Game Night

Enough of the "bored" games, amirite?

Grade: B +

Director:  John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein

Starring: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Jesse Plemons, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jeffrey Wright, and Danny Huston

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 33 min.

Landing is that rare category of movies that are better than they have any logical reason being, Game Night is an early-year diversion that sneaks up on you. On (and yeah, below) the surface, it lands on the well-populated space of Jason Bateman comedies where he plays the snarky straight man opposite some form of inanity. I was going to reel off a few examples, but even a cursory list would eat up my review space—suffice it to say that directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein penned the screenplays for both of Bateman’s Horrible Bosses films. In truth, writer Mark Perez’s Game Night script is a snappier brand of silliness, presenting a cinematic exhibition in which the audience already knows the rules, yet the gameplay this time is surprisingly more entertaining.

Max (Bateman) and his wife Annie (Rachel McAdams) meet cute over an evening of intense bar trivia, but the carefree, ultra-competitive personalities that make them whizzes at charades have also (somehow) inhibited their advancement towards parenthood. Enter Brooks (Kyle Chandler), Max’s successful, devil-may-care older brother, who invites Max and Annie’s weekly game night coterie to his rental mansion for an elaborate murder mystery. Things go haywire when two ruffians nab Brooks, leaving Max, Annie, and their four friends floundering to win a contest that may or may not be real.

Movie buffs will enjoy innumerable references that start with overall premise itself, a takeoff on David Fincher’s “The Game.” There’s a recreated Pulp Fiction monologue, a running Denzel gag that’s actually key to one subplot, and copious cues to The Terminator, The Matrix, Ed Norton plus every other actor who played the Hulk, and a mashup of Eyes Wide Shut and Fight Club, another Fincher film. The abode of one creepy character contains avian taxidermy revealed with a Dutch angle, an homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

The movie subsists on three simple filmmaking elements: a snicker-a-second script that keeps the audience guessing just enough, complemented by game cast. Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury play Kevin and Michelle, a lifelong couple suddenly rocked by the revelation that she once slept with a secret celebrity. Billy Magnussen plays Ryan, an affable doofus who invites an Irish workmate (Sharon Horgan) to the game as his ringer because, well, she sounds smart.

But besides Bateman, the real winners of this Game Night are three actors whose skills are particularly illuminated in this comedic setting, one in which the directors also give each the space to find their distinctive personas. Chandler plays the obnoxious Id to Batman’s backseat brother. Jesse Plemons is a revelation as a neighboring cop who’s wound way too tight since his divorce. And McAdams, so often pigeonholed as the supporting love interest, gets an equal spotlight with Bateman, and their comic alchemy carries the film.

Into a worthy season of Oscar hopefuls and a superhero movie turned cultural touchstone, Game Night arrives as a suitable date night, an enjoyable outing that’s somehow both smart and mindless. We could all use a little escapist comedy right now.

Spotlight

Grade: B +

Director: Tom McCarthy

Starring: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian d'Arcy James and Stanley Tucci

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 8 min.

It’s not “All the Pope’s Men,” but Spotlight illuminates the steno pads and shoe leather worn for the sake of authentic investigative journalism. Here it’s by The Boston Globe's ‘Spotlight’ team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in the United States, and their research into decades of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in Massachusetts and an ongoing cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese. The series articles on the scandal earned the Globe a 2003 Pulitzer Prize.

Spotlight—and Spotlight’s exploration—begins with the arrival of new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) in mid-2001. A passing column about abuse complaints against local parish priest John Geoghan prompts Baron to task Spotlight, led by Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), with taking a deeper look into years of similar abuse reports.

What unfurls is an old-fashioned procedural, as Robinson and his three-reporter team— Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy James)—fan out in search of victims and lawyers yearning to tell their story, as well as politicians and priests with hidden secrets. Pfeiffer and Robinson harangue attorneys involved in dozens of quiet out-of-court settlements. Rezendes attempts to track down victims and other damning sealed documents through Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), an eccentric local attorney representing hundreds of alleged victims. At each stop, the journalists encounter resistance, some motivated by fear of a powerful Church at the heart of every civic and cultural aspect of Boston, and some by past furtive failings inside the Globe itself.

Writer-director Tom McCarthy gives voice to some of those preyed upon for decades by Catholic priests without grandstanding. The horror of these crimes is self-apparent—the film eschews salaciousness or anything that detracts from the methodical manner in which the Spotlight team unearths the abuse and its concealment.

The ensemble cast succeeds mainly as a whole. Of the few moments set aside for individual performances, the standout is Ruffalo, who is outstanding in his idiosyncratic portrayal of the dogged Rezendes and his path from eager investigator to indignant crusader.

