Review: Peeples

It’s hard for one not to be cynical and merely view Peeples as an “urban” rip-off of Meet the Parents. That film, now 13 years old (yeesh), took the tired story of the nervous boyfriend meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time and spun it into gold, thanks to a talented cast playing to their strengths and bringing their A games. Even if Peeples wanted to take that approach with basically the same storyline, would the audience be as invested in Craig Robinson (The Office) and David Alan Grier (In Living Color) as they were for Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro?

Peeples revolves around Wade Walker (Robinson), an aspiring psychologist who has been dating Grace (Kerry Washington) for a year and still hasn’t met her family. When she leaves to visit the family at their house in the Hamptons, Wade decides to follow behind her and surprise everyone by asking her father, Judge Peeples (Grier), for Grace’s hand in marriage. Upon arriving, he finds that Grace has not mentioned him or their relationship. Wade spends the rest of the film attempting to gain the approval of the family, hijinks and misunderstandings be damned.

The biggest strength and flaw of the film was the casting of Robinson in the role of the hapless Wade. Robinson, despite cutting an imposing figure, has always appeared to be a lovable lunk of a guy; if you are the father of a daughter that has had multiple questionable relationships in the past, you would feel like she had finally found a nice fella to settle down with. Hence, one of the reasons the adversarial tone between Wade and the Judge seems so whackadoo. This isn’t Ben Stiller fumbling, mumbling, bumbling and stumbling all over your house; this is a dude that anyone would be happy to bring into your family.

The only way that screenwriter and first-time director Tina Gordon Chism (Drumline) can amp up the tension is by following Parents almost scene by scene. Father doesn’t take potential son-in-law’s career seriously? Check. Does the nice guy hear a conversation that he misinterprets for something much more sinister involving the dad? Of course. Is there a youngest child going wild unbeknownst to his parents? Mmm-hmm. Is there a final fight between everyone involved where the daughter will side with her father’s wild allegations, despite being the only one there to actually know the suitor long enough to have a reasonable suspicion that he may be a thief or drug addict? Well now you’re just taking all of the fun out of this.

Much could, and probably will, be said about the fact that the only true innovation that the film has going for it is its predominantly black cast. Honestly, the film doesn’t even touch on that concept more than a couple of times, like when Wade addresses a family picture as the “chocolate Kennedys”. Why does no one in the film ask what it’s like to be one of the few black families in the lily white Hamptons? When a subplot is introduced over a family member hiding her homosexuality, why isn’t her reasoning behind that thought process explored? One of the many scenes involving bicycle riding could have been excised to give one of these more serious concepts room to grow, but Chism chose to go the more lackadaisical route.

Peeples, despite advertising producer Tyler Perry’s name all over the advertising, isn’t the worst thing you will see this year in theaters. No one is involved in a highly unlikely abusive relationship, and an AIDS scare isn’t shoehorned in at the last minute for a ham-fisted moral. All in all, it isn’t really bad as much as forgettable, and I mean that literally; I could definitely see members of the audience running across this on TBS a couple of years from now and trying to remember if they have seen this film or not. No, in the end the film is simply buried beneath comparisons to its earlier, better inspiration, talented case be damned.  

Review: Iron Man 3

Perhaps no larger honor can be given to Robert Downey Jr. than the fact that so many fans are clamoring to see Iron Man 3 in theaters, despite the tepid response most viewers had to the last installment in the comic-book franchise. More than Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, more than Christian Bale as Batman; hell, maybe even more than Christopher Reeve as Superman, no other actor has come to be synonymis with a character than Downey as the iron-clad tech warrior.

So it goes that Marvel Studios rushed the character back onto the big screen after the wild success of The Avengers, perhaps to wash the bad taste of that misguided sequel out of moviegoers mouths. With Jon Favreau stepping away from the director’s chair, Shane Black was invited into the Marvel fold with his first directing gig since 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and only his second directorial effort ever.

When we first meet Tony Stark in IM3, it is apparent that he has been living an existence one step removed from a modern day Howard Hughes since the events that transpired in The Avengers; constantly tinkering in his basement and building new Iron Man armor, stricken with panic attacks over nearly dying while fighting off the alien invasion in New York, and managing to ignore his girlfriend/new head of Stark Industries Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). If that weren’t enough, he is quickly introduced to two new adversaries: Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), head of A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics); and Bin Laden-esque terrorist The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley).

 
The Mandarin’s unknown followers are responsible for at least nine known terrorist attacks, the knowledge of only three of which have been released to the American public. Tony is drawn into a battle with the Mandarin when an attack in Los  Angeles leaves one of his closest friends in a coma. The battle between these two forces quickly draw others in, including the returning character of Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), old flame Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), and President Ellis (William Sadler).

