Catch .44

(2.5/4 stars)

It's pretty obvious during the five minute conversation between the wanna-be Charlie's Angels (Tes, Kyla, and Dawn) that this movie desperately wants to be a Quentin Tarantino film. Which was bad news for me because I don't really like Tarantino's films. "Reservoir Dogs" is pretty good. That's what this seems to aspire to, though it doesn't quite make it.

This is the kind of movie where a lot of it is told in flashback, but I'll give it to you in chronological order, without trying to spoil too many surprises. As I said at the outset there are three young women Tes, Kyla, and Dawn. The latter two we can forget about because they die in the first ten minutes of the movie. Tes (Malin Ackerman) is a former strip club waitress/pickpocket who works for crime boss Mel (Bruce Willis) around the New Orleans area. She and her crew are assigned to go to a diner in the middle of nowhere to intercept a drug shipment (or something). The drugs/cash are the film's MacGuffin, the thing everyone is fighting over and yet they don't really matter.

But as we see early on things go wrong and Tes's underlings are killed. There's a double-cross and then another double-cross and then another double-cross. It'd take too long and spoil too much to say who all is double-crossing who.

Anyway, like the earlier "Smokin' Aces" this is a film by a Tarantino disciple that tries to mimic the master's work, but never quite gets there. It's got a lot of the same pieces, but feels too derivative. (Which is maybe why I never heard of it before it showed up on the Vine newsletter and was released on DVD.) If you're a fan of double-crosses and gore then this is a good rental, but I wouldn't buy it.

BTW, like the earlier "13" I got from Vine the DVD includes no extras. I don't know if the actual sale version does or not. If it does I can't evaluate them since I couldn't see them.

That is all.

Our Idiot Brother

There are nice guys and then there's Ned.  Maybe the screenwriters named him Ned because he's like Ned Flanders on "The Simpsons" only without the religion.  He's so nice when a cop comes up to his fruit & vegetable stand asking for some pot because he's having a bad day, Ned agrees to give him a bag.  He reluctantly takes $20 for it and then finds himself sent up the river on a drug pedaling charge.

Ned (Paul Rudd) gets out 8 months later and is no longer welcome at the farm where he used to work.  At first then he stays with his mom.  When he feels smothered, he goes to stay with his sister Liz (Emily Mortimer) and her husband (Steve Coogan) and their young son River.  Liz and her husband are the type of parents who don't want their kid to eat sugar and make him play some weird musical instrument so he can get into a fancy school.  Ned upsets that by teaching River about karate and stuff.

Soon he ends up with his other sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks)--I have no idea which sister is the oldest or youngest.  She works for Vanity Fair and is trying to break a big story about Lady Arabella, who was involved in some scandal.  Ned's honesty screws that up too.

He ends up sleeping in a raft at the apartment of his other sister Natalie (Zooey Deschanel).  She's supposedly a lesbian, but has been sleeping around with a guy.  Ned's honesty ruins things for her too.

It's all a little too obvious that the real "idiots" are the sisters, not Ned.  As screwed up as his life is, theirs aren't much better, just they refuse to admit it.  You might be able to figure out where everything is going. 

But overall this was a fun, lighthearted film.  Ned's good-natured blundering is funny and makes him a likable character.  He's not exactly in the same mold as Forrest Gump (because he's not that dumb) but he is someone you root for despite the dumb things he does.

This is a good movie for adult couples who want something light and fun.  There's really too much sex talk (and an unfortunate shot of Steve Coogan's naughty parts) for this to be a family film.

The extras on the DVD I received are three deleted/extended scenes (one is real short) and an alternate ending.  Unlike some movies that claim to have an alternate ending but end up having one or two lines changed, this one really is a largely different ending.  I think the original works better, but the alternate ending gives more closure about the characters.

That is all.

(3/4 stars)

13

I guess since this was about Russian roulette and listed Jason Statham as one of the stars I expected it to be more exciting. I was definitely not on the edge of my seat, even when guys had guns to each other's heads.

Another complaint I have is I didn't really feel I knew much about most of the characters. In many cases I didn't even know their names. It took a little straining to remember the "hero" is named Vince, in large part because for 2/3 of the movie he's referred to as "Number 13."

The reason for this is that Vince finds an invitation to a Russian roulette tournament. The mechanics of this are a little hazy to me. I think Vince is working at renovating this guy's house. The guy overdoses on morphine after he gets the invitation. Vince finds it and since he needs money for an operation for his dad (I think), he goes to New York to take the other guy's place.

