Get Hard (2015) * * 1/2

 

Directed by: Etan Cohen

Starring:  Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, T.I. Harris, Craig T. Nelson, Alison Brie, Paul Ben-Victor, Edwina Findley

No, Get Hard is not a porno movie.  It's about guileless, gullible hedge-fund manager James (Ferrell), who is wrongly convicted of fraud and sentenced to a term in San Quentin.  His father-in-law Martin (Nelson) is of course the guilty party, but he pretends to support James and promises to find "the real fraud", much like OJ Simpson pledged to find "the real killers".  With one month to get his affairs in order, James chooses to hire Darnell (Hart), the owner of the car wash in James' office garage, to give him lessons on how to survive in prison.  Darnell has never had so much as a parking ticket on his record, but he needs the money to keep his business afloat and goes along with the training.  James is a dope, and believes Darnell has been to prison because, well he's black.  Darnell plays along because he needs the cash. 

Get Hard walks the fine line this material presents.  It's funny to be sure, but also inconsistently so.  Darnell, with help from his cousin and other gang members who have actually been in prison, provides lessons on how James can avoid being gang-raped and assaulted daily.  When Get Hard is cooking, it is hilarious.  Those moments, however, don't come often enough, and what we have is Ferrell and Hart trying their best with mixed results.  

I'm reminded of Spike Lee's The 25th Hour, in which Edward Norton has 24 hours to get his affairs in order before he begins a seven-year prison term.  Norton's character knows he won't emerge unscathed and he will not be the same person as when he entered.   The 25th Hour covers the dramatic ground as Get Hard covers comically.  As the days tick off toward the beginning of James' sentence, it doesn't even occur to him that Martin framed him.  Darnell feels sorry for this knucklehead whose only crime is believing the best in the wrong people. 

F/X (1986) * * *

 

Directed by:  Robert Mandel

Starring:  Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Mason Adams, Cliff DeYoung, Diane Venora, Tom Noonan, Joe Grifasi, Martha Gehman, Josie de Guzman, Jerry Orbach

Movie special effects wizard Rollie Tyler (Brown) is approached by the Department of Justice to use his skills to fake the assassination of mob boss Nick DeFranco (Orbach), who is set to testify in a mob trial and enter the Witness Protection Program.  Rollie is paid $30,000 to orchestrate the "murder", including disguising himself and "pulling the trigger" in a public place.  Following the phony assassination, agent Lipton (DeYoung) tries to kill Rollie, citing "no loose ends" and Rollie is soon on the run and being framed for murder.  

The detective on the case, Leo McCarthey (Dennehy) knows DeFranco and smells a rat, especially when Rollie's girlfriend (Venora) and the agent who killed her and tried to kill Rollie are found dead in the woman's apartment.  F/X takes on Hitchcockian proportions, as Rollie is the innocent man accused and must rely on his visual effects prowess to fight his way out of this conspiracy.  He isn't an action-hero type, but he's smart and resourceful with numerous tricks up his sleeve.  I grant you that Rollie somehow is able to summon an effect up at a moment's notice, especially when he invades the ringleader Col. Mason's (Adams) home and does in all of his goons.  

Some of these tricks are elaborate and are unlikely to fit inside a bag, but because we root for Rollie and he's played so winningly by Bryan Brown, we forgive the movie's occasional lapse in credulity.  Brian Dennehy provides a counterpoint to the otherwise amiable Rollie.  He's a heavy drinker, but relentlessly pursues the truth, and has some nice scenes displaying his absolute cynicism.  F/X is a movie that comes out of nowhere to entertain, even in the face of plot holes and questions.  No matter.  We get to see the bad guys get what's coming to them from someone whom everyone underestimated. 

Heart Eyes (2025) * *

Directed by:  Josh Ruben

Starring:  Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Jordana Brewster, Devon Sawa, Yoson An

Heart Eyes begins with a tinge of satire and shock as a newly engaged couple is gruesomely murdered by the masked "Heart Eyes" killer, who has done this nationwide over the years to many couple on Valentine's Day.  You can see what the mask looks like, and now it seems the Heart Eyes serial murderer has taken up residence in Seattle.  We meet Ally (Holt), who has a winning smile and is a total cutie.  She is a marketing executive whose last ad campaign flopped and now needs a better one in order to keep her job.  A new hotshot named Jay (Gooding) comes on the scene, and despite her attraction to him, Ally feels her job threatened.  

Jay calls for a truce and a strictly professional dinner on Valentine's Day.  Ally is still trying to get over the boyfriend who dumped her and, after running into him and his new girlfriend outside the restaurant, kisses Jay to make the boyfriend jealous.   This is witnessed by the Heart Eyes killer and Ally and Jay become his (or her) targets.  The Heart Eyes killer creatively offs his victims in brutal fashion, and it is at this point when Heart Eyes simply becomes another slasher film with jump scares and kills that grow more bloody and violent.  

