2014: #18

It's at this point in the countdown where things sort to start of wash together. 18 are left, 7 of which are nominated for best picture, and it feels like one has to sort of nit-pick to make their points as to why they are further down the list than others. It's a bit of a challenge; in grading terms, everything from here forward would probably be a B+ or higher. By all means, argue away.

And speaking of best picture nominees...

#18 The Theory of Everything

The only acting race left that isn't a forgone conclusion is for the best actor statuette. It's a two-man round of the final curve for Birdman's Michael Keaton, the grizzled veteran, who shockingly has never to this point been nominated, and Eddie Redmayne, the bright-eyed youngster who devoted himself to learning and practicing each and every tic of famous, debilitated scientist Stephen Hawking. It's been a pretty even award-season split, even down to them both winning best acting Golden Globes, Keaton for best performance in a musical or comedy and Redmayne for best dramatic performance. If I were voting, I give the nod to Redmayne, who was absolutely remarkable. If the film itself were quite as staggering as his performance, you'd be reading about this bad boy in a few days.

Biopics are often tricky business. How do you do the real, true to life human being that your protagonist is based on justice in telling their story, and are you finding ways to keep the material accurate? What are your focal points? What's the thesis statement of your photo essay? The Theory of Everything is based on his ex-wife Jane Hawking's memoir Traveling to Infinity, which chronicles their life together over the course of their 30-year relationship. The film came under fire for Hollywooding the story more than it should have, especially when it came to the treatment of Jane (Felicity Jones) herself. Yes, it got the Hollywood treatment. It's a MOVIE.

Quick hits: Stephen meets Jane at Cambridge in 1963 and they fall quickly in love. He is a promising young physicist at this point who is wowing all of his professors and colleagues. A couple of years later, after a slow-motion fall, he is diagnosed with motor neuron disease and his body and vocals begin to rapidly deteriorate. Through all this, Jane sticks by him and they begin a family, all while Stephen develops his theory that black holes were present during the creation of the universe. As he gets worse, he manages to gain more fame, which furthers her from her own personal ambitions. She finds extracurricular solace in church choir conductor Jonathan (Charlie Cox), who eventually comes to live with them and help out as well. They admit feelings for each other, but manage to keep it above the waist. In 1985, Stephen gets pneumonia and nearly dies; the only thing that saves him is a tracheotomy that will knock out his voice and eventually lead to the advent of his now-famous computerized voice. Not too long after, Stephen bonds with his personal nurse Elaine (Maxine Leake) and decides to leave Jane for her.

The movie does get trapped in the biopic blueprint, and I found myself wishing there were more sequences with Hawking explaining what was churning around in that wonderful brain of his. But wow, is Eddie Redmayne terrific, especially from a physical standpoint. And as a wife who couldn't possibly be more put-upon, Jones is nearly his equal. They both deserve the accolades they are getting. I read somewhere that Hawking a) wrote to director James Marsh and said he thought was watching himself, and b) shed tears at the first screening. Doesn't get much better than that.

2014: #19

#19 Begin Again

'07 was potentially the best year for film in recent history. Two movies--Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood--are certain to go down as New American Classics in our cinematic lexicon. Beyond that: Juno, the too-real take on teen pregnancy that sent Ellen Page and Minnesota's own Diablo Cody hurtling into pop-culture infamy; Michael Clayton, one of the best performances of George Clooney's career as the titular corporate fixer; Gone Baby Gone, Boston noir at its absolute finest and Ben Affleck's directing debut; and plenty of other standouts like nature confessional Into the Wild, family dramedy The Savages, animated political commentary Persepolis. The list goes on. Even with all of that, my favorite movie of that year--and honestly, it wasn't even close--was a little indie musical from Ireland called Once.

The man responsible for bringing Once to the big screen is John Carney, ex-bandmate of star Glen Hansard in the Frames. His latest music movie, Begin Again, came in with an $8,000,000 budget, roughly 45 times the budget of his previous one. If Clerks and Jar-Jar Binks taught us anything, bigger budgets does not always a better movie make. I had impossibly high expectations for this one, so disappointment would be considered a relative term.

