Month: July 2015

A well-known staple of Psych 101 textbooks, the 1971 exercise depicted in the film The Stanford Prison Experiment also has plenty of detractors in the field. As a docudrama, the film contains very good acting and, if you don’t bother to think about it too much, can seem quite the provocative conversation catalyst.

Philip Zambrano (a fine Billy Cruddup), a psychologist at Stanford, whips up a summer project using student applicants, who he paid $15 a day. Quickly screened to attempt to weed out the psychologically damaged, the 21 subjects are then randomly split into inmates and guards to simulate a real prison experience for two weeks. College corridors and classrooms, empty for the summer, we’re transfixed into cells and there was even a solitary confinement “hole.” The guards adopt uniforms including sunglasses and wield billy clubs; the inmates wear smocks containing their ID numbers, chains around their ankles, and stocking-like caps. Zimbardo gets local police to lend a hand by simulating actual arrests, and the inmates are handcuffed, searched, blindfolded, and then stripped and “de-loused” on their way to their cells.

Once interaction begins , the guards, especially a taunting self-described Cool Hand Luke-inspired Strother Martin-like Chris (Michael Angarano), begin to get nasty and abusive. Inmates at first endure it, but eventually rebel. The “no physical violence” rule instituted by Zimbrano is quickly ignored and the whole experiment threatens to spin out of control. Meanwhile, Zimbrano, who along with a couple of assistants maintains surveillance, expresses not wanting to intervene but to “let things play out.”

The problem with such an experiment is the variable of participants’ guessing which behaviors researchers are expecting. These expectations are known in the research field as “demand characteristics.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that subjects put into this environment would likely respond the way the guys in Zimbrano’s “prison” did. Thus, this wacky experiment may have a seemingly compelling and luridly dramatic arc to it, but it’s offset by flawed science. Zambrano’s experiment over time has become notorious as a classic example of how not to conduct such a study.

Furthermore, as good as Ezra Miller and Tye Sheridan are in portraying two of the inmates who begin to suffer trauma to the point of desperately wishing to opt out of the experiment, their characters suffer from existing largely on the surface. With no back stories and little self-contemplation depicted, next to nothing is known about the origin of their motivations. There’s plenty of gripping cheap thrills in The Stanford Prison Experiement, but little emotional bite–a so-so approach for a film about a psychological study. An ex-con (Nalson Ellis) hired by Zambrano as a “professional consultant” has an epiphany regarding his imitating the very behavior he had come to despise while a prisoner himself. It’s a jolting reminder that director Kyle Patrick Alvarez and screenwriter Tim Talbott have the rest of this film’s characters’ inner lives in lock-down.

Occasionally Sharp Drama, Dull Science…3 (out of 5) stars

There’s the “hot spring” that turns out to be raw sewage. Add a ravishing female sports car driver who pulls up next to Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) and flirts herself all the way to a grotesque highway death. Then there’s the young brother (Steele Stebbins) who torments his far more delicate older brother (Skylar Grisondo) including using a hypodermic needle as a dart he throws at him in the fore-mentioned raw sewage lake.

Having fun yet?

The victimized mom in all of this is none other than Debbie (Christina Applegate of Married With Children fame). She must endure a husband who is as boring as Jeb Bush and Scott Walker combined. Rusty also is in way over his head since Debbie is basically looking to break out into far wilder libido terrain. She wouldn’t mind doing it with him but he’s clueless.

The family stops off at Debbie’s college so she can re-enact a frolicking, booze-driven sorority game. It’s unnervingly cliche-ridden but merely a prelude for what awaits Debbie once the family visits Rusty’s sister in Texas. There looms Rusty’s brother-in-law (Chris Hemsworth) his artificial prosthetic schlong recalling that of Jason Schwartzman in The Overnight, released a mere couple of weeks ago. Not for anything, but I’ve had quite enough of unfunny schlongs this month.

If you’re getting the idea Vacation feels obliged to push the envelope, you’d be right. However, in comedy, as in the stock market, it’s easy to keep score. Are there laughs here?….They’re frightfully few and far between. Helms, who reached a peak as the correspondent on the Daily Show many moons ago, then slid into The Hangover and Terrible Bosses franchises, is mostly irritating here.

