The Night Before

Just what I always wanted ...

another Seth Rogen stoner comedy

Grade: B

Director: Jonathan Levine

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anthony Mackie, Lizzy Caplan, Jillian Bell and Michael Shannon

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

Sometimes lowbrow humor can produce high art. The Night Before is bawdy and irreverent, a stoner Christmas comedy that skewers everything from parenthood to celebrity worship to both religious and secular iconography. An expectant father smokes marijuana that causes him to envision his unborn daughter as an adult pole dancer. His friend is beaten up by drunk Santas. His other friend, a famous footballer, cavorts with a hippie chick who only wants to steal his weed.

It’s uproarious, yet somehow coalesces as a yuletide film that references classics like A Christmas Carol and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas as well as postmodern holiday flicks like Die Hard, Home Alone, and a convivial jab at The Polar Express. The Night Before is far too ribald to join the perennial rotation of family Christmas films. But if you like your stockings stuffed with shrooms, then this is the movie for you.

For the past 14 years, Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Isaac (Seth Rogen) and Chris (Anthony Mackie) have reunited on Christmas Eve for an evening of revelry, a tradition started after Ethan’s parents suddenly passed away during the holidays. Today, Chris is a popular, thirtysomething footballer whose suddenly stardom stems from a syringe. Isaac is a lawyer facing impending fatherhood with wife Betsy (Jillian Bell). And Ethan still can’t cope with the breakup from his longtime girlfriend, Diana (Lizzy Caplan).

On the occasion of their final Christmas Eve get together, Ethan pilfers passes to the mythical Nutcracker Ball, a secretive soiree somewhere in midtown. While waiting for directions to the party, the trio traverse their normal haunts: the piano mat at FAO Schwarz; a karaoke bar; Chinese food. Ethan trips out on the box of drugs Betsy bought off Craigslist and gifted to him, accidentally swaps cell phones (and “coke blood”) with Diana’s friend Sarah (Mindy Kaling) and happens upon a hallucinogenic Christmas Eve mass. Chris loses his weed to a Grinch-style groupie (Ilana Glazer) and doesn’t really want to run into his mom, while Ethan hopes to rendezvous with, and win back, Diana at the ball.

Director Jonathan Levine jettisons the emotional complexity of his previous dramedies The Wackness and 50/50, which also starring Gordon-Levitt and Rogen. The Night Before is raw and ribald, placing it squarely in Rogen’s wheelhouse and reminding us that comedy is Gordon-Levitt’s strong suit. Mackie’s comic timing is sharp, but the real sardonic standout is Michael Shannon as Mr. Green, the boys’ past and present pot dealer who doubles as their intense guardian angel.

Despite its plentiful pop culture ferences and literary derivations, The Night Before runs on the thinnest of plots, a deficit that emerges once it finally arrives to the big bash. The narrative comedown is accompanied by Miley Cyrus, a faux-crucifixion and James Franco’s Cheshire Cat grin. Still, the sunny denouement is a necessary detox from the preceding debauchery. The film is just funny—it doesn’t make much sense, but neither do many fables.

Ant-Man

You're gonna need a bigger mound

Grade: B +

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Peña, Tip "T.I." Harris, Bobby Cannavale and Anthony Mackie

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 57 min.

The saying “big things come in small packages” as it relates to Ant-Man doesn’t just refer to the tiny titular super hero. It also speaks to the easy, breezy air surrounding another sturdy Marvel Studios stand-alone not distended by angst-filled demigods, interdimensional villains and overstuffed storylines.

As ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is being recruited by scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to assume the Ant-Man mantle, Lang asks why they don’t just call the Avengers to fix the apocalyptic problem du jour. “They’re probably busy dropping cities out of the sky,” Pym retorts.

The tension between Ant-Man’s connection to and detachment from the Avengers ethos runs through both the film’s plotline and its production history. Edgar Wright, who wrote/directed Shaun of the Dead and the rest of his Three Flavours Cornetto film trilogy, and writing partner Joe Cornish worked on their Ant-Man movie treatment for over a decade. In mid-2014, Wright, also tapped as director, left the project due to creative differences. Enter Peyton Reed, the Raleigh, North Carolina native whose directorial credits include the pastel Down With Love and the Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man.

What remains is a self-contained heist film steeped in charisma and humor, with its toe dipped just far enough to integrate it into the overarching Marvel Cinematic Universe. During the film’s 1989 prologue, Pym—the original comic book Ant-Man created by Stan Lee in 1962—parts ways with Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., mothballing his subatomic research and shrinking serum in the process.

