How to Train Your Dragon 2

Man, I just reviewed Paddington, which will probably make my yearly Top Ten.  How do you follow that?

Well, you could do worse than How to Train Your Dragon 2, a CGI action-adventure with beautiful animation, thrilling set-pieces, and touching emotional beats.

The film follows the continuing adventures of Hiccup and Toothless, a rider / dragon team, and the rest of the members of their Viking village as they seek to spread peace and love for dragonkind throughout their stylized version of Scandinavia.

Yes, there’s a villain.  And yes, there are more and bigger dragons, and yes, the stakes are (expectedly) higher in the sequel than in the original.  Ho hum.  Nevertheless, it’s all in the execution, and How to Train your Dragon 2 executes the material at the very highest level.  This is a wonderful adventure, technically awesome yet with a beating heart.

It just isn’t Paddington.  I think I should have watched a couple of episodes of Breaking Bad to cleanse my palate, because it turns out that a gentle little movie about a talking bear was one hard act to follow.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Given:  Martin Scorsese ranks among the greatest filmmakers of all time.  Given:  Leonardo DiCaprio ranks among his generation’s finest actors.  Question: together, can they make The Wolf of Wall Street worth watching?

“What?” you may be asking.  “Why is this even a question?”

It’s a question because The Wolf of Wall Street tells the story of absolutely terrible human beings.  The film knows they’re terrible.  They characters know they’re terrible.  How does one invest in the stories of a bunch of people who, if they were all incinerated in a nuclear inferno at the end of the second act, would leave the viewer thinking, “Serves ‘em right?”

One invests because Martin Scorsese is an undisputed master of the art form of motion picture creation, and Leonardo DiCaprio is an absolutely brilliant actor and movie star who can find something compelling in even the most loathsome of characters.

The film traces the rise and fall of DiCaprio’s salesman, stockbroker, and felon as he learns to the keys to amassing enormous amounts of wealth through means illegal, unethical, and, well, just plain evil.  It’s a cry of rage against an industry that crashed the American economy in 2008, costing untold numbers of people their jobs, their savings, and their homes while its executives reaped ever-larger bonuses.  The film doesn’t go into the specifics of 2008 – in fact, it ties DiCaprio and his cohort into other shenanigans.  But the rage is the same.

So why watch two+ hours of rage?  Because Scorsese knows who to frame a scene, how to build tension, how to craft a narrative in such a way as to keep us on the hook.  And DiCaprio, man, this guy is amazing.  He gives a charismatic, snakelike, evil performance that is absolutely riveting.  Even when he’s at his most evil, duping some unsuspecting schmuck out of his money and, quite possibly, jeopardizing the guy’s marriage, you can’t help but watch him.  This is an actor at the height of his powers, and you must respect the craft.

Does all this mean that you have to see The Wolf of Wall Street?  I don’t know – I’m not here to sell you anything.  All I know is that this film brings together serious talents and presents a compelling narrative.  If that’s your thing, and you don’t mind a little rage, have at it.

Loose Ends

Man, this whole "job and family thing really gets in the way of blogging.  Here are some short observations about what's been on my screen.

22 Jump  Street 

Don’t make my mistake.  Do not watch 22 Jump Street in a public, yet quiet, place.  I watched it while riding as a passenger in an airplane, and I spent roughly 90 minutes biting my knuckles to keep from guffawing.

This is my kind of comedy.  It’s clever, it’s packed with gags that hit us in rapid succession, and it even blows up a car.  Really, what more could you possibly want?

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Eh.  I’m getting too old for this $#!^.

Noah

Noah drags through its first act, then turns on the juice once the rain starts falling.  If you can get past the fact that everyone’s Caucasian and has British accents, then it’s easy to accept lava monsters and ancient industrialized civilizations.  Soon, you can immerse yourself in Aronofsky’s tale of justice and mercy, prophecy and insanity.  Just don’t make it the last film you see on a 9.5 hour flight.  This is not a movie to see when you're punchy.