By the time Rusty’s family hits San Francisco to visit his Dad (Chevy Chase in a monumentally insignificant appearance) the tally of groans is far more higher than that of guffaws. Even a bravely resilient Applegate can’t save this pile of deplorable rubbish. No matter how hard it tries to be on the edge of gross-out, Vacation exists merely in the throes of the hapless harebrained. The 1983 original, with Chase in the lead and Anthony Michael Hall as the teen son, while no prize itself, looks like a 4-star Billy Wilder comedy next to this paltry dreck.

Remake? Reboot? … Re-imagined Rot! … 1 (out of 5) stars

At no time will you mistake Southpaw for Rocky. Forget Raging Bull. It’s certainly no Nightcrawler, which contained a masterful Jake Gyllenhaal. Southpaw confounds, gives occasional reason for praise one minute, then slugs itself in the foot just as quickly. Gyllenhaal’s duke-it-out, hardscrabble performance here is the reason to see this movie. However, you’ll want to take on the chin director Antoine Fuqua’s cookie-cutter, toothless approach. If cliches were jabs, the punch count in Southpaw would be near record-setting.

Billy Hope (Gyllenhaal) is the kind of boxer known for taking a punch, or actually taking far too many punches. Nonetheless, he’s a light heavyweight champion, albeit one who can barely walk after his latest bout. Mentally, he’s not too well, either, although it’s not made clear whether that’s from brain damage, an innate condition, or a combination. His wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) handles the important decisions and business details in the family. Billy’s close to his 10-year-old daughter Leila (Oona Laurence), seems to be an affectionate husband, and has a nasty temper, especially when a certain Latino contender, “Magic” Escobar (Miguel Gomez), incessantly taunts him.

It never once occurs to screenwriter Kurt Sutter to revisit let alone explain a misfortunate accident. The identity of its perpetrators remains fuzzy at best, the incident swept under the rug. One assumes more details would likely lead to even less plausibility. Oh well: here’s Forest Whitaker as some grumpy trainer named Tick, who shapes young kids at a boxing gym and professes never to train professionals. Since Billy by now has fallen on hard times he agrees to begin redeeming himself by scrubbing the place after hours.

Tick eventually agrees to train Billy, takes on his boxing style or the lack of it and drills Billy on a predominantly defensive style. There’s some mumbo jumbo about Billy confusing opponents by changing hands and thus the “Southpaw” title. A good James Horner score and a new Eminem track help things out and the fight scenes seem fairly real. Throughout Billy still has a tattoo with his daughter’s name and birthdate and a burning will to make good with not just her but also the gods of justice. After all, Latino Escobar represents nasty fate. Billy’s thirst for revenge might be all too obvious but Fuqua does us no favors by arriving at a predictable place. In the end, I felt suckerpunched by a lack of imagination.

Good Gyllenhaal, Shaky Drama … 2.5 (out of 5) stars

Rip-roaringly, outrageously funny, then in its final turns predictably conventional, the Judd Apatow-directed Trainwreck presents the one and only Amy Schumer. Both the film’s lead actor and its writer, Schumer portrays a character, Amy Townsend, who takes the words of her rough-hewn dad in the film’s opening scene, and boldly personifies them. “Monogamy isn’t realistic,” dad (a very funny Colin Quinn) lectures his two daughters at the movie’s outset. “What if I told you there was only one doll you could play with forever?” Not even close to their teens yet, the girls seems rapt with attention.

The one daughter, Kim (Brie Larson), goes on to marriage and children; the other, Amy, is much more a chip off the old block. Amy’s basically a disarming yet oddly alluring character who left her filter behind with her inhibitions. Steadily boozing and partying, her escapades include a stiff number of one-night sexual encounters. “Never have them stay over,” she brags in voice-over. When she accidentally does once, she wakes up to an Al Pacino Scarface poster and mutters, “Please, God, don’t let this be a dorm room.”

By day, Amy writes for the men’s magazine S’Nuff. Her boss is a hilarious, practically unrecognizable Tilda Swinton, who, after last year’s roles in Only Lovers Left Alive and Snowpiercer, continues on an incredible roll. Since she basically knows nothing about sports, Amy is given the assignment to profile a leading sports medicine surgeon, Aaron Connor (Bill Hader), who she ends up dating. Among his clients: LeBron James, here playing an amusing if tightwad version of himself. Aaron and LeBron playing a game of one-on-one is worth the price of admission. Other sports celebrities pop up in cameos during the film. Though they often feel somewhat gratuitous, their inclusion basically works, including a highly unusual panel who attempt to come to Aaron’s aid, much to his surprise and annoyance.

