Tag

Jeremy Renner knows he’s better than you.

(2018) Comedy (New Line) Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Isla fisher, Lil Rel Howley, Hannibal Burress, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Nora Dunn, Leslie Bibb, Rashida Jones, Steve Berg, Indiana Sifuentes, Trayce Malachi, Jock McKissic, Thomas Middleditch, Al Mitchell, Sebastian Maniscalco, Vince Pisani, Kurt Yue, Kate Kneeland.  Directed by Jeff Tomsic

 

There’s a line in the movie that really rings true; “We don’t stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing.” Keeping that child-like part of ourselves alive means we’re ever changing, ever growing. Play can be a part of that; it teaches us about ourselves, if nothing else.

Hoagie (Helms), Jerry (Renner), Bob (Hamm), Chili (Johnson) and Sable (Burress) have been playing the same game of tag for thirty years. They’ve grown up a little bit since then; they’ve relocated all over the country from their native Spokane and have gone on to their own lives and their own families. But for one month every year – May, as it turns out – they are fair game to a no-holds-barred take-no-prisoners form of the children’s game.

It has helped keep their bonds strong even though they lead separate lives but for four of them, there’s a unifying factor – Jerry has never ever been tagged “it,” not even once, in thirty years. This will be the year, even though financier Bob has a reporter (Wallis) trailing him, even though Hoagie’s wife (Fisher) is about to lose her mind with competitive fire and even though Chili will be back in the territory where his ex-wife (Jones) dwells. For this will be the last year; Jerry is taking himself a bride (Bibb) and this will be his last year playing the game.

The filmmakers could have gone a few different routes with this and they elected to try and go down two different paths at once; the raunchy one and the heartwarming one. As fellow critic Roger Moore observed, they may have missed an opportunity by going the PG-13 route and thus attracting a larger audience pool but as it was, they didn’t do so badly.

The raunchy stuff isn’t as raunchy as other comedies that go there but it is enough to warn home viewers from letting their tweens and youngsters get hold of it. The element that gives the viewer some good warm fuzzies is well-earned without being too treacly, although there is a bit of a twist that was a little over-the-top.

As far as the comedy bits (mostly having to do with the lengths the players will go to tag Jerry and the lengths he’ll go to keep from getting tagged) while they were generally well-executed, some bent the boundaries of suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. That aside, this was a little bit better than I expected it to be although not quite as good as Game Night.

REASONS TO SEE: Occasionally heart-warming comedy about the bonds of friendship.
REASONS TO AVOID: Some of the comedy is a bit far-fetched.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a fair amount of profanity, brief nudity, some crude sexual content and drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is loosely based on an ongoing game of tag played by four friends in Spokane, Washington.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, HBO Go, iTunes, Movies Anywhere, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/10/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 56% positive reviews: Metacritic: 56/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Hangover Part II
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel

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Cold Blood (La mėmoire du sang)

Jean Reno is hunting for an audience.

(2019) Action Thriller (Screen Media) Jean Reno, Sarah Lind, Joe Anderson, David Gyasi, Ihor Ciskewycz, François Guėtary, Samantha Bond, Robert Feldman, Kateryna Buriskova, Anna Butkevich. Directed by Frėdėric Petitjean

 

The mountains of the Pacific Northwest are a cold place, as cold as an assassin’s heart. With so much desolation, there are plenty of places to hide – hide from civilization, hide from society, hide from life. Most of all, to hide from one’s past.

A young woman crashes her snowmobile in a desolate part of the mountains. Badly injured, she manages to crawl to a cabin where a middle-aged man finds her. The woman is Melody (Lind) and she’s far from everything. The man is Henry (Reno) and he has a particularly bloody past. He nurses the woman back to health, but she is remarkably evasive when he asks her “What are you doing out here?”