The tournament is held in a mansion (or something) out in the middle of nowhere. I don't know how far you have to get from New York City for that. There are at least 17 players. Each one has essentially a sponsor. I'm not really sure who Vince's was. At the house we meet some of the other participants. There's #17 (Mickey Rourke) who was in a Mexican prison before being smuggled into the US for the tournament. He keeps telling his handler (50 Cent) that he knows where there's a large stash of money. 17 and his money really have no bearing on the overall plot.

Vince's main rival is #6 Robert Lynn (Ray Winstone) who was in a mental institution until his brother Jasper (Jason Statham) signs him out to be in the tourney. #6 has won the tourney a few times before. For some reason, Jasper borrows 2 million from someone to gamble in the tourney on his brother.

I think part of the reason I was never too excited is besides being located in a mansion--and not somewhere seedy like a back alley--is there are so many rules. For the first two rounds everyone stands in a circle. They're given a gun and one bullet. They put the guns in the air and spin the chamber around at the behest of the referee who sits in a chair like a tennis umpire. Then each player puts his gun at the head of the guy in front of him. (They are all guys.) When a light with spiders on it (why spiders? I don't know) goes on, they fire. Some people die and others live. For the next round, there are two bullets in the guns. The final round features two players chosen at random to "duel." They get three bullets in their guns. If you can't guess who is chosen to duel they show you A) on the DVD back cover and B)A few minutes into the film. So I guess that's another strike as it spoils a little of the drama.

Anyway, with so many rules and everything so well-mannered (they even let the "survivors" go free!) it felt more like watching tennis than Russian roulette. That and I didn't really know much about the important characters and a lot of characters weren't that important anyway, like #17.

So this definitely could have been a better movie. Maybe the original version was better; I might have to go look for it on Netflix or something.

BTW, there were no extras on the copy I was given from the Vine newsletter. I don't know if the copy for purchase has any extras or what they might be.

That is all.

(2/4 stars)

Limitless

I wasn't all that keen on seeing this movie, but one of my Gather "friends" recommended it.  Also, it drove me up the wall that Netflix wouldn't have it available for a full month AFTER you could buy the DVD, which is also a full month after Blockbuster and On Demand had it.  So once I signed back up with Blockbuster I put that near the top of my queue and here we are.

The basic premise of the movie is:  what if you could take a pill that would speed up your IQ past those of history's greatest geniuses?  Eddie (Bradley Cooper) faces this conundrum.  When the movie begins he's a socially-awkward writer suffering from writer's block, living in a messy apartment, and being dumped by his girlfriend.

(On a side note, only in the movies does a writer get a book contract without having written anything and without being famous.  That almost never happens in the real world, especially with fiction.  So suspend a little disbelief there.)

Then his ex-wife's brother runs into him on the street and offers him an experimental pill called NZT-48.  Eddie decides to take it and instantly his writer's block is gone, he's learning new languages at the drop of a hat, and winning back his girlfriend.  There's just a couple of little problems.  One is that the pill only lasts 24 hours.  After it's gone, he goes to the former brother-in-law's place only to discover that the brother-in-law has been killed by some nasty people looking for the pills.

They don't find the stash but Eddie does, along with some cash.  He uses the pills and bills to begin amassing a fortune.  First he tries counting cards and doing some day trading.  When that's too slow, he seeks out corporate titan Carl Atwood (Robert DeNiro) and goes to work helping to broker a huge merger that will net him $40 million.

But there are still the problems of the pills and the people who want the pills.
Overall I enjoyed the movie.  The scenario might be implausible, but it's a fun what-if fantasy.  Cooper gives a solid performance as Eddie and is fairly convincing as both mousy pre-NZT Eddie and suave post-NZT Eddie.  

It probably could have been 15 minutes shorter.  It drags a little in the middle.  Some of this drag is from a scenario I find puzzling.  Eddie reaches into his stash jar for a pill but seems to be out.  So he goes to a meeting with Atwood off the pill, which doesn't go well.  But then it turns out he has a stash hidden away somewhere.  So why didn't he just go get the stash before the meeting?  I mean if he's so smart on the pills how could he be so stupid as to run out before the meeting?

Other than that hiccup it's a perfectly good movie.  A solid night's entertainment.

That is all.

