New Releases for the Week of January 10, 2020

1917

(Universal) George Mackay, Dean Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Richard Madden, Andrew Scott, Pip Carter. Directed by Sam Mendes

Two young British soldiers during the height of the First World War are given a nearly-impossible task; in a race against time, they must cross enemy territory to deliver a message to a battalion of soldiers who are walking into a trap – one of them the brother of one of the messengers. This won the Best Dramatic Movie at last weekend’s Golden Globes and is almost certain to be a major contender for the upcoming Oscars.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: War
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for violence, some disturbing images, and language)

Chhapaak

(Rising Star) Deepika Padukone, Vikrant Massey, Madhurjeet Sarghi, Ankit Bisht. The story of a woman in India who had acid hurled into her face, causing irreparable damage. Her refusal to accept an indifferent legal and medical system proved to be an inspiration to women all over India.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Cinemark Universal Citywalk
Rating: NR

Just Mercy

(Warner Brothers) Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson. A young lawyer just out of Harvard takes on a case in Alabama of an African-American man wrongly accused of a murder – and convicted of it, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary. The lawyer refuses to give up however and continues to defend his client despite an array of political power against him. Foxx’s name has come up in discussion for the Best Supporting Actor nominations.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Legal Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic content including some racial epithets)

Like a Boss

(Paramount) Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, Salma Hayek, Jennifer Coolidge. Two best friends who have built a cosmetics company from the ground up find themselves in over their heads financially. A buyout from a legendary industry maven seems to be the solution, but it’s only the beginning of their problems.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language crude sexual material, and drug use)

Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior

(Viva) Ajay Devgn, Saif Ali Khan, Kajol, Sharad Kelkar. The story of a legendary 17^th century Marantha warrior who fought for his king and his people and led them to a dazzling victory at Kondana Fort, leaving behind a legacy that illuminated the Indian imagination for centuries.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks
Rating: NR

Underwater

(20^th Century Fox) Kristen Stewart, T.J. Miller, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick. A group of underwater researchers find themselves facing a dire situation when an underwater earthquake devastates their facility and in their quest to reach safety they find themselves being stalked by something from their worst nightmares.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi action and terror, and brief strong language)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

3Pol Trobol
Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo
The Corrupted
Darbar
Reality Queen!
Sarileru Neekewaru
Three Christs

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE/KEY WEST:

3Pol Trobol
Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo
Darbar
Dawn
Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike DeGruy
Inherit the Viper
Sarileru Neekewaru
The Sonata
The Song of Names
Three Christs

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG/SARASOTA:

3Pol Trobol
Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo
Because of Sam
Darbar
Sarileru Neekewaru

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo
Darbar
Sarileru Neekewaru

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

1917
Just Mercy
Like a Boss
The Sonata
Underwater

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Dunedin International Film Festival, Dunedin FL
Miami Jewish Film Festival, Aventura FL
Sunshine City Film Festival, St. Petersburg FL

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The Catcher Was a Spy

Fog and espionage go together like pitchers and catchers.

(2018) Biographical Drama (IFC) Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson, Connie Nielsen, Shea Whigham, John Schwab, Hiroyuki Sanada, Giancarlo Giannini, Pierfrancesco Favino, Anna Geislerová, Bobby Schofield, Demetri Goritsas, William Hope, Milan Aulicky, Jordan Long, James McVan, Ben Miles, Agnese Nano. Directed by Ben Lewin

 

Doing a biography of a real individual is a difficult undertaking. It’s nearly impossible to get a sense of the subject in just a ninety-minute movie; real lives don’t always condense well. Sometimes, though, you get a subject who has so little known about them that ninety minutes seems too many.

Moe Berg (Rudd) was such a man. A journeyman catcher for five Major League ballclubs, he is depicted here near the end of his career with the Red Sox, being urged by his manager Joe Cronin (Whigham) to hang up his spikes and take up a coaching position. His teammates and contemporaries bestowed on him the nickname “The Professor” because of his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and his success on radio quiz shows.

But Berg had a destiny beyond the ballpark; fluent in seven languages, he was recruited by “Wild Bill” Donovan (Daniels) of the OSS – which would eventually become the CIA – to work initially as an analyst but eventually was sent out into the field to determine how close the Nazis were to developing an atomic bomb of their own and if they were close, to kill the lead German scientist Werner Heisenberg (Strong).

The film has a good number of atmospheric visuals, terrific production values that really bring forth the era and a stellar cast. All this combines to give the film a real noir feel which is a good thing. What it doesn’t have is a sense of urgency or of peril; the atomic race between the United States and Nazi Germany was essentially a struggle to the death for both nations. We never get that sense of suspense which would have been made the movie a lot more watchable; it feels more like an intellectual exercise.

