Author Archives: Jay

Ride Along 2

Don’t worry, guys, Kevin Hart is now a legitimate cop (he was just a security guard wannabe the first time around) but he’s still fucking things up hilariously for his “partner” and soon-to-be brother-in-law, Ice Cube. Detective Cube is just as reticent as ever and has no patience for a lowly beat cop, but fate (or convenient scripting) intervenes to make sure they’re back in the same care for yet another ride – this time all the time to Miami.

There’s nothing overtly wrong with this movie, it’s just an attempt to squeeze more money out of the same damn stone. Buddy-cop formula? Regurgitation to the max. And you know what regurgitation is right? It’s like when the mama bird eats a worm but instead of swallowing all the way, she saves it in her throat to later barf up into her baby’s mouth. That’s what this movie is to us. They sloughed off the basic idea of the first, chewed it up a bit, and vomited the mushy mess onto the big screen.

This doesn’t sound like much of an endorsement, does it? But I have to give this movie the props it deserves: it stars two black dudes (“blentlemen”) in the title roles and STILL has a cast full of people of colour. It’s an exercise in diversity that looks and feels effortless and yet is rarely achieved in Hollywood these days.

I like Cube and I like Hart but if there was anything fresh to add to this genre, they used it all up the first time around. Cube seems to play a cop in 80% of his films, which I suppose is a little karmic retribution for his NWA hit, Fuck Tha Police. Life is funny like that. Kevin Hart’s an interesting dude, though. He’s an ace stand-up comic and is a great choice for adding some manic, amped-up energy to any scenario, but he hasn’t found his break out role yet. Come to think of it, I know some people that are gambling it’ll be later this week with Central Intelligence, another entry into arguably the very same genre, this time alongside The Rock. Any bets? Will Kevin Hart finally get his due?

The Huntsman: Winter’s War

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Ravenna (Charlize Theron) is the sister we know: kinda evil, not above killing kings in order to usurp their kingdoms. Ravenna is the one who tormented Snow White in the last movie, the wicked step mother, if you will. Her younger and less-known sister Freya (Emily Blunt) has powers that resemble Elsa’s, from Frozen, and they’re awakened when she undergoes a personal tragedy. She flees in grief, and tortured by sad and angry thoughts, she establishes her own land, her own army, all ruled with the vengeance in her heart. The best of her army turn out to be Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain) and they attract Freya’s unwelcome attention. They also attract each other and there’s a little bow-chicka-bow-wow. But Freya, scorned by love, can’t bear to seem them together, and slays Sara.

Meanwhile, back at home with Ravenna are the events of the previous movie. Ravenna recruits Eric, aka, The Hunstman, to capture Snow White after her escape, and promises to bring his wife back to life as a reward. However, he quickly switches allegiance and together they defeat and kill the Evil Queen, and Snow White is crowned in her place.

In this movie, an unseen Snow White (Kristen Stewart does not reprise her role) asks The Hunstman to do one final thing: to get rid of Ravenna’s magic mirror, still a source of evil.

You’ve probably already heard that this movie is not super good, and I’m not able to tell you any different. I’m also pretty grumbly about the fact that a movie with 3 strong female leads is still named after the man.

I’m going to focus on the thing that this movie does right, and that’s noticeably its costuming. It should be a surprise to none of you that Colleen Atwood is behind the genius designs.

On Freya’s costumes, Atwood says: I sourced a lot of fabric in Italy for the dresses that she wears. She has a lot of Italian velvets and silk in her dress and croquets from different vendors in Italy. Some of her fabric is vintage fabric I had in my stock. We wanted Freya to have something that wasn’t a crown. I have a 3-D printer in my crafts department, and this guy is a genius at operating it. I said, “Let’s do little tiny feathers and glue them together.” So we grew that mask as separate elements in a 3-D printer and applied them to a facemask.

On Ravenna’s look: We built a different kind of cloak with feathers that I had all hand-foiled and made into the cape. It was quite an ordeal for the people who had to feather it. I had a feather room, where it was just feathers stuck into Styrofoam. It was really beautiful, you walked in and there were all these shelves with gold feathers stuck in foam before we applied them to the cape.

On working in the fantasy\period genre: The big challenge is that you’re working with modern bodies, you’re working with people that are three times the size what people were in the actual periods. When you look at all the costumes from historical figures, you realize how small they were. You have to adapt that period or that fantasy silhouette to a modern body so that it doesn’t look really goofy. You back away from it to get the proportions right, so that you feel it’s historical, even though it’s on somebody eight inches taller than the average man was in that period, and it’s a woman.