Gretta (Keira Knightley) and Dave (Adam Levine) are living in New York after he has recently signed a big time deal. Eventually, he gets a case of the wandering eyes and Gretta hits the bricks, lost and distraught. Equally lost and distraught is record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo), who can't seem to bring once-subordinate-now-boss Saul (Mos Def/Yaasin Bey) any worthwhile music. He's struggling with raising Violet (Hailee Steinfeld) and keeping ex-wife Miriam (Catherine Keener) off his back. Possible salvation comes in the form of Gretta, who he stumbles upon singing in a Soho nightclub. He convinces her to make an album with him in a truly organic fashion (including a cool montage in which they record outside), and it just might be the thing they both need. Everyone is good, especially the leads, and though it didn't come close to resonating with me emotionally in the same way that Once did, it was a fun, uplifting romp through New York in the eyes of musicians.

Back here with more tomorrow!

2014: #20a

Readers, I've miscounted again. Can you believe this s*@t?

I assure you, it will all add up/work out in the end.

Get it together, Mulhern! (shouts profanities, headbutts mirror, etc.)

#20a How to Train Your Dragon 2

There's a scene in Clerks where Dante and Randall are discussing the merits of Empire Strikes Back vs. the merits of Return of the Jedi. Before Randall launches into his brilliant take on the construction politics surrounding the building of the second Death Star, he simply asks "Which one you like better? Empire or Jedi?" Dante, ever the cynic responds: "Empire...it has the better ending. Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets froze and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's all life is...a series of down endings. All Jedi had was a bunch of muppets."

If the lovable Dragon series goes trilogy, which I imagine it will, consider the second installment its Empire Strikes Back. The tone is twice as serious and glum as the first, and it made watching it at times a little more excruciating. We have fast-forwarded a few years in the future, and Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is still attached at the hip to his Night Fury dragon counterpart Toothless. Now that the village has come to revere the scaled beasts, dragons are being utilized for recreation, racing and companionship. Stoick (Gerard Butler) is hoping that Hiccup is ready to take the reins as the leader of their Viking clan when the time is right, but Hiccup has other ideas. One day he and Astrid (America Ferrara) are out exploring ice caves with their dragons when they come across dragon trapper Eret (Kit Harrington, AKA GoT's Jon Snow) who is working for evil warlord Drago (Dijmon Honsou). They fly back to warn Stoick and co. about it, and though he tells them to help fortify the town, they defy him and go try to talk to Drago instead. On the way, they're captured by a different trapper--an older woman named Valka (Cate Blanchett) who turns out to be Hiccup's long lost mother. Soon after, Hiccup, along with both his parents, Astrid and others, are in a deadly trap set by Drago, who boasts a gargantuan Alpha dragon (the mothership, essentially) named Bewilderbeast.

Baruchel nails the confusion and angst of Hiccup as he works through the pitfalls of Viking adolescence. Everyone else is serviceable, and obviously Honsou's voice alone can move animated mountains. There are sad moments throughout, but the toughest part comes when our prodragonist Toothless, under the mind control of the Bewilderbeast, does something unthinkable. The biggest strength may just be the animation itself. If it's more complex than the first, it looks even better, with the seas and mountains of Scandinavia appearing inherently real and the flight of the dragons a thing of beauty.

2014: #22-#20

Congratulations to Ben Gurstelle, who answered the trivia question correctly and won himself a signed copy of Everybody Wants You Dead, and congrats to me who doesn't have to spend any money on postage to send it!

The correct answer, by the way:

The two films of the last 50 years to "sweep" the Oscars were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Meanwhile, let's move toward the top 20, shall we?

#22 American Sniper

The last of the Oscar nominees for me to see, and quite frankly, I may end up pushing it up in the rankings before I finalize it. That's because I saw it today. #22 is probably fair, but I may think on it a little more.

To Clint Eastwood's credit, I don't think he took a political stance here. Knowing he and his empty chair, I was kind of surprised that he didn't take the opportunity. This is an objective, fact-checked account of the life of Jesse Ventura-punching military specialist Chris Kyle. I don't think it's any secret that Eastwood considers Kyle a hero, as do many Americans, but him being presented in such a human way was pretty refreshing. The main problem I had was that the film held probably a 60 to 40 combat-to-stateside ratio, and the material back home was in my opinion, far stronger and more compelling.

