Author: Don Malvasi

James Franco, practically unrecognizable as a drug-dealing hoodlum/rapper, provides a saving grace of sorts to the largely limp Spring Breakers. With Franco onscreen the film’s stylistic excesses are obscured to an extent. Director Harmony Korine seems to be acting on an impulse to give the spring break genre a heightened grindhouse intensity of casual sex and lurid violence while simultaneously holding this particular corner of the American dream up to serious scrutiny. It’s a shame he undermines both the cheap thrills and the moral lessons with an artsy-fartsy veneer on things.

The drive-by shootings and orgies too often flow through a filter of introspective filmmaking as pretentious as it is repetitive. Although the dubstep soundtrack is mostly effective, it’s offset by visuals that revel in the overdone. Voiceovers often duplicate verbatim the same dialogue two or three extra times while the film’s characters mostly stare into space. These ginned-up techniques soon begin to seem like trappings meant to stretch the film to ninety minutes. The dramatic tension of crazed chicks getting bailed out of jail by Franco and falling under his spell, while well done, runs adrift when we’re constantly interrupted by the meandering interludes. Any potential dramatic momentum gives way to impressionistic twaddle, then eventually wavers to the most improbable of endings.

Yet, don’t refrain from seeing this film. Franco’s character, Alien (he pronounces it A-Lean) will stick with you. He’s outrageous, compelling and looks and speaks truly devil-may-care. When he takes a shining to the straight-arrow in the bunch, Faith (Helena Gomez), we almost don’t see him as exploitive. He’s fearless and scary at the same time, and equally charismatic and vain. He portrays an exaggerated bloating of a stereotype: “Look at my shit” he gleefully tells the gals as they all swim in a big bed filled with a huge arsenal of guns and hundred dollar bills that spew over onto the floor. The toll for this loot proves too much for Faith and one of the other girls (played by Korine’s wife, Rachel) but the remaining two stick around for the final shenanigans. From terrorizing a restaurant’s patron’s with squirt guns in an earlier scene, we know they’ve got the moxie to force some cash to finance their spring break trip. Then they meet Alien and the craziness just begins.

3 Disney Girls Gone Wild In An Unlikely Art Flick With An Uncanny James Franco (out of 5)

If the Academy Awards were ever to set out to encompass a truly international scope, a performance like that of Nina Hoss in the accomplished German film, Barbara, would not go unheeded. She is marvelous as Barbara, a banished physician who finds herself in a boondocks East German town at a time before the Iron Curtain fell. Her crime? Attempting to flee across the border from the oppressive regime into West Germany.

We encounter her as she begins to work in a hospital–all the while under surveillance from a Stasi heavy, Klaus Schultz (Rainer Bock). She keeps her distance from the other employees, refusing to even to eat with them in the cafeteria. The head physician, Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld), takes an interest in her. Or so it seems…

…Barbara is an impeccably paced study of the microcosm of a few characters in a small, out of the way town and how they represent the macrocosm of a society hellbent on inducing paranoia and suspicion as tools of control. Every move made by Andre can be read as either a generous forthcoming or a deceiving surveillance. He appears so legitimate it almost seems Barbara unreasonably suspects him. Then Schultz’ guys show up to not only search her place but her body cavities. The high-strung Barbara gives in to Andre’s advances in glacial steps. Hoss’s performance marvels the most in her nonverbals. She’s the master of a glance, even a twitch.

Patients in the hospital occasionally cry out in bursts of grief, piercing through the sterile stillness that director Christian Petzold, so effectively maintains. Relationships change and a thriller of sorts begins to develop. It give nothing away that moral compromise is one of the themes here. As it was so wonderfully explored in the more straightforward The Lives Of Others, Barbara gives an equally relevant payoff while taking a different tack. It moves forward with subtlety and its suspense is more of the quiet variety. Yet the dilemmas it presents are no more timeworn than that of freedom itself.

4 Gripping and Riveting Iron Curtains That Unveil A Great Performance (out of 5)

Barbara is playing this week at the Ritz V

If you regard the pairing of Steve Carell and Jim Carrey as adversarial magicians as a prospect for laughs, you wouldn’t be unreasonable. In the Incredible Burt Wonderstone, the results are, well, tricky at best.

Carell plays Wonderstone, a calcified headliner at Vegas casino. He performs the same old routines with the same old partner, childhood buddy Anton Marvelton (an out-of-place Steve Buscemi). Carrey does his magic on the street. That his tricks often involve a virtually illusion-free, self-inflicted wounding of himself only serves to increase his fanbase. Carell, self-absorbed and with an ego most viewers will wish could pull a disappearing act, fights with Buscemi. The two break up their decades-long partnership, and casino audiences continue to thin.

