Welcome, welcome, welcome to another year of amateurish, completely subjective, slightly witty film criticism with your old pal Mulhern! As my favorite Onion correspondent Jim Anchower used to say in his column The Cruise, "It's been awhile since I've last rapped at ya."
Last year, I had to pack writing about 27 movies into my Oscar day post, which was not ideal. The gameplan is to spread out about 5-6 a day until Oscar Sunday this time around. Every year I say it: "This is the year I write reviews after I see movies, like a movie critic does." Unfortunately, I'm not a film critic--I'm a 4th grade teacher. Sometimes when I want to kick back and write about how I thought Smaug the dragon talked too damn much, or how Jared Leto would have made for a pretty decent looking chick, I instead have to kick back and write about how to get my kids to understand the difference between mixed numbers and improper fractions. I'm certainly not complaining; I love what I do. Thems just the breaks is all.
As it turns out, I was a recipient of an unexpected day off today, the 6th school cancellation of this Winter. This is unheard of for Minneapolis Public Schools. I am more than half of the way done with my 8th school year working for the district, and before this year, we had been canceled once, for a period of two days in December 2010. That snowstorm had collapsed the roof of the Metrodome (go Packers). This Winter has been cold enough to shut us down 6 times. Which is pretty crazy, but is freeing me up a little bit to do things like get my hair cut, take in my dry cleaning, and write inane stuff about movies I saw.
Before we begin, I'd be amiss not to mention the sudden and awful passing of one of the best actors any of us will ever see, ever. Philip Seymour Hoffman had a good 20 years ahead of him and it sucks that heroin and addiction in general has taken another one from us. PSH was far from your standard leading man, both in the roles he took, and the utter lack of the Gosling factor. As a supporting man he stole every scene he was in and gave us rockin' Lester Bangs, sycophantic Brandt, tight clothes Scotty J., patient Phil Parma, and, my favorite, the enigmatic, terrifying Lancaster Dodd from my #1 of last year, The Master. Then you have his leading roles. He carried The Savages and Before the Devil Knows Your Dead on his back. He brought equal parts pain and humor to a man defeated in Love Liza. He confidently guided us through the irrational in the wildly confusing Charlie Kaufman vehicle Synecdoche, New York. And as Truman Capote, he made us all feel for people who, for better or worse, didn't deserve to be alive. He threw himself into every role he took on, regardless of the anguish it caused him, and never, ever settled for mediocre, even if the movie itself was. May he rest in peace.
And speaking of mediocre movies...
(see what I did there?)
#50 Identity Thief
It's not as if I had high expectations for this one, but with Jason Bateman steadily making his way into permanent leading-man territory and the always entertaining Melissa McCarthy, I thought it would be worth a shot. Sometimes when I go to the Redbox, I want to pick out something that doesn't cause me to think very hard. This one, I'm happy to say, required very few firing of synapses.
It's no shock growing up as a child of experimental theater that I am not a prude when it comes to colorful language. That said, there is a difference between cursing that works and curses that are thrown in just because. Identity Thief could very well be the poster child for gratuitous swearing. The story, especially considering what recnetly happened with Minnesota's benevolent overlords the Target Corporation, is very timely: Bateman is Sandy Patterson, a corporate schmo with a wife and kids who finds himself getting charged for a string of treat yo'self charges at spas and boutiques in Florida. He decides to leave home and track down the perpetrator, con-artist Diana (McCarthy). There is plenty of cat-and-mouse, crude insults and physical gaggery along the way as Bateman is unwillingly dragged along while Diana is pursued by bounty hunters.
There were little funny one-liners here and there, but mostly it was just kind of mean-spirited. The trick would have worked if I were rooting for the McCarthy character to, you know, realize the error of her ways and redeem herself, but I couldn't sympathize.
#49 A.C.O.D.
A.C.O.D. stands for "Adult Children of Divorce". Carter, played by Adam Scott, is a guy living out his normal life with his normal job until his brother Trey (the always affable Clark Gregg) decides to get married. This is a problem because it means his divorced parents (Richard Jenkins & Katherine O'Hara) have to start being in the same room again. They had a rough and nasty divorce that has scarred Carter for life, with plenty of mudslinging and cheating and other ridiculous behaviors. To make matters stranger, a psychologist named Dr. Judith (Jane Lynch) asks him to be part of her research book on the effects of divorce on adults.