Not all of that is the fault of the filmmakers. In real life Morris Berg was a private man to the point that it was nearly impossible to get to know him. He remains today as mysterious as he was in life. The movie brings up the rumor that the book this was based on did; that Berg was a closeted homosexual but there’s no valid evidence that proves or disproves it so rather than having the courage of its convictions, the film kind of wimps out on it. They do show him having a vigorous physical relationship with his girlfriend Estella (Miller) but even she found him a distant cold fish.

It’s hard for an audience to get behind a character like that and the normally very likable Rudd does his very best but in the end he becomes a bit standoffish and flat and the film kind of follows that lead. Berg is a fascinating character who deserves to have his story told but I sort of doubt it ever will be; the man was much too private for that to occur.

REASONS TO SEE: The strong cast gives it the old college try.
REASONS TO AVOID: Berg deserves a better movie.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity, language and brief sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The baseball sequences were filmed at Fenway Park in Boston.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Showtime Anytime, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/7/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 32% positive reviews: Metacritic: 49/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Spy Behind Home Plate
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Do It Yourself

New Releases for the Week of April 5, 2019

SHAZAM!

(New Line) Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou, John Glover, Natalia Safran, Grace Fulton. Directed by David F. Sandberg

A 14-year-old streetwise orphan boy is selected by the mysterious wizard Shazam to receive super powers, which he accesses by shouting out the wizard’s name. Instantly the boy turns into a ripped, buff man who has super powers. But which ones? Being a kid at heart, the boy superhero decides to have fun with his powers but things turn serious when an evil genius brings his dark forces to bear on the young hero.

See the trailer, video featurettes and clips here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Superhero
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of action, language and suggestive material)

Ash is Purest White

(Cohen) Tao Zhao, Fan Liao, Yi’nan Diao, Xiaogang Feng. The girlfriend of a low-level gangster is sentenced to prison for firing his gun when he is being beaten up by a rival gang. Refusing to give him up, she returns from prison only to find out that he’s moved on without her. This wonderful Chinese gangster movie played the Miami Film Festival last month. You can click on the link below (under Scheduled to Review) to read the Cinema365 review.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: NR

The Best of Enemies

(STX) Taraji P. Henson, Sam Rockwell, Anne Heche, Wes Bentley. Based on a true story, a civil rights activist and the leader of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Durham, NC find themselves chairing a committee to implement the federally mandated desegregation of schools in the summer of 1971.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: True Life Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG=13 (for thematic material, racial epithets, some violence and a suggestive reference)

Pet Sematary

(Paramount) Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jetė Laurence. A Boston doctor moves his family to rural Maine to start a quieter life. He discovers that there is an ancient burial ground in the woods behind his home. When tragedy strikes, his grief and desperation awaken an unfathomable evil that will enter his life with horrific consequences. The Stephen King novel on which this is based has already yielded an iconic movie back in 1989.

See the trailer, promos, video featurettes, interviews and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for horror violence, bloody images, and some language)

The Public

(Greenwich) Emilio Estevez, Alec Baldwin, Jena Malone, Gabrielle Union. An Arctic blast has turned downtown Cincinnati into a deep freeze. A mousy librarian grows a backbone, going against policy to allow the homeless to shelter in the library. What starts out as an act of protest turns into a police standoff

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, nudity, language, and some suggestive material)

Storm Boy

(Good Deed) Jai Coutrney, Geoffrey Rush, Finn Little, Morgana Davies. A successful businessman, retired now, begins to see images of his past that he can’t explain. He is forced to remember his childhood on an isolated coastline with his father and recounts the tale to his granddaughter, including his special friendship with an orphaned pelican.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Family
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall
Rating: PG (for thematic elements, mild peril and brief language)

The Wind

(IFC Midnight) Caitlin Gerard, Julia Goldani Telles, Ashley Zuckerman, Dylan McTee. A woman living in an isolated cabin on the prairie in the mid-19^th century is convinced that the constant wind is hiding something evil out beyond the line of sight. Although her husband tells her that it’s all just superstition, things are exacerbated with the arrival of another couple. Soon a chain of events is set in motion that will test the woman to her very core.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Barnstorm Theater, Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for violence, disturbing images, and some sexuality)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Majili
Palau The Movie
Transit

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Majili
Palau The Movie
Panchatantra
Romeo Akbar Walter
Screwball
Transit

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

The Chaperone
The Head Hunter
Majili
Mera Naam Shaji
Palau The Movie
Panchatantra
Prema Katha Chitram 2
Romeo Akbar Walter

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Majili
Mera Naam Shaji
Palau The Movie
Panchatantra
Romeo Akbar Walter

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Ash is Purest White
The Best of Enemies
Pet Sematary
Shazam!
Storm Boy
The Wind

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Sarasota Film Festival, Sarasota FL

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Being a superspy can go right to your head.