James Gandolfini as the casino boss, eventually has enough and pulls the plug on Wonderstone, who’s so broke he needs to live in a shabby motel and do gigs at retirement homes. Two “jokes” will give you an idea of the humor in this slight sleight-of-hand film:

When Carell has dinner at former aid Olivia Wilde’s place on his first night away from casino life, he promptly collects the dinner dishes and sets them outside her apartment door for ostensible room service pickup….Gandolfini, who has been on an incredible roll lately (Not Fade Away, Killing Them Softly, Zero Dark Thirty) has not one, not two, but three occasions to ham it up as he less than hilariously forgets the age of his son. On the third occasion, Burt is doing a magic show for Gandolfini’s kid’s birthday party and promptly gets usurped by Carrey, who decides to steal the show.

Carrey also steals the film. His hyper magic emerges dark and edgy, a refreshing counterpunch to Wonderstone’s white bread and vanilla approach. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone even enlists the venerable Alan Arkin as a legendary magician Rance Hollloway, who Wonderstone encounters in, of course, the nursing home. (Holloway, in the film’s opening flashback, inspires a school-age Burt, with a how-to-perform-magic VHS tape). While Arkin doesn’t disappoint, there’s a larger problem. The film’s riches-to-rags/will-Burt-get-the-girl?/will-Carell-and-Buscemi reunite? senimentalities slow down even a vibrant Carrey and Arkin. The film’s pace begins to resemble a car with a bad transmission, sputtering in fits and starts in between some decent jokes. Just when Carrey pulls his final, entertaining stunt, we’re robbed by a script move that neuters his rivalry with Wonderstone. Then as if to be reminded further that 90 percent of the okay magic in this film was computer-generated, the film gives us a massive trick ending that is about as plausible as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Director Don Scardino has helmed a scant three films since the notoriously thin Cruising in 1980. Something tells me that isn’t about smoke and mirrors.

2 1/2 Jim Carrey Is Back and Tries His Damnest To Overcome a Silly Yet Stale Magic Film (out of 5)

Another self-congratulatory, demented youth party film comes roaring out of the woodwork, dead on arrival. 21 & Over, directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, writers of The Hangover, will likely rile racist and misogynist sensibilities while largely falling short in laughs. A mere handful of funny moments fails to mitigate a tired formula. Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) is cruelly turning 21 on the eve of a big medical school admissions interview. Seems his overbearing dad is watching him like a hawk to make sure he’s in tiptop shape for the big event. Two pals, Miller (Miles Teller) and Casey (Skylab Aston) show up in a taxi to coax Jeff Chang (he’s never called anything else in this flick) to go out for his birthday anyway. Just one drink.

After a few bar scenes where bacchanalia never seemed so airless, Jeff is practically in a coma, although he manages to get carried around while asleep propped between his two buddies like a ragdoll. Before long he’ll be eating a tampon in a Latina sorority while Miller and Casey manage to spank a couple of blindfolded pledges with paddles. One of them excietdly forgets and talks , revealing that they are actually unbelonging males and not sorority sisters. Then they make a mad dash for Jeff Chang and eventually throw him out of a second story window. Since viewers have no revengeful opportunity to throw this movie out of a window, we proceed to a pep rally where a guy who earlier in a bar accidentally had a dart thrown in his face by Casey, is now the key to Miller and Casey finding out where Jeff lives. Oh, I know, they started out the movie at Jeff’s place, so why wouldn’t they know where he lives? Beats me.

Jeff gets abandoned and left with two practical-joking stoners at a party somewhere along the way, and exits with a bra on his chest and a teddy bear stuck to his crotch. Naturally he gets himself arrested. I won’t divulge anymore spoliers but there’s a hot girl Nicole (Sarah Wright) involved who seemingly can’t wait for Casey to make his move–a detail the less-dorky Miller doesn’t fail to mention incessantly.

Teller went full circle from his quality performance as the sensitive kid opposite Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole to last year’s party flick, Project X. Here he bears not only the extra weight of assuming the stereotype-spewing, wild-and-crazy foil opposite the straightlaced Aston (Pitch Perfect), but a further career progression from the talented to the tawdry.

