Neighbors (2014) *

Directed by:  Nicholas Stoller

Starring:  Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Lisa Kudrow

Animal House this ain't.    Neighbors and Animal House both focus on the antics of heavy-partying fraternities, but that is where the similarities end.     Animal House was funny because of its anarchic spirit and actually took some time to develop its characters so guys like D-Day, Otter, and Bluto are still remembered nearly 40 years later.    Nothing about Neighbors will be remembered 40 minutes later let alone 40 years.    Neighbors makes the crucial mistake of believing that the frat parties themselves are funny.   The party scenes are so choppily edited with blaring background techno music the viewer will get a headache.     A large fountain is placed in the backyard which could just as easily be situated in front of any City Hall in the U.S.    Who pays the electrical bill for the frat house?    Who paid to get the fountain shipped there?    

The plot of the film is well-explained in the ads and movie poster.    New parents Mac (Rogen) and Kelly (Byrne) are adjusting to parenthood when a loud fraternity moves into the vacant house next door.    The fraternity president is Teddy (Efron), who is often seen with his shirt off just to show us all how much he has been going to the gym lately.    They move in so much stuff that it begs the question where they keep it all.    How many people live at the frat house?

At first, Mac and Kelly make peace with Teddy and the crew by partying with them.    Sometimes all night.    The baby is apparently forgotten as everyone smokes weed and bonds.    The truce doesn't last though, because Mac and Kelly are kept up all night by the obnoxious neighbors.    They call the police and then the ever-escalating feud begins, in which both sides inflict physical and emotional pain on each other.    The best of these pranks was given away in the trailers, in which Mac's car airbags are stolen and used to launch Mac into the ceiling when he sits down in his cubicle chair.    The rest play like bad outtakes from Jackass.

Mac and Kelly are seemingly the only neighbors who complain to the police about the noise.    There is a brief explanation that the fraternity "bought them off".    Considering the frat boys do nothing but hang around and party all day and night, how do they get the money to buy everyone off?    There are so many questions it threatens to become a list.

Neighbors, however, doesn't deserve much thought.    Many of Rogen and Byrne's scenes feel annoyingly improvised.    Each grows more wearisome than the last, playing like streams of consciousness gone berserk.    I can imagine Rogen and company cracking themselves up and lighting up a big joint at the end of the day's shooting with satisfied smiles.     Like many of Rogen's other movies, there are plenty of weed references and plenty of weed smoking.    We get it, Seth.    You like weed.    There is also plenty of male bonding with homoerotic subtext, plus hazing in which freshmen are humiliated by being forced to perform blatantly homosexual acts.    Do the writers of Neighbors think this is funny?    It outlines my argument as to why I never joined a fraternity in college.    Why go through the embarrassment and indignation of pledging just so I could wear a jacket and get into frat parties for free?   The cover charge for these parties back in 1989 was $2.00 by the way.    I'd rather just pay the $2.00 and spare myself the nonsense.

Thankfully, Neighbors only runs about 90 minutes, but it sure does feel longer.   It is a long slog through situations and a plot which fail to amuse on any level.     The actors put a lot of energy into a lost cause.   

Draft Day (2014) * * *

Directed by:  Ivan Reitman

Starring:  Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Ellen Burstyn, Chadwick Boseman, Arian Foster, Frank Langella

I'm not sure what exactly comprises an NFL team general manager's day, but if it's anything like Sonny Weaver Jr.'s (Costner), then he can have it.   Especially the day of the 1st round of the NFL Draft, which may or may not make or break the future of NFL teams.    I'm not usually a viewer of the NFL draft broadcast, which occurs in April amongst great fanfare mostly because it's the closest thing football-starved fans will come to seeing football players until training camp.    The draft itself is dull fare.    The commissioner walks up to the podium every 15 minutes announcing the college player a team has picked much to the delight or disdain of the fans who show up and those watching at home.   We see the player stride to the podium, given a team jersey, and pose for a photo-op with the commissioner before being hustled off the stage.   We see this repeated all night long.    Many would disagree with my take on this.

Draft Day focuses on the tense, drama-filled day Sonny faces hours before his Cleveland Browns are to pick their first-round draft choice.    The Browns have faced decades of futility and Sonny is looking to reverse that.    He accepts an early trade offer from the Seattle Seahawks to move up to the first overall pick.   It seems fans, Sonny's pregnant girlfriend Ali (Garner), and the Browns' head coach Vince Penn (Leary) all have different opinions on who that pick should be.    The Browns' owner (Langella) makes a thinly veiled threat that Sonny must make a splash in the draft or be fired.   Sonny is living proof that coaches and/or general managers are hired to be fired.    Especially in Cleveland.   