The story is a pretty simple one. Chris Kyle, originally a rodeo cowboy with little direction, joins the military at age 30. While training to be a navy seal, he meets Taya (Sienna Miller) at a bar and, not long after they drink until she vomits, they begin dating and eventually marry on a ship. While on the ship, one of the homies gets a phone call: They're being deployed. From there, Eastwood toggles between combat (lots and lots of combat), Kyle's childhood, and the big moments back home. He's deployed four times total, and over the course of those deployments, he's credited with 160 kills, which to me is unfathomable. Eastwood focuses on a few of those greatest hits, including ones that are terrible to watch (one of the early sequences shows him choosing to pull the trigger on a grenade-carrying child and mother) and even harder for Kyle to live with.

Bradley Cooper ranged from good to great, but I think he occupies a nominee slot that two men, who will be mentioned later, deserved more (one obvious and controversial, the other a little less so). You could tell through his breathing and technique that his portrayal of Chris Kyle showed a lot of tension and restraint in regards to the job he had to do. Where he really shined, thought, was as a man trying to adjust and make sense of a life without his rifle. His thoughts and confusion were conveyed simply by the look on his face.

#21 The Fault in Our Stars

Fault in Our Stars over American effing Sniper? What's wrong with you, Mulhern?

I guess all I can say is "Haters gon' hate hate hate hate hate..."

This book was cheap on my Nook, so I bought it a while back when I saw one of my 6th graders reading it and wanted to check it out as well. John Green's book is great at capturing the skepticism of teenage life, regardless of the fact that his main character Hazel happens to be dying of cancer. Director Josh Boone, who's last credit was the quiet indie Stuck in Love, is true to both the story and the tone of the book without sacrificing a whole hell of a lot.

Shailene Woodley is Hazel, and Ansel Elgort is Augustus "Gus" Waters. They meet at a cancer support group in the basement of a church through mutual pal Isaac (Nat Wolff) as Patrick (comedian Mike Birbiglia) guides them through "sharing" time. When they meet outside, he has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. "The cigarette is a metaphor," he tells her. "You put the thing right between your teeth that has the power to kill you, but you never let it do the killing." They both have their simpatico "cancer perks" issues--plus his prosthetic leg and her oxygen tank--and they certainly crush on each other, but they don't truly bond until they both read Dutch author Peter Van Houten's (Willem Dafoe) An Imperial Affliction, he for the first time and her for the umpteenth. He decides to use his Make-a-Wish wish on a trip to Amsterdam to go meet Van Houten, with Hazel's mom (Laura Dern) cautiously chaperoning. The trip and subsequent meeting has its ups and downs, and they return to America with their hearts damaged nearly up to the stunning conclusion.

I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't a tearjerker, but in many ways it feels equally as life-affirming. Most of my issues with the film are issues that stem from reading the book (I feel like no one could possibly be as charming as the Gus character in real life, and I got really sick of him calling her "Hazel Grace" instead of just Hazel, and her calling him "Augustus Waters" instead of just Gus; I found it trite). All in all, a very solid cast and a well-structured adaptation that, from all that I've read, satisfied its readers.

#20 The Skeleton Twins

I'm a sucker for Bill Hader. Who isn't? Without him, how would we know about New York's hottest nightclubs such as Wesh, Kevin? and Your Mother and I Are Separating? Where would we get our passwords into said clubs? How would we know the definition of the "Human Roomba"?

Stefon gaffs aside, Hader stepped boldly into new territory in playing one half of the skeleton twins, Milo Dean. We meet him in his Northwest apartment, blasting music and getting in the tub. Offscreen, he cuts his wrists and the water turns a bright red. Meanwhile, on the other end of the country his twin sister Maggie (Kristin Wiig) is getting ready to pound a dangerous amount of pills when her phone rings. She flies off to visit Milo in the hospital and it becomes clear early on that their relationship has been nonexistent for the last decade. She takes one look at his suicide note ("To whom it may concern. See ya later.") and invites him back to their hometown in upstate New York to stay with her and her husband, the obnoxiously affable Mitch (Luke Wilson) until he is back on his feet. There are unresolved issues both past (Milo's affair with his high school English teacher, played convincingly by Ty Burrell) and present (Maggie's dalliance with her scuba instructor, played by Boyd Holbrook) that come to the forefront early on, and are confronted throughout the movie. Their being back together after so long is equal parts comforting and caustic, and eventually their meddling in each other's stuff brings up a number of past issues (exacerbated by a dinner visit by their awful mother) that threaten to split them up up once again.

Both Wiig and Hader are outstanding and worthy of much more recognition than they got as the fragile, damaged-goods, acerbically witty Dean twins. And Burrell, who has trailblazer a career path entirely on being goofy, nailed a dramatic turn. It's a movie that is at times hard to watch but always captivating, the perfect balance of drama and comedy, anchored by these talented SNL vets.