Decades later, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), Pym’s former protégé, is on the cusp of cracking Pym’s research and militarizing it. When Lang—a petty crook behind on job opportunities and child support since being released from prison—burgles Pym’s house, he only finds the Ant-Man suit. Pym decides that Lang is the right choice to become the new ant whisperer and stop Cross, despite the doubts of Hope (a remarkably buff Evangeline Lilly), Pym’s daughter, who has a contentious history with Pym following the mysterious death of her mother.

In contrast to Marvel enemies motivated by Infinity Stones and sundry disfigurements, Cross is driven by pure greed and betrayal. He eventually dons his own Yellowjacket shrinking suit to wreak havoc, but there’s more palpable menace earlier when Cross zaps a disapproving business partner into a dollop of bloody tissue, which he blots with a tissue before unceremoniously flushing it down the toilet.

At the same time, Reed maintains a deliberate distance with the danger. When Ant-Man and Yellowjacket engage in explosive combat atop a runaway locomotive, Reed pans out several times to remind the viewer that it’s actually taking place aboard a miniature train set behind propelled by a Thomas the Tank Engine.

The levity runs through the supporting cast, from Douglas as the droll straight man to Lang’s buddies in crime, played by Tip "T.I." Harris, David Dastmalchian and a scene-stealing Michael Peña as Lang’s former cellmate.

While Rudd’s comedic credits don’t suggest big action hero, the actor’s sardonic script contributions and wiseacre persona suit the film’s cheeky tone. Lang doesn’t crave hero status or even deserve it. He’s an everyman with a checkered past, overdue obligations, failed marriage and daughter he wishes he could see more. He also yearns direction in his life, something he’s unable to divine before Pym plucks him from rudderless obscurity.

Ant-Man’s visuals are passable. Reed adroitly handles the action sequences, particularly Lang’s constant shrinking and enlargement. But Ant-Man’s miniature world evokes a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids pastiche, and the special effects rendering of Lang’s ant army reminded me of the 1954 nuclear monster classic Them!

The seamless segue for Ant-Man’s eventual insertion into the Marvel storyline comes when he faces off with the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) while breaking into Avengers’ HQ to purloin some gizmo widget. There are also two teasers during the closing credits—one in the middle and one at the end—that preview a new heroine and how Ant-Man might feature in the next Captain America sequel.

Until then, Ant-Man is a—dare I say—delightful origin story propelled by Wright’s wit, Reed’s light touch, and the wry delivery of Rudd, Douglas, Peña and the rest of the cast. Like an ant, the movie dutifully fulfills its entertainment obligations despite carrying a film franchise far above its weight.

Pain & Gain

SPF 20K

Grade: B -

Director: Michael Bay

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Rebel Wilson, Tony Shalhoub and Ken Jeong

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

Was Michael Bay’s vision of American society actually its mirror image all along? Looking back, is it mere coincidence that in 1995 when Bay released Bad Boys, his first garish big-budget behemoth, about two Miami cowboy cops, the real-life Sun Gym Gang was in the throes of its brutal spree of kidnapping, torture, extortion and ultimately murder across South Florida? Is it coincidence that Pain & Gain, Bay’s latest feature 18 years hence, comes full circle geographically and, in some ways, thematically? [Between this and Spring Breakers, it hasn’t been a good month at the movies for The Florida Commission on Tourism.]

It is difficult to give Bay too much credit for seeing the story of Daniel Lugo and his band of muscle-bound murderers for what it is: an embodiment of the American dream on steroids. Based on a 1999 series of Miami New Times articles by writer Pete Collins, it’s set a modern-day milieu where everything is supersized, from abs to ambitions, from bodybuilding to Benjamins. Intent notwithstanding, Bay’s bombastic camerawork, slow-mo montages and oversaturated palette are the oddly apt canvas for a tale that even the director of Armageddon needs to continuously remind the audience is based on a true story.

In world divided between “doers” and “don’t-ers,” Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) fancies himself among the fittest former. A mix of moxie and make-believe, he ranks Rocky, Scarface and Michael Corleone among his personal heroes. And, his motivation is worthy of admiration, as when he exponentially increases membership at the Miami-based Sun Gym where he works as a take-no-prisoners fitness trainer.

