The LEGO Batman Movie

Grade: B

Director: Chris McKay

Starring the voices of: Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Mariah Carey, Jenny Slate and Channing Tatum

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 46 min.

The LEGO Batman Movie isn’t the DC movie we deserve, but it’s the one we need right now. In a time when the cinematic Caped Crusader feels both exhausted and exhausting, along comes a Lord & Miller-inspired parody to save the day. Director Chris McKay unifies the iterations, drawing its material from not just the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan exemplars, but also clever callbacks to the Adam West-starring TV series, the Super Friends cartoon and even the Joel Schumacher debacles, It even offers an olive branch to recent critics by taking some knowing jabs at the Zack Snyder re-imaginings. Want a film that lampoons Suicide Squad one moment—”I got to do something!” exclaims Killer Croc—then Bat Shark Repellant the next? Well, this is the Dark Knight for you.

You won’t find a funnier thirty minutes of film than LEGO Batman Movie’s opening act, with its surfeit of pop-culture references (including a recurring Jerry Maguire gag, of all things) and comic-book cues. Joker (Zach Galifianakis) leads a battle royale between the entire Batman rogues gallery, plus a cadre of concocting baddies like “Egghead” and “Condiment King.” It’s just a matter of minutes before Batman (Will Arnett, reprising his role from The LEGO Movie) has foiled the Joker’s plans again, but not before the proudly angry and lonely Batman refuses to acknowledge Joker as his greatest nemesis.

A wounded Joker quickly hatches his path to renewed infamy when Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) assumes the reins of police commissioner from her father. Normally, the sole duty of Gotham City police commish was the ability to push the button illuminating the Bat Signal. Barbara promises a new era of crime fighting based on “statistics” and “compassion,” and “not Batman.” When Joker and the rest of the traditional rogues gallery turns themselves into Barbara, it threatens to render Batman obsolete.

The rest of Joker’s plan rests on stoking Batman’s ego, exile to the Phantom Zone (yes, Superman doesn’t get off easy, either) and an escape accompanied by a new band of iconic villains: Sauron, Voldemort (Eddie Izzard), Gremlins, Dracula, Agent Smith, King Kong, Jaws and many more. It’s understandable if you spend large swaths of the film trying to figure out how the filmmakers acquired licensing privileges of all its characters.

Meanwhile, Batman’s psyche of solitude is invaded by both his latent attraction to Barbara and the arrival of orphan Richard Grayson (Michael Cera), who goes by “Dick” at school—”Well, kids can be cruel,” Batman retorts. The wide-eyed Grayson soon dons a red and yellow costume belonging to a scuttled hero named “Reggae Man” and adopts the moniker “Robin.” Nudged by the ever-reproving Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), Batman gradually recognizes the value of teamwork and embraces his new substitute family: Barbara the platonic coworker; Robin the surrogate son; and Alfred the father figure.

If the middle portion of LEGO Batman Movie appears to sag, it’s only in comparison to the joke-a-second opener. There’s little of the sentimentality of The LEGO Movie. Indeed, obvious appearances aside, LEGO Batman Movie is less a LEGO sequel than both a superhero send-up and an exhilarating standalone. It’s fun, family-friendly, and, in keeping with the heyday of Abrahams and Zucker, a searing satire accessible to kids and adults alike. Everybody do the Batusi.

Top Five

Take note: I didn't wear a suit & tie

for Grown Ups 2.

Grade: B

Director: Chris Rock

Starring: Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, JB Smoove, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, Romany Malco, Anders Holm and Cedric the Entertainer

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

Incorporating loose elements from Cinderella, Top Five is writer-director-star Chris Rock’s fractured fairy tale about the travails of being black and famous in America. Part comedy, part confessional, the film’s eclectic Woody Allen echoes reverberate through an urban canyon, following a meandering path that nonetheless reaches a thoughtful and even poignant destination.

