REVIEW: Bad Grandpa

By Chris Luckett

2 stars out of 5

Photo: Paramount Pictures

When Borat came out in 2006, it was one of those shifts in comedy that often heralds a new age and style of humour. Many waited to see what would follow. Audiences got Brüno… and that was it.

The reason Sacha Baron Cohen’s brand of prank comedy didn’t take off was because it’s very hard to do well. What separated Cohen’s movies from the comedy of The Tom Green Show or Just for Laughs! Gags were his talent, his daring ability to goad unwitting people, and his sheer devotion to the bit. Johnny Knoxville, though, is no Sacha Baron Cohen.

Knoxville, star of three Jackass movies and a TV show, has always been great at committing to a bit, but he doesn’t have much acting talent – he looks 80 here, but still sounds and acts 40 – which hurts the movie whenever it wastes time on its irrelevant plot.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Knoxville plays Irving, a salacious octogenarian whose wife has just passed away and who’s tasked with driving his eight-year-old grandson Billy (the remarkably funny Jackson Nicoll) across the country. Everywhere they stop, a pre-planned catastrophe of awkward embarrassment or graphic injury awaits. The hook of these scenes is that only Knoxville and Nicoll know they’re being filmed by hidden cameras. Everyone else reacts unaware they are in a movie.

The prank scenes provide the laughs of the movie, although far fewer than would be hoped for considering Knoxville’s history. (Many scenes just don’t go far enough in luring the pranked people into the movie. Knoxville’s character knocks over a string of bikers' motorcycles and flees; Sacha Baron Cohen would’ve knocked them over and stuck around for the awkward confrontation.)

Photo: Paramount Pictures

The real problems are the scenes connecting all the stops, during which Irving and Billy bond. Watching the prank scenes, the audience has a tacit understanding with the movie to enjoy knowing that Irving is really Knoxville while the others onscreen don’t. Once it’s just him and Billy, though, Knoxville doesn’t drop the deception or even give a knowing look to the audience, which feels like a belittling betrayal of Bad Grandpa's agreement between movie and viewer.

Bad Grandpa wants to function both as a Borat-style prank movie and as an immature, road trip comedy but it can’t have it both ways and doesn’t commit enough to either one. The bonding scenes seem like a prank on the audience and the prank scenes on others are too few and too mild. Johnny Knoxville should’ve just made Jackass 4.

REVIEW: Carrie

By Chris Luckett

2 stars out of 5

Photo: Sony Pictures

As blasphemous as it is to say, 1976’s Carrie is not a great movie. Most of the acting is either wooden or exaggerated, its symbolism is overtly obvious, and it takes a long time for much of significance to happen. The one thing it does fantastically, though – so well, in fact, that many call Carrie a masterpiece – is deliver an emotional payoff.

Carrie is mostly remembered for its prom-set ending, when the bullied teenager and fledgling telekinesist gets her revenge. After audiences spend over an hour watching Sissy Spacek’s meek protagonist being tortured at school and at home, the sense of vengeance and justice that is unleashed at the climax is nearly palpable. The two keys to that were the over-the-top tone of the characters and the twisted eye of director Brian De Palma. Both are sorely missed in this remake.

While nothing new happens in the first half of the movie, the script makes sure to throw modern affects into the script to try to appeal to teenagers. (“Look, they’re filming Carrie’s bullying on a cell phone!” “Hey, they uploaded their video to YouTube, just like I do!”)

Photo: Sony Pictures

Chloë Grace Moretz plays a Carrie White for the modern age. She’s less naïve and more strong-willed, but still tragically meek. Moretz is certainly fine in the role, but it’s a real waste of her talent. Besides Moretz, the only other actor who seems to understand the right pitch at which to play her character is Judy Greer as Carrie’s sympathetic gym teacher.

Carrie’s fanatically religious mother (played now by Julianne Moore) and the popular kids at school who bully Carrie are meant to be unlikeable people. The original knew this and purposely amped their traits into caricature territory to make them despicable. This version doesn’t go far enough with it, though, which makes things emotionally tricky as later plot points arise.