The visual effects and action sequences are stunning, especially when Tony's Iron Man brigade takes flight. The costuming, however, is more hit-and-miss. Other than a brief sequence that involves Pepper donning an Iron Man suit in an emergency, the filmmakers seem to have no qualms leaving Paltrow to run around in a sports bra. On the other hand, the updates given to The Mandarin, with his ringed fingers and camo-via-Asia outfit, look terrific. It’s hard to believe this is the ridiculous character mocked by comic fans for decades.

The biggest surprise in the film is how easily Black puts his stamp on the franchise. Taking a character that has been given little more to do than create a flying tank and crack one-liners, Black revisits the characters of his creative past and brings a darkness to Stark that has been missing heretofore. A complexity is given to Tony, making us question if he would follow his personal demons into the dark if it weren’t for the neverending project that is being Iron Man.

Without giving too much away, Marvel has managed to tie up the Iron Man franchise with a nice bow at the end of this third film, not necessarily saying we will never see the character again, but definitely letting us in on the fact that it will be a while before Iron Man 4 hits screens. But with closure like this, I’m sure fans will eagerly await the new adventures of Tin Head in the meantime.

Review: The Company You Keep

One of the hazards of waiting until the last second to write a review is, whether you want them to or not, other critics' opinions start to drift in your direction. Now, I have no idea exactly what their thoughts are on any given subject, but I have already picked up on the fact that Robert Redford's latest directorial effort, The Company You Keep, is being released into more markets this weekend without a whole lot of support behind it. This surprises me, because for my money it very well may be the best film that I have watched in 2013.

The Company You Keep stars Redford as Jim Grant, a well-respected defense attorney in his town dealing with life as a single parent after the unexpected death of his wife. Through a series of coincidences discovered by a young reporter in town (Shia LaBeouf), Jim finds his past coming back to haunt him in the form of recently arrested Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon). Solarz and Jim (real name Nick Sloan) were members of the 60s radical activists Weather Underground, and have lived decades under new aliases because of a bank heist that ended in the murder of a guard.

Leaving his daughter in the care of his estranged brother (Chris Cooper), Jim runs in an attempt to reconnect with the only person who can prove his innocence: a former lover (Julie Christie) that was actually a part of the robbery, and can tell police that Jim had nothing to do with any of it. With both the police and the enterprising reporter on his trail, Jim journeys cross-country, all in an attempt to return to the quiet life he knew just days before.

I'm not sure if Redford is a director that actors are just dying to work with, in the same way many view Woody Allen, or if he just used his Sundance clout to strong-arm award winning character actors into just about every speaking role in Company, but this is one of the most impressive casts to hit the screen in years. Ah, who am I kidding? It takes mutual respect to wrangle up fairly big-name actors to appear in roles that are clearly beneath them; it also takes a hell of a director to manage a cast this large and build it into a series of memorable scenes.

If there is a weak link, perhaps it's not surprising that it would be LaBeouf (star of the Transformers franchise). As the young, enterprising journalist, he has the unenviable position of being both the youngest star in the cast and least celebrated actor. In scenes featuring Redford, Sarandon, Stephen Root, and Brendan Gleeson the young man is all but blown off the screen by his elders. Some of this could stem from the fact that LaBeouf's character is so unlikable; there is a sense that Redford likes it better this way, as this is how he sees the younger generation, complaining about their lot in life but without the convictions of the baby boomers to actually fight for anything.

If there is a film that I would compare Company to, it would have to be The Fugitive. There are scenes here, with Redford just barely avoiding capture, that manage to convey the tension in that earlier film without feeling like a knock-off of the same. Perhaps its because of the personal investment he feels in the film, but Redford flexs acting muscles that we haven't seen since his 70s output, or depending on how generous you are feeling, perhaps Sneakers.

With an all-star cast and the best script of writer Lem Dobbs' career, Redford brings to the screen one of the finest films of his career, as well as a strong contender for my Top Ten list at the end of 2013. With Company, Redford manages to show directors with five times his output that it is possible to craft an entertaining political thriller in this era of franchise-crazy studios, as long as you have the talent to pull it off.

Review: Oblivion

When Joseph Kosinski was chosen a couple of years ago to direct his feature debut, TRON: Legacy, it was met by the masses with a collective, “Who?!?” Rumored to be given the job on the strength of a preview reel he showed Disney execs, one can't help but wonder if that reel was nothing more than updated graphics to the original film after watching his sophomore effort, the Tom Cruise star vehicle Oblivion.