First of all, Adam Scott can't carry a movie. Yet, anyway. He's great as a side player (see: Parks and Recreation, Step Brothers). I like Adam Scott, but I can only take so much Adam Scott, and in this one he is, for lack of proper terminology, kind of a whiny bitch. Jessica Alba's bit part doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and most of the obvious talent is wasted on a script that is only okay. It's slow and about as formulaic as it gets.
#48 The New Public
Way back in Spring of 2012, I volunteered for the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (MNSPIFF) in large part because my friend Eric was running it and told me to get involved. I had just gotten back from a couple of months in Africa and the only real thing I had going was substitute teaching. My job was to take tickets and help with the people in line for the movies. For every 3.5 hours I clocked as a volunteer, I got a free movie pass. So I got to see something like 7 or 8 movies. Which was rad. However, in Spring of 2013, I had a full time job and no time to volunteer, but I still wanted to support. I only saw 2 movies at that festival, and one of them was The New Public.
This documentary follows the creation of a public charter school in Brooklyn that, due to poor financial planning and recruitment, faces a tough situation. The high school in question focused on both core curriculum and arts integration. These should be things that I care about, right? Well, right and wrong. The movie was heavy-handed, to say the least, and it painted a picture of educational reform that was bleak and somewhat unrealistic. The filmmaker, much like Waiting for Superman, seemed to posit that the only way to fix things was to create more charters like this one. I enjoyed some of the teacher and student interviews because it was obvious, especially in the case of the teachers, that they were incredibly passionate about what they were trying to do. I'm a public school teacher, and I don't plan on boring you with my opinions on public vs. charter/private schools, but I will say this: If you are going to argue for more charter creation, at least make it compelling to the viewer.
#47: The Big Wedding
An all-star cast (Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Amanda Seyfried, Topher Grace, Katherine Heigl, and annoying, annoying Robin Williams) come together to help Seyfried and her Spanish-speaking fiancee' Alejandro (Ben Barnes) come together to get married. Don (DeNiro) and Ellie (Keaton) used to be married; he is now with free-spirit Bebe (Sarandon). Only trouble is, Alejandro's parents are strict Catholics, and don't believe in any kind of divorce. So what do you suppose Don and Ellie are forced to do? Do you think that, just maybe, as they get to pretending, they might get to reminiscing and realize there are still some unanswered questions and some unabated feelings? Do you think that lessons are learned along the way? Do you think that Robin Williams, as marriage counselor/priest Father Monighan gets in some ribald one-liners?
Right on all accounts. Like A.C.O.D., older lovers rediscover themselves in a movie that seems geared toward the Viagra set. A few funny moments. A few cute things. Mostly kinda ugh.
#46 The Heat
Melissa McCarthy, stop doing lousy movies!
Here we have Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) and Mullins (McCarthy) paired up as cops. Ashburn is straight-laced and by the books. Mullins is the opposite. She flies, foul-mouthed and jean-jacketed into interrogation scenes while Ashburn desperately tries to talk her down. They infiltrate a drug ring and go after bad guys. Ashburn learns to loosen up a little bit, while Mullins tries to act more positively toward others.
The end.
#45: Thor: The Dark World
Like many of the films coming out of the Marvel Comics camp, this one was too long, and unlike the films coming out of the Marvel Comics camp, it wasn't all that exciting. What made the first Thor movie interesting was the way that Chris Hemsworth portrayed him: A barbaric, crass, confused fish out of water who found life on earth to be a playground of sorts. This resulted in lots of funny moments and interactions.
In The Dark World, we pick up a couple years after Thor rode his multi-dimensional hammer back to Asgard. On earth, Jane (Natalie Portman) is moping around and missing her muscular Norseman. He can't get back to earth because dad (Anthony Hopkins) tells him his job is to defend the 9 realms. When she ends up in trouble, he returns to earth to save her and bring her back to Asgard. Turns out as she was snooping around, she crossed path with some dark matter type stuff that the dark elves (angry creatures that are fighting Thor's people) want to get their hands on.
Convoluted, right? Meanwhile, Thor's nasty brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), last seen falling off the bifrost bridge in the direction of the abyss of no return, is living in jail on Asgard. Thor needs to enlist his help to fight off the elves. Should he let him out, or will he get up to his old tricks? Who knows? Who cares? There was far too much Asgard, far too much pointless exposition, far too much seriousness in this disappointing sequel.
'Til next time, amigos-
Mulhern
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