Back tomorrow with more!

2014 Movies: #25, #24 and #23

Readers, the Mulhern at the Movies blog has just gone over 5,000 hits! I guess it's not all that impressive when you consider that this is over the course of 89 posts, so the average is something like  60 hits per post, but hey-sometimes in life you have to celebrate the little things.

And in celebration, I am giving away a free signed copy of my mystery/thriller Everybody Wants You Dead to the first person that can correctly answer this Oscar trivia question:

*A so-called "sweep" of the Oscars is when a movie takes home awards for best film, director, actress, actor and screenplay. In the history of the Academy Awards, this has happened 3 times, and only twice in the last 50 years.

Can you name the two movies that "swept" the Oscars in the last fifty years?

Send me a message with your guesses. If you are correct, you will win fame, glory and a signed book!

Good luck. Let's start the top 25 of 2014, shall we?

#25 Edge of Tomorrow

There is a part of me that remembers the permeating preview for this movie more than the movie itself. You know, the one where Emily Blunt does this move? And some auto-tuned EDM artist sings "This is not...the end" over and over while gatling guns pop and mecha-robot aliens loom over Tom Cruise and buildings explode? The first time I saw this preview was while several of us were watching Desolation of Smaug at Eastgate Cinema circa Christmas 2013, and one friend turns to me and says "soundtrack by Antoine Dodson." I have seen the preview for this film almost as much as the one for the $82 million juggernaut Fifty Shades of Grey, which I can almost quote in its entirety.

"I have a very...singular...taste. You...wouldn't understand"

We're getting off topic. Edge of Tomorrow pits Mr. Cruise against a race of "Mimics", an alien race that has come to earth via meteor strike, which feels slightly like something out of a scientology text. Much like the X-Men vs. the sentinels in Days of Future Past, human soldiers throughout the world have been getting their asses handed to them, despite being outfitted in battery-powered mecha suits. Cruise plays William Cage, a military public relations officer, who is ordered to report on a battle on the beaches of Northern France (why screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie chose to draw parallels to the storming of Normandy is beyond me). When Cage refuses, General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) has him marked as a deserter and he is sent to Heathrow Airport, where Sargent Farrell (Bill Paxton) has a battle suit strapped on him to storm the beach with the rest of them. In the catastrophic assault, Cage kerplodes a giant mimic but is sprayed with its acid-blood as a result and dies in the wet sand.

Dies, as it turns out, is a relative term; he wakes up back at Heathrow, having the exact same conversation with Farrell that he had earlier that morning. "This is going to fail," he tells them. "How else would I know exactly what you're going to say before you say it?" Their attitude is something along the lines of "Well, that is a strange coincidence, but get on that plane and go kill some meteor aliens for us, would ya?" This is when the "Live. Die. Repeat." slogan begins to rear its catchy head, as each time Cage dies on the beach, he wakes on the same luggage bags at Heathrow, left to come up with some way to alter the course of his dystopian Groundhog Day narrative. Finally, a cog in the gears--he meets war hero Rita Vrataski (Blunt) who tells him that she knows what's happening to him and to "find her again when he wakes up." She adds, "I'll probably be sweaty and doing this." When they connect again, she tells him he knows his skill of being able to reset the battle and make adjustments because until she received a blood transfusion, she had the same skill; he got it from the Mimic's blood that he killed on day 1. This information takes the film in a more lighthearted direction. Now each time he dies and wakes up, he seeks out Vrataski to get training, and the sequences are humorous and clever.

Ultimately, they figure out a way to take down the Mimics, and it's kind of dopey and convoluted. But the ride up to that point is highly entertaining. Edge of Tomorrow is based on a Manga graphic novel called "All You Need is Kill" that draws comparisons to both Starship Troopers and the video game Halo. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Edge of Tomorrow is very much like watching a video game unfold on screen. You screw up, you die, you start over, this time trying not to make the same mistakes. Everyone has to get hit by a few fireballs before they teach themselves how to take down Bowser, right? It's all part of the process.

