New Releases for the Week of September 1, 2017

TULIP FEVER

(Weinstein) Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Christoph Waltz, Jack O’Connell, Holliday Grainger, Tom Hollander, Matthew Morrison, Judi Dench, Zach Galifianakis. Directed by Justin Chadwick

In 17^th century Amsterdam during the height of Tulip mania when prices for bulbs were skyrocketing beyond all sense, a young artist is commissioned by a wealthy merchant to paint a portrait of his beautiful wife, whose marriage to him had been arranged. Desperate and lonely, she falls in love with the artist. Together they plot to buy their freedom – by entering the volatile tulip market and hoping the right bulb will win them the wherewithal to buy their way out of their situation.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Period Romance
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for sexual content and nudity)

Hazlo Como Hombre

(Pantelion) Mauricio Ochmann, Alfonso Dosal, Aislinn Derbez, Humberto Busto. Three childhood friends grow into young men, chasing after women and doing all the things that young Hispanic men do…until one of them confesses that he is actually gay. The alpha male of the group and the most homophobic tries to convince his newly outed friend that it’s just a passing phase of sexual confusion but soon the situation becomes untenable and the other two must convince the alpha to put aside his prejudices and accept them at face value.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Regal The Loop
Rating: R (for sexual content throughout)

The Layover

(Vertical) Kate Upton, Alexandra Daddario, Matt Barr, Kal Penn. In this sex farce directed by esteemed actor William H. Macy, a pair of beautiful roommates – one a high school English teacher, the other a make-up salesperson – decide to swallow their professional disappointments and party the weekend away in Florida. On the flight there they meet a hunky young guy who both girls become smitten with. A layover in St. Louis due to bad weather in Fort Lauderdale gives them each a chance to win the object of their affections into their respective beds with each escalating the competition. All’s fair, after all, in love and sex…and maybe war.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Universal Cineplex
Rating: R (for language throughout, sexual content and some drug materials)

Patti Cake$

(Fox Searchlight) Danielle Macdonald, Bridget Everett, Mamoudou Athie, Cathy Moriarty. An aspiring rapper in the mean streets of suburban New Jersey struggles to find her path to glory and her own particular voice in an atmosphere of haters and doubters who are always betting against her. This was one of the more acclaimed movies to come out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival and also played the Florida Film Festival this year as well.

See the trailer, clips and an interview here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use and a brief nude image)

Temple

(Screen Media) Naoto Takenaka, Asahi Uchida, Natalia Warner, Logan Huffman. Three American tourists follow an ancient map into the uncharted forests of Japan searching for a near-mythical temple. Once they find it, they find themselves entrapped by the spirits dwelling within and they are soon in a fight for their lives against a supernatural opponent they barely comprehend.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: AMC Universal Cineplex
Rating: NR

Valley of Bones

(Smith Media) Autumn Reeser, Rhys Coiro, Steven Molony, Bill Smitrovich. A disgraced paleontologist gets a shot at redemption when a meth-addicted oil worker discovers what could be the find of the century in the North Dakota badlands. Both of them become partners on the dig but when their pasts threaten to catch up with them, find themselves as adversaries.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website (mobile version).
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, AMC Universal Cineplex, AMC West Oaks
Rating: R (for violence, language, drug use and some nudity)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Arjun Reddy
Baadshaho
I Do…Until I Don’t
Paisa Vaasool
Shubh Mangal Savdhan
Unlocked

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI:

Baadshaho
I Do…Until I Don’t
The Queen of Spain
Shubh Mangal Savdhan
Turn it Around: The Story of East Bay Punk

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA:

Baadshaho
I Do…Until I Don’t
The Neighborhood
Unlocked
The Vault

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE:

Baadshaho
The Neighborhood
Paisa Vaasool
Whose Streets?

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Tulip Fever
Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Neil. Patrick. Harris. Is. God.

(1988) Comedy (New Line) John Cho, Kal Penn, Paula Garces, Danneel Harris, Tom Lennon, Danny Trejo, Elias Koteas, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Neil Patrick Harris, Amir Blumenfeld, David Krumholtz, Patton Oswalt, RZA, Richard Riehle, Jake Johnson, Melissa Ordway. Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson

 

Christmas is a time for family. For bonding with those friends who have been beside you the entire year. To have kindness and concern for others, to have peace and compassion on your mind.

This movie is about none of those things. Our heroes, following the events of Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay have drifted apart. Kumar Patel (Penn) has left medical school after failing the drug test and lives in the same ratty apartment he once shared with Harold Lee (Cho), who has become a big-time Wall Street investor (and has protestors ringing his office). He is married to Maria (Garces) whom he is trying to get pregnant in order to impress his father-in-law (Trejo) who doesn’t impress easily.

Kumar has been dumped by Vanessa (Harris) who is pregnant with his rugrat. He’s also scored an impressive stash from a mall Santa (Oswalt) which he intends to spend Christmas smoking himself into sweet spliff oblivion. But he receives a package that is meant for Harold and decides to deliver it in person to his former best bud.

Harold though has problems of his own. His home has been invaded by his future family (who arrived by the busload) and his dad-in-law wants this Christmas to be perfect. To that end he’s brought a 12-foot Douglas Fir that he has spent the last eight years raising, making sure that the dimensions were just right, that the branches opened up just so. Once decorated, it is indeed a magnificent tree.