In Oblivion, Cruise stars as Jack, a one-man mechanic crew tasked with preserving the small amount of Earth that is still livable. Along with his partner (both technician and domestic) Victoria, played by English actress Andrea Riseborough, Jack is an inhabitant of Earth circa 2070. Fifty years after a devastating war against alien invaders in which the Earth's governments decimated the planet with nuclear weapons in an attempt to drive the enemy back, Jack is given the task of repairing drones that protect machines important toward the survival of the human race. Waking every day to fix machines that have been incapacitated by the alien enemy, Jack can't help but feel that something is off.

While Victoria is more than happy to continue counting down the two weeks that they have left on Earth before being transported back to the moon on Jupiter where humans now live, Jack still loves his native planet. Growing flowers with soil that is supposedly contaminated; adopting a creek side cabin as a retreat to store tokens of humanity's past; listening to old Led Zeppelin tunes while shooting free throws; Jack has managed to turn a desolated planet into the ultimate man cave.

While on patrol, Jack sees a spacecraft fall from the sky. Upon searching the wreckage, he finds humans locked into hibernation units. While attempting to open said units, drones appear and begin killing the survivors. Stumbling onto the unit holding a woman that he has dreamed about, Jack risks his life to save her from being exterminated. Taking her back to his home to be patched up, they begin discussing the past as Jack knows it, and he is shown that much of what he has been led to believe is in reality a lie.

One of the jokes a lot of folks made when they first saw the trailer for Oblivion was in regards to how much it appeared to be a live-action remake of the Pixar film Wall-E, only starring a human instead of a robot. I must admit, I made the same joke as well, and yet I was still blown away by how similar the two full-length films are to one another in their finished forms. Read the above synopsis again; Kosinski (a co writer of the screenplay as well as director) doesn't just have Cruise growing a flower to give to his love, he also has a killer pop-culture collection. That is just scratching the surface, however.

The comparisons to sci-fi films don’t stop there; the hits just keep on coming! Cruise's character and interactions with others seems to be patterned after Total Recall, while managing to excise that earlier film's misogyny. The portrait of the Earth that we are shown borrows from the Planet of the Apes series, while the drones themselves seem to crib liberally from the visuals and mechanics of the Enforcement Droids from Robocop. I'm not even touching on the most exciting action scene of the film, which depending on how you look at it is either a strong homage or rip-off of the space battle scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy.

Most damning is the constant allusions to Kosinski's debut, T:L. The director bastardizes his own film by liberally borrowing the neon look of the homes and vehicle specs of his only other film, which I'm not sure is an act of desperation or an attempt to keep what he considers his audience happy. At a certain point I found it almost funny, especially when the French electronic band M83 would pop up on the soundtrack. Why not just run a stream along the bottom of the screen that reads, "Sorry, Daft Punk wouldn't return our phone calls this time"?

Perhaps it just boils down to Kosinski bit off more than he could chew by accepting a Cruise pic this early in his career, choked, and vomited up this hokum? It's not that the film is even that bad, it's just a pretty piece of junk to stare at vacantly for 2 hours. When the end credits roll, you will walk out with the sinking feeling that you should have just bit the bullet and bought a ticket for Spring Breakers instead, and to that I say you would be right.

Review: No

Sony Pictures Classics may be the most adventurous “indie” studio going at the moment. Sure, when you’re just a small piece of a huge corporation you can afford to take chances, but there are still those that would be happy to play it safe.

What does that have to do with No, the political comedy focused on late 80s Chile? As smart, funny, and daring as this Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film is, it also has the distinction of being the ugliest looking film to hit theatres in quite some time.

Shot in an obsolete video format that looks prehistoric when compared to a clip on YouTube, there is reason for director Pablo Larrain’s madness: the film, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as an ad-man called upon to help drive Chilean dictator Pinochet from office, looks just like the TV clips that comprise a third of No’s running time. It seems fitting that it is difficult to decipher what are real clips and what are moviemaking magic in this satire that is less about the truth than using a version of the truth to get what you want.

 Bernal is great, as always. The Mexican actor displays the charm that he is known for, while showcasing comedic chops that were heretofore unseen as Rene Saavedra, an advertising wiz who’s called upon by Chile’s opposition group to create a television campaign that will capture the masses imaginations and force them to vote “no” in a 1988 election. Rene creates commercials with happy jingles and mimes, knowing that folks will be more open to suggestion with “ear worms” than angry declarations of right and wrong. When it looks to be building steam, the regime begins its own ad campaign, led by Rene’s business colleague, Lucho (Alfredo Castro).

 If this all sounds a bit like a political Mad Men, well, in a way I guess that’s fair. But while Mad Men is lauded for its ability to be unconventional, No makes the TV show look like Charles in Charge by captivating the audience with a great script and wonderful direction. Rarely has a film so ugly been so worthwhile.

