2014 Movies: #45-43

#45 Under the Skin

Over the holidays, my dad threw me his usual "You haven't seen...?" accompanied with his usual wide, incredulous eyes when I answered "no", which was then followed by his usual "Oh, you have to see it. It's great." The movie in question was Under the Skin, which I had just happened to have received on loan from a friend. My other parent and her husband and I watched it later that evening at the house; her husband got bored about thirty-five minutes in and went to do other things around the house, while my mom gave it about fifteen more minutes than him and requested that we try something else. Every once in a great while, my dad's seal of "great" does not match up with my own, and this was one of those times.

Not to say that there weren't a couple of great things about it. It looked good, and it garnered a lot of style points, despite the blatant Kubrick-borrowing. The set-up: Scarlett Johansson is a mysterious woman driving around Glasgow in a van seducing men. She lures them back to her place, strips off her clothes, and, without giving anything away, they disappear. The way that these drunk, often nude men disappear looks cool cinematically, but is beyond ridiculous. When she ends up taking in a disfigured man to disappear him, something snaps inside her and she takes pity on him and lets him go. This does not go over well with her boss, a menacing motorcyclist who has exactly zero lines of dialogue in the film. From there, everything changes for Johansson's character.

Look, that's about all I can say about Under the Skin without giving away the major twist surrounding Johansson's character. If you already know, cool. If you don't, I can tell you that many respected, actual film critics really liked it and so did my father. I didn't really care for it. Here's why:

1) The pace was outlandishly slow. 2) There didn't seem to be much of a point. 3) I understood the point that was being made, but I didn't really care. 4) I thought the resolution was not worth the wait. 5) Too many naked guys.

Nah, I can deal with reason #5, especially when the tradeoff is ScarJo in the nude (even though it was "bad naked" a la' Seinfeld's nudist girlfriend). There's certainly the part of me that's like "Hey, wait...I like Scarlet Johansson, and I like Stanley Kubrick movies!" As such, I kind of do want to recommend this one and I think, to a degree, it's worth checking out. You could like it more than I did. Just be warned-it's slow as hell and it's all style, no substance.

44) We Don't Wanna Make You Dance

In the early 1980s, a young band emerged on the New York music scene. They were funky, fun, fresh-faced, and three out of the four of them were brothers. Miller Miller Miller & Sloan had a short but prominent run for a couple of years, opening for the Clash, Tom Tom Club and others at famed venues the Ritz and CBGB's. They were destined to be the next big thing. But like so many talented bands, it never was.

Filmmaker Lucy Kastalanetz filmed their gigs and interviewed them during that time, when everything was bright and new. She filmed them when things were starting to fall apart in the early 1990s, and she found them again almost 20 years later and interviewed them again, this time to find out what they had been up to all these years. And that's when the movie lost its steam. Dan Miller became a struggling animator, Mike Miller is now a solo act called Mr. Shy, Barney Miller started a record business, and Blake Sloan was a computer programmer who had invented a kind of cool bass guitar hybrid. They all seemed like they were okay, but you could tell that there was a certain level of ennui and disappointment hovering below the surface that MMM & S never broke big. Having been in the same band for 10 years, I can relate. But I still have all of my awesome memories, and this movie didn't spend nearly enough time digging up or showcasing theirs, including their catchy tunes.

43) Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Hey, do you remember 2000's Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, starring Jason Alexander as Boris, Rene Russo as Natasha, and Bobby DeNiro as fearless leader? It's a live-action/animation mashup, and it catches up with R & B 35 years after the cancellation of their show, with the cartoon duo living off of royalties and doing all types of nothing. Boris, 'Tasha and Fearless leader (the cartoon versions) escape out of Pottsylvania and are accidentally pulled out of the television by a producer and become the aforementioned human versions. Then, they try to hypnotize America with their own TV network, and-