#24 They Came Together

In 2001, a little indie movie called Wet Hot American Summer made its way to the big screen briefly before it almost disappeared forever into obscurity. Then, a funny thing happened: It got new life as a massive cult hit. A friend of mine once showed it to me in her sorority bedroom (it wasn't like that, you guys) and we laughed like crazy. I guess part of me couldn't quite understand why it wasn't bigger, either. The cast was insane! It featured, among others, Janeane Garafolo, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Ian Black, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, Christopher Meloni, Molly Shannon, Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler. It's just been announced that they will be making a miniseries continuation on Netflix with just about all of the principal players returning, and plenty of cult cinephiles are drooling already.

I bring this up because Wet Hot was written by Michael Showalter and David Wain, with Wain also handling directorial business. More than a decade later, the duo teamed back up for They Came Together, starring WHAS alums Rudd and Poehler. They Came Together is a spoofball satire of romantic comedies, with one friend of mine drawing comparisons between it and Airplane! I didn't know what to expect, but I guess I figured that with Rudd and Poehler at the helm, it would be worth a watch. Turns out I was right-I guffawed and chortled and hit just about every point on the laugh spectrum.

Joel and Molly (Rudd and Poehler) are out to dinner with friends (Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper) when they are asked how their relationship came to be. Then it's a he-said, she-added-on retelling of how they met, each cliche' more spot-on than the next. They meet and dislike each other immediately--he is a corporate schmuck who is trying to buy out her specialty candy store. They unknowingly show up to the same Halloween party in matching Ben Franklin costumes and deny vehemently that "they came together". It is mentioned about 100 times that one of the characters in their love story is New York City, and plenty of formula interactions with the Big Apple ensue: talking to strangers, juggling fruit at a corner market, playing basketball in the park, getting splashed with taxi puddle water. Of course they eventually fall for each other, and every romantic comedy move is employed, down to the   "her making him taste pasta sauce on a wooden spoon" and "awkward fall down the stairs after getting herself dolled up." The supporting cast, like Wet Hot, is enormous and features Keenan Thompson, Ken Marino, Jack McBrayer, Melanie Lynskey, Colbie Smulders and WHAS returns Meloni and Michael Ian Black. The detractors of this movie, and there were plenty of them, didn't care for it simply because they expected something different and got a rom-com send up. If you take that knowledge with you going in, you'll laugh until it hurts and see that Rudd and Poehler have the ability to make even the most stale look fresh and new.

#23 Pride

In 1984, under the iron-fisted rule of Margaret Thatcher, British miners went on strike to protest the closing of 20 coal pits that would lead to thousands and thousands of layoffs. Also being brought under attack by Thatcher: the LGBT community throughout the United Kingdom. Searching for kindred spirits to help bring their voices to the forefront, a group fronted by activists Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) and Mike Jackson (Joe Gilgun) start raising money for the miners and try to form an alliance. Their efforts are shut down by members of the National Union of Mineworkers, who don't want to be openly associated with the gays. Instead, the Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners campaign crew takes a bus trip to a small mining town in Wales and ultimately forges a connection with the down-and-out coal miners and the surrounding community. Every now and again they come up against the close-minded and are bombarded with nastiness, but for the most part, the queries about the differences in lifestyle are dealt with in an innocent and accepting fashion.

This is a true story that is handled extremely well by director Matthew Warchus, who is most known for his stage adaptations for Royal Shakespeare company and various award-winning British musicals. Much of the story is told through the eyes of the one fictional/composite character, a teenager named Joe Bromley (George MacKay), a gay teenager who experiences his first activism and love as their Support the Miners crusade takes them from inception to completion. Schnetzer and Gilgun are both outstanding as two heroic young lads who put everything on the line to champion their cause. The heroes on the Welsh side of things are portrayed convincingly by veterans Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Paddy Consindine, who approach the situation with varying degrees of concern and humility. Another standout is Dominic "Jimmy McNulty" West as Jonathan Blake, an older member of LGBT community who helps bridge the two factions as somewhat of a figurehead. It's not altogether too surprising, unfortunately, that there was controversy surrounding the release of the film in oft-uptight Britain; it was given a R-rating almost entirely because of a couple of homosexual kissing scenes, and descriptor "a group of Lesbian and Gay activists" was changed to "a group of London-based activists" on the DVD banner. That didn't stop it from a standing ovation at Cannes, one that was entirely deserved for bravely taking on what is still a sore subject in many sectors of Britain.

More to come! Stay tuned!

2014: #27 times 3 and #26

We are officially 8 days away from Oscar madness, folks. The excitement is almost too much to bear!