Review: 42

 

As soon as the first scene of 42 flickers across the screen, the audience immediately knows what kind of movie they are watching. Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) is telling two of his closest confindants that he has his mind set on bringing a black player up from the Negro Leagues to become the first African-American player in major league history. While music swells triumphantly behind his announcement, his assistant stutters out a mild objection, only to be stunned silent by Rickey's steadfastness.

 

That is 42 in a nutshell; completely happy to tell a story known by almost all sports fans without an ounce of originality to it. Nothing will make a filmgoer appreciate Steven Spielberg's work as much as having to sit through Spielberg-lite.

 

There are so many avenues a filmmaker can take with the Jackie Robinson story. Could we not delve into Rickey's ambitions a little further than the two reasons given: he thought it would be good for business and the right thing to do? Didn't he have moments where he actually feared for Robinson's life, or those of his family and/or teammates? No, we are only given a scene in which he shoves a pile of hatemail toward Pee Wee Reese (an underused Lucas Black) and basically tells him to grow a pair.

 

Thankfully Chadwick Boseman is there to hold the picture together in a star-making turn as Robinson. Valiantly putting up a good fight against the direction by Brian Helgeland, Boseman manages to convey the inner turmoil of a man fighting against himself, desperate to lash out against those mistreating him while knowing to do so would end his career. Boseman is at ease in scenes both on the field and at home. Those scenes of domestic life are greatly enhanced by the work put in by Shame's Nicole Beharie as his wife.

 

The entire supporting cast is a masterclass in character work, with many of the actors capable of stealing the film at any moment. Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU )makes an immediate impact upon the movie with his depiction of the legendary Dodgers manager Leo Durocher, willing to bare an open mind for the sake of his ballteam winning, and not conceding an inch of power to ballplayers ready to revolt against the idea of a black man sharing their lockerroom. Alan Tudyk (Firefly) makes an impact as Phillies manager Ben Chapman, the instigator of the most racist reception Robinson encounters on the field that the film addresses. Every line of dialogue Tudyk directs Boseman's way in their scenes together seemingly contains at least two racial epiteths in an attempt to cause a reaction. Tudyk comes away from 42 as perhaps showcasing the finest acting, for somehow being a horrible antagonist while still remaining the comic foil.

Brian Helgeland is without question a talented screenwriter, but with 42 he has proven himself once again lacking as a director. There are a hundred more interesting stories to be found in Robinson's career, but what we are given is the most sterile, "inspiring" version of the man's life that could possibly be produced for the screen. 42 is a fine film to fall asleep to on a rainy weekend day, but its hard to justify paying full admission prices for it.

Review: The Gatekeepers

In The Gatekeepers, six former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, go on camera for the first time and talk about their conflicted feelings toward their enemies, the Palestinians. The mere subject of the documentary (interviews with former directors of Israeli intelligence) is enough to “sell” this film, but it’s the revelations found within that truly make it worth watching.

The Gatekeepers attempts to track the history of Israel from the Six-Day War in 1967, almost to the present day, and the conflicts that the nation has felt during that time.

The six men at the center of the film are not afraid to speak frankly about assassinations and torture. You don’t become the head of Shin Bet by being afraid to pull a trigger. Avraham Shalom, the oldest of the interview subjects, left his position over an incident in which a terrorist was murdered while his hands were tied. Another recalls his greatest success as killing a suspected Palestinian terrorist with a “phone bomb”. Each of the six protagonists speaks on the concept of having to decide if the potential loss of innocent lives is worth “taking out” a suspected threat.

Director Dror Moreh plays his hand a little too soon, seemingly only interested in making this film so he would have the ability to ask these men about the ethics involved in dealing with terrorists. After questioning the elderly Shalom multiple times about the morality in killing these murderers, the old gentleman finally says that there is no morality where terrorism involved. “Find morals in terrorists first.”

Yet the film isn’t one-sided at all. At different points during the film, each of the men condemns the tactics that have been used during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most of them point toward the politicians they worked under as the true heads of Shin Bet during their times running the unit. Also, each of the men describes how the Palestinians reacted to the deaths happening around them; the phone-bomb assassination in particular seemed to stir a hornet’s nest; relations went from low-level hostility to violent retaliation. 

Moreh’s documentary is fascinating, when the director isn’t openly pointing the subjects of it in the direction he wants to take them. Avi Dichter, the second-most-recent director interviewed, comes the closest to comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with Germany’s treatment of Jews in the days leading up to World War II. Something tells me that segment is Moreh’s favorite in the film.