One of his clients is Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), an unctuous businessman with an ego as massive as his bank account. Spotting an easy and deserving mark, Lugo enlists his hapless workout buddy Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) and Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson, ever-improving), a hulking ex-con and born-again-Christian. Together they hatch a plan to kidnap and coerce Kershaw into signing over his fortune—money, cars, residence, etc.—to the trio. Lugo dreams of a life of mansions, backyard barbeques and riding lawnmowers; Doorbal wants to purchase injections to reanimate his steroid-shriveled testicles; Doyle, well, is a timid Lenny who finds wealth far more problematic than poverty.

Bay’s impulse to portray the Gang as bumbling beefcakes rather than monstrous meatheads works—to a point. There’s merit to lampooning the inanity of Kershaw’s month-long captivity and would-be murder, followed by the need for Kershaw to enlist the services of private investigator Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris) after the Miami police refuses to assign credence to Kershaw’s unbelievable tale. But torture, dismemberment and homicide—both attempted and actual—merit far greater reproach than what’s typically reserved for the Keystone Cops. Pain & Gain’s comedy is pitch black, but it remains comedic nonetheless even at moments when a more agile director would recognize the need to modulate tone and deconstruct characters. Instead, Bay chooses odds ways to pull his punches, like couching any of the actual murders by the Gang as accidental.

But modulation is hardly Bay’s hallmark, and here is no exception. Dissatisfied with the satirical, Bay again indulges in the scatalogical, epitomized by an inexplicable scene in which a fat, incontinent patient leaves bile smeared all over the walls and floor of his hospital bathroom. In a story whose truth is already stranger than fiction, one character feeds his severed toe to a pet chiwawa. And in what universe does a gaggle of married male suburbanites, with their wives looking on, breathlessly volunteer to role-play a rapist attacking Doyle’s stripper girlfriend (Mindy Robinson) during an upscale Community Watch meeting? Misogyny? Check. Homophobia? Check.

In truth, Pain & Gain is a setting that cries out for Michael Bay’s filmmaking technique, but it’s a story that demands the satirical tone of the Coen brothers. Lugo may as well have been talking about Bay when he declares, “Some people don’t know a good thing when it’s staring them in the face.”

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Split THIS Union!

Grade: C –

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Starring: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rufus Seawell

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min.

As a stylized mashup, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (hereafter just Dishonest Abe) doesn’t live up (or down) to its titillating premise. Re-imagining the Rail Splitter’s life as a revenge quest against the coven of vampires who killed his mother and, later, threaten the Union, the film is not without its provocative passages. But, this adaptation of Seth Graham-Smith’s 2010 epistolary-style novel, written as a faux-biography of Lincoln, distends from its self-serious plot and cartoonish presentation.

Years after the death of his mom (Robin McLeavy), a vengeful Young Mr. Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) is recruited by flamboyant vampire hunter Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper) with promises of retribution. Armed with a silver-lacquered axe, Abe swings into gory action, checking off Sturges’ hit list with nocturnal fury.

Once Lincoln falls for Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and gets a taste of politics, however, he holsters his hatchet and sets his sights on higher office, where Lincoln hopes to take a holistic approach to exorcising the bloodsuckers intent on taking over the United States.

Director Timur Bekmambetov (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, seriously) only hints at the campy fun that should have been the film’s heartbeat, first during a chase and battle through a horse stampede, and later onboard a runaway munitions train that somehow travels at the same speed as The Underground Railroad (watch and you’ll see what I mean).

But with decades of vital American history to traverse, Dishonest Abe soon adopts a cursory countenance that makes for—dare I say—dull viewing. Walker is fine as the early unknown Abe, but it feels like he’s just playing dress up as the bearded, rutted 16^th president brooding over, well, everything.

Moreover, shoehorning the scourge of slavery and the whole of the Civil War under the rubric of a (un)death struggle against Nosferatu proves more kitschy than clever, down to the obsequious inclusion of Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), Lincoln’s African-American boyhood mate and eventual 19^th century edition of Reggie Love. The whole morass eventually devolves into a murky computer-generated spectacle—layered with needless 3-D, natch—lifted from the long-since tired 300 palette. Likewise, Dishonest Abe is drained of its energy and eventually becomes a bloody bore.

Neil Morris

Man on a Ledge

A preferable alternative to seeing "Man on a Ledge"

Grade: C

Director: Asger Leth

Starring: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Genesis Rodriguez, Ed Burns, Anthony Mackie and Ed Harris

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 42 min.