Where Spotlight falters is not fleshing out the overarching power of the Catholic Church in Boston and the means to maintaining secrecy. We hear lots of appeals to piety and Old Boys’ collegiality, but we never feel the fear that kept so many victims quiet for so long, and preserved a culture of secrecy at the highest levels of Boston government and society.

Contrast that with All the President’s Men, where the palpable pall of reprisal seeps through the screen. Still, Spotlight also ends with a resignation, and it gingerly positions Globe deputy editor Ben Bradlee Jr., son of the famed Washington Post editor at the center of the Watergate investigation, as a picture of journalistic recalcitrance.

In 1994, Keaton starred in The Paper, a film about a day in the life of a bustling New York City tabloid. Spotlight takes place against the backdrop of the transition between declining traditional print press and the rise of online media. In that respect, the film is not only a celebration of intrepid journalism, but also an elegy for a fading medium.

Southpaw

Body by Jake

Grade: C

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, Rachel McAdams, Oona Laurence and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 3 min.

That the protagonist in Southpaw is a white pugilist with the last name “Hope” is an indicator of this formulaic riches-to-rags-to-redemption boxing bore.

We’re informed early on that undefeated light heavyweight champ Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) were childhood sweethearts reared in a Hell’s Kitchen orphanage. But while Maureen has adopted the airs and elocution of the high life, Billy hasn’t shed the ferocity of his hardscrabble upbringing and the monosyllabic mumblings of his punch-drunk present.

Nevertheless, their genuine devotion to each other persists until a hotel brawl between Billy and an upstart contender (Miguel Gomez) ends with gunfire and Maureen’s death. This triggers a downward spiral in which Billy rapidly loses his title, his manager (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), his acquaintances, his sobriety, his home, and ultimately custody of his young daughter Leila (Oona Laurence) to child protective services.

Per the Boxing Movie Playbook, Billy returns to the hood to rehap in a dilapidated gym run by an aging trainer. Tick Willis (Forest Whitaker), formerly a cornerman for one of Billy’s former rivals, agrees to give Billy a janitor job and retrain him from a brawler into a boxer (Rocky 3 alert). Meanwhile, Billy must curb his drinking and kowtow to the court in order to regain custody of Leila.

The plotline to Southpaw is basically The Champ meets the story of Job. There’s no moment in that isn’t predictable, starting with the film’s title foretelling the same switch in strategy during the climactic fight as the one Mickey employed in Rocky 2. Plot turns seem to occur in a vacuum, oblivious to their buildup. Billy spends half the film trying to satisfy a skeptical social worker, Angela (Naomie Harris), that he’s a fit father.Yet once Billy and Leila are reunited, their first trip is traveling to Las Vegas so a little girl—accompanied by Angela no less—can watch her dad get pummeled into a bloody pulp in the ring.

The film feels suffocating at times thanks to Fuqua’s trademark grimy palette. The supporting performances are equally uninspired, including Whitaker, who usually pushes his method approach to quirky excess.

It falls to Gyllenhaal to drag this film along as if tethered to a training tire. He traverses a range of emotions throughout the film, from Billy’s testosterone-driven in-ring persona, to the self-destructive anguish of losing his wife and child, to the gradual and reluctant humility he accepts in order to reclaim his life.

Eminem was originally slated to play Billy, and while the rapper acquitted himself well in the autobiographical 8 Mile, this film’s director and material isn’t as self-sustaining. Gyllenhaal nearly gives a knockout performance in Southpaw. Unfortunately, it feels like the actor is fighting in a lower weight class.

Morning Glory

Little lady, you're young enough to be my next wife

Grade: B –

Director: Roger Michell

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, and John Pankow

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

The only convention Morning Glory defies is its early awards season release date. Anyone expecting an update of Broadcast News for the YouTube generation will have to settle for simulacrum that fun but “fluffy,” to borrow the script’s running word-gag. Indeed, South African director John Michell (Notting Hill, Venus) produces something that is a lot like the waning morning talk show at the story’s center: a contrivance occupying a once-vaunted medium that eschews the hard task of generating critical respect in order to take the path to quick and easy entertainment.

Rachel McAdams – who played a plucky news blogger in State of Play – plays Becky, a plucky television producer so devoted to her work (and sleep pattern) that she goes on afternoon dates and, even after being laid off from her job with an early morning show in New Jersey, still sets her alarm clock for 1:30 a.m. in order to watch the multiple TV monitors she sets-up in her bedroom.

Soon enough, Becky finds work with faux-TV network IBS, where the head of programming (Jeff Goldblum) taps her with the challenge of reviving Daybreak, its atrophied and perpetually cellar-dwelling morning program. Impeding this mini-Mary Tyler Moore making it after all is competition from GMA and the Today Show, a miniscule budget, a seemingly inept crew, and diva co-hosts Colleen Puck (Diane Keaton), an aging ex-beauty queen, and foot-fetishing Paul McVee (Ty Burrell).

