"The Boy Next Door" Review

Directed by The Fast and the Furious helmer Rob Cohen, The Boy Next Door is the romance-thriller starring Jennifer Lopez and Ryan Guzman. Lopez's character, Claire Peterson, is a high school teacher who has an affair with Noah Sandborn (Guzman), a 19-year-old high school student played by a 27-year-old actor who looks like he's a 35-year-old underwear model. After this affair, Sandborn grows dangerous, stalking and harassing Peterson and endangering her reputation. That said, after Gigli, I'm not sure Lopez's reputation could be damaged much more.

There's three movies going on in The Boy Next Door. For the first overly-long act of the film, the movie is a romantic dramedy between Lopez & Guzman. Then, after one steamy and uncomfortable night, the film abruptly shifts into a pseudo thriller as Noah Sandborn is suddenly transformed from the ideal man into a manipulative creep. Then, Noah's character is rewritten once again as he becomes a serial killer for the horror section of the film.

In the romantic portion of the film, the tone is too dark for you to buy into any of the chemistry between Guzman and Lopez, but everything going on is far too stupid for any sense of tension to be built. Claire Peterson is a classics teacher who evidently only teaches The Iliad, because that's the only book that's ever brought up - and it's not even brought up to enforce a theme, it's just kind of mentioned and quoted for the sake of sounding smart. During one scene, Noah Sandborn gives Claire Peterson a gift: A slightly old-looking copy of The Iliad. Peterson remarks, "This is a first edition!" Noah agrees with her and says that he found it for a buck at a garage sale. Now, for obvious reasons, this is ridiculously stupid and kind of funny if you're with the right crowd of people, but I also believe it sums up the first part of this movie perfectly. The content of the scene is mind-numbingly stupid, while the characters are acting shy and affectionate towards each other, and the scene is shot in such a way where it looks like one of the characters is about to pull out a knife and stab a deer and eat the brains. This lack of a coherent vision for the film leaves the audience feeling confused and uncomfortable.

Given that the whole opening to the film is dimly lit and somewhat ominous, you would think that Noah's transition into being a sociopath would be relatively smooth. However, while the end result is completely predictable, the change in character seems incredibly forced. Because all of the technical aspects of the film stay relatively constant, Noah turning bad just seems like poor writing, rather than a shift in the tone of the film. The thriller portion of the film as a whole is generally just too repetitive and boring. The film takes a daring idea and somehow makes it seem bland. The fact that Noah is over the age of consent and is the one seducing Peterson (though Peterson initially doesn't consent, which immediately makes the rest of the scene hard to watch) makes all of the presented consequences seem somewhat trivial. These sequences of the film are essentially just a bunch of threats that don't seem nearly as threatening as the movie wants you to believe they are.

The final movie that The Boy Next Door attempts to disguise itself as is a horror film. Taken on its own, this portion of the film isn't that bad. It's not exactly good, but there are a couple somewhat effective moments. The final ten minutes of the film, while not terribly well executed, have some legitimate consequences that allowed me to actually feel something for the characters. Ryan Guzman's performance in these final minutes is also significantly more inspired than the rest of the film (though his transformation into his role as a murderer once again appears to be an example of bad writing). However, the transition from light thrills to torture scares isn't even remotely justified, and this final sequence just doesn't work in the context of the rest of the film.

I don't think that anyone was truly expecting this movie to be good, but I wouldn't say it's even worth a 'guilty-pleasure' viewing. I suppose it would be some fun to watch with a group of friends if you were all making fun of it though. The story is far from complex and there are plenty of incomprehensibly dumb moments to laugh at, so it’s an ideal target for your biweekly “Bad Movie Night”. Other than in a context like that though, I don’t see how I could recommend this trash. 2/10.

"Mortdecai" Review

Mortdecai, or as I like to call it, Mustache Jokes: The Movie, is the most recent film starring Johnny Depp with facial hair and an accent. Depp plays Mortdecai, an eccentric art dealer fallen on hard times. Due to the fact that everyone wants to murder him and he’s completely out of money, Mortdecai grows a mustache in a vain attempt to add some sort of meaning to his life. However, the mustache he grows is stupid and his wife doesn’t like it. Mortdecai likes the mustache though, so he keeps it, leading to everyone making fun of him for it. Haha! Get it? Johnny Depp is wearing a fake mustache but the mustache is weird and nobody likes it. Isn’t that hysterical? There is dumb facial hair on the face of Johnny Depp. Classic comedy. Anyway, an expensive painting is stolen so Mortdecai is hired to find it and crazy hijinks ensue.

