Spy

I’ve been slow to climb aboard the Melissa McCarthy bandwagon.  Her performance in Bridesmaids reminded me of Chris Farley, who made a string a successful movies built around fat jokes.  Sadly, Farley was consumed with self-loathing, and the drugs to which he turned eventually killed him.  Thus, it felt cruel to go to the movies just to laugh at the fat lady.  Cruelty is not my idea of a good time.

And yet, there I was: stuck in Coach on a long flight, having already seen most of the pictures the in-flight entertainment system had to offer.  I remembered that Spy garnered good reviews, so I decided to give it a (skeptical) shot.

I laughed all the way through Spy, from the first silly gag involving bats in the CIA Comm Center through the silly gags involving various sequel ideas that played through the closing credits.  Spy is not 90 minutes of laughing at the fat lady.  It’s 90 minutes of laughing with the clever, capable woman who just happens to be a little larger than normal.  Oh, and lots of laughing at Jason Statham.  Jason Statham.  Who knew?

Here’s the setup: McCarthy is a “back room” CIA agent along the lines of Mission: Impossible’s Simon Pegg.  Like Pegg, she winds up doing field work even though nobody (including her) thinks she’s up to the task.  Like Pegg, she turns out to be awesome.

Spy, of course, plays this setup entirely for laughs.  To do so, it recruits a murderer’s row of some of the finest supporting talent working in movies today, from Jude Law to Rose Byrne to Bobby Cannavale to Morena Baccarin to Peter Sarafinowicz to Allison Janney.  And this isn’t the kind of movie in which various big name supporting actors just turn up to cash a paycheck: each of them endows his or her character with enough personality, enough life, to make every moment pop.  Even the Big Bad, while dangerous enough to present a credible threat within the context of the film, exhibits just enough silliness to put a smile on our face.

I loved this movie.  Spy is raunchy and goofy and laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end, and it’s all that not only without demeaning its star, but with making her absolutely awesome.  Writer/Director Paul Feig nails it, and I’m now firmly aboard the Melissa McCarthy bandwagon.  I can’t wait to see what the two of them do with Ghostbusters.

X-Men: First Class

Holy cow.  X-Men: First Class is actually good!

Some background: I never got into superhero comics.  Everything I know about the X-Men I’ve learned from going to the movies.  Consequently, my last exposure to the X-Men universe was through the odious Wolverine.  When I went in to this one, my expectations were low.

Here’s the setup: it’s the Kennedy Administration.  A dude with groovy brain powers recruits a coldblooded revenge killer to join Team Good.  As one may imagine, things do not work out as groovy brain guy might have preferred. 

The film hangs a pretty good story on that frame, helped along by fun period work, seamless effects, well-directed action set pieces, and the revelation that the amazing young actress from Winter’s Bone looks great naked.

The consensus among my filmgoing friends is that X-Men: First Class is average, at best.  I don’t get it.  I had more fun at this film than any other superhero film released this year.

Knowing

There are two kinds of people in this world: DARK CITY people and THE MATRIX people. DARK CITY has atmosphere; THE MATRIX has gunfire. DARK CITY has style; THE MATRIX has fetish wear. DARK CITY reveals; THE MATRIX tells.

Yeah, I’m a DARK CITY guy.

You know what else I am? A Nicolas Cage guy. Ok, not enough of one to sit through NATIONAL TREASURE 2, but enough to forgive him for BANGKOK DANGEROUS. VALLEY GIRL can earn a man a lifetime of cred, as far as I’m concerned.

Thus, when Alex Proyas (the director of DARK CITY) puts Nicolas Cage in front of a camera, I’m there. In KNOWING, Proyas directs Cage as an MIT astrophysicist who unlocks a terrible secret and races to discover its ramifications. Cage is fine in the Nicolas Cage Dressed Up as a Professor role, but what makes this film so enjoyable is its Proyas style. KNOWING just plain looks great, even if it does go full Emmerich at times. Proyas knows how to get solid performances from even his child actors, and he knows how to build a world whose every detail serves to advance his story.

Is this as fine a film as FROZEN RIVER? Few are. Is this a solid thriller with strong supernatural and science fiction elements? Sure is. Is it also better than THE MATRIX? Oh, oh yes. If Proyas and Cage are your cup of tea, you’re sure to enjoy KNOWING.

Sunshine

There's a lot to like about SUNSHINE. It sports dazzling visuals, arresting sound design, and a fun twist on the reliable science fiction premise of things going wrong on a spaceship far from home. The twist, of course, is that this spaceship is on a mission that takes it dangerously close to the sun, and the star's radiation is so dangerous that it borders on tangible.

Often, a film like this will pit the feeling humanists against the cold-hearted military types. I thought SUNSHINE was going down this road, so imagine how surprised and delighted I was when the military types turned out to be right time and again. Another common pitfall of this kind of picture is a disregard for physics, and I thought that SUNSHINE handled this particularly well in the third act, when time and space get ginchy.

Unfortunately, however, physics is about the only thing right about the third act. When the movie twists, its as if the filmmakers lost faith in the inherent fascination of their premise and decided to go, instead, with a bogeyman. And then they present the bogeyman horribly, with inexplicable fuzzy-cam and at least one victim shot so amateurish that I couldn't believe it made the final cut.

Even with the disappointing close, however, I still recommend SUNSHINE. It looks great, sounds great, and is a good time at the movies for most of its run. You could do worse.