Cats & Dogs

What a delightful film.  I’ve seen it, with my kids, I don’t know how many times.  It just never gets old.  

The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie is clever, visually pleasing, and flat-out hilarious. My wife and I have been quoting it back and forth to each other for weeks.

The film begins as a relatively straightforward action-adventure, albeit with a Lego twist. The cleverness comes from two sources: the gags, which seem mostly to consist of taking down mainstream culture in general (a bold move for a mainstream film) and Batman in particular, and the structure. I particularly enjoyed all the digs at the Caped Crusader, whom I've always found to be a ridiculous character better suited to Adam West than Christian Bale. It's difficult to praise the film's structure without getting into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that the movie takes everything you know about how these movies go, inverts it, then twists it sideways. It works, it's seamless, and it's wonderfully creative. I loved it.

Visually, The Lego Movie looks great. In fact, I've never seen a film animated quite like this one. It looks like a computer rendering of stop-motion animation using actual, used Legos, some of which appear to have been scavenged from one of the piles on my kids' bedroom floor. Some light research tells me that filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller (of the hilarious 21 Jump Street and good-enough Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) employed a computer program that modeled how actual bricks to fit together to ensure that most everything shown onscreen can actually be built. The effect? A palpable sense of wonder.

Finally, The Lego Movie is hilarious. Now, I'm an easy laugh – when my wife and I used to frequent comedy clubs, we'd always get seated right up front because laughter's infectious. That said, I laughed out loud throughout this film. From little gags like Abraham's Lincoln's unique mode of transportation to Will Arnett's 90-minute Batman parody, this picture scores again and again and again.

In short, everything about The Lego Movie is awesome. I can't wait for Lord & Miller's next picture.

21 Jump Street & The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

21 JUMP STREET

Funny, exciting, and kinda sweet, 21 Jump Street is my biggest surprise of the summer.  The story’s nicely constructed and does a fine job of walking the line between schmaltzy and savvy.  Jonah Hill does a fine job, co-star Channing Tatum reveals a surprising gift for comedy, and the Third Act peril and action beats don’t overwhelm the generally light tone.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is basically BBC porn.  It puts together beloved actors from the British drama scene, gives them arcs that reward our love for them, and pays it all off with a tear-jerking finale that sends us out the door with smiles on our faces.

I mean, look: we’re talking about a feel-good movie starring Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton, etc, plus Dev Patel as the eponymous hotel’s part-owner and manager.  These are all people we’re happy to spend time with for an hour and a half, and they’re happy to make us laugh, cry, and feel like we’re getting our money’s worth.  I know I did.

Moneyball

When I heard that Moneyball was in production, I thought it would fail.  How do you take a book about statistical analysis and turn it into a narrative film?

Moneyball succeeds by changing focus from the book.  The book, as I said, is about statistical analysis and uses one team’s experiment with it to educate the reader.  The movie is about Billy Beane, the manager of said team, his journey, and how his grasp of the potential of statistical analysis changed his sport, his team, and his life.

Brad Pitt plays Beane as smart and savvy, yet insecure.  He’s a baseball guy, but he’s so totally a product of his lifelong immersion in the sport that he’s a baseball guy only.  When he spots an influential whiz kid (Jonah Hill) in an opposing manager’s office, he understands the value of a completely different perspective.  It’s a perspective so different that betting on it could cost him his career.  There’s your drama.  There’s your movie. 

Now, I like baseball.  I go to several games per year, I follow the Nationals in the Post, and believe that Marconi invented radio specifically to give the world the magic that is Vin Scully.  But you don’t have to like baseball to like this movie.  You have to like scrappy underdogs, you have to like things that don’t go boom, and you have to like Brad Pitt.  I like all three, and I like this picture.  I want to see it again as soon as I can.  

Megamind

Megamind is laugh-out-loud funny.