Sonny, as played by Costner, is a guy we can sympathize with.    He has not only the Browns' future in his hands, but the happiness of Browns fans, who have put up with decades of misery.   Throw in the temper tantrums of his starting quarterback who thinks he will be traded, a head coach who feels left out of the loop, and a mother who wants to sprinkle the ashes of his late father on the practice field today; and you have an idea what Sonny is up against.   And you think your job is stressful.
Costner convincingly allows us a glimpse into a man whose job is one big conduit of stress.

Draft Day is intriguing throughout, mostly because Sonny doesn't show everyone all of the cards.   It is presented so the non-NFL draft geek can follow along, while presenting enough insider stuff to please hardcore fans.    Naturally there is plenty of product placement with the NFL logo plastered all over the place, but at least it feels authentic.    This isn't the Any Given Sunday football league, where Sonny would be the GM for the struggling Dallas Knights.    I'm sure things are never wrapped up like they are in Draft Day and everyone goes home happy, but the film isn't a documentary, but a light drama in which things work out for Sonny at least for one day. 

True Crime (1999) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Clint Eastwood

Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Denis Leary, James Woods, Bernard Hill, Isiah Washington, Michael McKean, Diane Venora

To describe True Crime makes it sound like formula:  A washed-up reporter grabs for a last shot at redemption by preventing an innocent man from being executed at the 11th hour.    Eastwood, as star and director, turns the film into an exercise in human drama and ratcheted-up suspense.    How exactly does it feel to be a condemned man seeing his wife and daughter for the final time?    There is so much emotion and truth in these scenes that it sure feels like Eastwood has firsthand knowledge. Juxtaposed with these powerful scenes are a journalist procedural in which Steve Everett (Eastwood) believes a black man named Frank Beachum (Washington) due to be executed at midnight is innocent and gathers evidence to prevent the execution.

If only Beachum were Everett's only issue.    His affair with his editor's wife is discovered, his wife is about to leave him over the seemingly numerous infidelities in their marriage, he is warned off the story by his publisher, and he is teetering on the edge of sobriety after being on the wagon for two months.    Oh, and it's his day to take his daughter to the zoo.   True Crime is successfully able to juggle these points without seeming crowded or trying too hard to touch all the bases.    Everett is wounded and hardly a hero, but we root for him because he is pulling up his bootstraps to make one more run at doing the right thing.  

True Crime feels emotionally true as we follow Everett's hectic day.   We see him bascially run through the zoo with his daughter in order to avoid being late to lunch with a witness who said he saw Beachum kill a store clerk.    This tricky scene is well handled.    The witness is not a racist and sticks to his story despite all of Everett's best journalistic ploys, but there is an undercurrent of racism.   We see Steve's editor (Leary) giving him the evil eye all day, trying his best to control his hostility.     We meet the warden (Hill) and prison chaplain, who are preparing for the execution in adherence to their duties.    It's not pleasant, but it must be done.    We even hear radio news broadcasts explaining how exactly a lethal injection is administered.    Knowing Eastwood as we do, this information is not just superfluously delivered for no good reason.    It leads to an extraordinary payoff.

We have seen many films in which a lawyer/journalist/family member works tirelessly at the 11th hour to prevent an execution.    True Crime is the best of them, mostly because Eastwood took the time to make an old theme feel fresh and new.    It is also very emotionally draining.    Watch the scenes involving Beachum's last visit with his wife and daughter.    That is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. 

The Other Woman (2014) *

Directed by:  Nick Cassavetes

Starring:  Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Nicki Minaj, Don Johnson

Sometimes after watching an abysmal movie, I think about the scripts that were passed over in favor of the one that was made into the wretched film.     I think that at least some of those scripts have to be better.    They likely just couldn't follow a formula or were not "marketable" to certain audiences which guarantees them at least a strong weekend or two before showing up on DVD a few months later. 

The Other Woman no doubt is pitched at female audiences who get to see the lying, cheating weasel guy get what's coming to him.    The concept is better than the execution.    The Other Woman is a dead, flat comedy.    The actors try to inject life into it, but once you see a guy shit his pants after drinking a laxative-laced drink, you've seen it a thousand times.    Without sounding too sexist, the brief scenes of bodacious Kate Upton running on the beach in a bikini isn't enough to make up for the other 1 hour, 45 minutes one has to endure just to see those brief scenes.

