Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Movie Review

Starring Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Kim, Celeste O'Connor and Annie Potts.

Written by Gil Kenan & Jason Reitman.

Directed by Jason Reitman.

★★★

Another movie continuing the tradition of being a sequel to the original without really counting the other movies as canon. I can't think of anything it used from Ghostbusters II (and the Paul Feig Ghostbusters was a remake destined to be a forgotten footnote). And while it did feel like its own movie for most of it, it relies a lot on familiarity/nostalgia from the original to hit those emotional chords.

It centers on single mom Callie (Gone Girl's Carrie Coon) and her two teens Trevor (Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Annabelle Come Home's Mckenna Grace) who've inherited a rickety old farm in Summerville, OK, from Callie's father, whom she never knew. Context clues early say that her father was Egon Spengler, who died officially of a heart attack but there are larger, spookier forces at play. Trevor tries to get in with the local teens while brainiac Phoebe is too intrigued by all the research and gadgets her grandfather left behind. Meanwhile Paul Rudd is a nearby teacher who catches Callie's eye.

It had some late surprises I was expecting and a couple that I was
n't. The star of the show is Grace, who's been bouncing around in some good projects (Gifted, The Haunting of Hill House, young Carol in Captain Marvel, young Tonya in I Tonya) but this feels like a role that can boost her into Dakota Fanning level of Best Teen Actress roles.

Stay through the credits. (But avoid looking at the IMDB cast list before you see the movie so certain things don't get spoiled. Glad I didn't look until after the movie.)

Admission - DVD Review

Starring Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Michael Sheen, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn, Nat Wolff, Olek Krupa, Gloria Reuben and Sonya Walger.
Directed by Paul Weitz.

★½

Paul Rudd is not the kind of actor who can save a movie. He's pretty bland, a blank-slate harmless beta-male who might be a really great guy to hang out with in person, but on-screen, he's as crazy as a Snuggie. Making him a love interest for Tina Fey is a safe choice, but there's no spark or chemistry there. The last time I thought he had chemistry with a woman on-screen was Alicia Silverstone in Clueless.

So, Rudd distraction aside, this is more about Tina Fey, and while Fey tends to play brainy types unlucky in love, at least she's brainy. But this hinges on the Idiot Plot Device. Roger Ebert would refer to this when a movie has a plot that only keeps the movie going by having the main characters be or act like total idiots.

The device here, the hook, the first-act reveal, is that Rudd may have found Fey's son she gave up for adoption 18 years ago. She believes him. But she doesn't ask/tell/confront the kid. Takes her an hour of the movie to dance around the issue until she breaks it to him after everything else in the movie that needs to happen happens. See, she works in Admissions at Princeton, and Rudd thinks this kid would be a great student there.  Now, had Fey just tried to get to the bottom of it right away, the movie would have been 30 minutes long.  So...

And if this movie is remotely accurate as to how Ivy-League schools select their students, then screw Princeton.

Anchorman 2 - Movie Review

Starring Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Kristen Wiig, Meagan Good, Dylan Baker, James Marsden, Greg Kinnear, Judah Nelson, Fred Willard and Chris Parnell.
Directed by Adam McKay.

★★1/4

Nine years. Nine years since the legend has graced the big screen.  So when the stars align and he finally re-emerges, we get a cuddly reunion that I just wish had been funnier.

Call it the Austin Powers effect. I though the second movie was the weakest because it felt like it was retreading jokes from the first one.  This one too offers a retread. Some of it is funny, make no mistake, but this also suffers from our ability to see the punchlines coming from farther away, and shouting the punchline does not make it funnier.

We begin with Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone happily married, parents to a cute little moppet, and co-anchoring the weekend edition on a national news network (WBC).  When the main anchor of the network decides to retire, he names Veronica his successor, and he fires Ron, "the worst anchorman I've ever seen."  Ron's fragile pride is wounded, and he tells Veronica that if she loved him, she'd refuse the promotion. So naturally we cut to a few months later where a newly single Ron Burgundy has hit rock-bottom.

But then comes along the opportunity to be a part of GNN, the first 24-hour news network.

The movie has fun with the trope of "getting the band back together."  Steve Carell is a bigger star now so Brick has more to do this time around. But Brick was so dumb in the first one that he's impossible to invest in this time around. Comedy is best when there's a grain of truth to it, but Brick is incomprehensibly stupid. He's dumber than an adult Ralph Wiggum.

There's some inspired humor with the way it skewers cable news. There are also some gags that go on too long and just aren't funny, like Ron's awkward racism trying to relate to black people.

The third act gets so ridiculous that it almost saves it. (Did I mention it has a lot of good surprise cameos?)