(2017) Spy Action (20^th Century Fox) Taron Egerton, Julianne Moore, Mark Strong, Channing Tatum, Colin Firth, Michael Gambon, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry, Thomas Turgoose, Sophie Cookson, Elton John, Pedro Pascal, Poppy Delevingne, Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson, Hanna Alström, Edward Holcroft, Keith Allen, Tom Benedict Knight, Samantha Coughlan. Directed by Mathew Vaughn

 

The first film in this nascent franchise, Kingsman: The Secret Service was a thinly veiled satire on spy film tropes and class warfare that included some fairly spectacular action set pieces and a notorious denouement in which a beautiful Swedish princess rewards the hero for saving her life by consenting to butt sex.

Critics of course took great umbrage to the latter and labeled it crass (which it was) and sexist (which it clearly wasn’t; women should be allowed to enjoy sex – even in the posterior – without it being some sort of political statement). There were some issues  revolving around an overabundance of gadgets and gimmicks but it was a solidly entertaining film that left the viewer anticipating a sequel.

So here it is; now that Vaughn has gone to the trouble of setting up his world of gentlemen spies, he decides to tear it all down by having the Kingsmen wiped out in the first act, leaving surviving hero Eggsy (Egerton) and gadget guru Merlin (Strong) asking the American counterpart – the Statesmen – for help (read into that what you want, politically inclined viewer). The agency works out of a Kentucky bourbon distillery and has agents with names like Whiskey (Pascal) who has a way with a whip, Champagne (Bridges) who is the agency head, and Tequila (Tatum) who has suspicions about the Brits. There’s also Merlin’s counterpart Ginger Ale (Berry) who suspects not all is morning in America.

They are up against a vicious, ruthless drug lord with a lavish jungle base. Now, you might have a vision in your head of a Latin hacienda but what Vaughn came up with is Poppy (Moore) who has a fixation on Happy Days-era America and has a bit of an inferiority complex. Lonely and bored in her jungle Main Street lair, she fills her days with vicious robotic dogs and Elton John (playing himself) whom she kidnapped to put on nightly concerts exclusively for her.

Vaughn has always excelled at action set pieces and he does so again here, but the camera work is highly kinetic and as a result many of the sequences are vertigo inducing and may work better for viewers susceptible to such things on the small screen. Still, he has no compunction about going way over the top and so he does here.

In my review of The Secret Service I maintained that the journey was out on Egerton who was lost among the gadgets a bit and here that is not so much the case. He comes off as smarmy and a bit superficial, a change from his cockney street kid turned gentleman spy in the first. It is not, I should say, a welcome change. Here Eggsy is trying to balance his relationship with the Swedish princess with his job as suave superspy. We rarely get a glimpse of his good heart that made him more palatable in the first film. This is what I would call a mistake in direction.

Moore is a talented actress but even she can’t elevate this role above the cookie cutter villain that Poppy turns out to be; all gimmick and no growl. She has her own plan for taking over the world and it’s a fairly clever one but it’s been done before both in Bond and in other imitations. While she has some fun interactions with the most venal President (Greenwood) ever, at the end of the day she lacks the spice to make her a truly interesting villain.

Most of the fun here comes from the supporting performances; Strong makes Merlin the heart of the Kingsmen and he gives the role more nuances than it probably deserves. Berry also shines as Merlin’s counterpart. I loved Elton John here as a kind of venomous caricature of himself, turning out to have some surprising ninja skills in the climactic fight. Never underestimate a gay pop star who has spent a career fighting for the lives of his fellow gay men during the AIDS crisis.

This simply isn’t as good as the first movie. While there are plans for a third film in the franchise and possibly a Statesmen spin-off film, I’m not looking forward to them as eagerly as I did this one. Once bitten twice shy when it comes to movie franchises and I suspect a lot of you out there feel the same way.

REASONS TO GO: Elton John is terrific in an extended cameo and Strong is equally so as Merlin. The fight scenes are hyperkinetic.
REASONS TO STAY: This is really not as good as the first movie. Egerton is too smarmy and Moore too generic.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a lot of violence, some drug use, a bit of sexuality and plenty of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: There are five Oscar winners in front of the camera: Moore, Firth, Bridges, Berry and Elton John, who won for Best Song.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Fios, Google Play, iTunes, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/2/18: Rotten Tomatoes: 52% positive reviews. Metacritic: 44/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Austin Powers in Goldmember
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Blade Runner 2049

The Siege of Jadotville

Jamie Dornan leads the charge.

(2016) War Drama (Netflix) Jamie Dornan, Mark Strong, Jason O’Mara, Emmanuelle Seigner, Guillaume Canet, Mikael Persbrandt, Fiona Glascott, Sam Keeley, Michael McElhatton, Conor MacNeill, Roman Raftery, Danny Sapani, Melissa Haiden, Leon Clingman, Conor Quinlan, Mike Noble, Charlie Kelly, Alexander Tops, Fionn O’Shea, Danny Keogh. Directed by Richie Smyth

 

In 1961, shortly after being granted independence from Belgian rule, the Republic of the Congo (today known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) suffered internal strife and civil war. Violence broke out almost immediately after independence and Belgium sent in paratroopers to protect white citizens who were fleeing the country, particularly from the Katanga region.