Photo: Sony Pictures

There are differences in the plot of this remake, but they won’t be spoiled here. While the alterations often a slight change of pace, they slow down a movie that really shouldn’t feel anywhere near as long as it does. And some of the changes are just laughably bad.

Director Kimberly Pierce is an adequate director, but she has very little style – which is one thing nobody could accuse Brian De Palma of having. The dull scenes in the original still found ways to entertain through De Palma’s crazy direction and eye for odd camera angles. When Pierce isn’t aping De Palma’s shots, though, she has no eye of her own.

There’s lots of blood and plenty of intended emotion, but the movie’s ultimately as stiff as the dead and as poorly made as a soap, at times. If Lifetime made horror movies, Pierce’s remake of Carrie feels like it would be one of them.

VIDEO REVIEW: Captain Phillips

REVIEW: Captain Phillips

By Chris Luckett

4.5 stars out of 5

Image property of Columbia Pictures

Anyone who grew up in the ‘90s and played Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 remembers one of the tensest levels in the game taking place aboard a frigate, with James Bond needing to rescue hostages. No such hostage scene existed in the actual movie, but the first act of the incredibly tense Captain Phillips gives audiences the feel of it better than a Bond movie possibly could.

Based on a true story from 2009, Captain Phillips tackles the tale of four Somali pirates who hijacked a cargo ship, and the captain (played here by Tom Hanks) who did everything he could think of to save his ship and his crew.

Image property of Columbia Pictures

Director Paul Greengrass has made an art out of handheld action, with The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Green Zone, but his most apt prior experience was the compelling dramatization of the 9/11 hijackings, United 93. With that film, he was tasked with telling a dark, true story of hostages that many audiences had recently watched on live TV, while being gripping enough to distract viewers from remembering that they knew how it ended. He does the same with Captain Phillips: whether you watched it all go down live or not, knowing what happens won’t detract from the experience.

Image property of Columbia Pictures

Greengrass very smartly shows the cruel and desperate daily lives of the Somalis before focussing the point-of-view upon Phillips, and it goes a long way toward making tense situations much more gripping and tragic. Phillips is fighting for his life, but the pirates are fighting for theirs, too.

Tom Hanks gives a fantastic performance as Phillips, as audiences have come to expect from him. He’ll likely be up for another Oscar. The four pirates, played by Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Barkhad Abdirahman, and Mahat M. Ali, all give convincing and haunting performances. Abdi, especially, is absolutely riveting as the leader of the pirates.

Captain Phillips may well be the tensest movie of the year. The second act slows somewhat, due to a restricted setting that the trailers sadly gave away, but the movie’s opening hour and closing thirty minutes are not for the weak of nerve. Playing Nintendo 64 never felt like this.

VIDEO REVIEW: Gravity

(filmed 10/9/13)

OPINION: The Year So Far

By Chris Luckett

Every year, I generally see a little over a hundred movies. I usually hit “50” sometime around autumn, as I watch two movies every three weeks or so for most of the year (before ramping up the frequency around awards season, when I catch up on any acclaimed movies I missed as well as Oscar hopefuls).

Yesterday, I saw my fiftieth movie of 2013. Since my “Best of the Year” lists always look remarkably different when they’re finished than they do around their ultimate halfway point, it’s always interesting to stop and take stock of the year so far. This year, I’m sharing that, by revealing my ranked order of the 2013 movies I’ve seen so far.

For the record, I have not yet seen Before Midnight, Blue Jasmine, The Butler, The Conjuring, Enough Said, Fast & Furious 6, Frances Ha, Fruitvale Station, The Heat, Man of Steel, Monsters University, Short Term 12, Sound City, The Spectacular Now, The Wolverine, or The World’s End (though I plan to).