Strike A Pose

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In 1990, an ad went out for FIERCE male dancers; 7 men were picked from obscurity and within months were surfing the zenith of fame alongside Madonna in her Blonde Ambition tour and Truth or Dare documentary.

All but one were gay, and Madonna, having recently lost friends to AIDS, was outspoken about gay rights and safer sex. Madonna’s timing was excellent – she pushed buttons while at the same time humanizing homosexuality. In the days before Internet, this was a shot in the arm for the gay community. The kiss depicted in Truth or Dare was for some the first gay kiss they’d seen. It was the first real uncensored gay conversation for many.

But tours end. Fame is fleeting. These 7 men went their separate ways. 25 years later, filmmakers Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaa seek to reunite them, or at least the surviving 6. What has happened in the past quarter century? Drugs, alcohol, HIV, depression, homelessness, and lawsuits. Life outside the spotlight is cold.

There’s a nostalgia factor at play here, and the first third of the film is peppered with archival footage that will please even passing Madonna fans. Beyond that, the film only superficially delves into the successes and\or failures of these dancers. Despite the prominence of Express Yourself as a theme and an anthem, much is left unsaid. What of these lawsuits? Fully three of the group sued Madonna after the tour ended, despite having been “a family” and having nothing but love for her, and owing her a debt of gratitude. In fact, the only reason offered for the lawsuits is being “caught off guard.” Not a single bad word is spoken against her, but her absence (other than in clips and videos) is distinct.

Is there life after Madonna? Yes. And it might even be interesting, but you’d never know it from this documentary. It’s content with skimming the surface and cashing in on the men’s iconic status. Their 15 minutes evaporated pretty quickly, but this documentary’s impact will fade even quicker.

This post first appeared on Cinema Axis as part of the coverage for the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival.

Now You See Me 2

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I only saw the first Now You See Me (1) grudgingly, which is to say, on a plane. It’s amazing what you can get me to watch when I’m hurtling through space in a glorified tin now-you-see-me-two-movie-poster-10 can. Anything to distract myself, even Jesse Eisenberg doing “magic.”

To be honest, I hate magic. I hate the spectacle and the artifice and the hammy, tan people who “perform” it. I hate it. I HATE hate it, the way I hate Nazis and speeding tickets and being tricked into eating vegetables. I have to remind myself, with a shock, that some people actually pay to see magic, while I would gladly pay to not see it. I’d rather not even walk by a street magician, if I can help it. But I’m half-willing to give it a go in the movies because while I also hate Nazis, I concede that some fairly wonderful movies have been made containing them. So I don’t rule Now You See Me out just because it has magic. Or just because it has Jesse Eisenberg, who is quickly ascending my list of things to avoid.

Jesse Eisenberg is joined by 3 other magicians (including a token girl!) to form the “4 horsemen” – the Robinhoods of the magic scene, they spent the first movie stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. You can’t do that without consequences, so they’ve been in hiding this past year and are only revealing themselves in the sequel when their magical governing body, the Eye, calls on them to do so – for a very good cause, I’m sure.

Safe to say a sequel to this blip of filmdom is one trick I never saw coming, unlike all the tricks in the film, which I saw from a mile away. There is no “magic” is Now You See Me 2, which is a real tragedy in this renaissance of practical effects, unless you count the nysm2-jack-lula-posters “magic” of CGI. Or the magic of marketing, I suppose. Definitely not the magic of film making, because this guy was seemingly made in a vacuum of personality. There is no fun in watching card tricks when you know the cards were added digitally, after the fact. And the tricks are not replicable in the real world, so Now You See Me 2 is just another CGI-bloated entry into the super hero genre, only these heroes are super lame and the costumes even lamer (though Eisenberg’s sporting a more Lex Luther-appropriate hairstyle than he did in Batman v. Superman).

But the greatest crime this film commits is its end. We, the audience, have spent 2 hours watching the 4 horsemen play tricks on their audiences, their enemies, their government, and each other. Now they seek to play one on us, and a two minute monologue discredits everything that’s come before and tells us we’ve been played for fools and what we thought was happening really wasn’t. Gotcha! Except the script does absolutely nothing to earn this. To set this up, a script has to leave breadcrumbs, it has to set it up, carefully, craftilly, but dutifully. Or else it’s total baloney. And this, my friends, was grade F deli meat, straight from Oscar Mayer himself. It’s like me suddenly telling you that I’ve been writing a Finding Dory review this whole time…TADA!

What do you mean you’re not convinced? I said ta-da, dammit. What more do you want? A viable story? Some forethought? Common sense? I mean – what do you expect here? This isn’t magic. It’s just a little trickery, and you can either buy in or opt out. It’s up to you.