My score:  75/100 (3 stars)

Metacritic score:  59-100 (2 stars)

Captain America (2011)

I haven’t gone to see a movie in the theaters since “Iron Man 2” in 2010, because nothing released interested me much.  But I’ve always had a soft spot for Captain America, though I’ve never read more than the first couple issues that my grandma gave me in some kind of compilation back in the ‘80s or something.  Anyway, this got good buzz from my Facebook “friends” so I thought I’d go see it.

I’d say it was worth the five bucks I paid to see it in 2D—it didn’t seem like the kind of movie to benefit much from the 3D thing.  Like most of the Marvel superhero movies it’s a solid popcorn movie, though not as great as “The Dark Knight” in my mind.

When the movie begins, it’s in present day as a government team is digging around the arctic for a strange downed aircraft.  Inside they find a frozen Captain America.  Then we flash back to 1942, where a scrawny Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, formerly the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four) is trying to get into the army to serve in the same unit as his dead father.  What he lacks in size he makes up for in courage, but he’s rejected for being too small and asthmatic.  That doesn’t deter Steve, who applies later at a World’s Fair, foregoing a double date with his friend Bucky Barnes (a kid sidekick in the 40s comics) and two random dames.  Steve’s tenacity comes to the attention of Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who is conducting a secret experiment to create a special serum to make “super soldiers.”  He’s already used it on Nazi commander Johan Strauss (Hugo Weaving) but has since defected to America.

Steve is given the serum and comes out looking like a bodybuilder.  A Nazi agent sets off a bomb and kills Erskine, making it so that Steve will be America’s only super soldier instead of having a whole army of them.  He’s presented with two choices:  be locked up in a lab for testing or become an army mascot known as “Captain America.”  He agrees to the latter, where at least he can be doing something.  It turns out that what he does is dress up in a funny costume and make speeches about buying war bonds.  He also makes movies and even has a comic book! 

Just as Steve is embracing his fame, he goes over to Italy and meets a hostile reception.  When he finds out Bucky has been taken captive by the Nazis, Steve goes alone into enemy territory to break him out.  There he confronts Strauss, going by the name the Red Skull because his serum turn his skull red, and becomes the real-life Captain America.

From there Steve, Bucky, and a loyal band of multinational/multiethnic troops try to wipe out the Red Skull and his evil HYDRA weapons plants.

I think what would have made this a little better to me was a little more realism.  I know it’s a comic book movie, but I found the Nazi ray guns to be a little too far over the line into fantasy.  And the whole “jewel of Odin” thing didn’t really add much to the plot.  They could have achieved the same results with more conventional weapons, though those might not have looked as cool to the teens in the audience.

Also, as much as I hate this new trend of breaking movies into two parts, a la Harry Potter, I think this would have been better as two parts.  One part to focus entirely on the World War II era and then another to bring Captain America into the modern age.  That way they could have dealt better with the issues surrounding him going from 1943 to 2011, like his love interest Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) either being dead or really, really old.  Because there’s just not going to be enough time in the Avengers movie to give that more than lip service.

No matter what, though, this was a million times better than the 1990 version Syfy aired at the time this movie came out.  It’s worth seeing if you’ve liked the other Marvel superhero movies or just want two hours out of the heat.

BTW, stay after the credits for a preview of the Avengers movie coming next year!

That is all.

My score:  75/100 (3 stars)

Metacritic score:  66/100 (2.5 stars)

Cedar Rapids

I knew when I heard about this that I would probably like that movie.  The reason is that I could best describe it as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" meets "Up in the Air" and I really liked both movies.  If you do too then you'll probably also like this.

The plot involves a 40-ish year old insurance agent who's not a virgin named Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) who works for BrownStar Insurance in Brown Valley, Wisconsin.  He's worked for BrownStar since he was 17 but is overshadowed by his coworker Roger, who's one the prestigious Two Diamond Award twice. 

But then Roger dies in a perverse way and it's up to Tim to go to the insurance industry conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (really Ann Arbor, Michigan, woo hoo!) to win the award for a third time.  He leaves his girlfriend, his old teacher (Sigourney Weaver, who at this point I did not want to see having sex) and gets on a plane for the first time.  Boarding a plane for the first time is kind of scary and nerve-wracking, especially doing it after 2001 with all the paranoia and extra security.  More probably could have been made of this scenario.