1 1/2 Naughty, Brainless Insults To Our Intelligence (out of 5)

I don’t know wrestling from NASCAR, so Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was an unknown to me before he started acting in movies. You may hear that in Snitch, his acting takes a newfangled turn for subtlety. Let’s not get carried away. While Snitch is far more enjoyable than it has a right to be, Johnson is only part of it. Vivid performaces by Barry Pepper, Michael Kenneth Williams and Susan Sarandon offset a creaky plot and a preachy theme. And, the film’s farfetched tomfoolery aside, a potentially star-making turn by Jon Bernthal seals it in the winner’s column.

The proverbially “based on true events” Snitch has itself in a huff about mandatory drug sentences for first-time offenders. Johnson’s estranged son receives a UPS package with enough Ecstasy in it to fuel a stadium-sized Rave, and Federal drug agents knock at his door almost instantly. Led by Pepper, who’s wearing comical facial hair reminiscent of Frank Zappa in his heyday, they arrest the frightened kid at gunpoint. A PBS Frontline episode told the original story of a man named James Settembrino agreeing to infiltrate drug dealers and turn in some suspects to save his son from serving a full 10 year sentence for possession of LSD. It’s no sin in itself that director Rick Roman Waugh blows up the real story into a yarn that has The Rock going after no less than a Mexican drug cartel led by Benjamin Bratt. While the climax of the film forays into weariness, getting there proves to be fun. Credit Wright for almost hiding more than a couple of plot holes while his actors do the rest.

On the way to paydirt, The Rock encounters a no-nonsense district attorney who’s running for Congress (Sarandon) and her savvy lead investigator (Pepper). His first foray into undercover drug-and-hood politics brings him to a steely, wackadoodle drug player, Michael Kenneth Williams (Omar from The Wire), who commands a heaping load of respect. Tension nicely substitutes for action and Bernthal’s vibrant presence as Johnson’s employee–an ex-con who wants to stay straight–provides the film a welcomed noir-ish tone. Bernthal gives in to Johnson’s demand to provide “an introduction” to the underworld and the two become partners, tiptoeing around Williams. Once we get into drug cartel territory, the tension simmers down some and the sluggish cliches become more frequent. Still, as a well acted tale of a desperate father looking to right a wrong, Snitch is an improvement on the largely deployable batch of January/February overwrought action flicks. It may be bumbling at times and former stuntman Waugh is often clueless in his framing of his shots, but Snitch manages to burnish a strange panache of sorts. Bernthal’s performance cranks things up enough to give you enough time to actually enjoy the film before you eventually scratch your head over the film’s culpable plot contrivances.

3 The Rock Steps Into An Acting Clinic Chokehold (out of 5)

The trouble with the hyper-action genre is that it is becoming virtually impossible to find plausibility while action sequences become more slick and over-the-top. Unremittingly senseless, A Good Day To Die Hard bum rushes its way to inanity before you’ve had a chance to open your popcorn. In a chase scene long enough to feel like a movie within a movie, the ever venerable John McClane (Bruce Willis) rescues his son, Jack (Jai Courtney) and a sprung-from-custody Russian political prisoner, Komarov (Sebastian Koch). They spend the rest of the film nominally pursuing an ultra important file locked away in Chernobyl of all places.

Two scenes vie for most ludicrous:
1) Willis, while car jacking a Russian motorist, wallops him when he resists, and spews out the ultimate American exceptionalist punchline: “Do you think I understand a word you’re saying?”
2) Komarov’s’s daughter Irina (a foxy Yuliya Snigir) strips off her protective gas mask at Chernobyl and actually SNIFFS the air to test it for toxicity, like a mother sniffing inside her toddler’s drawers for a sure sign of trouble.

However, unlike previous films in the franchise, Willis here offers few noteworthy one-liners. Oh, when he discovers Jack, his highly estranged son, is a CIA operative, he blurts out something about Jack being involved in some “spy shit.” But mostly John reverts to several repeats of “I’m supposed to be on vacation” as he gets further involved in fighting off a horde of bad guys supported by the Russian head of state. Sadly, the “vacation” line doesn’t have the impact of, say, the “I wasn’t even supposed to be working today” line uttered so effectively in the film Clerks. And if it’s a father-son dramatic theme you want in your action cereal, see the new Dwayne Johnson film instead. At least the acting in that is believable.
Rather, in A Good Day To Die Hard, a tsunami of silly, sedative-inducing action drowns out what little paint-by-number plot and character elements director John Moore has thrown in like so many reluctant croutons in a soup of sludge.