The United Nations, under the leadership of Dag Hammarskjöld (Persbrandt), saw the alarming developments as both the Soviets and NATO began backing rival factions in the Congo. It was decided to deploy a peacekeeping force, the first that the UN had ever done. Composed primarily of Irish troops under the command of Pat Quinlan (Dornan), they reported to the UN Secretary General’s aide Conor Cruise O’Brien (Strong) and were sent to the tiny outpost of Jadotville.

There they found themselves surrounded by rebel forces loyal to Moise Tshombe (Sapani) and under the command of Rene Faulques (Canet), a Belgian mercenary. With no support and in an untenable position, they were ordered to hold Jadotville and for eight days, they did. It was a heroic defense, but it would later be swept under the rug even in Ireland, where the deeds of the soldiers weren’t recognized until 44 years after the events took place.

Dornan is best known for playing Christian Grey in 50 Shades of Grey but he does a pretty competent job of portraying the resolute but inexperienced Quinlan. The Irish troops refer to themselves as “war virgins” and so they are, most of them having seen no combat in their lives more violent than a Friday night at their local pub. Unlike Grey, Pat Quinlan is a loyal family man with a beautiful wife (Glascott) waiting for him at home and although he has caught the eye of local adviser Madame LaFontagne (Seigner) he remains faithful and if you’ve seen Emmanuelle Seigner before, you’ll understand how difficult a proposition that is.

There are plenty of white actors here that play out the events that were detailed in the book by Declan Power on the siege; however despite the fact that this movie is set in Africa there are virtually no Africans in the cast although Sapani as Tshombe does stand out. Apparently colonialist attitudes are still prevalent in the West.

It has to be said that one sees a war movie for the battle scenes and first-time feature director Smyth does a competent job staging them; there isn’t quite the you-are-there quality of Saving Private Ryan or the horror of Apocalypse Now but nonetheless the scenes are thrilling and suspenseful. Action fans will get their money’s worth.

Still, there is a good deal of chest-thumping and platitude shouting and those items turn this from what could have been an interesting study of an event that history had buried to a standard direct to home video disappointment. It’s not a snoozefest by any stretch of the imagination but I found the movie to be uninspiring and considering what the soldiers went to during the siege and even more to the point after it – events of which are glossed over in an almost criminal fashion. I would have liked to have seen a good movie about the siege and the Congo Crisis but this frankly wasn’t it.

REASONS TO GO: Some of the battle sequences were well-staged. Dornan does a solid job as the lead.
REASONS TO STAY: A slow moving story with too much chest-thumping turns this into movie-of-the-week territory. There are hardly any Africans here to tell this story of events in Africa.
FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of war violence and some mild profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Conor Quinlan, who plays PJ in the movie, is the grandson of the real Pat Quinlan.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/11/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 60% positive reviews. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Beast
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: The Accountant

New Releases for the Week of March 11, 2016

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE

(Paramount) John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr., Douglas M. Griffin, Suzanne Cryer, Bradley Cooper. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg

After a car accident, a woman awakens in an underground bunker with a man who claims the outside world was destroyed in a nuclear war. Tensions build however as she begins to suspect that there’s something else going on outside. Not a direct sequel or prequel to Cloverfield but more of a blood cousin, according to creator J.J. Abrams.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and promos here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, IMAX
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for some thematic material including frightening sequences of threat with some violence, and brief language)

Brothers Grimsby

(Columbia) Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson. Two English orphan boys; one becomes the most skilled assassin in MI6, the other a football hooligan. Separated as young boys, the hooligan resolves to find his brother but when he finally does, he inadvertently botches a job putting the both of them in danger. On the run and hunted by friend and foe, the assassin realizes if he is to save the world – and himself – he is going to need the help of his idiot brother.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for strong crude sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, language and some drug use)

The Perfect Match

(CODEBLACK) Terrence Jenkins, Paula Patton, Kali Hawk, Brandy Norwood. A serial playboy, jaded and disillusioned about the permanence of relationships, takes a bet that he could stay with the same woman for one month without falling in love. However, the woman he falls for turns out to be the woman of his dreams. Will he choose love over money?

See the trailer, clips and interviews here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for sexuality, some nudity, and language throughout)

The Wave

(Magnolia) Kristoffer Joner, Thomas Bo Larsen, Ane Dahl Torp, Fridtjov Såheim. A picturesque Norwegian village, nestled in a beautiful fjord and bolstered by a lucrative tourist trade, sits in the barrel of a shotgun; a shifting of tectonic plates and the mountain sitting at the other end of the barrel could unleash a cataclysmic wave with only ten minutes for the villagers and the tourists to reach high ground. But the Wave is only the beginning of the disaster.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Enzian Theater (Friday night only)
Rating: R (for some language and disaster images)

The Young Messiah

(Focus) Sean Bean, Sara Lazzaro, Adam Greaves-Neal, Christian McKay. The life of the boy Jesus Christ, little known and only speculated at, is examined here as a seven-year-old boy must come to terms with his own divinity and his mission upon this earth.