Maybe if there'd been more people in my theater, there would have been more laughs, and I would have enjoyed it more.  As is, it's fine, you know. What can I say. It's alright. You could do worse. (Shrugs). I was disappointed.

DVD Reviews - Anna Karenina, Hitchcock, This is 40, The Possession

ANNA KARENINA (★★★) - Starring Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Matthew Macfayden, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson and Olivia Williams.  Directed by Joe Wright.

I loved the artistic decision by the makers when faced with the challenge of adapting a thick book to film.  They made it like a stage play.  Sets become real locations, then back into sets, allowing for quick scene changes and transportations, and a heightened sense of theatricality.

Knightley's great as Anna, the proud wife of a boring general (Law) who has an affair.  My biggest problem with it was her lover, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass, Savages).  There was nothing attractive or charismatic about him. It made no sense why Anna would destroy her life over having an affair with this dork.

I liked everyone else.  Bonus points to Matthew Macfayden for showing the flair of a young Kevin Kline.

----

HITCHCOCK (★★) - Starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, James D'Arcy, Toni Collette, Danny Huston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Michael Wincott, Ralph Macchio and Kurtwood Smith.  
Directed by Sacha Gervasi.

Maybe it's just me, but I would hope that someone making a movie about Alfred Hitchcock would have a little more directorial flare to telling the story.  This felt like it could've been directed by Dennis Dugan.

It centers on the struggles Hitchcock went through to get Psycho made. He was riding a high from the success from North by Northwest, yet he faced many obstacles trying to get this tale told.  The whole thing flows along at almost a sitcom pace, and Mirren even gets one monologue that feels inserted in there strictly for Golden Globe nominating bait.  James D'Arcy does some interesting things as Anthony Perkins but it's a surprisingly small role.

It's not bad; it's just not good.  It's a paperback beach novel of a movie.

----

THIS IS 40 (★½) - Starring Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel, Megan Fox, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow, Chris O'Dowd, Robert Smigel and Melissa McCarthy.  Directed by Judd Apatow.

This is hell.  This is a whiny, self-indulgent, meandering, laugh-free, plot-free demonstration of an upper-middle-class white family going through their first-world problems and general malaise of hitting the halfway point in their lives.

(Okay, it's not laugh-free; Melissa McCarthy's extended cameo was pretty funny. And how can you not smile at a movie that has Albert Brooks in the cast?)

Paul Rudd and Mr. Judd Apatow's wife and kids reprise their roles from Knocked Up to show how lame life is when you turn forty.  At least it can be.  "You reap what you sew" could be one of the morals of this movie.  Don't like your kids swearing? Maybe you shouldn't have sworn around them all the time.

I actually turn 40 later this year, so I could argue I was the target audience.  Not impressed.

----

THE POSSESSION (★) - Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Madison Davenport and Natasha Calis.  Directed by Ole Bornedal.

If you ever want to see a movie featuring a Jewish exorcist but want it to make The Unborn look like a modern classic, you're in luck!  Someone made this movie to fulfill your needs.

This movie is an Elvis impersonation of a horror thriller.  It hits the same beats of a hundred other movies, has the same pacing and ominous soundtrack, but it never succeeds to present an original idea or provide an actual moment of suspense.  Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who's resembling Javier Bardem more the older he gets, gives a sincere performance as a concerned father whose daughter is possessed, but it's for a lost cause.

How Do You Know - DVD Review

ll

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson, Kathryn Hahn, Mark Linn-Baker, Tony Shalhoub and Lenny Venito.
Directed by James L. Brooks.

This is one of those rich-people-with-trifling-issues rom-coms more associated with Nancy Meyers than James L. Brooks. It's about people struggling to connect, but able cast and witty dialogue aside, it felt like it's written by someone who hasn't had actual human connection for a long time.

Reese Witherspoon plays a professional softball player who's about to learn she's been cut from her team. Owen Wilson plays a professional baseball player who makes $14 million a year who falls quickly for Reese, but he's trying to figure out how to be in a real relationship. Paul Rudd is a CEO who's about to learn his business is being investigated for securities fraud and that he might personally go to jail for it, even though he isn't sure what he did. Jack Nicholson plays his father, who also happens to be chairman at the same company.

Reese bounces back and forth between Owen and Paul, all the while each character seems to be waiting for the other to stop talking so they can talk about themselves and wonder aloud how to connect to people without ever doing so. Nothing about this movie ever feels real. I found Owen's huge well-furnished apartment more interesting. I could picture ten union workers furnishing it, putting everything in place, checking the lighting, measuring everything. The work they put in deserves to be in a better movie.