1 1/2 Bruce Willis Says His Family Comes First These Days–It Shows (out of 5)

Lucky Rooney Mara. First she gets to star in a David Fincher film (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). Then, as if she’s searched far and wide for an equivalent film stylist, she finds herself working with Steven Soderbergh. Soderbegh’s love of his craft knows few boundaries. He regularly shoots and edits his works himself under clever familial pseudonyms (copping his dad’s names Peter Andrews as cinematographer and his mother’s maiden name, Mary Ann Bernard, as editor). His films exude craftsmanship even when they’re occasionally not very good (last year’s Haywire) or fall just short (2011’s Contagion). When he’s at the top of his game (Traffic, Out Of Sight, The Girlfriend Experience), his savvy with the camera and intuitive editing know few peers.

What a pity if, as he claims, he’s really retiring (at 50!), but Steven Soderbergh, after a winsome Magic Mike, has achieved an entertaining and thoughtful mindblower in Side Effects. To be sure, it’s one of those films (like 2011’s excellent Double Hour) where the less you know going into it, the better your viewing experience will be. Thus, I will reveal only minimal plot details. Let’s just say it touches on the pharmaceutical industry’s antidepressant drugs and their possible nasty side effects, and the treatments and talk therapies of Mara’s current and former psychiatrists (an excellent Jude Law, and Catherine Zeta-Jones). Then it sneakily evolves into a Hitchockian crime thriller. Yeah, I know. The term Hitchcockian often gets bandied about with careless abandon, but not here. The twists and turns in Side Effects are fun to behold. All the while Soderbergh’s direction maintains a quirky detachment. His cleverness seems innocent, as if he’s as surprised as the viewer at screenwriter Scott Z. Burns’ red herrings and detours.

Mara, thoroughly owning her character, plays a wounded bird of a woman whose fragility is palpable. Her depression seems an insurmountable problem when she meets Law, who treats her instead of commits her after she survives driving her car into a wall. That’s just the beginning of a wild ride into deception, revenge, and not a little satire regarding a fictitious miracle drug, Ablixa. Better living through chemistry meets $50,000 psychiatrist honorariums.

If these elements seem an unlikely stew, you’re getting warm. Highly original, Side Effects never loses its footing. Law deftly portrays a man who is, initially, always in control of himself. His responses when he believes he’s caught in a sting and begins to unravel are one of the highlights of the film. Has the shrink lost his mind? His compelling performance draws us into a labyrinth that doesn’t let up until the final scene–one which, side by side with its natural catharsis, felt a little bittersweet if this is really Soderbergh’s last theatrical feature. Why don’t we ever hear of the countless mediocre directors out there hanging up their cameras? Oh well, he says he’s likely to still direct in other mediums, possibly television, where his upcoming biopic of Liberace will air on HBO. Hollywood film studios all turned down the project. From a four-hour long bio of Che Guevara to Liberace, Soderbergh often goes where no one else dares. In Side Effects, he goes where many have gone. He just does it better.

4 There’s Something Happening here But You Don’t Know What It Is–Do you Mr Jones? (out of 5)

Identity Thief gains no bonus points by flaunting its idiocy. From an utterly inane concept to an essentially senseless execution, Seth Gordon’s follow-up to his infinitely funnier Horrible Bosses exists mostly on its own planet of ineptness. Do you like Melissa McCarthy? Check out Bridesmaids or This Is 40 for a more concentrated dose of her crude schtick without this film’s headscratching premise or its patronizing sentimentality. What, you like her enough you’re willing to be the masochist for this film’s sappy shenanigans and mannered malarkey? Just consider a guy (the hapless Jason Bateman) decides to travel from his home in Denver to Florida, where he’ll confront and basically kidnap the thief of his identity (McCarthy) in order to–what?–bring her back so she can confess to his boss (John Cho) and keep him in good standing at his new job. Seems his credit rating has dived “as low as a homeless person.” Then, the plan goes, he’ll sneakily bring the cops in and get her arrested.

McCarthy sucker punches guys in the throat numerous times in what can best be described as a Moe from the Three Stooges move. She effortlessly manipulates Bateman, dodges two different enemies who are looking to kill her and Bateman (don’t ask) and finally talks Bateman into joining her in credit card fraud by posing as a bigwig (John Favreau) who once treated him poorly. Of course, Bateman only decided to go along with the stunt because he lost all his money when he left his pants behind after getting attacked by a friggin’ snake when he and McCarthy, suddenly carless, were forced to take a shortcut hike deep in the woods. The film, meanwhile, goes deeper and deeper in the weeds.