See the trailer, interviews, a clip and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biblical Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some violence, disturbing images and thematic elements)

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Accessories are important for the true gentleman.

(2015) Spy Action (20th Century Fox) Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Caine, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Sophie Cookson, Sofia Boutella, Mark Hamill, Jack Davenport, Geoff Bell, Samantha Womack, Jordan Long, Tobi Bakare, Nicholas Banks, Edward Holcroft, Morgan Watkins, Jack Cutmore-Scott, Hanna Alstrom, Fiona Hampton, Lily Travers. Directed by Matthew Vaughn

The spy movies of the late 60s and onward have a certain place in the cultural psyche. They represent a particular era, sure, but they also represent the fight between good and evil, our fascination with technology and a certain sense of humor about life in the modern age. Our attitudes towards women, patriotism, freedom and what constitutes a gentleman have been largely shaped by these films.

Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Egerton) is growing up aimlessly in a working class London neighborhood. His dad died when he was a baby and his mom (Womack) has taken up with a local thug (Bell) named Dean. Dean abuses his mom but Gary isn’t strong enough to stand up for her or for himself. Dean despises him and ridicules him for it.

But Eggsy has a good heart to go along with his Cockney accent and when he gets arrested for stealing the car of one of Dean’s underlings and leading the police on a merry chase, he knows he can’t call home. Therefore, he calls the number on the back of an amulet once given to his mother by a gentlemen who came to inform her of the death of Eggsy’s father, remembering that if he called that number and read a certain phrase, help of whatever nature was needed would be forthcoming.

It comes in the form of Harry Hart (Firth), a debonair and well-dressed gentleman who tells Eggsy that in fact, his father once saved Harry’s life and that Harry wanted to repay that debt by offering his son the opportunity to try out for a position in the same super secret organization that his father served in and that Harry in fact serves in now – the Kingsmen. No, not the “Louie, Louie” bunch.

The Kingsmen are a secret, non-government affiliated group of highly trained, highly skilled gentlemen. They aren’t spies particularly; what they do is prevent bad things from happening. They have a seemingly unlimited budget and there are only a set number of them; when one dies they are replaced. This is the group that Eggsy is about to join – if he can survive the process of selecting the winning applicant, that is and it is a brutal one, focusing on teamwork, thinking on one’s feet and assessing dangerous situations. Most of the applicants are upper class snobs, although Eggsy befriends Roxy (Cookson), a female applicant (who gets her share of grief from the snobs, as does Eggsy) and Merlin (Strong), the tech wizard of the Kingsmen and the right hand of Arthur (Caine), head of the organization.

In the meantime, a tech billionaire named Valentine has big, bad plans. See, he’s a little bit concerned about climate change. Okay, he’s a lot concerned about climate change. He’s given up on the government doing anything about it and has decided that to make humankind’s carbon footprint smaller he needs to make the population smaller. His plan is to use a special cell phone signal through special SIM cards in free cell phones he’s given away to nearly everyone trigger a violent, murderous rage in those who hear it. Only those wealthy, beautiful few who he’s personally approached and implanted a microchip that cancels out the signal in their heads will be immune to the carnage, especially after they all are safely ensconced in bunkers around the world.

It’s a mad plan, certainly but Valentine is deadly serious about it. He’s even hired himself a mercenary army and constructed a lair within a mountain. You know he’s got to be a villain with a mountain lair. In any case, with Valentine’s powerful connections, getting to him won’t be easy and preventing an anarchic Armageddon even less so but that’s what the Kingsmen are there for, after all – to save the day.

Vaughn has made films based on Mark Millar comic series before (as this film is) and the collaborations between the two have been fruitful, producing the fine superhero film Kick-Ass for example. Vaughn has become one of my favorite directors of late with some excellent genre films to his credit. He knows how to make a film visually spectacular and hit all the right buttons in the fanboy psyche while not taking the movies so seriously that they become ponderous. His movies are almost always deeply entertaining.

And this one is no exception. Colin Firth as an action hero seems like a pretty unlikely casting, but it works here. Firth actually performed a surprising amount of his own stunts, but handles the role well, keeping a Bond-like facade of cool while kicking the butts of a group of Dean’s thugs, or some of Valentine’s flunkies, or a church full of homicidal fundamentalists.

Samuel L. Jackson makes a fine villain. Given several personality quirks (he gets violently ill at the sight of blood for example) by the writers, Jackson gives the character a lisp that makes him all the more memorable which is in the grand tradition of Bond villains. While the lisp does occasionally fall off, Jackson gives the character the right amount of menace to make for a formidable foe but enough goofiness to give the film a lighter tone. He also gets a nifty assassin in Gazelle (Boutella), who has no legs but on her Pistorius-like artificial limbs is fast, graceful and deadly as she is able to unfold sword blades from those artificial legs while in mid-air. Tres cool.