You get the picture. The first attempt to movie-ize the beloved franchise was for all intents and purposes a failure, one that Jason Alexander said on record that he "only did for the money." So on the plus side, the bar was not set very high for Peabody and Sherman. We follow Mr. Peabody, (voiced by Ty Burrell) genius, inventor, olympian, and his son Sherman as they take the Way-Back machine to the past so that they can interact with famous folks from history. When the Shermanator brings back special lady friend Penny from school (fellow Modern Family ensemble member Ariel Winter) to the house, he wants to show off the goods, so they take the machine on a history's greatest hits tour, most notably through ancient Egypt where she becomes Cleopatra-lite. Of course, being kids and all, they don't account for the famed "butterfly effect" and the usual time travel plot lines are kickstarted, such as the Bill-and-Ted like "historical figures trying to navigate the present" story, and the "abuse of the technologies has created doubles of the protagonists involved in the time travel procedure and thus how can they simultaneously exist" action. Covering plenty of familiar territory, Peabody and Sherman still manages to have a heart, especially when dealing with Mr. P's struggles with parenting a human child. I know, I know. But the way that it is handled actually worked some of the time.

2014 Movies: #47-46

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! We begin with a football film called:

#47 Draft Day

Kevin Costner stars as Sonny Weaver Jr., the grizzled general manager for the always hapless Cleveland Browns. It is the day of the draft (no-really?) and tensions are high. Everyone wants to know Sonny's game plan, as it were. In a dead-tired analogy, he meets team owner Anthony Molina (Frank Langella) at a waterpark, where he asks Sonny what he plans to do and encourages him to "make a splash". Ugh. Then comes the call from the Seattle Seahawks-trade us 3 future first-rounders for the #1 pick in the draft. Much to the chagrin of the Browns coach (Denis Leary) and the war-room team, Sonny accepts, and the clock starts ticking. Will it be lauded Wisconsin Badger quarterback Bo Callahan? Ohio State linebacker Vonte Mack (42's Chadwick Boseman)? Running back Ray Jennings (real NFler Arian Foster), son of former Brown Earl Jennings (Terry Crews)? You could cut the tension with a knife, people!

Sonny has a master plan, and not even his recently pregnant and pissed-off girlfriend/salary cap manager Ali (Jennifer Garner) or his recently-widowed mother (Ellen Burstyn) know what it is. Both are often brushed aside with "not today" gruffness, especially when mom tries to show up and spread his dad's ashes on the football field and make Sonny say a prayer, the hokiest and most unnecessary plot point in the whole schabang. The movie is awfully entertaining and peppered with celebrities playing themselves and playing others. Costner, in his natural non-emotive state, is perfect for the role. Too often, though, the movie tries to catch the viewer's emotions and bobbles the ball, much like a Packers special teams player attempting to recover an onside kick.

Totally not bitter about that, by the way.

#46 The Animal Project

Every year, I check out at least a few selections at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) in the Spring. This was one of the ones I saw there, a sleepy little Indie about an acting teacher named Leo (Aaron Poole) in Toronto who is trying to find meaning in it all. He has a teenage son who he can't quite interact with, and a group of actors that he can't quite motivate. Leo gets an idea--what if, in order to make a truly human connection, you have to become animals? He rents his acting troupe various animal costumes: bunny, donkey leopard, lion, mouse, bird. Their instructions are to wear the costumes and go out and interact with people throughout Toronto. Plenty of cuteness (one of them posts outside a school and offers free hugs) and quirkiness (taking off the mask to smoke a cigarette in costume) ensues. Along the way, the young actors learn things about themselves and the human condition. I guess it makes sense, but in order for the movie to work, the viewer has to buy into the notion that something like this could spur human growth and maturity. As a viewer, I'm not totally sure that I did.

2014 Movies: #49 & #48

Congrats, dear reader! You have slogged through the wooded thicket of the bottom 10 and made it out unscathed.

We now enter a group that is maybe more like a moorland terrain. Low growing vegetation, acidic soils, some prettiness-at least some redeemable qualities.

Put on those hiking boots and let's trudge!


49) Million Dollar Arm

I am a baseball fanatic. Apparently, so is Jon Hamm. He is a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan (he grew up near there), and this would of course be unforgivable if it weren't for one of the best performances of the last decade as Mr. Draper.