The Finest Hours

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You’ve already seen this movie. If it differs much from The Perfect Storm, I can’t remember how. But The Perfect Storm was a much better movie, and I’ll tell you why: it’s because you cared whether the characters lived or died. The Finest Hours does not care to imbue you with any such worry. The men on the sinking ship are hardly known to us. Their leader, played by Casey Affleck, is so poorly drawn that all we know about his life off the boat is that he doesn’t have one. And yet we still like this guy more than Chris Pine, a grunt at the coast guard with a chip on his shoulder. What we know about him: he rejects his girlfriend’s proposal for an unknown reason and then accepts in order to avoid a fight, but then neglects to mention\get permission from his commanding officer (Eric Bana), and won’t pick up the phone to tell her goodbye (won’t even answer the phone when SHE calls HIM) even though he’s about to go on a suicide mission. Helluva guy.

But you know. He’s broody. He’s let men die before and he’s not going to do it this time, even if it kills him and everyone he knows. His crew is pretty nervous about this plan but it’s either meet their fate in the ocean or go home and marry a pretty girl, so of course he sallies forth. And don’t worry, they’re successful.I do not believe I am spoiling anything in telling you this because you know exactly what kind of movie this is going in: man vs. nature. Man must triumph (and then return home to be cowed by a 22 year old woman with red lips).

Chris Pine is no George Clooney and though I wouldn’t call The Perfect Storm an altogether perfect movie, The Finest Hours does pale in comparison, and compare you must. And I don’t mean a Canadian’s legs after a long, hard winter pale. I mean an anemic, Irish zombie who’s locked in a closet and is starving for brains pale. A couple of reviews ago I asked what’s blacker than black, and I got my answer. So today I’m wondering: what’s the whitest shade of pale? And disappointingly, it’s white. White is the lightest possible colour on the spectrum, so even if we found something whiter than white, that would just become the new white and we’d have to come up with a new shade name for old white that’s not ghost white or snow white or white smoke, since those are already taken (And are all darker than white, and don’t tell me you can’t tell!).

Should you watch it? No one’s stopping you. It’s a perfectly serviceable rescue drama where you know exactly how things will play out based on the title alone. It won’t impress you much, but maybe after a hard week of work and a large bowl of popcorn at your disposal, that’s all you need.

Kung Fu Panda 3

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In X-Men: Apocalypse, Cyclops convinces Nightcrawler to have a regular teenaged afternoon-about-town. They stop in at the mall, cruise downtown, and go to the movies, where they happen to catch Return of the Jedi and note that the third one in any trilogy is “always the worst.” Ahem.

Kung Fu Panda is Kung Fu-cked up. Well, maybe it’s not terrible, but it IS boring and useless. The animation is kind of beautiful at times, and it takes stabs at being heart-warming, but by the third installment, this franchise just feels washed out, and I was never its biggest fan to begin with. The plot is a barely-there mishmash of eastern and western tropes and while it says the right things, it fails to engage.

You may know from previous films that Po the panda (voiced by Jack Black) is kung-fu-panda-3 raised by a restaurateur goose in a village with no other pandas. There is, however, a Kung-Fu master (Dustin Hoffman) and his protégés (Angelina Jolie, David Cross, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, Lucy Lui) which soon includes Po, as improbable as it seems. In this movie, Po’s biological father (Bryan Cranston) shows up in the noodle shop looking for his long-lost son and is thrilled to find that his son is now a dragon warrior because that’s just what his village needs to be saved from the evil villain Kai (J.K. Simmons). But Kai is a super villain and only a master of chi can possibly stand a chance. And rather than mastering chi, Po’s fucked off to magical Panda village where’s fluffing around with the other pandas, stuffing his gourd and rolling about like a big dumb animal.

Don’t worry, it’s a kids’ movie, so everything goes exactly as it should: learn lessons, make fart jokes, yadda yadda yadda. Nobody gets beheaded. Nobody’s femur snaps like a twig. Nobody’s silky soft fur gets worn by a callous victor like a cape. It’s all very, well, PG. Nothing unexpected happens. The plot feels very derivative of the first film’s, and come to think of it, the second’s. No kung-fu-panda-3_640x480_71452230774 matter how much kung-fu we learn there’s always another threat to vanquish – both the physical ones, and the ones inside our head (cue soft pan-pipe music). God I hate cartoons with morals.