There are a lot of asides to the spy movies and television series of history; a reference to the Get Smart! shoe phone for example, or the glasses worn by super-spy Harry Palmer in films like The Billion Dollar Baby and The Ipcress Files. Clearly there are several Bond references although many are turned on their ear; Valentine at one point has a speech in which he says “This is the part where I reveal to you all my plans, and then come up with a slow and convoluted way for you to die, and you come up with a convoluted way to escape and stop me. Except this isn’t that kind of movie” at which point he shoots his nemesis in the head, much like Indiana Jones once shot a swordsman making fancy moves before he could attack.

Egerton shows a lot of potential, although I can’t say he’s a slam-dunk future star. He’s got charisma but he wasn’t really asked to carry this movie (as well he shouldn’t have been) and so I’m not certain he can rise above the gimmicks and gadgets, of which there are plenty here. The jury is out on him for me, although I can see him eventually ascending to a leading man status.

The humor here is mostly dry although there are some broad physical jokes here from time to time. Those who find the English wit not to their liking may consider this not their cup of tea, although I enjoyed this a great deal. In fact, this is the most entertaining movie I’ve seen thus far this year (which isn’t saying much) and one of the most entertaining I’ve seen in the first quarter of any year (which is saying a lot) ever. For those looking for a fun time at the movies, this is your best bet at least until some of the more anticipated movies of the spring start appearing next month. I certainly wouldn’t complain if this became the start of a new Fox franchise.

REASONS TO GO: Highly entertaining. Great action sequences. Strong performances throughout.
REASONS TO STAY: Relies a bit on gimmickry and gadgetry. May be too droll for some.
FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of violence and mayhem, some pretty crude language and some sexuality and brief nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The menswear shop on Savile Row which is the entrance to the Kingsman headquarters is based on Huntsman, a real store in the area. Because shooting in the actual shop would have been impractical, a set was built copying many of the characteristics of the original although production designer Paul Kirby added his own touches to give the set its own personality.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/22/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 73% positive reviews. Metacritic: 59/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: This Means War
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Hot Tub Time Machine 2

The Imitation Game

Beauty and the Beastly

(2014) Biographical Drama (Weinstein) Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, James Northcote, Tom Goodman-Hill, Steven Waddington, Ilan Goodman, Jack Tarlton, Alex Lawther, Jack Bannon, Tuppence Middleton, Victoria Wicks. Directed by Morten Tyldum

During World War II, one of the crucial technological breakthroughs made by Nazi Germany was the development of Enigma, a virtually unbreakable code using an ingenious machine whose code key changed daily. The Germans did virtually all their communicating with it and were able for that day to relay orders from command to the fronts quickly and efficiently. The Allies found that breaking that code would be the key to winning the war – and the code was considered unbreakable.

British Intelligence, in the person of Commander Denniston (Dance) and the mysterious Stuart Menzies (Strong) of the nascent MI-6 are looking for the best and the brightest cryptographers to break the code. Currently their team based in Bletchley Park is led by Hugh Alexander (Goode) has had no success and at midnight each day all their work comes to naught as the Germans change the code key.

Into this mix they bring Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) , a brilliant mathematician and cryptographer. He is also arrogant and a social misfit, unable to communicate with even the barest cordiality with his team. He dreams up a machine that can calculate combinations of letters and numbers faster than even the human brain, one that can go through an infinite number of calculations without stopping in the course of a day. Unfortunately, it proves expensive and cumbersome and is yielding no results. Denniston is eager to shut the project down but Alexander surprisingly stands up for Turing with whom he has butted heads endlessly.

Turing needs more help and he gets it in a comely young woman named Joan Clarke (Knightley). Brilliant in her own right and intellectually Turing’s equal in many ways, she is held back because she’s got breasts and apparently those cumbersome things prevent her from thinking clearly and concisely because….well, I don’t get it but it has to do with hormones and…I don’t know, because men have been idiots for a very long time?

In any case the team has to weather the frustration of knowing that every day they don’t solve the code that thousands of Allied soldiers die. Denniston is completely out of patience and has given the team a hard deadline to get results. Menzies also lets Turing know that someone on his team is funneling information to the Soviets. Finally there’s the awful realization that even if they do solve the code, they have to make sure the Germans don’t guess that they’ve broken it – otherwise they’ll just improve their machine and then the Allies will be back to square one, which means they’ll have to decide which information to act on – which also means letting people die when they might possibly have saved them, which leads to tragic consequences for one member of the team.

Beyond that Alan has a secret of his own – he likes boys and not just in a fraternal way. Homosexuality is illegal in Britain and if word got out that Turing is one it will be all the ammunition Denniston needs to get rid of Turing. Actually, there is one thing Turing likes more than boys – that’s Christopher, the creation he has built to crack the code and Christopher is, in a very large part, the forerunner of modern computers.