As he and his family go to celebrate Mass, Kumar comes by with the package which turns out to be a gigantic joint. As Harold no longer partakes, he tosses the massive thing out the door. Kumar, irritated, decides to light it up for himself but somehow, almost by magic, the joint floats back into the house and lights the tree on fire.

Harold is mortified. He has only a few hours to replace the tree and potentially save his marriage. Kumar, feeling a little guilty, decides to help out along with his friend Adrian (Blumenfeld) and Harold’s friend Todd (Lennon) and Todd’s toddler. In the course of the night, they will deal with Ukrainian mobsters, ghetto tree lot entrepreneurs, a coked-out infant, emergency surgery on the real Santa after they accidentally shoot him, and appearing in the chorus line of a Broadway musical starring Neil Patrick Harris which is a bit disconcerting to our intrepid heroes since he was killed in the last movie. Listen, he’s N.P. Freakin’ H, motherf****r so don’t be hatin’.

It’s been said in other places by finer writers than I that Harold and Kumar are essentially the Cheech and Chong for the 21st century. That’s cool by me; not being a stoner I don’t really get the humor as much but then there’s room for all sorts of movies and who am I to deny the Stoner Nation their due. I’ve seen the first and now this, the third, movie in the franchise and in all honesty, the first is a much better movie than this (to the surprise of no one). That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s worthwhile moments however.

This is no Christmas movie for the entire family to gather around the flat screen for. There is a lot of sexual humor, some of it quite crude as well as plenty of nudity and drug use. While some will laugh out loud at some of the pretty consistently lowbrow humor (it wouldn’t hurt to fire one up before you fire up the Blu-Ray), I don’t think even those toasted out of their skulls are going to find this a laugh fest from start to finish.

I will say that Cho and Penn have an easy-going chemistry and I think it was a bit of a mistake to have them on the outs for most of the movie. Part of the charm of the first movie was the relationship between the two and that’s largely missing here until the end. However, one cannot discount the contributions of Neil Patrick Harris. Even though he’s essentially in one scene, it’s the best scene and illustrates why the man’s an icon, a credit to the human race and just a gosh-darned all around nice guy. While he’s no Dr. Horrible here, he constitutes one of the main reasons to see the film – or any film for that matter. Even if he’s not in it.

The 3D is pretty nifty although I suppose at this point it will largely depend on if your 3D set is nifty as well – I’ve found a pretty staggering range of quality in 3D televisions. The jokes are more or less uneven although I found some sequences (as one where they start hallucinating that they are Claymation figures) to be pretty worthwhile. This isn’t a family holiday movie by any stretch of the imagination – but I think it’s not necessarily a bad thing if there are a few out there that aren’t.

WHY RENT THIS: Three words: Neil. Patrick. Harris. Also, Cho and Penn still have good chemistry. Some nifty 3D effects.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The humor is a bit tired and not all of it works.

FAMILY VALUES:  Lots and lots and lots of sexual content with occasional nudity and regular crudity, plenty of drug use, a boatload of foul language and a bit of violence. Just a bit.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Adrian calls Harold “Sulu” at one point. John Cho plays Sulu in the Star Trek reboot.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: Actor Tom Lennon rants about his fellow actors and the films in six separate interview segments and there’s also a bit on the brief Claymation sequence in the film.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $35.4M on a $19M production budget; the numbers were disappointing enough that a fourth Harold & Kumar movie isn’t on the radar.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

NEXT: The Holly & the Quill concludes!

New Releases for the Week of November 4, 2011

TOWER HEIST

(Universal) Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Tea Leoni, Gabourey Sidibe, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Judd Hirsch, Michael Pena. Directed by Brett Ratner

When the staff that work in an exclusive Manhattan apartment tower discover that their pensions have been stolen by a Wall Street billionaire who lives in the penthouse, they’re at first stunned. Some of them have nothing but their pensions to rely on and it appears that the old fraud is going to get away with it. However, the staff have a couple of aces in the hole; intricate knowledge of the tower and a school chum of the concierge who happens to be a professional thief. Even with a full house of FBI agents and security, these amateurs might have the best hand after all.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, promos and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: PG-13 (for language and sexual content)

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas

(New Line) John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Tom Lennon. The two stoner buddies have been apart for six years following their last adventure and have moved off into other circles, other friends. However a mysterious package that arrives at Kumar’s house begins a series of misadventures including the search for the perfect Christmas tree, the return of Neil Patrick Harris from the dead and the shooting of Santa Claus.  It’s quite possible that this movie will be much funnier while on drugs. Then again, most movies are. Besides, any movie with NPH in it is all right by me.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Comedy

Rating: R (for strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violence)

Take Shelter

(Sony Classics) Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Katy Mixon, Kathy Baker. A quiet family man in the Midwest begins to have terrifying dreams. Terrified of what the dreams may signify, he begins to work obsessively on a storm shelter in his backyard. His odd behavior begins to put a strain on his marriage and puzzles his friends and family who begin to question his sanity, but if he’s right the consequences may be far more dire than a trip to the mental institution.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Thriller

Rating: R (for some language)