In the meantime, Spokane police detective Kappa (Anderson) – recently transferred in from New York – is obsessing over the death of a wealthy industrialist, murdered in a sauna. Coincidentally, he was buried in Spokane where he was originally from. The trail for his killer has gone cold and all that is known is that he used a special kind of ice bullet that melts after impact, effectively wiping out any ballistic evidence there might have been.

It soon becomes clear that Henry was the ice bullet-wielding killer but what part does Melody have to play in all of this? Is she just the innocent traveler she claims to be, or does she have a hidden connection to Henry? I think you all already know the answer to that.

This Franco-Ukrainian co-production harkens back to the hitman action films of such genre geniuses as Luc Besson and Renny Harlin. As a matter of fact, one of the movie’s big problems is that it leans too hard into action films of the 80s and 90s, being absolutely infected with cliché dialogue and rote action sequences. As for plot, this is paint-by-numbers screenwriting with the big twist being impossible not to figure out well in advance of the big reveal.

Jean Reno deserves better. He is a terrific actor whose role in Besson’s Leon: The Professional essentially defined the role of the ice-cold hitman. Henry is essentially Leon; a little more grey in the beard, a little more paunchy but just as dangerous. Reno sleepwalks through the role with an expression that just screams “How the eff did I end up in this film?” I have to wonder the same thing. Nothing in the script gives me reason to suspect that this was something Reno really wanted to do. I imagine the money must have been right. That or he had a mighty yen to see the Carpathian Mountains, where most of this was filmed. Still, even when he is not at his best, Reno remains very watchable.

There are lots of plot holes here (the snow is a couple of weeks from melting but there are still football games on TV, for example) and small towns in Washington state are apparently full of people who speak with heavy French and Ukrainian accents. It is missteps like these and many others that characterize the film and make it a lot harder to watch than it needed to be. There are some decent suspense sequences and Anderson gives a performance that reminds me a bit of Tim Roth. The cinematography is mighty pretty if you like your woods snowy.

This is a forgettable movie that is one you are unlikely to want to see twice, even if you indeed are persuaded to see it once. This doesn’t even have the gift of being so bad it’s good – it’s just a movie that you will likely watch for 20 minutes before switching it off and looking for something else to watch unless you’re one of those optimistic sorts who are sure that it’s bound to get better. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. Still, even a bad Jean Reno film isn’t completely unwatchable but I suspect only the most diehard of his fans are going to be eager to see this one.

REASONS TO SEE: Reno is at his best when he is in full-on grumpy mode as he is here.
REASONS TO AVOID: There are way too many plot holes.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of violence and profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This marked the first time in 14 years that a Wes Anderson film didn’t feature Jason Schwartzman in the cast (he did co-write the script).
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/6/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 10% positive reviews: Metacritic: 27/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Leon: The Professional
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: The Catcher is a Spy

Mozart and the Whale

Josh Hartnett and Radha Mitchell are taken for a ride.

(Millennium) Josh Hartnett, Radha Mitchell, Gary Cole, John Carroll Lynch, Rusty Schwimmer, Erica Leerhsen, Nate Mooney, Sheila Kelly, Robert Wisdom. Directed by Petter Naess

Asperger’s Syndrome is a form of autism in which the patients are high-functioning, with a difficulty in socializing but an amazing ability to lock in on something that fascinates them, whether it is mathematics, trivia or molecular structure. They are often misunderstood as social misfits when in reality they just don’t have the mechanism to cope with social situations that the rest of us take for granted.

Jerry (Hartnett) is a New York cab driver who is afflicted with Asperger’s. He can add numbers in his head like a human calculator, but he has trouble carrying on a conversation without turning it into a non-stop soliloquy filled with random facts. He loves birds to the extent that many fly free in his terminally cluttered apartment, and he often takes one with him to work driving his cab (which begs the question; wouldn’t it fly out the door whenever someone got in or out?) much to the discomfort of his passengers.

Like many Asperger’s patients, he needs routine and structure and when things break out of the routine, he has difficulty coping. When he accidentally runs into a parked car, he gathers his things and walks away, leaving a group of angry people.