As per usual, I've screwed myself over with not knowing how to count (obviously this is problematic, being that I am an elementary teacher), but I have actually seen 63 movies this year, not 60. I'll give a small amount of lip service here to 3 different #27s and a #26 and then re-rank accordingly. This will at least take us to the top 25 in an...interesting fashion, right?

Get it together, Mulhern! (slaps face, headbutts mirror, etc.)

#27a Bad Words

Jason Bateman is Guy Trillby, a degenerate 40-year old copywriter who exploits a loophole in the annual Golden Quill Spelling Bee: you have to have not graduated 8th grade in order to compete, and Trillby never did. In a slow-mo sequence involving him grabbing the giant trophy and running, sliding along the hood of his journalist "sponsor" Jenny's (Kathryn Hahn) car and jumping in the passenger seat while pissed-off parents shout and pummel the vehicle, he says via voiceover "Maybe I didn't think this through." On the plane to the nationals with Hahn (who is interviewing him for a story), he meets his #1 competition, an adorable Indian boy named Chai Chopra (Rohan Chand) and tells him to "turn his curry hole toward the front of the plane before he tells the stewardess he heard his back ticking." These are the kind of crass one-liners--Michael Bluth meets Andrew Dice Clay, maybe--that Bateman fires off throughout the film, and they rarely seem stale. He eventually warms up to Chai, but is it genuine, and are his motives pure of heart? Of course not. It eventually becomes clear that he is there to exact revenge for a past transgression, and he will burn every latin root and overworked preteen in his way, antidisestablishmentarianism be damned. Not always the strongest, plot-wise, but laugh-out-loud funny and worth a watch.

#27b The Boxtrolls

Isaac Hempstead Wright is the voice of Eggs (named after the box he wears), an orphan who is raised by a number of friendly creatures who have built a home out of discarded junk underground; in one particularly touching sequence, Fish (Dee Bradley Baker) puts him to sleep via a record on an old 45 machine. Eggs and his boxtroll family are targeted by the vile and sinister Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), a large man with greasy hair and several protruding growths. With his team of "Red Hats", comprised of Mr. Gristle (Tracy Morgan), Mr. Trout (Nick Frost) and Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade), they swear to town mayor Lord Portley-Rind (Mad Men's Jared Harris) that they will take down the boxtrolls, who are threatening the city's cheese supply and well-being with their nightly escapades. Their extermination plots begin working and they eventually snatch up Fish, leaving Eggs, together with Portley-Rind's small daughter Winnie (Dakota Fanning), "scrambling" (get it?) to save his surrogate dad and his homies. A fun romp, The Boxtrolls is stop-motion animation, and visually it is a triumph, especially the machine used to round up the Box Trolls. The overall tone, though, is dark, surreal and incongruous. It's almost entirely at night and underground, which makes gives it a unique touch but one that I would caution Pixar-heads to look into before watching it with their four year old.

#27c 22 Jumpstreet

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller along with screenwriter Michael Bacall pose to the viewer a simple question: Can the same jokes work twice? For the most part, the answer is yes. Now that it's taken them two times to graduate high school, Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are put back into Jump Street with captain Dickson (Ice Cube), now across the street at 22 after the 21 building has been made unavailable. Their mission? Go back to school (again), this time as college kids, to infiltrate the dealer of a mysterious drug (again) called WHYPHY. Jenko connects immediately with his jock roots, befriending football players named Zook (Wyatt Russell) and Rooster (Jimmy Tatro), who may or may not be leads in their case. Meanwhile, Schmidt finds himself in the artist scene, hooking up with Maya (Amber Stevens) after pretending to be some sort of a white Saul Williams slam-poetry connoisseur. Her roommate Mercedes (Jillian Bell) doesn't approve, but Schmidt notes something fishy about her. The pursuits of Mercedes and Zook eventually lead them to the kingpin, a mysterious figure named Ghost; tracking him takes the duo to a full-fledged college Spring Break, where the ridiculous climax of the film comes to a head. Hill and Tatum earn the A's in comedy that they couldn't quite achieve as fake high school students, and they play the rift growing between them masterfully throughout. Just like last time, the film relies on sight gags, buckets of blue language, a couple unexpected twists and rampant bromance to carry it to the finish line. For most intents and purposes, this is the same movie as the first. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

