“Fruitvale Station” isn’t interested in presenting cold, hard facts.
Although it opens with actual video footage of Oscar Grant being shot by
a BART officer, the rest of the movie is devoted to a broad
representation of the young man’s life, mixing recreation with outright
fiction. For some, the overwhelming sympathy shown to Grant will provide
an exhaustively emotional experience, helping to mourn a senseless
death. However, “Fruitvale Station” doesn’t do itself any favors by
ignoring the mysterious workings of the incident, and while the picture
is penetratingly performed, it leaves numerous questions behind in
regards to the killing and Grant’s distressed demeanor, rendering the
feature too calculated for comfort.
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It’s interesting to find Warner Brothers attempting to
sequelize/spin-off the film “House Party” 23 years after it opened in
theaters. That there’s still value in the brand name is extraordinary,
especially when the latest installment, “House Party: Tonight’s the
Night,” is aimed directly at young “Step Up” fans that can’t get enough
of the hat-askew, back-flipping stuff. I’m just going to assume that
most viewers taking the time to watch “Tonight’s the Night” have never
even heard of “House Party,” otherwise, they’d be watching the original
“House Party” and not this decidedly unfunny, sophomoric creation that
plays like an R-rated Disney Channel movie.
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Horror films set in space are often a difficult proposition. Horror
films set in space that have no budget to work with have more of a
creative uphill climb. “Stranded” is a lunar adventure that takes place
on a single set, with limited visual variance to help sell the sci-fi
aspects of the story, while the script largely avoids anything that
might require any type of specialized activity outside of actors
stomping around looking frightened. It’s the latest from “Battlefield
Earth” helmer Roger Christian, which should be enough of a review right
there for most readers. Cheap, dull, and starring Christian Slater,
“Stranded” is a generic effort that doesn’t set out to achieve much over
85 tedious minutes of screen time.
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To fully appreciate “Dealin’ with Idiots,” the viewer must have some
working knowledge of its writer/director/star Jeff Garlin. Or perhaps
patience is a more accurate description. The combative comedian who rose
to fame on the HBO program “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Garlin is an
acquired taste, repeatedly falling back on his skills of improvisation
and observation to help him crack wise, often punctuated with his
squealy, infectious laugh. The howl is sadly missing from Garlin’s
second helming stint (following up his 2006 movie, “I Want Someone to
Eat Cheese With”), but the rest of his loose sense of humor remains in
“Dealin’ with Idiots,” an impulsive character-driven effort that’s good
for a few laughs and some serious confusion.
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“R.I.P.D.” is a constipated picture. It’s easy to see what the
production had in mind when cameras originally rolled, but editorial
tinkering and general tonal indecision has coughed up a painless misfire
— a movie that could’ve been something sharper, sillier, and more
direct with its action sequences. What’s up on the screen is flawed and
noisy, trying to siphon “Men in Black” fuel without the imagination of
Barry Sonnenfeld in play, and while it doesn’t come together, there are a
few inspired moments to pick up the slack, and the presence of Jeff
Bridges has the ability to lighten any mood, gleefully stomping around
the effort like he owns it.
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This second wind in the directorial career of James Wan has been
fascinating to watch. Almost killing his career with dreadful pictures
such as “Death Sentence” and “Dead Silence,” Wan rebounded with the 2011
horror humdinger “Insidious,” which inched the helmer away from gore
and noise, challenging him in the art of the scare. With a sharp visual
sense and welcome patience for the haunted house subgenre, Wan found an
ideal match to his sensibilities, now returning to the deep dark with
“The Conjuring.” Again favoring tension over bedlam, Wan issues a
similar but successful follow-up to “Insidious” (as opposed to
“Insidious: Chapter 2,” also from Wan and due in September), finding
proper beats of fright and family to play in this throwback endeavor.
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The monster movie tradition receives a delightful Irish makeover in
“Grabbers,” a fast and funny horror comedy that finds a fresh angle to
play in a subgenre that’s always in need of a change of pace. Led by
marvelous performances from stars Richard Coyle and Ruth Bradley,
director Jon Wright locates a specific position of insanity to play and
commits in full, making the small-scale adventure feel significant while
securing a healthy number of laughs during the ride. It’s cheeky and
reverential, keeping the creature feature alive with a glass-clinking
tilt, trading Americanized mayhem for Irish wit, a few close encounters,
and plot that actually finds a way to celebrate binge drinking.
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2010’s “RED” was a disappointment. Gifted a premise with serious
action-comedy potential while surfing along an irresistible marketing
hook, the picture didn’t live up to expectations, losing its focus as
murky intrigue and overplotting gradually scooped the fun factor out of
the geriatric mayhem, rendering it strangely inert. “RED 2” is more of
the same mediocrity, though the antics are now emboldened by the
original’s promising box office performance. Out to dish up the same
watery stew of bullets and slapstick, the follow-up doesn’t achieve a
personality of its own as it madly dashes to cover the same terrain as
the earlier effort, only here the noise has been dialed up and co-star
John Malkovich has been instructed to go full ham. This is not progress.