Rock plays the thinly-veiled Andre Allen, a former standup comedian turned film star in the midst of two professional/personal turning points. Allen yearns to transcend his star-making but ultimately humiliating recurring movie role named “Hammy the Bear.” So, he decides to make a “serious” film named Uprize, a humorless but misbegotten movie about Dutty Boukman and the bloody 1791 Haitian slave revolt. Meanwhile, Allen is poised to marry Erica (Gabrielle Union), a blond weave-wearing reality TV star who is coordinating the wedding as a ratings-grabbing event for Bravo.

The success of both endeavors is crucial for Allen, a recovering alcoholic who is one flop away from having to stoop to Dancing With the Stars, according to his agent (Kevin Hart). So Allen agrees to be interviewed for The New York Times by Chelsea Brown, a reporter and single mom unintimidated by Allen’s celebrity and dismissive demeanor.

Together, they traverse Allen’s life, starting with his new world of PR reps, groupies, opportunists, and a media that vacillates between unctuous and antagonistic. They make their way back to Allen’s old neighborhood, where his father (Ben Vereen) begs for money whilst branding his son as a sellout. Allen’s extended friends and relatives—played by Tracy Morgan, Leslie Jones, Sherri Shepherd, Jay Pharoah and others—sit around and argue endlessly about their top five all-time rappers.

These lists of hip-hop superlatives are the film’s refrain, the ties that binds Allen’s divergent circles together. Meantime, Allen grapples with the fact that he feels like a stranger in both worlds, with duplicity around every corner. Ultimately, the only place he feels utterly at home and can “keep it real" is the one place he vows to never return: the comedy stage.

Top Five is profusely profane, and the sexuality of several scenes straddles the line of being gratuitous—a hotel scene involving a hedonistic Cedric the Entertainer and two hookers springs to mind. Then there are the kinky proclivities of Chelsea’s closeted boyfriend.

Indeed, only a Chris Rock movie would tackle the pitfalls of an interracial relationship involving a closeted gay man, or show a bawdy Jerry Seinfeld making it rain in a strip club, or reel off a joke about Marilyn Monroe and JFK’s assassination. Despite its rather formulaic finale, it all works by somehow bemoaning the worries of the rich and famous without sacrificing its mainstream accessibility.

Trance

Grade: C +

Director: Danny Boyle

Starring: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassell

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

A friend once said he held a special affinity for Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear because “it feels like Scorsese just having fun.” The same could be said for Danny Boyle’s Trance, his return of sorts to crime thrillers like his 1994 feature debut, Shallow Grave. But Boyle’s budgets and filmmaking collaborators have changed over the years, including regular cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (28 Days Later..., Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours). The consequence is a slick, self-assured oeuvre that, in Trance, Boyle dares to juxtapose against van Gogh, Rembrandt and Delacroix. Unfortunately, the film also mirrors a piece of modern art that holds less discernable meaning the longer you stare at it.

Introduced through a chorus of lens flares, synth bass and recital of his professional duties, Simon (James McAvoy) is an auctioneer working at a London-based auction house that’s robbed by Franck (Vincent Cassell) and his cartoony gang. Simon suffers a blow to the head during the heist of Goya’s “Witches in the Air,” briefly obfuscating the fact that Simon is complicit in the caper, the consequence of mounting gambling debts he owes Franck. Moreover, the trauma also gives Simon amnesia so he forgets where stowed away the priceless painting.

After crude means of interrogation prove fruitless, Franck turns to hypnotherapist named Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), who quickly realizes Simon isn’t there to find his missing keys but instead the missing artwork. And she wants her cut.

An generally taut heist flick soon leaps down a psychological rabbit hole, as Elizabeth’s repeated therapy sessions provide more insight into Simon’s backstory. But everything from the storyline to the characterizations are subsumed by Boyle’s stylism. Elizabeth is too self-assured; Franck’s patience and panache belies the portrait of a seedy British gangster. As Simon devolves into a nervy knot of neuroses, Boyle at first blurs, then obliterates the line between reality and fancy.