For a movie about baseball, Million Dollar Arm featured surprisingly little baseball. That was perhaps the biggest disappointment. The second biggest disappointment was the despicable amount of cliches being thrown at the viewer. Sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Hamm) travels to India to recruit cricket players to try out as pitchers on pro baseball teams and is immediately taking us through the motions. Why are there so many people here? Why is my air conditioning broken in this hot country? Why is everything so spicy and colorful? It's just as bad on the other side, when his apprentices come to America and are overwhelmed by "attractive white women" and "cable tv packages" and "alcohol". There is even the quirky neighbor Brenda (Lake Bell) who gets Bernstein to question his being set in his ways and the ornery old baseball scout with the "trust me, I've seen it all, kid" disposition (Alan Arkin). Despite every  opportunity for Million Dollar Arm to fall completely flat, Hamm, Bell and the Indian actors (especially Aasif Mandvi) turn in good performances.

48) Wish I Was Here

10 years ago, Zach Braff was at the height of his Scrubs run. As hospital resident John Dorian, he became the poster boy for whimsical, heart-on-the-sleeve dramedy. This experience transferred seamlessly into his first foray into writing and directing with the excellent Garden State. Of course, there were a lot of other factors at play to make it such a quality product: the heartfelt script, Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard, an outstanding soundtrack, and of course, Method Man.

He did not make lightning strike twice. Wish I Was Here has plenty of good moments, certainly, but it feels like an Outback Steakhouse--even though we all love steak and potatoes, they find a way to make it underwhelming. In some ways, it feels like Garden State 2. Our Braff protagonist is grown up with kids but still struggling with making it as an actor, resolving issues with his own parents (His ailing father is played by Mandy Patinkin), and having plenty of "what does it all mean?" moments. The premise that Aidan (Braff) ends up in between acting gigs and home-schooling his kids, while wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) ends up winning the bread. Meanwhile, he is trying to convince his degenerate brother Noah (Josh Gad) to reconcile with his father before it's too late. While trying to convey life lessons to his offspring, his own life is kind of falling apart. He has recurring fantasies about wearing space helmets and going on dangerous missions which are meant to show his true connection to his brother, but mostly they are out of place and add nothing, save a couple of cool visuals. The best thing about this film may actually be the kids (Joey King and Pierce Gagnon), whose misbehavior and curiosity are both hilarious and realistic.

2014 Movies: #51 & #50

A Most Wanted blog post! Get it?

#51 A Most Wanted Man

Almost a year ago now, we were driving back from a cabin when the wife turned to me and read a a headline from her smartphone news ticker out loud: "Philip Seymour Hoffman found dead in manhattan apartment." It was shocking; he certainly wasn't a mainstay in the tabloid for any sort of degenerate behaviors. As it turned out, he had struggled with addiction as a young man, quit using for nearly two decades before relapsing in late 2013. Really, what he always had struggled with was perfection. 

And for all of the roles he mastered over the years--as a fixture in the P.T. Anderson oeuvre, as hapless sycophant Brandt in Big Lebowski, as rock critic Lester Bangs, as baseball managers and cutthroat campaign runners, as disgraced priests and meta theater directors, as Truman Capote--it's kind of a shame his last leading role was in this movie. His performance, as usual, was reliable, but the film itself was a thickly layered, painfully slow, complex slog through the world of international espionage. A Chechen man shows up in Hamburg, claiming to be related to a wealthy Islamist, and Gunther Bachmann (Hoffman) is assigned to track him. It's unclear whether or not he is who he says he is, and it takes Gunther and his team take an extremely long time to figure it out. So long that, when the resolution finally comes, I barely cared. Sorry, PSH. You deserved a better exit.

#50 Muppets Most Wanted

The Jason Segel-helmed Muppets re-boot was so witty and well done that it made this one look practically dismal in comparison. We pick up a couple years after we left off, and the fabric and fur crew is riding a high wave of stardom. Enter the exploitative Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais), who books them on a world tour. He's in league with Constantine, an evil Russian dead ringer for Kermit, only with a crooked mouth and a mole. He wants to utilize the world tour to steal precious gems on all of their stops, so he arranges for Kermit to be thrown into Russian prison, unbeknownst to the Muppet crew, who just think that Constantine is Kermit with a cold, or Kermit acting a little strange. The Kermit in Mother Russia situation contributes to the majority of the laughs, with Tina Fey as the warden who loves frogs just a little too much, Jemaine Clement as the "Prison King", Ray Liotta as inmate "Big Papa", Stanley Tucci as "Ivan the Guard" and Danny Trejo as "Danny Trejo". Their jokes and prison musical numbers--Ray Liotta doing eight counts is priceless--are the best thing about the movie. Everything else, including Ty Burrell as the hapless French detective, gets old quickly. Especially the whole evil Kermit scenario, at best a half-trick pony run into the ground.