Trainwreck goes full tilt in reversing a lot of cliches of raunchy rom-com male tom-foolery. Amy shock-talks profusely, avoids commitment, sidesteps romance, seems to value quantity over quality in relationships. Yet the film makes no attempt to avoid the usual Apatow placement of comfy traditions on a pedestal, albeit one that must be reached through many hurdles. Trainwreck succeeds because it’s damn refreshing celebrating a chick who out-guys the guys. It wouldn’t possibly be the year’s funniest comedy to date if it weren’t for Schumer’s huge on-screen comedic talent.

Amy Comes Up Huge/LeBron James Gives A Nice Assist…4 (out of 5) stars

Director Asif Kapadia took what was the blessing of Amy Winehouse’s family and record company and then relentlessly actually made the film that needed to be made on the life of Amy Winehouse. His biopic wisely throws out any political correctness and eschews a safe approach for an ultimately honest one. The results offer a movie that is hands-down among the year’s best. A film as tough to sit through as 12 Years A Slave, Amy could go down as the quintessential tragic rendering of the abhorrent cost of fame in this unforgiving age. At once monstrous and life-affirming, Amy is the rare film that elicits many an excruciating reaction while also rendering an odd catharsis. Winehouse here on one level is the indomitable beacon of a pop star. Except for her amazing voice and songwriting, she seems just like you and me in so many ways, yet is ultimately destined for tragedy.

Authentically rough around the edges, Amy takes advantage of a wealth of archival footage, some of it as grainy as cellphone shots. When we first encounter Amy she’s but a mere middle-class Jewish kid from suburban London, but what a kid! It doesn’t take long to tell she’s the kind of person who, while loosy-goosey on the outside, is internally devastated by her own intense feelings. The footage of her presenting her demo song to her record company zings with goose-bump-producing edge. Yet her likability is far more primitive than anything tangibly calculated.

At times the film Amy admirably seems like a home movie that is as unsure of itself as Amy the jazz chanteuse is of herself while climbing a gradual reluctant ladder to stardom–and infamy. Kapadia finds his way by keeping his aim on the truth beneath Winehouse’s constantly mocked public persona. From the outset afraid of fame, our heroine can only hope to survive what becomes a paparazzi-laden existence at a time when tenderness of any sort would have been a welcome palliative. Yet, as Kapadia makes clear, compassion was very scarce in Winehouse’s life. Her husband, seemingly eager to attach to her gravy train, introduces the already heavy-drinking Winehouse to hard drugs. Since she’s bound to him with a clearly obsessive attachment, it’s about as fatal a relationship as she could have encountered.

Then there’s her dad. He of the famous “I don’t think rehab is for everyone–Amy’s fine.” Toward the end of her life, we watch her smartly get herself away from the pressures for a months-long sojourn to St. Lucia, only to have her dad show up with his own huckstering agenda complete with a camera crew. It’s enough to give us the heaves…speaking of which, Winehouse’s demise at the age of 27 was as much a product of her bulimia as of her addiction to alcohol and drugs.

Hats off to Kapadia. Winehouse’s dad has an issue that he somehow was portrayed inaccurately in the film. As my own dad used to say, “Go pound sand.” To which could be added–let the record stand for itself. While Winehouse may certainly be faulted for being her own worst enemy, the enormous burden provided by her many enablers was a ravaging, rough mountain to climb. Throughout the film, her dauntlessness looms as the starkest possible contrast to the madness surrounding her.

See this film if it kills you–and, emotionally speaking, it probably will. You’ll never forget the scenes when a confused and disoriented Amy tries to wade through the deplorable paparazzi–a sad symbol for our aggravated era of nonstop, constant social media. Had Amy been born in any other time, she’d likely still be alive and well. There’s only one worse image that lingers. More inane than even the brutally insentive paparazzi, we’re treated to an ugly Jay Leno joke about her that holds forth as a prototypical example of I-don’t-give-a-fuck coldness. It’s enough to make you nuts.

Documentaries don’t get any better than this….5 stars (out of 5)!