Mortdecai is directed by David Koepp, which is especially disappointing because I was a big fan of Koepp’s last film, Premium Rush. Premium Rush is a 2012 film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt about a bicyclist who is pursued throughout Manhattan by a dirty cop. Sounds dumb, right? It definitely was, but it took itself so seriously and committed to its world so fully that it ended up being a lot of fun to watch. Mortdecai is not fun to watch, and a large reason of why it’s not is because it keeps winking at the audience and asking for the audience’s approval. This lack of confidence in itself sucks out any of the fun in the film, and makes viewing it a tedious experience.

Johnny Depp’s character is exactly the bland, overdone character that shouldn’t be given more than 5-10 minutes of free time, and none of the other characters are any better. Saying that they’re all one-dimensional would be too kind. The characters are the sort of things that would be created if you gave a bunch of mediocre improvisers some simple character quirks and had them act out 15-second scenes. The movie has some pretty high profile actors (Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Olivia Munn, Jeff Goldblum), but none of them do anything that makes it seem as if they didn’t memorize their lines 5 minutes prior to pressing record.

Watching this film, I kept thinking about how it appears to just be an amateur version of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Both follow eccentric leading men as they are chased around for the sake of stolen art, and they both include low-brow humor juxtaposed by the class of everyone involved. However, the ways in which The Grand Budapest Hotel is better than Mordecai are innumerable. To sum up a couple of reasons, Mordecai’s humor seems to be derived from a necessity to make jokes, not from actual humorous inspiration. You could have written a better script off of mad libs. The film also appears to be shot as quickly and lazily as possible, so as to just tell the story and not worry about creating a cohesive style… other than bad. There’s just not enough effort put into making this movie good. Johnny Depp’s charisma isn’t enough. 2/10.

"Foxcatcher" Review

Based on a true story, Foxcatcher relays the tale of Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) as he trains for the 1988 Olympic Games and his relationship with multi-million dollar sponsor John du Pont (Steve Carell). Attempting to break free from his brother’s shadow (Mark Ruffalo), Schultz initially feels admiration for du Pont, but grows uncomfortable as du Pont’s behavior becomes more erratic.

</> All of the actors in this film are at the top of their game. Steve Carell has been getting the most attention for his performance, and it’s very well deserved. Finally playing a character out of the norm for him, Carell makes du Pont fascinatingly unsettling, but seemingly harmless despite his fortune. Channing Tatum gives one of the best performances of his career, not only handling numerous difficult wrestling sequences, but showing an incredibly heartbreaking range of emotions with very little dialogue. Mark Ruffalo rounds out the trio of fantastic performances. In the best shape of his life, Ruffalo plays a family man who is much more stable than both du Pont and Mark and has to work to keep them both doing what they need to do.

Bennett Miller, following Moneyball and Capote, is absolutely masterful behind the camera. A majority of the film is silent, and he uses this silence to create much more emotion than if the characters were talking. In a single take, he is able to tell you more about the characters than with pages of dialogue. Miller, combined with a top-notch script, allows for the film to be a completely engrossing experience, despite being somewhat challenging to the audience. While it occasionally feels like the film has been cut down a little too much, Foxcatcher is still an amazing movie. 9/10.

"American Sniper" Review

Based off of the autobiography of the same name, American Sniper is the story of Chris Kyle - ‘the most deadly sniper in American History’. With over 160 ‘confirmed kills’ over four tours, Kyle is routinely described as a legend as the story follows him from childhood to his service in the Iraq war to his PTSD. Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film stars Bradley Cooper as the famous sniper.

This movie reminds me a lot of Captain Phillips. Directed by relatively reputable names, they both contain a solid performance from a high-profile actor playing a character that is highly controversial in real life but is sold as an American hero for the film’s sake. I obviously don’t know him personally, but from everything I’ve read, Chris Kyle seems to like to make up stories. Aside from the famous Jesse Ventura incident (in which Kyle claimed that Ventura said that the SEALs “deserved to lose a few” and was subsequently punched out by Kyle, an incident that never happened and resulted in a lawsuit from Ventura), Kyle also claimed to have killed two carjackers in Texas and over 30 looters after Hurricane Katrina, both of which events didn’t happen and are incredibly unsettling things to lie about. Ignoring all of that though, how is the movie?

Not very good. The whole film is too one-dimensional and one-sided to give the audience much of anything to feel except for blatant patriotism. Despite over 100 credited actors in the film, there are only four characters: Chris Kyle, Chris Kyle’s frustratingly annoying wife who’s not given anything to do but cry (Sienna Miller), evil Muslims who all want to kill America, and other soldiers. That’s about all we’re given, leading to a few simple scenes being repeated over and over for the duration of the 132 minute movie.

Bradley Cooper gives a great performance as Chris Kyle, but it feels like he’s in the wrong movie. Given his tendency for playing somewhat mentally unstable characters who are charismatically uncharismatic, he seemed like a natural choice for the role once Kyle’s defining trait was established as “likes to beat people up”. However, the film paints Kyle as a much more a hero than a maniac. This causes Cooper’s performance to seem out-of-place as he creates a much more realistic portrait of a man who’s a great sniper but also kind of a jerk.