The real Turing would be credited by no less than Winston Churchill for winning the war, but nobody knew the extent of his involvement until just 20 years ago when some wartime secrets were declassified. In fact that Enigma had been broken at all was a very closely guarded secret that Turing himself didn’t even take credit for and when asked, he would say he worked in a radio factory during the war. But far from being grateful for his service in saving millions of British lives, he was convicted of being a homosexual and disgraced, forced to take chemical castration treatments. A year after his treatments were completed, he died of cyanide poisoning, ruled a suicide although there are those who think that the poisoning may have been accidental.

This is the first English-language film for Norwegian director Tyldum (Headhunters) and it’s already netted him praise and award nominations including the DGA award. He shows a very good eye, juxtaposing scenes in the bucolic Bletchley Park campus with the spartan lab facilities filled with all sorts of electrical gear.

Tyldum is fortunate in his casting as well, with Cumberbatch turning in a performance that has already garnered major award recognition and is likely to be bringing in an Oscar nomination later this week. It is certainly one of the most outstanding performances of the year. Turing portrayed here is awkward and unlikable, honest and blunt to the point of rudeness. He is supreme in his knowledge that he is right and doesn’t like to waste time arguing the point. He knows he has a momentous task ahead of him and while outwardly at times he may seem to look at it as a game, a kind of brain teaser, there are moments when he lets slip that he is fully aware it is anything but. He is tormented and dreadfully unhappy, brilliant but alone in his brilliance. He also has a tender heart which breaks easily. The only person he can truly confide in is Joan and even in her case he can’t tell her everything.

Cumberbatch isn’t alone. Knightley turns in another sterling performance as the brilliant but repressed Joan, whose parents discourage even the hint of impropriety but she yearns to do something that makes a difference and has the intellect to do it, but is unable to exercise it because of attitudes towards women at the time. Only Turing gives her the opportunity to flower and she is extremely grateful – to the point when he asks her to marry him she says yes even though he only does it to keep her at Bletchley. Joan in Knightley’s capable hands is a thoroughly modern woman in a very snazzy wartime suit.

In fact the film manages to capture the period nicely, although this is definitely a movie with modern sensibilities. Tyldum parallels the attitude towards women hampering Joan’s career with the attitude towards homosexuality being a constant fear for Turing although one gets the sense that he felt that due to the indispensable nature of his war contributions that the government would turn a blind eye and maybe they did but that attitude certainly caught up to him.

What happened to Alan Turing was disgraceful and a waste of human potential. However, the movie made about his work does honor him and that’s very important to remember – not all film biographies are this respectful. Many who knew Turing have commented that the movie was fair in its depiction of Turing who was at turns arrogant, brilliant and sweet. One of the great performances of the year is reason enough to go see this, but there are many others as well.

REASONS TO GO: Cumberbatch gives an award-worthy performance, and receives ample support from the rest of the cast. Does honor the memory of Turing well.
REASONS TO STAY: Could have cut down on the repetitious scenes of the cryptographers failing to solve Enigma.
FAMILY VALUES: Depictions of drug use and one scene of disturbing violence are what got this an “R” rating.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Cumberbatch, who is distantly related to Turing, wore dentures based on Turing’s actual dental imprints as did Lawther who played Turing as a young boy.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/14/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 90% positive reviews. Metacritic: 72/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Theory of Everything
FINAL RATING: 9/10
NEXT: The Gambler

New Releases for the Week of December 26, 2014

INTO THE WOODS

(Disney) Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Christine Baranski, Daniel Huttlestone, Lilla Crawford, Lucy Punch, Tammy Blanchard. Directed by Rob Marshall

In a kingdom of myth and legend, there lies a village on the edge of the woods where a baker and his wife live. They want nothing more than to have a child, but they have been unsuccessful so far. In rolls a witch who tells them that they’ve been cursed, but tells them in order to reverse the curse they need to gather a cow as white as milk, hair as yellow as corn, slippers that glitter like gold and a cape as red as blood. Into the woods they go to find these things and there they’ll find Cinderella, Prince Charming, Rapunzel, Jack (and his beanstalk), Red Riding Hood and assorted giants, wicked stepmothers and princes. But in the woods, nothing ever goes the way it’s supposed to and the woods are indeed a dangerous place. From the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical and the director of Chicago.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release formats: Standard (opened Wednesday)
Genre: Musical
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material)

Big Eyes

(Weinstein) Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Krysten Ritter, Danny Huston. Walter Keane was one of the most successful painters of the 1950s and early 60s. His figures, with oversized eyes and waif-like expressions became a cottage industry to themselves. The trouble is, that he didn’t pain any of them. Not a one. His wife Margaret did.