This one just felt strained to me. Strained like trying to take a giant panda poop on a steady diet of white rice and cheese. Strained like the look on your adopted father’s face when your “real” dad shows up for #3. Strained like that feeling in your groin when you execute a kung fu thrust kick without first stretching your hammies. Strained like a fourth simile would be. This one’s just not working for me.

Hurricane Bianca

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Mr. Martinez chases his “making a difference” dreams all the way to backwards Texas where he winds up as the science teacher teaching creationism. Faggy ties are of course verboten here, but not, apparently, backless, braless dresses on the female teachers, or anatomically-correct titty cakes in the staff room. The students are horrid little assholes set on making his first day his last, but their work load is light because this school puts its students’ safety first, and fires him immediately upon learning he’s gay.

Hurricane_Bianca_poster He soothes himself with a little drag and suddenly, he’s inspired: why not Mrs. Doubtfire himself back into a job? So the next day he falsies up everything he can in grand Drag Queen fashion: fake lashes, fake cleavage, fake hair, real sashay, and before his new name “Bianca” can trill off his tongue, he’s sitting in the principal’s lap, accepting the very position he’d been fired from the day before.

The kids are still assholes but Bianca is magically more savvy than Mr. Martinez and she takes no guff. In fact, she unleashes scathing Drag Queen stand-up on her students. This shit was nastier than Amy Schumer roasting Charlie Sheen. There’s no doubt that even Texans would find this less professional and more fire-able than being gay, yet Bianca roasting her students wins her popularity and career stability.

Roy Haylock does a good Mr. Martinez but it’s hard not to like him best when he’s snarky and sarcastic Bianca. Bianca Del Rio is his legit Drag Queen name – you may know Bianca from having won season 6 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race (and if you do, you’re in luck: not only does Ru Paul make an appearance, so does at least one of Bianca’s competitors!). There’s a gold mine of comedy here and I don’t blame writer\director Matt Kugelman for coming up with a pretense for laying it on as thickly as Bianca spackles on her eyebrows. Laughter is more important than authenticity.

Alan Cumming and Rachel Dratch lend some campy fun to the proceedings (and watch out for a Margaret Cho cameo!) but as the title suggests, it’s Bianca who is the force of nature here. Batten down the hatches and enjoy.

The Voices

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Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds.

No, I’m not trying to conjure him. I’m just trying to remind myself why I put myself through this in the first place.

I first watched and liked Reynolds when he was on a TV show called Two Guys, A Girl, And A Pizza Place. Yes, it’s a terrible name, and surprisingly, they shortened it a couple of seasons in to just the Two Guys & A Girl (even more surprising that there were a couple of seasons). Horrid as the show was, I’ve liked Reynolds on a scale sloping markedly downward ever since, probably because he’s coasted on being a pretty but empty husk of a the-voices man. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I realize I didn’t watch this to see if Ryan Reynolds is capable of breaking the mold. I watched it for the talking animals.

The premise: Jerry is just a normal, likable guy who happens to have pets who can talk to him. His cat, Mr. Whiskers, is particularly evil, as I completely expect all cats are, so no one is overly surprised when the cat takes things to a sinister place when an office-crush stands Jerry up for a date. The only thing more satisfying than wet cat food is gruesome serial murder!

The movie is actually kind of interesting in a way – it does a good job of showing us Jerry’s psychosis by giving us contrasting views of what he’s experiencing vs. what everyone else is experiencing. The difference is chilling the first time you notice it, and it’ll haunt you for the rest of the movie.

Jacki Weaver is a stand-out as his court-appointed psychiatrist, which you can 06-voices-review.w750.h560.2x imagine is a doozie of a job. Weaver is always a delight, a god-damned delight, and she’s an excellent stand-in for the audience as Jerry moves from cute to creepy. Is Reynolds any good? It’s clear he’s really into this role, but he kind overdoes the vacant eye thing. Unless those are his real eyes and he’s been wearing convincing puppy dog contacts this whole time! But he’s got a touch of that pre-Deadpool, charming psychopathy that just kind of works.

I’ll make no bones about it: ‘The Voices’ is an odd duck. I’d venture to call this a black comedy, but I’m also wondering what’s blacker than black? Okay, just Googled it, and here’s the scoop: there is in fact a colour blacker than black, and it’s called Vantablack. It absorbs all but 0.035% of light. It’s so black that our puny little brains can’t even understand it, so if you were wearing a Vantablack unitard, your hands and feet would appear to be floating around magically. Which is about right for when your Scottish-accented cat tells you to behead the pretty blonde and stash her in myriad tupperware. You heard it here first, folks, a new genre called the Vantablack comedy, only to be unfurled when the black just doesn’t cover it. It’s the kind of movie you should list on your internet dating profile just to suss out the wackos who respond “Me too!” It’s a great barometer for the people you don’t want to meet in a non-public place, and if you dare to date, then do not stand them up, and if stand them up you must, be sure to call your mother and tell her you love her first.