There are actually two (or maybe more) women who would qualify as "the other woman".   The man they all covet is a slick, handsome Wall Street type named Mark (Coster-Waldau) who runs pyramid schemes with investors' money.    His wife Kate (Mann) unwittingly partakes in these schemes by blindly signing whatever papers he asks her to sign.    Kate has other issues with her husband, who has carried on an affair with a corporate lawyer named Carly (Diaz) for over a year.   Oh, and he neglected to tell Carly that he is married.     Carly discovers this tidbit when she travels blindly to his Connecticut home for a rendezvous and the wife answers the door.    Carly breaks off the affair, but Kate tracks her down at her office and, in an ungainly plot twist, the two become friends.   

Kate, as played by Mann, is fingernails-scraping-across-a-blackboard annoying.     Her dialogue consists of bouts of verbal diarrhea which would drive any sane person to drink.    The two do bond over cosmopolitans (which I suppose is the female bonding drug of choice these days).    There is even a scene in which Kate's giant dog squats on Carly's floor.    Everything about this friendship is ungainly and that is even before the plot takes over.   

The two gain another ally in Amber (Upton) who is discovered to be the third woman in Mark's life when they follow him to the Hamptons one weekend.    Amber has no idea Mark was married either and the three plot revenge.    How Mark is able to juggle these women plus keep up on his pyramid schemes should be the subject of a different movie, or maybe even take the place of the plot of this one.    We know how things will turn out.    There is not one plot development that surprises or challenges us.    There are no laughs at all.    Actually, there may have been more laughs in Diaz' and Cassavetes' last collaboration, My Sister's Keeper (2009), and that is a tearjerker drama.  

The Drop (2014) * * *

 



Directed by:  Michael Roskam

Starring:  Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, Noomi Rapace, John Ortiz

I enjoyed The Drop despite the fact its main character is malleable and undefined.    Is he smart?  Dumb?   A killer?   An observant bystander?    He is all of those things and none of those things.    He is whatever the script needs him to be at that time.    The Drop is a crafty piece of film noir for the most part despite its faults.    The performances, including Gandolfini's final screen performance, are top-notch.    They create flawed, desperate people.    What are they desperate for?   Love, money, or perhaps both.

The Drop takes place in Brooklyn, where bars sometimes function as "drops" for Chechen mob money.    The mob collects their money at closing and then the next night another bar handles the money.    Bob (Hardy) is the bartender at Cousin Marv's, a small bar once owned by Marv (Gandolfini), but now in the hands of Chechens.    One night the bar is robbed of its $5,000 till and the mobsters want their money back.    Bob and Marv can't give too many details on the masked thieves, although Bob helpfully tells the police that one had a stopped watch on his wrist.     For reasons explained later, Marv isn't happy with Bob for telling the police that piece of information.

Bob stays quiet and keeps his head down.    He goes to mass, but doesn't take communion, which is noted by the detective on the robbery case who has seen him there every day at 8am.    He stumbles across an abused dog in a woman's trash and soon adopts the dog and falls for the woman (Rapace), a waitress with issues of her own.     Then, there is the business of the missing $5,000.     Who stole it and who knows more than he or she is letting on?    Marv has his own issues, including a father on life support whose care is sucking him dry financially.    Gandolfini proves what a versatile actor he was.    His Marv is weary and desperate.    He, like Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront, was once a contender.    "I used to be respected.    I used to be feared," he tells Bob.    Now, he is under the thumb of the mob who took over his bar as repayment for his gambling debts.   

As if all of this weren't enough, there is a lingering missing persons case on a man last seen at Cousin Marv's before his disappearance.    All of this links together without seeming gratuitous.    Naturally, Bob and Marv are more involved than suspected.    Hardy is able to keep up with Bob's ever-changing persona, quite a feat here.    At first, I thought Bob was supposed to a nitwit bartender.    He reveals his smarts later, but it doesn't mesh with what we saw earlier.

The Drop was written and directed with the word "gritty" in mind.   Its characters and the world they inhabit is seedy and cold.    The film takes place right around Christmas and the events culminate on Superbowl Sunday, but this Brooklyn seems colder, more desolate, and lonely.    The characters plod through life as if it were a duty rather than a pleasure.    We begin to wonder if all of the money in the world would change that.   