Although it lifts the iconography of Wall Street calamity—a man perched atop a Manhattan high-rise, threatening to leap to his death—along with a New York financier-cum-bogeyman (Ed Harris), Man on a Ledge draws from the Occupy movement only in the same way X-Men: The Last Stand was informed by the struggle for gay rights. It’s a gimmick in search of a punch-line, much like Phone Booth, another New York-set lone man-in-peril piffle.

Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) is an ex-cop convicted of stealing and destroying the world’s most priceless MacGuffin, a diamond belonging to Harris’ David Englander. After escaping from prison, Nick hatches a plan to threaten jumping from the highest floor of the Roosevelt Hotel, gathering the attention of literally dozens of onlookers and an equal number of media types and their choppers. It’s all a ruse, as the audience is too quickly told, since Nick is only the diversion for his brother (Jamie Bell) and girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez, the flash of her in lingerie the only reason to see this movie), who are across the street inside Englander’s vault pulling off an actual diamond heist in order to prove Nick’s innocence.

Got that? Everything else here is designed to soften the film’s fall as it slowly plummets to its death. There’s a fallow subplot about cop corruption involving Nick ex-partner (Anthony MacKie), and the inexplicable presence of Lydia Mercer, a disgraced police psychologist whose world-weary, hard-living persona is instantly discredited by the fact that she’s played by the inescapably gorgeous Elizabeth Banks.

As contrived as it is convoluted, screenwriter Pablo Fenjves’ tall tale relies on the absurd premise that the reappearance of a man famously convicted for stealing a precious gem will provide the perfect cover for the actual theft of that same jewel taking place literally across the street. It also relies on plot holes and other oddities—e.g., for reasons never explained, Nick wipes away his fingerprints from inside the hotel room before crawling out its window, yet later knowingly provides a print to Lydia that reveals his identity. And, the rushed, ridiculous climax is irrational on multiple levels, not the least of which is its slipshod, climactic concept of legal due process.

But beyond the illogical narrative and character motives is the fact that Man on a Ledge isn’t nearly as exhilarating as its title suggests. Instead of high-flying fun, it’d be better off taking a long walk off a short perch.

Neil Morris

The Adjustment Bureau

You're not leaving this room until you sign onto "The Bourne Legacy"

Grade: B

Director: George Nolfi

Starring: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slatterly, and Terence Stamp

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 46 min.

The Adjustment Bureau ultimately isn’t a Matrix-esque sci-fi thriller or some metaphysical foray into the eternal questions of free will and fate.

Sure, there are heady issues bandied about in this loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story, “Adjustment Team,” in which an unseen, omnipotent, and conspicuously ecumenical “Chairman” dispatches his band of “adjusters” to steer the course of human events.

Clad in Mad Men attire, these angels of fate do not control human thoughts or actions – although they are able to wipe a person’s memory – but can influence external events in order to obtain a predetermined outcome. For example, they cannot force someone crash their car into another, but they can alter a traffic control signal at the moment your vehicle is entering an intersection.

Instead, writer-director George Nolfi constructs a giant hamster maze designed to test the lengths two crazy kids will go to find true love. David Norris (Matt Damon) is a charismatic Congressman seemingly destined for political stardom. In the midst of an unexpected election night defeat, David has a random but memorable encounter with Elise (Emily Blunt), a beguiling beauty and aspiring dancer.

It turns out the Chairman and his bureau – including Harry (Anthony Mackie) and Richardson (John Slatterly) – has future plans for David and they do not include Elise. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game between David’s compulsion to be with Elise and the efforts by higher authority to keep them apart.

Plot holes abound, even discounting the script’s science-fiction context. No reasonable explanation is given for why this league of extrasensory gentlemen can perceive human emotions but not thoughts, or how they know where all of mankind is and will be at all times but somehow keep losing track of David and Elise whenever they enter each other’s orbit.

That said, there’s a witty, charming Ernst Lubitsch touch applied to much of The Adjustment Bureau – memories of Heaven Can Wait spring to mind. It nicely partners with the palpable chemistry between Damon and Blunt, two able, handsome actors who entice us into caring about their characters.

Alas, Nolfi – and perhaps studio “adjusters” – don’t trust the strength of their material. Matters take a revealing, but dark turn when a taciturn, troubleshooting adjuster named Thompson (Terence Stamp) arrives on the scene. Time and again the filmmakers try to amp up the script with chase sequences - filmed on location in Manhattan – involving cars, doorway portals, and a stairway to nowhere except a finale that feels suspiciously like the product of test-audience pandering. The mixing of styles and genres is Nolfi’s stated intent, but his execution creates tonal inconsistencies that keep the viewer constantly off-kilter.