2014 Movies: #54-52

#54 Belle

I have to really be in the right mood to do high-society period dramas. I am getting to the point where I can follow Downton Abbey with minimal assistance, but even that has taken hard work and dedication on my part. Belle, if I remember correctly, was the unfortunate victim of a weeknight, possibly even Sunday night, viewing that involved plenty of sluggish food and probably some red wine. Needless to say, I slept through a good portion of the film. What I can tell you is that Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is our titular vixen, and she is of mixed race, making the fact that her white, nobleman great-uncle (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson) raising her is of course taboo. She has privilege, but only to a point because of her skin color. She comes to grow and navigate this world of prestige and love more or less on her own as Britain moves toward ending slavery. A snoozer, but under the right circumstances, it probably isn't. Plus, Draco Malfoy's in it, and that's good, right?

#53 Life of Crime

The "chronology of Elmore Leonard novels" section of Wikipedia also features a second column directly to the right for film adaptations. Out of the 50 book's he's written, about half of them have been adapted into big-screen or TV films. You've heard of some of them, certainly: Get Shorty, Out of Sight, the Big Bounce, Rum Punch (Jackie Brown) and a number of books thrown together in a blender to spit out FX's popular sheriff drama Justified. Life of Crime would be the final Leonard film production to be completed while he was still alive; he died just over a year ago at 87.

Which is a shame, because this adaptation does not quite do his uniquely sharp-tongued dialogue and his signature, complex double/triple/quadruple-crosses justice. Not to say that it's bad. But with the sum of its thespian parts (John Hawkes, Tim Robbins, Jennifer Aniston, Isla Fisher, Matt Forte and Yaasin Bey, Mos Def's new nom de plume), you'd expect it to be better. Small time crooks Ordell (Bey) and Louis (Hawkes) come up with a thoughtless scheme to kidnap Mickey (Aniston) and get a cool million from Frank (Robbins), a shadeball real estate mogul. Problem is, he wants nothing to do with her-he's trying to divorce her and move forward with his mistress Melanie (Fisher). Recognize some of the names? That's because it's the same Ordell, Louis and Melanie that Samuel Jackson, Bobby DeNiro and Bridget Fonda played in Jackie Brown almost 20 years ago. This takes place within that same world, so it's a prequel of sorts, only it doesn't feel like one because it is not done nearly as well.

#52 Dom Hemingway

Is that you, overweight Jude Law? Word has it that the Holiday hunk put on 30 pounds to play Dom, a safecracker coming off of a 12-year bid to collect on what he believed is owed to him for his loyalty and his keeping his mouth shut. Well, not everyone feels that way, especially not his previous boss Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bechir from a Better Life). But he'll humor him, and send him some hookers at the pub and a cocaine party and everything else his previous life of wanton excess afforded him. An accident and subsequent double-crossing cause him to take a good, hard look and to try to reconnect with his estranged daughter Evelyn (Game of Throne's Emilia Clarke). One final safe crack may be his shot at redemption. Or maybe it won't.

Jude Law does a decent enough job with the role, but rather than root for him to succeed like you are often prompted to do by the antihero, you find yourself just feeling sort for sorry for his blathering character. The action sequences bite the speed-up/slow-down technique that Guy Ritchie popularized a while back, not to mention the fast-talking snark. As someone to emulate, Guy Ritchie certainly isn't bad; he made Snatch and Lock, Stock, obviously. He also made Swept Away and Revolver.

2014 Movies: #57-55

Right back to it, yeah?


