Category: Movie Reviews (Page 56 of 81)

Movie Review: “The Boxtrolls”

September 25, 2014 / Jason Zingale

Isaac Hempstead Wright, Elle Fanning, Ben Kingsley, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, Jared Harris

Graham Annable & Anthony Stacchi

Pixar may get all the love, but over the last five years, Laika Studios has really come into its own as a company that you can usually expect great things from. Not only has the Portland-based animation house breathed new life into the underappreciated art of stop-motion with movies like “Coraline” and “ParaNorman,” but they’ve done so with an offbeat style unlike any of their competitors. That Burton-esque spirit is alive and well in “The Boxtrolls,” but sadly, that’s about it. The studio’s latest film is an uncharacteristic misfire lacking the charm, wit and heart of its previous efforts, and although it has moments of brilliance, they’re buried beneath an uninspired script that left me feeling cold and indifferent.

The titular Boxtrolls are a race of builders who live in an underground lair eating bugs and tinkering with the junk they forage during their nighttime excursions above ground. Though they’re an otherwise friendly group, the Boxtrolls have been forced into hiding after a villainous schemer named Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) used the disappearance of a local baby as a way to convince the townspeople that the Boxtrolls are dangerous monsters who eat children. Desperate to climb the social ladder and join the ranks of the town’s elite White Hats, Snatcher strikes a deal with their leader, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris), to exterminate all of the Boxtrolls in exchange for his very own white hat and access to their exclusive cheese-tasting club.

But what the townspeople don’t realize is that the missing child is actually alive and well, raised by the Boxtrolls as one of their own after his father gave him away. Now a fully-grown boy, Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright) – named after the cardboard box he wears on his body – has begun to fear for their survival after watching his friends get captured by Snatcher’s red hat-wearing henchman. With the help of Lord Portley-Rind’s meddlesome daughter, Winnie (Elle Fanning), Eggs ventures into the city to rescue the Boxtrolls and expose Snatcher for the slimy charlatan that he is.

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Movie Review: “This Is Where I Leave You”

September 18, 2014 / David Medsker

Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Corey Stoll, Jane Fonda, Rose Byrne, Timothy Olyphant, Connie Britton

Shawn Levy

Shawn Levy wants a do-over. The man who carved out a very successful career as a director that, as the Onion A/V Club once joked, you didn’t know you hated, now wants people to take him seriously. Levy actually turned some heads with the underrated “Real Steel” (his best movie by a country mile), but then followed that with last year’s “The Internship” (you had already forgotten about that one, didn’t you?), and in two months, he unleashes a third “Night at the Museum” film upon a public that thought two “Night at the Museum” films was more than enough, thank you. He’s typecast, and he doesn’t like it one bit. In other words, he now knows how it feels to be nearly every actor or actress who’s ever appeared in one of his films.

Levy’s latest attempt to rebrand himself is “This Is Where I Leave You,” a dysfunctional family dramedy that is filled with rapid-fire jokes (funny ones, too) and boasts a pitch-perfect cast. The biggest problem with the movie, sadly, is Levy himself. He seems out of his depth, and derails the momentum at odd times, lingering too long on a shot here and overdoing the camera work there. A director more experienced with the genre would have fared only marginally better, yes, but Levy had a chance to prove himself here, and he comes up short.

Judd Altman (Jason Bateman) is not having a good year. Not long after walking in on his wife cheating on him with his boss (Dax Shepard), his sister Wendy (Tina Fey) calls to inform him that their father has died. The family isn’t close – their mother Hilary (Jane Fonda) aired the kids’ dirty laundry in the form of a best-selling novel – so the news that their father’s dying wish was for the family to sit Shiva, keeping all four siblings and their significant others in the same house for seven days, is not warmly received. In those seven days, hearts mend, hearts are broken, sibling rivalries both real and imagined rear their ugly heads, and Hilary talks way too openly about, well, everything.

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Adam Driver Corey Stoll Jason Bateman This Is Where I Leave You This Is Where I Leave You review Tina Fey

Movie Review: “A Walk Among the Tombstones”

September 18, 2014 / Billy Tatum Jr.

Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, David Harbour, Adam David Thompson

Scott Frank

It’s not often that there’s a movie set at the turn of the millennium or a truly engaging film released during the limbo months between blockbuster seasons, but Scott Frank’s “A Walk Among the Tombstones” delivers on both counts.

