DVD Reviews: Bernie, The Innkeepers, Lockout

These are all 2012 releases now available on Netflix.

BERNIE (★★★) Starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey. Directed by Richard Linklater.  Black does his best acting job in years as Bernie, a mild-mannered mortician who befriends all the old ladies of his small town, but finds himself the object of affection of one rich spinster (MacLaine).  The Texas humor is gentle, and it's another great turn by Linklater alum McConaughey, doing a new twist on his Southern lawman character.

THE INNKEEPERS (★★½) Starring Sara Paxton, Pat Healy and Kelly McGillis.  Directed by Ti West.  I'm enjoying West's continuing contribution to old-school style horror movies.  This one suffers from being just a little too slow and a little too willing to get its heroine out of danger as soon as she's put in it.  But it is a great lesson how much more effective a thriller can be when we get to know and care about the characters.

LOCKOUT (★★) Starring Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace and Peter Stormare.  Directed by James Mather & Stephen St. Leger.  Here's an example of an old-school style action movie but it feels more like a retread than a revisiting.  Pearce's wiseguy antihero deserves a better movie than this Escape from New York ripoff, where he must rescue the President's daughter, being held hostage in the world's first supermax prison in outer space. Most of it takes place in hallways and corridors, and it kept making me wish a xenomorph would show up and start picking off everyone.

Kung Fu Panda 2 - Movie Review

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Starring the voices of Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, David Cross, Lucy Liu, James Hong, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Haysbert. Directed by Jennifer Yuh.

Saw this at the $1 theater. Should come out on DVD pretty soon, actually.

I really enjoyed Kung Fu Panda, and I was worried the sequel might diminish the memory off the original. My fears were unfounded, although I will say this isn't as good as the first.

Jack Black voices Po, the Baby-Huey of a panda who's now really good at kung fu, to where he can stand tall with the furious five. A new threat is sweeping across China. Turns out China's emperor family are peacocks, and the evil prodigal son Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) has returned to reclaim his throne. He's raised an army of assassins and brought a secret weapon to help him conquer the country. But the subplot is that Po, adopted by a goose, wants to learn about his biological parents, where he comes from.

There's more fighting and a bit darker tone this time around. It's also left wide open for Kung Fu Panda 3.

Gulliver's Travels - DVD Review

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Starring Jack Black, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Chris O'Dowd, TJ Miller and Catherine Tate. Directed by Rob Letterman.

Jack Black... what can I say. I loved School of Rock, but lately it seems like he's picking projects where he does the same thing in different scenarios and it's just not funny anymore. Year One was an odious example, and this big-screen high-concept low-ambitioned comedy isn't much better.

Black plays mail-room slacker Lemuel Gulliver, a guy going nowhere aspiring to nothing. One day he plagarizes some articles to impress a hot editor in his building, and she immediately sends him on a writing assignment to the Bermuda triangle. Naturally he gets caught in a whirlpool out there (with some inept green-screening, I might add) and land in Lilliput, an island where little people can instantly build contraptions to trap giants, as though one washes up on shore every year.

The likable-enough cast is trapped in this Blackian world of easy punchlines. The finale where everyone dances with Black as he sings "War" made me want to hide my face.

There is no aspiration here to make it a memorable movie. There's no ambition beyond lowbrow humor and making as many elementary kid as possible giggle when Gulliver pees to put out a palace fire.

P.S. Emily Blunt tried to get out of making this so she could be Black Cat in Iron Man 2. Poor thing.