#57 Godzilla

Ugh. Long movie with not nearly enough Godzilla, and far too little Bryan Cranston. He heads a talented cast (Elisabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, Ken Watanabe, David Strathairn) that is mired in lack-of-developed-story land. Why are they wasting our time talking about the concept of nuclear fission and discussing military strategy when we could be watching Godzilla destroy buildings and body slam Mothra?

#56 The Equalizer

Over the years, we have seen Denzel alternate between two modus operandi: Denzel the dramatic actor, and Denzel the action movie star. Denzel the dramatic actor hadn't been out in years before a slam-dunk return to form in 2012's excellent Flight. I thought to myself, hell--does this mean he is going to stop churning out the high-paycheck, gun-toting, box office dominators now? I thought so, until his next starring role was in a movie called...2 Guns.

It's certainly not like Denzel doesn't have the capability to do the shoot-em-ups well (Man on Fire, Inside Man). It just has to have other things going for it, which this one absolutely does not. Paired up with Antoine Fuqua again for the first time since Training Day, Denzel plays Robert McCall, a guy with a "mysterious" background who now lives out his days having fun with his Home Depot knockoff co-workers. When his friend, young prostitute Alina (Chloe Grace Moretz) gets knocked around by a john, Denzel decides to unleash the retired commando on the Russian mob who is responsible. The result is pointless--literally pointless--violence littered throughout a script that tries to riff on the Denzel-shelling-out-tough-love vibe that worked with Dakota Fanning a decade ago but does not even come close here. The sheer amount of gratuity in the last fifteen minutes would make Tony Montana blush. Come on, man. You're better than this.

#55 The Other Woman

Want to emasculate total badass Nikolai Coster-Waldau (Jaime "The Kingslayer" Lannister from Game of Thrones)? Cast him as the male heartthrob in a bizarre love quadrangle with woman on the side Carly (Cameron Diaz) wife Kate (Leslie Mann) and even younger, more endowed woman on the side Amber (Kate Upton). Carly has met Mark (Coster-Waldau) and finds him to be Mr. Perfect, until she shows up one day at his house in a "sexy plumber's" outfit and his wife answers the door. Oh, snap! What now? Well, what happens is, rather than destroy the woman on the side, the wife decides to--get this--join forces with his floozy to try and take him down. And how about this for a twist? There's a third  woman, and they get her to help too! No, it can't be!

Are you sensing my sarcasm yet? There are moments of hilarity and desperate flashes of brilliance, but for the most part the movie drives its flashy cars into familiar territory and cheap, gross-out laughs.

See you next time!

2014 Movies: Celebrating 10 years with...Worst of the Year!

In early 2005, I had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin and was working as a cook at the Nitty Gritty Birthday Bar & Grill, executive producing an enormous musical fundraiser that would hit the stage in April, and otherwise doing a whole lot of nothing. So I watched a fair amount of movies; little did I know that they were the wrong ones.

The Academy Awards, hosted by Chris Rock and dominated by The Aviator and best picture winner Million Dollar Baby, aired on February 27th. Starting in 2002, I started making top 10 lists of movies I had seen that year and emailing them to a select list of family and friends ( Donnie Darko and City of God were my #1s those first two years). 2004, though, was the first time in my adult life that I hadn't seen the best picture winner before the oscars aired. My friend Ben and I walked down to University Square 4 Theaters a day or two later and saw Million Dollar Baby.

By the next year, I made sure not to come into Oscar season so woefully unprepared. I made it a goal to see all 5 of the nominees before the Oscar show on March 5th, 2006. And I saw them all --Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night & Good Luck. and Munich--with time to put together a top 20 list. 

"Mulhern at the Movies" was born.

10 years later, I have come to realize that whether or not I had the same opinion as the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences was not necessarily what drove me. In fact, only one best picture winner (Crash) was also my favorite film of that year (though quite a few were in my top 5). I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing out on anything great. It certainly made things more challenging when they decided to up the number of possible nominees on me. Due to spending the end of 2011 as a student teacher in Africa, I ended up coming up short that year by one nominee--Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a polarizing film that I didn't have a whole lot of interest in anyway. 

10 years and hundreds of movies later, we arrive at the movies of 2014. One thing that I have improved upon is my advance scouting. Before the nominations were announced on January 15th, I had already seen 4 of the 8 nominees. In the last week, I've managed to knock out 3 more, leaving only American Sniper left to defeat this eight-headed monster.