The most ridiculous moment might be McCarthy and Bateman enjoying a 5-star hotel in St. Louis with the stolen credit card. It doesn’t take an ignoramus to figure out the phony card will be discovered pronto so the worst thing in the whole wide world is naturally to stay in one place and wait to get caught. No worries. McCarthy breaks out of a police car by smashing its window and the dynamic duo walk down some magic staircase to freedom while the cops are distracted by one of the pursuing killers (remember them?)….It gets worse. Bateman and the ever-normal Amanda Pete, as his wife, ultimately take a shining to McCarthy, allow her to ingratiate herself to their kids, and give her the utmost respect–all for no apparent reason other than she was an orphan who caught a bad break. Oh boy oh boy oh boy—McCarthy’s acting like a freaky chick again. Mere sputtering through the motions, I say.

1 Ugly Film Looking For a Way Out (out of 5)

Is it possible Al Pacino often selects screenplays that prove challenging in an all too unusual manner? “Let’s see if I can overcome even THIS stinker” he seems to be saying to himself as he acts up a storm in Stand Up Guys, which also boasts Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin for good measure. After seeing the film, close your eyes and try to imagine anyone besides Pacino in the lead role. The result, which isn’t unsatisfying with Pacino, would be plain ugly with just about any other actor taking on Valentine, an ex-con who gets out of jail after 28 years only to embark on 24 hours or so of amusing misadventures. Buddy Walken, who Pacino took the prison hit for, picks up Al as he leaves the jail, and, we soon realize, must slay Al to save his own skin from a comically vicious mob boss. Al catches on soon enough yet he’s surprisingly resigned to his fate. He’s so busy entertaining himself (and us) that he hardly seems to notice the gravity of his situation.

Before we know it, there are hookers, a stolen car, numerous retail break-ins, and a break out of a nursing home of fellow pal Alan Arkin, who loves driving the car they stole since that’s what he used to do in “the old days,” when they were all a team. Just to show the old guys can still do it, they even bust on a young gang who gave a young woman such a hard time she ended up in the trunk of the aforementioned stolen car. Throw in an impromptu funeral for sentiment’s sake, and a possible estranged granddaughter. Through it all Pacino soars like a pro who starred in a few of the greatest films of all time and can do Shakespeare in his sleep. Farcical comedy? No problem. He’s got the timing, the exact timbre of voice and the panache to pull it off and make you forget the script basically makes no sense. Not an easy feat. Go Al. Unlike genuine January stinkers Gangster Squad and Broken City, where good acting shaded lousy concepts and writing, here the acting takes on a life of its own, allowing one to question the need to assess solely on terms of credibility or logic. Unless, of course, you don’t particularly care for Pacino, in which case you’re screwed.

3 Al Pacino Fans Only (out of 5)

Utterly sad and hauntingly disturbing, Amour challenges and provokes.  On the surface, perhaps less so than Michael Haneke’s previous output (Cache, White Ribbon, Funny Games).  However, when the subject matter is no less than the degeneration that can occur before the end of life, manipulations, however subtle and ostensibly humane, take on a weight all the more terrifyingly remorseless.  The scale of Amour‘s subject matter provides the harshest of contexts.  The couple’s unsentimental pain and suffering, depicted in as real a manner as can be imagined, can take on a disquieting tone when a lifelong   provocateur like Haneke seems to be substituting ravaging, uncompromising realism at the expense of more benign insights, let alone empathy or compassion.  Yet, facing the question of death, are we merely intensifying that lifelong tendency to blame the messenger?  After all, what we ultimately have in Amour is a Rorschach blot that allows for introspection on this most important of issues.  After experiencing the day-by-day grim deterioration of  Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and the sacrifices and frustrations of her husband Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) I was left with a numbness that felt something like the immediate aftereffects of a car accident:  I could think of little else than the overwhelming immediacy of what I’d just expetienced  yet at the same time I was glad to be alive.  Life took on a new glow.

A bit of context regarding Riva and Trintignant.  They’re icons of the French cinema.  For anyone familiar with them, their presence adds a poignant  immediacy of identification that may be lost on many American audiences.  They’re not just any two actors going through this ordeal but ones their fans can recall from more youthful and vibrant days.  And what performances!  Along with an excellent Isabelle Hupert  as their preoccupied daughter, they form an ensemble cast that must be seen to be believed.  As must this film, despite what reservations you may have about it being no walk in the park.  Put aside any fear of the starkness you’re about to witness.  You may just find it life-affirming.  You will no doubt be changed.  Great art has a way of doing that.

4 1/2 Elegiac Brutalities  (out of 5)