Here in the second paragraph, I usually describe the movie’s first act to give you a taste of what you’re in for.  You don’t the need that for Megamind.  Just know that it’s a cartoon about supervillain who’s not such a bad guy, once you get to know him.

This film looks great, with bright and colorful animation.  The story’s simple enough for toddlers, yet smart enough for parents.  The comedy balances slapstick and character-based humor to give everyone something to laugh at.  And the action sequences, well, they’re fantastic. 

I watched Megamind with my family (ages 2 - 43), and we all enjoyed it.  We laughed out loud, we got swept up in the characters, and we look forward to seeing it again.  Megamind is a winner.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL was a great surprise. I was busy with other things when it came out, so I missed Ebert's very favorable review and the positive word of mouth it generated. It took a coworker's raves to get me to sit down for the movie, and I must remember to thank that guy.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL has an uninspiring setup, one that could work for any number of comedies with varying success. A guy's girlfriend dumps him. He goes to Hawaii to forget her with a change of scenery. She turns up at the same resort with her new boyfriend. But other comedies don't have the guy writing a rock opera of Dracula with a soul-baring tune that makes you want to both laugh and cry (and laugh). Other comedies don't have supposed villains who turn out to be among the funniest and most noble characters in the picture. Other comedies don't have that perfect combination of raunchy humor and gentle understanding that are the hallmark's of producer Judd Apatow's ouvre.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL does make the common mistake of forgetting the "comedy" part of "romantic comedy" in most of the third act, but it makes up for it with a stitch of an ending. This is a charming, funny, marvelous film, one well worth seeing.

I've been raving about it to my coworkers.

Horton Hears a Who!

HORTON HEARS A WHO! is a beautifully animated, well voiced, faithful retelling of the Dr. Seuss classic. I nearly fell asleep.

Don't get me wrong. My kids loved it. Many of the people in the theater applauded when the credits rolled. It's just that I've read that story so many times that it holds no mysteries for me.

Ah, well.

Evan Almighty

Oh, how I loathed EVAN ALMIGHTY. Here's a movie that takes the most banal platitudes:
((1) Dad needs to make more time for the kids.
(2) McMansions are bad.
(3) SUVs, and particularly Hummers, are bad.
(4) Development is bad. (5) Realtors are bad (ok, that was a new one).
(6) Animals are good.
(7) That "random acts of kindness" meme is the height of Divine truth.
(7) Wanda Sykes is funny.),

combines them with stunning ignorance:
((1) Small-time TV news co-anchors and congressmen can afford giant houses and fabulous cars.
(2) House committee chairmen are just slightly less powerful than the President.
(3) Congressional chiefs of staff and legislative aids are basically the same thing.
(4) A committee chairman can fire a congressman.
(5) The Blue Ridge Mountains are short commute to DC.
(6) God is a moron.
(7) Anyone would choose to live in Buffalo instead of anywhere else in the world, including Port au Prince.),

and creates a lazy, preachy, treacly, unfunny mess of a film that amused my 7-yr-old, but made my wife and me want to stick forks in our eyes.

EVAN ALMIGHTY's jokes are lame. Its characterizations are lame. Its politics are lame. Its religion is lame. Its dialogue, its CGI, its direction, its music, its buildup, its climax, its ending, even its closing credits are lame (Ok, its ending and closing credits are more desperate than lame, but still...). Morgan Freeman makes for an agreeable King of Kings and Steve Carrell makes for an agreeable prophet, but that's about all this movie has to offer. Avoid, avoid, avoid this movie. It's not worth seeing.

Knocked Up

While not as riotously funny as SUPERBAD, KNOCKED UP is still quite funny. And touching. And insightful. And sweet. It's a perfect date movie, but you don't have to be a date to enjoy it. Here's another winner for Judd Apatow; a guy who, at the moment, can do no wrong.

