the demands of undercover work and sublimated fear of death that he turns to pills just to help him maintain his equilibrium. In INFERNAL AFFAIRS, Leung’s character kind of likes being a gangster: he’s grown used to it and, though he’d like to come in, we have a sense that he could continue to thrive in the underground world to which he’s become accustomed.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot to like about THE DEPARTED. It’s a Scorsese picture, so of course it looks and sounds great. The cast is phenomenal, the story brisk, and situations involving. It’s a four-star movie, no doubt about it. But I like a little more moral ambiguity in my movies. INFERNAL AFFAIRS wins by a nose.