Anyway, when Tim lands in Cedar Rapids he runs into a prostitute named Bree outside.  He of course doesn't know what she is and gives her a butterscotch.  He's meets his first black person ever inside the room.  Ronald (Isaiah Whitlock) owns his own insurance company and like Tim is a total dork.  Due to overbooking, they have to take on a third roommate, Dean Ziegler (John C Reilly), whom Tim was warned to stay away from by his boss.  And we soon see why as Dean is the polar opposite of Tim:  boisterous, cussing, and hitting on everything in sight.  Later in the fitness center Tim meets the fourth member of their ensemble, Joan (an unrecognizable Anne Heche) who if you've seen "Up in the Air" is basically the Vera Farmiga character. 

It doesn't take long for Tim to start being turned to the dark side.  It all begins with some cream sherry in the bar.  (Cream sherry, the Devil's nectar!)  Soon he's doing all sorts of things he never thought he would do.  The most serious of which is finding out the truth behind Roger's awards the past two years and about his boss's plans for the company.

I thought a lot of this movie was hilarious, in the same way as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" in that it's fun watching a straight arrow turn to the dark side.  Something sadistic in our nature.  It's just funny as Tim encounters alcohol, drugs, and sex and tries to reconcile them with his Ned Flanders world view.

What the movie lacks is a good love interest for Tim.  We know Sigourney Weaver is too old for him.  We know Anne Heche is married.  And we know the prostitute is a prostitute.  Since those are the only options available, you wind up missing something on the romantic front.  They needed some cute assistant at the office or something he had ignored for him to end up with.  Maybe it's in the deleted scenes.

Anyway, this is a fun movie and mercifully short and just about 85 minutes.  Make sure to watch the first half of the credits for a couple of bonus scenes.  If you work in an office and like adult humor then this is a good bet.

That is all.

My score:  75/100 (3 stars)
Metacritic score:  70/100 (3 stars)

The Company Men

I really enjoyed this movie.  If it's not very subtle in its message that's all right because it's message is on target.  There is a labor crisis in America that affects everyone from the top on down.

"The Company Men" focuses on three separate segments of the workforce, all of whom work for GTX, a conglomerate that started by making ships for the Navy and so forth.  Of course now with defense cuts and so forth the shipbuilding segment of the company is being phased out.

Heading this division is Gene (Tommy Lee Jones) who co-founded the company with CEO Jim (Craig T. nelson).  Gene is conflicted about the company's downsizing and has been publicly vocal about his ethical concerns in putting people out of work to make the stock price go up.  When he winds up getting a pink slip himself, he still has millions but nothing to do with his time or money.

One of Gene's oldest associates is Phil (Chris Cooper) who started out in the shipyards after a tour in Vietnam.  Phil is in his late 50s and when he gets the ax, finds no one wants to hire him despite all of his experience.  Too young to retire but too old compared to the college kids coming up who'll work for cheaper, Phil is caught between a rock and a hard place with seemingly no way out.

And then there's Bobby (Ben Affleck) who was a middle-manager for GTX.  Despite making only $150K or so a year, he lives in an affluent suburb of Boston in a million-dollar home and drives a Porsche.  When he gets his pink slip, he's left scrambling to find work and keep his head above water.  To try and make ends meet, he has to take a job from his brother-in-law (Kevin Costner) working as a carpenter.

All that's missing here is an even younger employee just trying to break into the market.  But still you get a pretty good idea of the bleak job market.  Many people like Phil find they can't get a job and the job they've been working for 30 years or more doesn't have any value.  Others like Bobby have been living beyond their means from paycheck to paycheck.  All the while CEOs like Jim continue drawing millions, refusing to give up perks like corporate jets, primo vacations, and giant offices in order to save someone's livelihood.

As I said, this is about as subtle as Michael Moore's "Capitalism:  a Love Story" but it's hard to deny that it's not true.  It's a changing job market and millions are being left behind, marooned on an island while others have to scale back their lives and their dreams.  The end reminds me of a documentary I saw years ago about the economic crisis in Brazil.  At one factory the head honchos decided to fire everyone and close the factory down.  The workers decided then to simply break the locks, fire up the machines, and keep working by pooling their own resources.  Maybe we need more of that spirit here.


Unless you're a rabid Tea Partier who still believes CEOs like Jim are riding to the rescue, I'd suggest watching this.

That is all.

My score:  90/100 (3.5 stars)
Metacritic score:  69/100 (3 stars)