He belongs to a group of fellow Asperger’s patients, and he takes comfort in the presence of people he can relate to, even though some of them like Gregory (Lynch) can be a bit on the curmudgeonly side.

Into this group comes Isabelle (Mitchell) who has been referred to it by her therapist. She is the diametric opposite of Donald; where he is introverted and shy, she is straightforward and without fear. She is direct where he is not. She comes into his life much like a cannonball would come into a group of Civil War-era infantrymen and she has much the same effect. She invites him to a Halloween party and dresses up like Mozart; he puts on a rather disheveled whale costume and almost doesn’t show up because he is so obsessive about time.

Despite all the obstacles, the two form a romantic partnership that brings a brand new dimension into their lives. When Isabelle cleans up Donald’s apartment, he freaks out but eventually he begins to learn how to accept her presence into his life. When he realizes that they can’t afford the house she wants and the lifestyle they both want, he takes a job at a university in statistics where he excels. When he invites his boss over for dinner, it turns into a disaster largely in part to Isabelle’s inability to cope with the situation.

There is obviously a deep emotional connection between the two, but it becomes just as clear that their Asperger’s is getting in the way of their relationship. Will they be able to overcome something so deeply ingrained in them?

This is based loosely on real life couple Jerry and Mary Newport. Norwegian director Naess, whose resume includes the Oscar-nominated Elling, does a magnificent job in portraying the disease, so much so that the movie is often screened at legitimate autism conferences as an illustration of the social consequences of the disease.

Hartnett, who was reportedly unhappy with the final version of the film and consequently did little or no promotion of the movie, does some of the best work of his career here. He gives Donald depth that one wouldn’t expect, making him seem real and authentic. Much of this is due to Ronald Bass’ script but Hartnett pulls out some nuances that I didn’t think he had in him based on previous performances. This is the kind of movie that could get him more challenging roles if he wants to pursue that kind of work.

Mitchell, who has become a steady leading actress since first attracting notice in Pitch Black, also does a great job, making Isabelle entirely non-stereotypical and giving her the kind of spunk and fullness of life that make her in many ways the most memorable aspect of the movie. While Hartnett’s performance is more subtle, Mitchell gets to go over the top here and she does it nicely without descending into parody. Her and Hartnett make an attractive couple and while the chemistry is non-traditional, it works all the same.

The supporting cast of veteran character actors does well in their roles, particularly Lynch and Schwimmer. At no time do you get the feeling that anyone is looking down on their characters; these are all real people with real problems and while they may have different challenges than we do, that makes them no less fascinating.

This is director Naess’ first American film, and he does pretty well although the pacing gets a little choppy. Then again, that may be due to the nature of the characters that can lose interest in something and simply stop. That makes it occasionally difficult on the viewer who feels like the movie is veering off unexpectedly. It’s a kind of cinematic vertigo. While he never descends into movie of the week treacle, there are a few moments that are overly sentimental to me but thankfully they are few and far between.

While most look at Rain Man as their view into autism, in many ways this is a much more authentic look (although some groups have criticized the movie for playing into the perception that all autism patients have savant-like skills, which is actually much more rare than Hollywood would lead you to believe) at the disease. As a society, we tend to marginalize these people or worse, ignore them altogether. Hopefully, a viewing of Mozart and the Whale will give you a fresh perspective on a disease that affects real people and is in nearly every community in one form or another.

WHY RENT THIS: A very authentic-feeling look at the lives of those with Asperger’s Syndrome. Hartnett and Mitchell have some quirky chemistry.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The movie’s pacing can be a bit abrupt. There are moments that are a bit mawkish.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some allusions to sexual subjects and a little bit of foul language but otherwise nothing too disturbing. However, the subject matter may be a bit much for smaller children.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The screenplay was written by Ronald Bass who also wrote Rain Man, another movie about autism. He was inspired in this case by a 1995 article on Jerry and Mary Newport.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Tony Manero