Here's the setup: Seth Rogen's a schlubby slacker who somehow manages to fall into bed with the delightful Katherine Heigl. Two months later, and to her horror, Heigle realizes that she's pregnant. Will this mismatched couple figure out how to navigate both pregnancy and the early stages of an actual relationship? Oh, come on: it's a romantic comedy. Of course they will. The real question is, will this mismatched couple do so in a sufficiently amusing way? You betcha.

As with SUPERBAD and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, the comedy here is all in the dialogue. At the moment, no one's consistently writing funny dialogue as well as Apatow (and buddy Rogen), and KNOCKED UP is no exception. These characters are a delight to see and hear, and I suspect that I'll find more to enjoy about their conversations when I see this film again with my delightful bride. Further, you know how most romantic comedies have at least one of the characters learning some schmaltzy life lesson and then beat us with it? KNOCKED UP sells its character development through clever and perceptive insights into relationships both starting and established.

Take all this, mix in a love for its characters, and any question as to why this film was such a monster hit goes away. This is a smart, funny film. I look forward to seeing it again.

Superbad

SUPERBAD is the funniest movie I've seen in months. Its jokes range from broad to subtle, its characters feel and behave in comically realistic ways, and its humour feels natural, rather than forced. There's never a sense, as in BALLS OF FURY, that this film is jumping around and shouting, "Look at me! I'm funny!" It just is.

SUPERBAD follows three geeks on the cusp of high school graduation. There's the skinny one, the fat one, and the one who lives at the very bottom of the social ladder. Unlike NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, which invites us to laugh at its geeks, SUPERBAD invites us to laugh with them as they embark on a quest which, for a high schooler, is all-important: they need to score some alcohol for a party (Side note: when we were in high school and wanted alcohol, we drove around town with our prettiest friend. When we spotted a liquor store that was staffed by a man either very young or very old, we sent her in with cash and a smile. Worked every time.). Along the way, they try their hands at forgery, petty theft, setting police cars on fire, and scaring the hell out of small children. It sounds horrendous, I know, but trust me when I say that it's all in good fun. These kids mean well, they really do, and we can't help but like them and root for them.

That's fine, and it could make for a reasonably pleasant time at the movies, but that isn't what makes SUPERBAD so funny. It's the dialogue, baby, and SUPERBAD is a dialogue-rich film that creates some of the most hilarious exchanges I've enjoyed since KISS, KISS, BANG, BANG. I saw this with some friends the other night, and we've been quoting lines back and forth ever since.

Additionally, this movie has a sweetness to it that gives it a warm glow. There's no villain, per se - just situations. It' s nice, and it avoids the uncomfortable changes in tone that hurts movies like THE WEDDING CRASHERS.

Overall, I rate SUPERBAD as a huge, huge hit. It's the kind of movie one can see over and over again, and I fully intend to. What a great comedy.

Acepted

ACCEPTED is your basic slobs vs. snobs comedy, anchored by Justin Long and set in an upstart college that dares to let students study whatever they want, on their own, as their path to self-actualization.

Long is likeable enough, the movie rocks along all right, and I chuckled once or twice, but it got me to thinking. ACCEPTED is both a wish fulfillment fantasy and a commentary on the current state of American society. Let's set aside, for now, the hypocrisy of the incredibly competitive entertainment industry in distributing a movie that celebrates just letting it all hang out. I'm more interested in the film's assumption that going to college in order to set oneself up for a decent job is a pale excuse for education when measured against finding oneself. Tell that to college kids in Bangalore and Dalian – the kids who are overtaking the US in technical innovation and international patent applications. They're in it for material gain, to compete in the global market, while American kids flee the hard sciences and engineering in favor of liberal arts degrees that feel good but both fail to prepare them for the international job market and keep them from being able to help maintain America's technical
edge.

Have we truly left the American work ethic behind, yearning instead for unlimited time to work the half-pipe and take pictures of girls in bikinis? If so, then look out, America: in another generation or two, we'll be the call the center operators of the world. Talking will be all we know how to do.