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After scoring an unlikely success with 2011’s “Drive,” director Nicolas
Winding Refn and actor Ryan Gosling delve even deeper into the darkness
of cinema with “Only God Forgives,” an eye-crossingly violent mood piece
on the futility of revenge. Considering the relative mass appeal of
their previous work, “Only God Forgives” is decidedly specialized
filmmaking for adventurous audiences blessed with paint-drying patience.
It’s monumentally rough stuff with a glacial pace, though its surreal
execution grows quite interesting the longer Refn sticks to the unknown
and the absurd, making the effort more performance art in design than
aggressively genre-minded.
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Not that animated films should be held to a standard of realism, but
“Turbo” is quite bizarre, even for a cartoon. It’s a story about a snail
who finds himself soaked in nitrous oxide, endowing him with the
characteristics of a car. He glows and moves with lightning speed, yet
fringe characters don’t really seem shocked when confronted with such a
vision. The snail is also allowed to compete in the Indianapolis 500
with other cars, and nobody bats an eye. However, the fantasy draws a
line at communication, finding humans unable to hear the snails speak.
It’s a weird movie and thankfully one that’s filled with enough positive
energy and slick visuals to distract from its nonsense. Entertaining
and agreeably performed, “Turbo” is a pleasant diversion for younger
audiences. A little nutty, but friendly and colorful.
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Nobody disappoints quite like Pedro Almodovar. The famous, celebrated
writer/director returns to his roots with “I’m So Excited,” intending to
awaken his dormant sense of humor, last viewed in full bloom two
decades ago in “Kika.” Spending the interim crafting immaculate
melodramas and collecting awards for his work, Almodovar hopes to
restore a little spark to his oeuvre with this attempt at a
sex-and-midair-panic cinematic soufflé, only to come up frustratingly
short in the laugh department. Although admirably bizarre and forward
when it comes to the dance of the pants, “I’m So Excited” doesn’t work
itself into a proper lather, showing only intermittent flashes of
inspiration.
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The found footage subgenre doesn’t always explain itself in full. Rarely
is there a film that establishes why we’re watching the video
recordings of others, electing to use the screen chaos of hand-held
devices instead of motivating their presence. “Paranormal Activity”
selected a police evidence angle to ease audiences into a haunted
atmosphere, but “Chronicle” didn’t even bother to follow through on its
collection of security footage and home movies. “Evidence” is perhaps
the most securely reasoned found footage effort to date, creating a
story that logically requires cops to sift through hours of confessions
and interactions on the hunt for a killer. It’s a welcome respite from
careless storytelling, but this creative spark is smothered by an
exhaustively subpar picture.
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The quirk flies hard and heavy in “Girl Most Likely,” which often
resembles more of a failed sitcom pilot than a feature film. Directors
Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini show no sense of timing and
tenor when it comes to the deployment of eccentricity in this comedy,
but they do have a reassuring figure in star Kristen Wiig, who
proficiently manages any challenge tossed her way. She’s the lone
highlight of this soggy, overeager effort, coming to the rescue of a few
embarrassingly forced moments of oddity, while consistently supporting
the rest of this painfully self-aware picture with her innate screen
gifts.
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Director Wayne Kramer certainly doesn’t make it easy to enjoy his work.
Obsessed with the murky state of the human condition, viewed through a
darkly comic prism, the helmer often treats his characters as pinballs,
dreaming up an elaborate play field of sickness and violence to explore.
After failing to dissect the state of illegal immigration in 2009’s
“Crossing Over,” Kramer returns to his roots with “Pawn Shop
Chronicles,” a warped collection of lurid stories that play like a cross
between “Creepshow” and “Pulp Fiction.” It’s high-flying, wound-licking
stuff, strictly for those who found the moviemaker’s 2006’s effort
“Running Scared” an underrated masterpiece. Outsiders should seek their
ugly entertainment elsewhere.
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A decade ago, the pairing of John Travolta and Robert De Niro would’ve
been considered event cinema, watching two popular actors square off in a
physically challenging thriller. Today, it’s not such an extraordinary
viewing experience, especially when both talents openly guide their
career by paycheck opportunities, seldom invested in the details of the
work. “Killing Season” is typical of De Niro and Travolta’s recent
dramatic interests, placing the two in a dreary, one-note cat-and-mouse
effort that’s rarely exciting and geopolitically numb. Derivative and
bizarrely graphic, “Killing Season” is nothing more than another
forgettable entry in two ongoing filmographies that desperately need
more inspired professional choices.
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