Fortunately, it’s the rapport between Damon – ever the likeable Everyman – and Blunt that determines Adjustment Bureau’s fate. In particular, this is Blunt’s best performance since her early work in My Summer of Love and, later, The Devil Wears Prada. Here, she is mischievous, vulnerable, and always fetching. And, scenes of Elise’s modern dance routines made me envision another alternate reality: one where Blunt was cast as the Black Swan.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://goo.gl/unU3H

The Hurt Locker

This summer's latest action movie, G.I. JOE,

now in theaters...oh, wait...

Grade: A –

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Ralph Fiennes, Evangeline Lilly, and Guy Pearce

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hours, 11 minutes

Of all the taut, gripping images in director Kathryn Bigelow’s exceptional Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker, one of the simplest lingers longest in your mind.

Pinned down by sniper fire in the middle of the desert with a group of British mercenaries, three American soldiers endure insufferable heat for hours, waiting out – and killing – their adversaries one by one. In the stillness of their stakeout, flies conspicuously hover and nestle on the soldiers’ faces, as if these men striving mightily to stay alive were somehow already dead.

Set in 2004, Hurt Locker follows the final month in the rotation of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit, or “Blasters,” whose mission is to defuse or otherwise nullify enemy mines and IEDs. Following the death of the squad’s leader (Guy Pearce, in a cameo), Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are joined by Sgt. Will James (Jeremy Renner), a hotshot whose expertise and brazenness have helped him disarm over 800 bombs. James enjoys each disabling mission not just as a challenge, but as an almost a sexual rush that typically calls for a post-coital cigarette.

A scene in which Eldridge unwinds by playing a war-themed video game evokes both the psyche of the war-torn soldier and the nature of the actual war. The Iraqi battlefield is depicted as an arid theater in which opposing sides engage in an unending, deadly game of cat-and-mouse, devoid of politics, religion, or any other animating ideology. In the arena of urban warfare, distinguishing friend from foe is both paramount and nearly impossible. An enemy could be peering from behind or atop any building; an IED could be hidden underneath any innocuous bag of garbage. For the locals, war has become a spectator sport – children fly kites from rooftops as suicide bombs detonate below.

Although Hurt Locker certainly benefits by comparison to the many previous lackluster films about America’s war in the Middle East, it is no small praise to declare it the best non-documentary yet about the Iraq War. Making her first feature film since 2002’s K-19: The Widowmaker, Bigelow finally realizes her promise as a filmmaker. Filmed in Jordan, her action sequences are both austere and breathtaking – “edge-of-your seat” is an appropriate compliment. Meanwhile, the screenplay was written by Mark Boal, a journalist who spent time embedded with an actual bomb squad in Iraq (Boal’s 2004 article about the death of an Iraq War veteran was the basis for Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah).

The heart Boal’s script is an exploration of the soldiers’ survival instincts. In the waning days of their tour, Sanborn retreats to the safety of caution and protocols. In contrast, James faces down the enemy and its deadly devices headlong. He is either a deus ex machina or a reckless cowboy with a death wish, and the tension resides in whether his methods harm or protect his squad mates.

Where Hurt Locker falters is when the focus shifts too far onto James’ growing mental and emotional volatility, triggered primarily by the discovery a bomb hidden inside the cadaver of a young child and manifested chiefly by his sudden desire to embark on seek and destroy missions for anonymous triggermen. While this allows Renner to expand on an already noteworthy performance, it disrupts the balance between the characters.

The film’s title is generally a colloquialism for inflicting pain on someone else. In the context of the film, there are alternate allusions. First, there’s the crate James keeps under his bunk containing dozens of triggering devices he has previously diffused, which remind him of the number of times he has cheated death. And then there is the bulky suit Blasters wear when approaching an explosive device up close, a kind of mobile sarcophagus that is relatively ineffectual against short-range detonations at preventing pain or death. Ironically, it is also the place James feels most at peace – he even takes to sleeping in his blast helmet.

Contrast that with a short scene near film’s end, in which James, temporarily States-side between deployments, visits a local grocery store to buy breakfast cereal for his estranged wife (Evangeline Lilly) and their child. James looks upon the aisle of seemingly limitless choices with both perplexity and alienation. The “real world” has lost its meaning. For soldiers like James, the only way to feel alive is to keep facing death.

Neil Morris