The whole movie just doesn’t flow very well. While the film does a great job at portraying modern warfare, it quickly devolves into mindless action save a few choice scenes. Not only is it mindless action, but the movie has the pretension to claim that it’s something more. The film asserts throughout that Kyle is a hero and a legend, but except for a brief montage near the beginning of the film, we don’t see any reason why. When we’re back at home, all the audience gets to see is Kyle being told by his wife that he’s not the same. Nothing deeper is explored. For those of you who are overly patriotic, you will likely enjoy this film quite a bit, but I just couldn’t get into it. 4/10.

"Paddington" Review

If you’re someone like me, you first heard about Paddington Bear after hearing that Colin Firth was leaving the project after a mutual agreement that his voice didn’t fit the bear. However, evidently Paddington Bear is the star of a series of hugely influential British children books. That makes sense, because Paddington is about as British as it gets. With Ben Whishaw filling in the voice for the title bear, the rest of the cast contains a variety of large stars from Britain. Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville (who is not the same person as Tom Wilkinson, a fact I realized once the credits rolled) are the parents of the family that take Paddington in, Peter Capaldi plays an eccentric neighbor of the family, and Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton provide the voices for Paddington’s Aunt and Uncle. Nicole Kidman is the one non-British member of the cast, stemming from Australia.

Unlike a majority of kids movies that come out nowadays, Paddington appears as if some genuine effort was put into it. It has a definite quirky style, and the film has a great sense of humor. Technically, the movie is a ‘fish out of water’ type of film, but contains a spirit of adventure that is rarely seen in that type of movie nowadays. The computer generated gears are edited seamlessly in the film, making all of the interactions seem much more genuine.

One of the brilliant things that the movie does is not spend 15 minutes having people freak out that the bears can talk. The outrageousness of everything is explored, but not in the aggravatingly overdone way that it is done in any other movie like this. At times the film is a little overly sentimental and formulaic, but it’s still a joy to watch for every single moment. This exceeds all expectations for a kids movie, and I might be getting some of these books for my little sister and I to read together. 8/10.

"Inherent Vice" Review

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice is based off of a Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name. Joaquin Phoenix stars as “Doc”, a detective who investigates the disappearance of his former girlfriend and her millionaire boyfriend. I would try to explain more of the movie, but I’m not sure I can. The plot is intentionally disjointed, due to the main character being high the whole time, and after watching the full film I only had a vague understanding of all of the plot details.

The performances here are all phenomenal. Wearing mutton chops throughout, Joaquin Phoenix carries the movie and gives a reminder to why he’s one of the best actors working today. The ensemble cast is truly an ensemble with far too many actors to mention. Some of the highlights include Josh Brolin as an ape-like detective with a propensity for frozen bananas, Owen Wilson as a presumed dead saxophonist who seems to appear everywhere, and Martin Short as a cocaine-addicted dentist. Every performance in the film is absolutely on point.

Incredibly well shot throughout, the movie’s atmosphere is very surreal and absurd, which works really well with the strange nature of the script. Humorous moments in the blocking and set design help the audience enjoy the film and not focus too hard on understanding the story. I don’t think the purpose of the movie on the initial viewing is to fully comprehend the details. I feel like it’s to get engaged with the characters and the absurdism of everything. I think it’ll take several viewings to fully understand most of what’s happening in the film, and even then I feel like there will be new easter eggs with each new viewing. I really enjoyed this film, and I can’t wait to watch it again. 9/10.

"Selma" Review

Despite being advertised as a Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, I don’t feel like that’s the best way to describe Selma. Although Martin Luther King Jr. is technically the main character of the film, the movie doesn’t focus so much on him as it focuses on the events taking place. This movie is more about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Selma to Montgomery march. Selma is much more about the cause than it is about the people.

That said, the performances in the film are all very strong. David Oyelowo is incredibly affecting as King, and Carmen Ejogo is similarly great. There’s a lot of very good cameos from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Tom Wilkinson, and Trai Byers, There’s also a few very odd cameos. Giovanni Ribisi plays a presidential advisor and Stephen Root plays a racist colonel. Neither of them were bad, but it took me out of the movie a bit to see them. The cinematography was also a bit inconsistent, occasionally containing some odd lighting and framing choices.

The film took a little time for me to get into, but once it found its footing I was all in. The protest scenes are astonishingly emotional. I haven’t been so impacted by an action scene in a long time. Ava DuVernay directs the film with total control and makes a very strong film out of only a decent script. Narrow in focus but wide in scope, Selma is especially relevant as of recently. 8/10.