Get On Up (2014) * *

Directed by:  Tate Taylor

Starring:  Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Jill Scott, Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, Dan Aykroyd

James Brown surely had to be more charismatic and likable than the guy presented in Get On Up, which presents Brown mostly as an egomaniacal, belligerent a-hole.    The premise is we should forgive Brown his trespasses because, boy, could he sing and dance.    There is no denying Brown's influence on music.   The epilogue of Get On Up tells us he is among the most "sampled artists of all time."   He was unique and there won't be another one like him.     If the movie is to be believed, then thank goodness.     But, there had to be more sides to the man than Get On Up represents.

The film opens in the early 90s with a very high James Brown pulling a gun on a group of real estate class trainees.    Brown owns the building and was very upset that one of the trainees used the bathrooms.     This awkward scene sets the tone for the rest of the film, which shows Brown as an arrogant bully who makes life rough for anyone who loves him.    In real life, Brown was jailed for the gun incident and for leading cops on a high speed chase while high on PCP. 

We follow Brown through his poor childhood in Georgia, where he was bounced around between his mother, father, and an aunt who ran a brothel.    He is jailed for stealing in this teens, but discovers a talent for singing and dancing that he uses when he is released to form a band.    Brown, however, isn't a lead singer for long.    He is signed to a record deal as a solo act, retaining only the loyalty of his friend Bobby (Ellis), who becomes Brown's right hand man, backup singer,  and occasional doormat.    When Bobby expresses a desire to become a solo act himself, Brown behaves like a scorned creep thus ending their friendship for a number of years.

Maybe the real James Brown was this way all the time and thus we are presented with a one-dimensional look at the "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business."    The performances are spot on.   Boseman supplies energy and his moves are certainly Brown-esque, so we can't blame him for acting as the material suggests he should.    Director Taylor made 2011's The Help, which was a look at racially-torn Mississippi during the early days of civil rights.    Get On Up is a biopic which doesn't cover much new ground.     We have seen Brown's story in countless other musical biopics.    I have sometimes criticized some biopics for not showing why the subject was so lauded in the first place.    Get On Up shows so many musical numbers that the film seems like it is just killing time.  

I use Behind the Candleabra, Steven Soderbergh's biopic of Liberace, as a counterpoint to this film.    It wasn't afraid to show Liberace as touching, tender, vicious, spiteful, and human.    He is presented three dimensionally.    Get On Up focuses on the vicious, spiteful stuff.    There is not one scene involving Brown's wife in which he is seen as anything but an abusive creep.    His son dies from a drug overdose, causing Brown to get high and lead the cops on the chase, but to my knowledge he has no scenes involving him interacting with this children.    They are around, like the wife, but hardly given anything to do.

We say some biopics show its subject "warts and all."    Get On Up is only interested in the warts part.    There is a good film to be made about "Mr. Please, Please, Please," but this isn't it. 

The Gauntlet (1977) * * *

Directed by:  Clint Eastwood

Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince

Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet is an action film full of bullets, chases, and even some depth.    Eastwood plays a cop who is assigned to escort a witness from Nevada to Phoenix to testify at a mob trial.    The mob wants her dead, as do other people whose motives are made clear later.    Unlike Eastwood's other cop roles, his Ben Shockley is a drunken underachiever who pulls it together to try and get the job done.    The witness is a hooker named Gus Malley (Locke), who we learn graduated college and possesses a fierce intelligence.    She is more than a match not only for Shockley, but any other male who dare underestimates her.    It is refreshing to see that in a female role which could have been typical, but is made special.

Shockley is under the gun right from the beginning.    Upon picking up Gus from jail, he learns Vegas has placed odds on her getting to Phoenix alive.    Determined, Shockley survives a hail of bullets, explosions, and traps.    He is slow to catch on that he is being set up.    Shockley and Gus survive the onslaught and manage to get to Phoenix in a bus which is shot at by most of the Phoenix police force.    It is not made clear why Shockley informs anyone what his route will be.    It is also not made clear why the police stop firing at him when he runs the bus up the city hall steps.    While we're at it:   Why did the police idly stand by as the ending played out like it did?

Up until the final 15 minutes, which despite being considerably tense is the tipping point where the film flies off the rails, The Gauntlet is a well-paced, well-constructed action film.     It also shows Eastwood playing a somewhat vulnerable character which is a derivative of his usual macho characters played until that point.     Eastwood doesn't even shoot the bad guy at the end, although he does punch a biker woman in the face.    She was attempting to kill him and rape Gus, so he isn't totally unjustified in punching her.     I enjoyed Locke as well, who takes what seems to be a simple character and adds complexity.   

The Gauntlet wouldn't break records for originality even back in 1977, but it is one more example of Eastwood's evolution as an actor and director.    If they just did something different with the finale, we would've had close to a classic here.