After firing Paul during her first day on the job, Becky cajoles and semi-blackmails the services of Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), a Pulitzer/Emmy-winning veteran newsman under contract with IBS but languishing in semi-retirement after being pushed out of his evening news anchor’s chair. Described as the “third-worst person in the world” behind Kim Jong-il and Angela Lansbury – “She knows what she did,” says Adam (Patrick Wilson), Becky’s fellow producer and budding romance – Pomeroy is a relic who still yearns to do serious news but is trapped in a TV universe where ratings define relevance.

The denizens of Morning Glory are a collection of inglorious caricatures, sometimes made intolerable by the actors typecast to play them. The talented McAdams shines, even if she plays Becky as an indefatigable flibbertigibbet with bangs who would be better suited to a 1930s screwball comedy. Keaton continues her post-50 histrionic dingbat period – seeing her gyrate on set with the rapper 50 Cent as he performs the five-year-old “Candy Shop” is outdated on multiple levels. And, anyone lucky enough to miss “Extraordinary Measures” can still see what happens when the already grumpy old Ford plays a character written to be cantankerous – hint: there’s lots of growling and furrowed brows.

But, disliking the characters or on-air talent does not necessarily doom a show – how else to explain American Idol? Morning Glory possesses an innocuous charm that becomes infectious once you set aside any preconceived hope that the film will offer clever cultural commentary, media satire, or even a well-written romantic subplot. This is mainstream moviemaking at its most digestible – pass the frittatas.

Neil Morris

Sherlock Holmes

Robert Downey recreates that time he
broke into his neighbor's house.

Grade: B

Director: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, and Eddie Marsan

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hour, 8 minutes

Guy Ritchie’s kinetic update might not be “your father’s Sherlock Holmes,” but it’s a lot closer to your great-great grandfather’s. The reimagining of Holmes actually took place throughout the 20^th century on film and television with Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett’s beloved portrayals of Holmes as an over-mannerly sleuth in the Masterpiece Theater mold.

While Ritchie’s frenzied filmmaking style is strictly mod, his Sherlock Holmes is patterned more after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s complex, flawed literary incarnation. As narrated by his partner and friend Dr. John Watson, Holmes is an intellectual eccentric with a massive ego, eager to foil his criminal prey but mistrusting of the police. He is a skilled bare-knuckle brawling, has significant vices, including cocaine and morphine addictions, and possibly suffers from Bipolar disorder.

These traits inform Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, ably played by Robert Downey Jr., although the film does not dwell on Holmes’ dark side. Still, it is replete with Downey’s trademark idiosyncrasies – at this point, it is difficult to decide whether Downey’s personal travails inform his performances or merely steer his choice of roles. Regardless, his breezy Holmes keeps matters light and captivating throughout the film’s many saggy spots.

Set in London of 1891, the film’s original story opens with Holmes and Watson (Jude Law) apprehending the murderous, mystical Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), then later scrambling to track him down again after he apparently uses his knowledge of the black arts to rise from the dead and reanimate a secret society bent on world domination, called the Temple of the Four Orders.

Along the way, Holmes is reacquainted with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), an American grifter described – as in Conan Doyle’s books – as the only woman to outwit and, thereby, intrigue Holmes. While Adler’s appearance is a welcome nod the Holmes canon, Downey and McAdams share bare-bones onscreen chemistry.

On the other hand, the film’s most layered relationship is the bromance between Holmes and Watson, who Law portrays not as Nigel Bruce’s bumbling oaf, but as a curious, capable companion who has aspirations of his own – including impending nuptials to Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly) that Holmes aims to thwart. In Holmes, the buttoned-down Dr. Watson finds an outlet to quench his thrill-seeking thirst instead of his own dormant gambling addiction, while Holmes placates Watson’s nascent deductive abilities because he values the presence of his loyal ally.

While not an origin story, Sherlock Holmes borrows narrative elements from Batman Begins, including setting the stage for revealing the hero’s definitive foe in the inevitable sequel – here, it is a faceless Professor Moriarty. However, when Holmes begins to squat and hallucinate in the middle of pentagrams and deciphering ancient spells and map patterns to predict where the killer will strike next, the script devolves into a Victorian-era version of The Da Vinci Code.

Still, when Holmes finally provides the obligatory “big reveal” during a fight atop the still-under construction Tower Bridge, there isn’t a corresponding “big cheat”; rather, most of the answers have been in front of you all along. While the film’s coda feels perfunctory and Ritchie’s editing is choppy at best, it is small distraction from Downey’s humorous, spot-on performance, Law’s capable supporting turn, and Ritchie’s manic, steampunk rendering of 19^th century London. No, this isn’t your father’s Sherlock Holmes. Thankfully, it’s elementary that it might be your kids’.

Neil Morris