Twenty-thirteen still holds a number of heavy-hitters, from awards fare like 12 Years a Slave and Inside Llewyn Davis to sure-fire box office hits like Catching Fire and Thor: The Dark World. For now, though, this is what I’ve thought of 2013.

1. Gravity (5/5)

2. Rush (4.5/5)

3. The To-Do List (4.5/5)

4. Spring Breakers (4.5/5)

5. The Place Beyond the Pines (4.5/5)

6. Elysium (4.5/5)

7. Much Ado About Nothing (4/5)

8. Star Trek Into Darkness (4/5)

9. Now You See Me (4/5)

10. Insidious, Chapter 2 (4/5)

11. We’re the Millers (4/5)

12. Iron Man 3 (4/5)

13. Prisoners (4/5)

14. The Company You Keep (4/5)

15. Mud (4/5)

16. The Hangover, Part III (3.5/5)

17. Oz the Great and Powerful (3.5/5)

18. Oblivion (3.5/5)

19. The Great Gatsby (3.5/5)

20. Don Jon (3.5/5)

21. World War Z (3.5/5)

22. 42 (3.5/5)

23. Snitch (3.5/5)

24. This is the End (3/5)

25. RED 2 (3/5)

26. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (3/5)

27. Side Effects (3/5)

28. Despicable Me 2 (2.5/5)

29. Olympus Has Fallen (2.5/5)

30. The Croods (2.5/5)

31. Jack the Giant Slayer (2.5/5)

32. Nothing Left to Fear (2.5/5)

33. To the Wonder (2.5/5)

34. The Call (2.5/5)

35. After Earth (2/5)

36. A Good Day to Die Hard (2/5)

37. Trance (2/5)

38. Pacific Rim (2/5)

39. Escape from Planet Earth (2/5)

40. The Big Wedding (2/5)

41. Epic (2/5)

42. The Purge (2/5)

43. Evil Dead (1.5/5)

44. Identity Thief (1.5/5)

45. Safe Haven (1/5)

46. G.I. Joe: Retaliation (0.5/5)

47. 21 & Over (0.5/5)

48. Pain & Gain (0.5/5)

49. Movie 43 (0.5/5)

50. Riddick (0/5)

REVIEW: Gravity

By Chris Luckett

5 stars out of 5

Image property of Warner Bros.

Sometimes, a movie is released that just begs to be witnessed on the big screen. A movie that, if someone waits to watch it on their television, will lose something only evident when sprawled across a large canvas. A movie that you brag to others years later about having gotten to see when it was in theatres. Gravity is one of those movies.

The terrifying and simple plot revolves around astronaut Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), who is repairing a satellite when stray debris destroys the space shuttle she and astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) were planning on using to get back to Earth. The terror of being utterly lost and alone has been tackled before in movies like Open Water and 127 Hours, but that fear is multiplied exponentially with the prospect of being alone in outer space, with nowhere to go, no way to get back to Earth, and a dwindling supply of oxygen.

Image property of Warner Bros.

In addition to being unrelentingly tense, Gravity somehow finds time to also be quietly beautiful and almost poetic. It’s an amazing juggling act for which director Alfonso Cuarón deserves complete credit.

From the opening shot (which lasts 17 minutes, including the kinetic and explosive destruction sequence of the shuttle), Gravity throws special effect after special effect at you, firing a 90-minute barrage of filmmaking tricks that blend seamlessly and perplex the brain long after the credits roll.

Image property of Warner Bros.

The gargantuan size and scope of space is so unfathomable, no movie has ever truly captured it. Some, like Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey, have come very close, but none achieved what Gravity does. When watching it, you feel like you’re in space. The accomplishment of eliciting that feeling is hard to truly appreciate. (It should be added that the movie’s 3D is flawless, adding an infinite depth that helps to truly immerse you in the experience.)

People talk in reverence about when they saw visual masterpieces like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Titanic, The Matrix, or Avatar on the big screen. In a decade’s time, people will look back and say the same things about Gravity.