Liam Neeson Stars as Matt Scudder, a former NYPD detective who used to have a very unhealthy habit of chasing booze with as much passion as he chased bad guys. The two intersected with tragic results when he took a booth at his favorite dive just as two thugs were robbing the place, blowing away the bartender in the process. What follows is a shootout that grabs you by the throat and leaves Scudder reexamining his life.

Flash forward to 1999, where we find a clean and sober Scudder. He’s traded in his police title (but still holds on to the badge) for a private eye shingle. Fresh out of an AA meeting, Scudder is approached by drug trafficker Kenny Kristo (Dan Stevens) whose wife was recently kidnapped and murdered. Scudder is a bit conflicted working with the yuppie junior drug kingpin, but forty grand helps ease his inner turmoil. Just as he’s had enough of Kristo and his business, a young girl (Danielle Rose Russell) is abducted by the kidnappers and Scudder goes all-in on finding them and making sure no one is taken again.

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Movie Review: “The Zero Theorem”

September 18, 2014 / Ross Ruediger

Christoph Waltz, Melanie Thierry, David Thewlis, Lucas Hedge, Matt Damon

Terry Gilliam

As someone who’s been a disciple of all things Terry Gilliam for the better part of 30 years, it seems pretty obvious that his most innovative filmmaking days are probably behind him. Those of us that continue to return to his well keep our expectations firmly in check. We don’t expect mind blowing “Brazil”-level satirical explorations, or profound science fiction trips such as “12 Monkeys,” but we are happy to indulge our favorite mad uncle when he unveils something a little less groundbreaking, from somewhere in between, and that’s more or less what “The Zero Theorem” is.

Set in some nearby hazy nether-future – a grotesque exaggeration of our own reality – the film revolves around hypochondriacal misanthrope Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz, looking like Bob Geldof after he shaved all his hair off in “The Wall”), a number-crunching programmer working for a soul-sucking mega-corporation called Mancom. He appears to be more than adept at his job, but awful at the rest of life. With virtually no social skills to speak of, Qohen (pronounced “Cohen”), when he isn’t at work, keeps himself holed up in a dilapidated mansion in a sketchy part of town, waiting for a mysterious phone call that he hopes will bring change. His sole desire is to be allowed to work from home, so he can be close to the phone and away from people.

He begrudgingly attends a party thrown by his obnoxious, clueless supervisor Joby (David Thewlis), where a chance encounter with Management (Matt Damon playing over 50) allows him to plead his case, only to seemingly fall on deaf ears. Later, he’s saved from choking by a comely partygoer named Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry). Curiously, not long after the party, his request to work from home is inexplicably granted, only there’s a catch: He must try to crack the zero theorem, a mathematical formula that when solved could reveal the meaning of life. To aid him in his work, Management sends his teenage son Bob (Lucas Hedges) to assist, and before long, Bainsley reappears as well.

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Movie Review: “The Drop”

September 11, 2014 / Jason Zingale

Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, Noomi Rapace, Matthias Schoenaerts

Michaël R. Roskam

Though it comes with the undesirable label of being James Gandolfini’s final screen appearance, “The Drop” has all the makings of a dark horse awards contender. Adapted by esteemed crime writer Dennis Lehane from his short story “Animal Rescue,” the movie doesn’t have the same cynicism as past adaptions of the author’s work (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone”), but it’s a grimy little crime drama that harkens back to the great Sidney Lumet films of the 1970s. This is a movie that places mood and character above all else, and while that might not be everyone’s cup of tea, Michaël R. Roskam’s “The Drop” is a well-paced and expertly acted film that serves as a fitting end to one actor’s career and the exciting emergence of another.

Tom Hardy stars as Bob Saginowski, a quiet, well-meaning bartender at the Brooklyn watering hole previously owned by his cousin Marv (Gandolfini), who still runs the day-to-day operations. But while Marv is the face of the business (his name even adorns the outside of the building), it really belongs to a group of Chechen mobsters that use it as one of the city’s many drop bars, a place chosen at random to hold all of the day’s illegal bookmaking money. When the bar is robbed by some amateur thieves, the two cousins are put in charge of finding those responsible, leading Marv (who helped plan the whole thing) to resort to desperate measures. Meanwhile, Bob finds a wounded pit bull in a trash can and decides to adopt it, but when the previous owner (Matthias Schoenaerts) resurfaces looking for trouble, he must decide how far he’s willing to go to protect the mutt and the woman (Noomi Rapace) helping him care for it.

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