#26 Chef

If Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler doubled as an analogy for the life and career path of Mickey Rourke, I think that to a much lesser degree, the same could be said about Chef and Jon Favreau. Here you have a promising young New Yorkian who, with the help of buddy Vince Vaughn, takes the indie world by storm with Swingers, subsequently adding "you're so money" and "Vegas, baby, Vegas!" to the lexicon of  ubiquitous late '90s quotables for high schoolers and frat boys alike. Next up was Made, less impressive but still in the Swingers ballpark, and a memorable guest appearance as himself on The Sopranos, further establishing his street cred. Since then, he's been decidedly hit-or- miss, scoring big with Elf and Iron Man, making a decent family film with Zathura, and more recently, committing crimes against humanity with Iron Man 2 and Cowboys & Aliens. Unlike Rourke, who disappeared for decades amidst personal and professional failures, Favreau, despite being commercially successful, seemed to be losing sight of who he was and what got him there in the first place.

Enter Chef, Jon Favreau's first time with leading man/director duties in over a decade. He plays Carl Casper, a renowned chef with a team of trash-talking cooks on his squad (Bobby Cananavale and John Leguizamo), but he is starting to crack under the pressure. His boss Riva (Dustin Hoffman) wants him to play it safe, while he wants to throw something wild at make-or-break food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) when he visits. Ramsey trashes him, taking shots that Casper takes very personally, and he later confronts him at the restaurant in a profanity-fueled tirade that immediately goes viral, making the situation for the old school, tech-fearing Carl much worse. He is let go and spiraling into self-pity, an older, wiser version of his Mike from Swingers. Spunky ex-wife Inez (who else but Sofia Vergara?) suggests that he open a food truck and take son Percy (Emjay Anthony) along for the ride. Together they travel across America, slinging Cuban sandwiches and other wears while Martin (Leguizamo) mans the kitchen and Percy captains the social media helm. The movie is a little bit too long and has a little bit too neat of a conclusion, but Carl discovers that by going back to basics, he regains his passion and reinvents himself along the way. It's a pretty joyous affair. Is this mirroring things for Favreau? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it kind of felt to me like he was saying "Relax, all right? I've still got it."

More to come!

2014 Movies: #28

#28 X-Men: Days of Future Past

I read a number of positive reviews over the summer about this one and wasn't able to make it, for whatever reason. That said, I wasn't in a hurry because with the exception of the cuban missile crisis sequence, X-Men: First Class was hot garbage; so too was the embarrassingly bad Wolverine and the totally underwhelming The Last Stand. I never claimed to be a mathematician, but that's eleven years (X-Men 2, in '03) since a decent outing for the beloved comic book squad. And there's one common thread running through the first two and Days of Future Past: Director Bryan Singer. Thank goodness he's back to right the ship.

Charles Xavier's future gifted youngsters find themselves locked in a battle with giant metal Sentinels, much more terrifying than the ones I remember from the comics and the cartoon. Bishop, Colossus (he of the power-sneeze in the video game), Iceman, Blink, Warpath and Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) are doing their best to fend them off, but are getting their asses handed to them. In fact, everyone except the injured Bishop and the cleric Kitty Pryde are actually vanquished. Before the Sentinels can get them, Kitty vanishes them and it is revealed that she has sent Bishop's conscience back in time to warn the others, so in actuality, they have survived the attack because the attack was avoided in the past.

Whaaa?

Future X , Future Magneto, Storm and Wolvie show up and begin to hatch a plan. Wolverine (because of his unique healing abilities) will be sent back to 1973 to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing engineer Bolivar Trask (GoT's Peter Dinklage), who had created the Sentinels. The fact that Trask was assassinated by a mutant means that the government saw the utility in his project, and the sentinels get the funding he was looking for. Wolverine requires the help of young X (James McAvoy) young Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) to take her down. Knowing that she will listen to him, they decide to spring Magneto (Michael Fassbender) from his concrete underground prison at the Pentagon. Why, do you ask is he imprisoned in that fashion? Because he killed JFK by manipulating the direction of the bullet, of course! From there, lots of exciting and visually engaging sequences: Quicksilver slowing down time to stop a room full of government agents; Magneto lifting up an entire sports stadium to hover above Nixon and his goons to show he means business; another holds-no-barred battle with the sentinels of the future. Even though the plot itself is somewhat convoluted, Singer and co. pull it off. Wish I had seen it in theaters. And you can bet Oliver Stone wishes he had thought of the "magneto theory".