Trance feels like a film made by someone auditing a community college course in hypnotherapy by day and watching Inception on repeat every night. It’s captivating to look upon, and I’m not (just) talking about Dawson’s frequent nudity. The photography and camerawork are polished, the cast is capable (even when their characters are miswritten), and electronica score by Underworld’s Rick Smith propels Boyle’s frenetic pace. But once you manage to catch your breath a moment, the incongruities and illogic crowd out the visual acuity.

As the false endings pile up, there’s the chatty Big Reveal that ties up the loose ends...except it doesn’t. Boyle’s marriage of art and psychoanalysis implodes into an indulgent morass of mixed motives and plot twists. At one point, a character is given the option of pressing a button on a computer screen that will enable that person to “forget everything.” Bleary viewers of Trance won’t require any such assistance.

*Originally published at Indyweek.com

Unstoppable

Quick, we have to stop this train before the hard drive crashes!

Grade: B

Director: Tony Scott

Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Dunn, Kevin Corrigan, and Lew Temple

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

With a thundering sound mix drowned out only by the den of apposite popcorn-munching throughout the theater, Unstoppable is the quintessential example of a film that doesn’t try to be anything more than it is. An unmanned, half-mile-long freight train carrying thousands of gallons of hazardous phenol acid barrels through the Western Pennsylvania countryside at 70 mph, its destination the densely populated city of Stanton. It falls on two rail workers – veteran engineer Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) and newbie conductor Will Colston (Chris Pine) – to chase down and stop the “coaster” before disaster hits.

Loosely based on the 2001 “Crazy Eights” unmanned train incident in Ohio, Director Tony Scott amplifies his typical camera-in-a-blender action sequences with depictions of frenzied media coverage – including swooping news choppers, filmed using other unseen choppers – and dubious corporate agendas being foiled by hardnosed track manager Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson). And, Barnes and Colston are provided just enough back-story while riding the rails to feign character development.

Mostly, however, this is prototypical white-knuckle intensity that is slickly produced and – notwithstanding the pseudo-elephant trumpet that blares every time the runaway train rolls by – more reserved than Scott and Washington’s more recent collaborations, Man on Fire, Deja Vu, and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Unstoppable fits the criteria of the sort of movie Max Cherry said he wanted to see in Jackie Brown: something that starts soon and looks good.

Neil Morris

Eagle Eye

This whole Wall Street bailout debate
is getting way too emotional

Grade: C –

Director: D.J. Caruso

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, and Billy Bob Thornton

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 58 minutes

A crackerjack premise riffing on our omnipresent technological age rapidly devolves into a pseudo-political howler in Eagle Eye, director D.J. Caruso’s latest stab at an Alfred Hitchcock revue. Caruso’s last film, Disturbia, sought to unofficially ape Rear Window. This time, Caruso cooke-up a helping of North by Northwest with a dash of The Man Who Knew Too Much thrown in for seasoning

Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan are strangers who find themselves enslaved by the techno machinations of an unknown, omnipotent force. Matters remain suitably taut while the antagonist’s identity and motives remain cloaked in mystery. Unfortunately, enter a HAL-meets-Skynet supercomputer named Aria, buried deep below the Pentagon, that starts interpreting the clause in the Declaration of Independence about “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish” their government a bit too literally.

Four credited screenwriters slap on layers upon layers of twists and turns in hopes of stumbling upon a sensible endgame. The consequence is mind-numbing and riddled with plot holes, barreling headlong toward a ludicrous climax capped by a laughable, test audience-approved coda. Tack-on half-baked, ham-fisted political invectives directed against the war on terrorism and Patriot Act domestic surveillance, and you have a film geared chiefly toward paranoid conspiracy theorists. Think of it as Hitchcock…by way of Ed Wood, but with a bigger budget.

Neil Morris