See the trailer, clips, a promo and premiere footage here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release formats: Standard (opened Wednesday)
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements and brief strong language)

Force Majeure

(Magnolia) Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wettergren, Vincent Wettergren. While on a family ski vacation in the Alps, a family enjoying lunch on the terrace dining room of the resort they are staying at witness an avalanche bearing down on them. As people scatter and his wife and children panic, a family patriarch will make a decision that will shake his marriage to the core and leave him struggling to regain his role in the family as well as a man.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for some language and brief nudity)

Foxcatcher

(Sony Classics) Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller. The eccentric heir to an enormous fortune decides to spend some of his wealth on creating an Olympic training camp for wrestlers. Inviting a gold medal winner and his brother to the family estate where he has created that state-of-the-art camp, the increasing paranoia of the would-be coach and the unhealthy lifestyle that he has led his charges into leads to an incident that nobody expected. Carell is said to be a front runner for the Best Actor Oscar for his performance here.

See the trailer, clips and promos here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for some drug use and a scene of violence)

The Gambler

(Paramount) Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Brie Larson. An English professor who loves to take risks and has become a high-stakes gambler on the side. Owing money to Asian and African-American gangsters and a violent loan shark who warns him of the hole he’s digging in, his budding relationship with a student may end up being more collateral than he’s willing to pay. A remake of the 1974 James Caan drama.

See the trailer and an interview here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release formats: Standard (opened Wednesday)
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide release
Rating: R (for language throughout and for some sexuality/nudity)

The Imitation Game

(Weinstein) Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Mark Strong, Charles Dance. Alan Turing was one of the great mathematicians of his day. His work helped break the Enigma code which was thought to be unbreakable; it helped win World War II for the allies. However, the road to breaking that code was perilous and torturous and Turing was hiding a secret that if it came out might have derailed his work altogether.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release formats: Standard (opened Wednesday)
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Wide release
Rating: PG-13 (for some sexual references, mature thematic material and historical smoking)

Unbroken

(Universal) Jack O’Connell, Garrett Hedlund, Domhnall Gleeson, Finn Wittrock. Louis Zamperini started out as a kid who constantly was getting into trouble with other kids and the law. However, the big brother he looked up to steered him towards track and field, enabling him to become an Olympic champion. After enlisting to fight in the Second World War, his plane was shot down in the ocean and he and a fellow airman endured 47 days adrift in the Pacific before being picked up by a Japanese warship and being sent to a brutal prisoner of war camp where he underwent intense physical and mental torture. His courage and will to survive remain as inspiring now as they were back them.

See the trailer, interviews, clips, featurettes, premiere footage and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release formats: Standard (opened Wednesday)
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for war violence including intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language)

New Releases for the Week of October 31, 2014

NIGHTCRAWLER

(Open Road) Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmad, Ann Cusack, Kevin Rahm, Carolyn Gilroy, Leah Fredkin. Directed by Dan Gilroy

Down on his luck and desperate for a job, any job, Lou Bloom stumbles into the world of the nightcrawler – pseudo-journalists who go to crime scenes and get video of victims for local newscasts. It turns out Lou is really good at it but the more he sinks into the morass of compromised ethics and victims translated as cash, the closer to real trouble he comes.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opened Thursday)

Genre: Thriller

Rating: R (for violence, bloody images and language)

Before I Go to Sleep

(Clarius) Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Anne-Marie Duff. The victim of a traumatic accident is no longer able to form new memories; she wakes up each morning with all the events of the previous day erased from her mind. Instead of being surrounded by benevolent friends and family however, she may be surrounded by people who want to do her harm – and to make sure her memories remain erased.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opened Thursday)

Genre: Thriller

Rating: R (for some brutal violence and language)

Horns

(Radius) Daniel Radcliffe, Juno Temple, Kelli Garner, Max Minghella. Suspected of violently raping and murdering his girlfriend, a man wakes up after a night of hard drinking with horns growing out of his head. He soon discovers that the horns can compel people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and perverse desires. Using this as a tool, he determines to discover the real culprit and make him pay.

See the trailer, promos, a clip and a link to order the full movie at Amazon here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Supernatural Fantasy

Rating: R (for sexual content, some graphic nudity, disturbing violence including a sexual assault, language and drug use)

Missionary

(Freestyle Releasing) Dawn Olivieri, Mitch Ryan, Kip Pardue, J. LaRose. Katherine is an ordinary housewife separated from her husband and raising her kid alone. She gets romantically involved with a Mormon missionary and things seem to be looking up. Then, she and her husband reconcile. She attempts to break-up with her boyfriend but he doesn’t seem to be inclined to take no for an answer and will stop at nothing to keep her as his.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for violence, sexuality and language)

The Zero Theorem

(Amplify) Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Melanie Thierry, Lucas Hedges. In the near-future, a gifted but damaged computer genius works in solitude on a project designed to prove that everything equals nothing. An odd cast of characters either help him or hinder him in his work. The latest movie from visionary director Terry Gilliam had a special screening earlier this year at the Enzian due to the movie having been written by UCF professor Pat Rushin. You can read my review of it here.

See the trailer, featurettes and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Science Fiction

Rating: R  (for language and some sexuality/nudity)