The Voices isn’t as funny as it thinks it is, and never achieves any true suspense. If you take it at face value you’ll find some cheap voyeuristic thrills, and a good dose of madness (served cold, without the insight sidedish). So yeah. This one’s memorable if you embrace the wacky and don’t mind the macabre.

I Love You Both

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No man is an island. But you know who is an island? Twins! Twins can definitely make themselves into a little island. Krystal and Donny are supertwins and superfriends. They live together, they hang out together, and they even date the same guy. Wait – what?

doug3 Only in 2016? Even in 2016? Somehow they’ve met this supercool dude named Andy, and he’s everything either of them could hope for. He’s interesting and charming. But which one of them does he like? As close as they are, Krystal and Donny find out there are still things to learn about their relationship once they begin dating the same guy. Are they maybe a little codependent? How close is too close?

Krystal and Donny are played by real-life siblings Kristin and Doug Archibald, who also co-wrote the script (Doug directs). They have an easy and natural chemistry that really pops on screen. The relationship feels real and anyone who has siblings will relate. They wrote the script over the phone, long distance between L.A. and St. Louis, and funded it through a successful campaign on Indiegogo. Once all the parts were assembled, both took a hiatus from their day jobs to film, and the result is a rare instance where one might finally say “Please DO quit your day jobs.”

It’s a talky, dialogue-heavy film that’s a solid first effort if not always pitch-perfect. There’s a surprisingly light touch to it that makes the premise all the more palatable; the will they\won’t they, gay\straight\bi aspect is appropriately downplayed. This movie is really about the twins, about growing up and letting go, and it’s never more successful when it’s just Kristin and Doug on screen, eating heaping bowlfuls of noodles with their hapless dog.

The performances in the film are strong, but I particularly loved the comic sensibility of Krystal and Donny’s mother, played by Kristen and Doug’s real-life mom, Charlene. Watch this movie and tell me this doesn’t feel a little bit like your own mother. There’s a universality to the character while still having big personality. Only a mother can make you feel so bad about yourself by loving you so goddamned much. I totally want to eat casserole with this woman.

I Love You Both is an impressive debut feature and also an important moment for queer cinema – finally, the hearkening of a time when gay characters aren’t the point, they’re just part of the picture.

Jane Got A Gun

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Despite what you may think a glaringly obvious move, there is nary an Aerosmith tune in this whole dang movie. Sure it’s a western set in the 1800s, but that wouldn’t have stopped Baz Luhrmann, I’ll tell you that much, pard’ner.

When Jane’s husband comes home all shot up with bad guys on his tail, she’s got no choice but to hustle up the services of the nearest hired gun…who just happens to be her ex-lover.

maxresdefault I’ve never been in an old-timey gun fight (knock wood!) but I imagine the only thing worse than being laid up in bed full of bullet holes, gangrene mere moments away, is to watch your wife fall into the sexy arms of her much-handsomer ex-boyfriend as he protects the both of you and you’re too weak to even protest. How embarrassing!

Although I’d say it’s way more embarrassing to have made such a generic film with absolutely no personality despite passable performances by Natalie Portman and Joel Edgerton (full disclosure: Ewan McGregor is purportedly also in this film but I totally failed to notice him…if the story checks out, you may remember that these three appeared together in the Star Wars prequels, so they do have a history of making bad choices).

It’s not exactly a surprise that this film failed to make a saloon-worthy splash, it was syphilitic with trouble since day one. Actually, since the day before day one, which is when the original director, Lynne Ramsay, walked off the project after a 3-day stand-off with untitled producers who refused to give her final cut. Cinematographer Darius Khondji followed in solidarity, as did Jude Law. Bradley Cooper was brought on to replace him, with Gavin O’Connor in the director’s seat, totally unprepared. Michael Fassbender had already left over clashes with Ramsey so when Cooper left, Joel Edgerton was shuffled over from bad guy to good and Ewan McGregor took up the baddie role. It’s kind of a miracle this movie got made at all, and maybe they should have just left well enough alone.

Not that it’s despicable, it’s just not very entertaining. It looks really good in spots but it’s got the plot of every western you’ve ever seen, interspersed with confusing flash-backs. And I must say: huge missed opportunity. This could have been a table-turning, gun-slinging feminist western but instead Portman dispassionately pinballs from one man to the next and is very much a damsel in distress and that made me one disinterested dame.