Those who go to see Heart Eyes for this reason will be satisfied.  Other than discovering the identity of the killer and why he or she committed the killings, Heart Eyes isn't built for suspense but slaughter.  It's wearying watching the filmmakers up the ante on the gore, wasting two appealing leads in the name of gory slashing.  

Love Hurts (2025) * *

Directed by:  Jonathan Eusebio

Starring:  Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Marshawn Lynch, Lio Tipton, Daniel Wu, Sean Astin, Mustafa Shakir

Marvin Gable (Quan) is a mild-mannered, relentlessly upbeat Milwaukee realtor hiding a secret past as a ruthless assassin.  He was in league with his brother Knuckles (Wu), but he fell in love with Rose (DeBose), who was ripping off Knuckles and ordered to be killed.  He fakes her death and then decides to leave the criminal life altogether.   He is a successful realtor, but soon Rose comes knocking, asking him to help her get rid of Knuckles once and for all.  

Maybe my sense of direction is way off, but it doesn't seem that the goons Knuckles dispatches to kill Marvin travel all that far to find him.  It seems like they live only on the other side of Milwaukee.  No matter.  Love Hurts features Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan in his first starring role.  He is likable and gives off Jackie Chan vibes in both personality and the fight scenes where he uses everything including the kitchen sink to fend off his opponents.  

The action is fun for a time, but then grows stale halfway into the movie's 84-minute running time (including credits).  Yet, the movie still feels like a slog even with the trim running time.  DeBose and Quan don't have much chemistry, and the movie chugs towards its conclusion with the speed of molasses in January.  Love Hurts takes place on Valentine's Day, but I doubt it will become a Cupid classic. 

Goodrich (2024) * *

Directed by:  Hallie Meyers-Shyer

Starring:  Michael Keaton, Mila Kunis, Laura Benanti, Michael Urie, Kevin Pollak, Carmen Ejogo

Andy Goodrich (Keaton) is a workaholic Los Angeles art gallery owner with a wife and twins whose wife calls him one night to inform him she has checked into a rehab.  Lotsa luck with the kids, she basically tells him, and the distraught Andy calls his pregnant adult daughter Grace (Kunis) to help him.  The trouble is:  Grace and Andy have a frosty relationship, mostly because of Andy's divorce from her mother.   No points for guessing that Andy will figure it all out and have a better relationship with the kids he hardly knows.  

Andy, though, isn't a bad man, just aloof because he devoted his life to a gallery which is now losing money and might go under if it is unable to attract artists.  Andy attempts to lure the daughter of a former client to his gallery in hopes she will allow her mother's work to be displayed.  This possibility grows to be more of a probability, but then it doesn't in a development that feels like a plot twist.  Because Andy is generally a decent man, the dramatic tension of Goodrich is lost.   

However, Michael Keaton still gives us an effective performance, making the most of his underwritten character.  Kunis hits all the notes you would expect as his estranged daughter:  Exasperated, frustrated, resentful, and then forgiving and reconciliation.   She does all well, but Goodrich itself simply lacks anything to push against.  

September 5 (2024) * * * *

 

Directed by:  Tim Fehlbaum

Starring:  Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Benjamin Walker, Jim McKay (archive footage), Leonie Benesch, Rony Herman

September 5, 1972 was an unprecedented day in the history of the Olympic Games, and not because of Mark Spitz winning his record seventh gold medal.  The Munich Games, the first in Germany since 1936 Berlin, went on uneventfully under shots were fired in the Olympic Village before dawn.  Before long, it is learned two Israeli athletes were killed and nine others taken hostage by a terrorist organization called Black September.  

ABC Sports president Roone Arledge (Sarsgaard) soon puts all hands on deck to cover this unprecedented event.  He wrestles away control of coverage from ABC News to ABC Sports.  His reasoning was sound:  The ABC Sports headquarters in Munich are set up a few hundred yards from the Olympic village where Black September was conducting its reign of terror.  Why cover it from New York?  September 5 takes place over the course of one tense day where Black September operates in the shadows and the plight of the Israeli athletes hangs in the balance in the same nation which forged the Holocaust against Jews three decades earlier.

The sports team scrambles, pivots, and creatively covers the events on the fly behind producer Geoffrey Mason (Magaro), an inexperienced newcomer working his first shift as segment producer.  He expected to cover track and swimming and instead the story becomes Black September.  The sports team is resourceful and smart, trying in earnest to bring the full story to viewers, but what is correct and what is speculation? Why September 5 works so brilliantly is that it fosters tension and suspense even though we know the terrible outcome.  The final minutes in which it was believed the Israeli athletes were freed at the airport hits like a gut punch.  Geoffrey is discussing interviewing the athletes about the ordeal.  We know better and it is brings a tear to your eyes. 

The performances in September 5 are outstanding, but there are no flourishes or excessive emoting.  September 5 is tautly told and focused.  It is also the first new release in the last three years I've attached a four-star rating to.  Now that we know that Hollywood can make a four-star movie, it's time to begin making them again more frequently.