All in all, I feel like it was a particularly strong campaign from Hollywood. I could make a case for at least 4, if not 5, movies as the best/my favorite of the year. There were rather obvious snubs, a couple of them more acerbic and controversial than the rest. Having not seen Bradley Cooper or Steve Carell (though I'm seeing Foxcatcher in a few hours) yet, it might be unfair to pass judgment, but a large part of me thinks the voters are insane for not electing David Oloyewo as one of their five. Not only is it a megawatt performance, he's taking on a role that people are often too afraid to commit to for fear that it will do MLK the man, nay, the legend, injustice. He doesn't, but more on that later.

As we always do here at Mulhern on the Movies, we count down from worst to first. Typically, I will give less time and words to the early ones in the countdown, but there are exceptions.

As the great Reverend Al Green was won to say, let us get it on!

#60 Sex Tape

I kind of new going in that this one would be a mistake, but I didn't expect it to be this much of a mistake, considering Cameron "Benji Madden of Good Charlotte's wife" Diaz and Jason Segel are both too talented to let a kind of interesting and timely idea flounder this hard. But flounder it did, like a dying fish. They are Annie and Jay, respectively, a couple looking to spice up their married life by making an awkward, clunky tape on an iPad. In an age where we can't get enough of ourselves, and where couples and uncouples alike send each other dirty snapchats and photos, it feels like something that could absolutely happen. The first quarter of the movie deals with the making of the tape, but as soon as the tape gets leaked, the movie goes off the rails in a major way, its controls set to dick-and-fart autopilot. The retrieval of the tape is obnoxiously stupid and nonsensical and eventually you're just praying for it to be over. With a title and target audience like this, it's not like this could have been hopelessly romantic and wistful, but Segel has made a career of playing that type (see: Marshall Eriksen and the guy who has to forget Sarah Marshall) and he doesn't make much sense in this role. When they talk dirty to each other, it's cringeworthy. I've had a problem with Cameron Diaz speaking nasty ever since Bad Teacher came out. This is even worse.

#59 Divergent

The first installment of this popular YA fiction series starring it-feminist Shailene Woodley runs a good hour too long. Tris (Woodley) is living in a dystopian Harry Potter/Hunger Games mashup. She is supposed to join one of five factions based upon skills and virtue (a la' Gryffindor, Slytherin, et. al) and after her tests finds herself  as "Divergent", hard to put into any category--kind of like gypsy jazz. As the movie goes on, she starts to appear to be somewhat of a chosen one--kind of like the Hunger Games. There is a lot of training, there is a lot of infighting among her faction (the dauntless), there is a lot of contrived dialogue and slow explanations. There's the mentor-student, will-they-or-won't relationship with a tough dauntless guy named Four (Theo James) that will keep the tweens on the edge of their seats moving forward, I guess. Other contributors include an out of place Kate Winslet as the villain, and Ashley Judd as Tris's mom, doing that pained expression thing she always does back when she and Morgan Freeman used to Kiss the Girls and tell us about an imminent arrival of a spider. Blargh.

#58 Winter's Tale 

On Valentine's Day, I agreed to see this one at the fancy movie theater in Saint Louis Park, where you can order artisan cheeses and flatbread pizza and wine and bring it to your little tabletop while you watched the movie. The food (and company) part of the date was pretty solid. Not the movie part, though. Colin Farrell stars as a young burglar in the early 1900s who, when robbing a mansion, discovers a beautiful girl (Jessica Brown-Findlay of Downton Abbey). They have a brief romance and then she dies in his arms. For whatever reason, Peter the burglar can't die (despite all of evil gangster Russell Crowe's attempts, which include, most notably, throwing him off the Brooklyn Bridge). In the present, Peter is wandering New York City aimlessly when he meets a young girl with cancer and attempts to heal her and fix his past. Unless evil, also-immortal Russell Crowe and devil Will Smith can stop him. Good thing he has a magical white horse to help him along them way!

I'm not even kidding. As my late grandmother was known to say: "Farfetched."

Stay tuned for more over the next 31 days!