The Angry Birds Movie - DVD Review

THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE (PG) Starring the voices of Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Peter Dinklage, Bill Hader, Kate McKinnon, Keegan-Michael Key, Sean Penn, Tony Hale and Jillian Bell.
Written by Jon Vitti.
Directed by Clay Kaytis & Fergal Reilly.

★★½

Well, this is probably the best possible movie you could make out of this material, right? It's about a community of birds, none of whom can fly. One bird named Red (Jason Sudeikis) doesn't quite fit in. He's sarcastic and has anger issues, and after an incident, he's forced to attend anger management classes.

But then the piggies arrive. The birds have never heard of the piggies, but they come with gifts and loud noises and colors and hey-look-over-there! Red suspects there's something shady about Head Pig Leonard (Bill Hader) and wants to investigate, but the townspeople think it's just Red being his usual antisocial self.

The movie doesn't have much story to stretch to 90 minutes, so it fills in the gaps with risque jokes and visual gags. The third act is when the movie really gets into the game-play, with the birds catapulting themselves into the pigs' flimsily-constructed city to go rescue their eggs. There's a lot of talented voices in here, so while it didn't make laugh, it did make me smile a few times.

One bizarre note: two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn voices one of the birds, but all he does is grumble.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - Movie Review

Starring Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn and Patton Oswalt. Directed by Ben Stiller.

★★★½

I saw part of the same-titled Danny Kaye movie on TV when I was a little kid, but I don't remember much about it. It was based on a two-page James Thurber short story. This movie has nothing to do with that original story.

Stiller plays Walter Mitty, a boring man who constantly zones out into fantastical daydreams. He works for Life magazine but he soon learns that their next printed issue will be their last. Stiller wants to have it both ways and for the most part, does, with very funny daydreams combined with thought-provoking drama about actually living life.

Its main weakness would be with the blatant, intrusive product placement. The use of Papa John's as a plot device bordered on grotesque.

This is an elegant panoramic tribute to his locations. Greenland and Iceland look like places I'd want to visit. Nice to see Stiller take full advantage of the big screen.

Gangster Squad - DVD Review

Starring Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Mireille Enos, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Pena, Robert Patrick, Troy Garity, Sullivan Stapleton, Jon Polito and John Aylward.  Directed by Ruben Fleischer.

★★

This is a pulpy True Detective dime-store cops-and-mobsters movie.  As such, it's attracted a stellar cast. I imagine the talent all in one room, looking at each other, and then saying "Since we're here, should we try to make an actual good movie? Nah, let's just have fun!"

Remember Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy?  Remember Christian Slater and Patrick Dempsey as Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in Mobsters? This movie has more in common with those ventures than, say, The Untouchables.  Josh Brolin is assigned by the LAPD chief (Nick Nolte) to go after gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a man who enjoys killing apologizing underlings more than Darth Vader.

Meanwhile Cohen's dame (Emma Stone) is having an affair with another cop (Ryan Gosling), who joins Brolin's crew.

Everyone in this movie looks like they're having a blast, but it follows the old Siskel rule. "Is this movie better than just watching these actors sitting around talking over lunch?" The answer is no.

Penn's Cohen seems like he came out of the Sin City sequel, both in stylized overacting and make-up.  Gosling takes this amusing soft-slide to his voice, reminiscent of Mickey Doyle from Boardwalk Empire.  Stone's too modern to comfortably walk in her moll's shoes.

The whole thing though is relentlessly shallow.  It has no desire to leave an imprint. It just wants to shoot Tommy guns and cackle like Cagney.

Random Movie News - 5/23/13

- Drew Pearce, who wrote Iron Man 3 and the upcoming Pacific Rim, has been hired to write Mission Impossible 5.

- Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, The Master) is putting quite a cast together for his next film.  Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Benecio Del Toro and now Sean Penn are on board for Inherent Vice, based on the comedic Thomas Pynchon novel about a private detective in 1960's Los Angeles.

- Assassin's Creed is slated to open May 22, 2015.  Based on the best-selling video game, it will star Michael Fassbender.

- Evan Peters (American Horror Story) has signed on to play Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

- The cast is shaping up for Rob Marshall's Into the Woods.  James Corden (never heard of him) and Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) are in line to play the Baker and his Wife, Meryl Streep (Hope Springs) will play the Witch, Johnny Depp (Nick of Time) will play the Wolf, Christine Baranski (The Good Wife) will play Cinderella's Stepmother, and Chris Pine (Star Trek) and Jake Gyllenhaal (End of Watch) are circling the parts of the two Princes.

Now when it comes to musicals, it seems like a no-brainer for Into the Woods to get the treatment, and I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.  Rob Marshall directed Chicago, but he also directed Nine, and now he has to prove that he can make Into the Woods without having Red Riding Hood do her number in black lingerie.  I like how the cast is shaping up, if all those people can sing. I'm surprised Eddie Redmayne isn't already signed on for Jack.

The Tree of Life - DVD Review

Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken and Sean Penn.
Directed by Terrence Malick.

"THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!"

There is no doubt Malick is a master of visual poetry. But 138 minutes of montages and scene fades doth not a movie make.

This very personal, ambitious work calls to mind Stanley Kubrick's 2001 as its closest comparison, but even Stanley got around to telling a story. Here we swim through a cubist flipbook of life for the three O'Brien boys in small-town 1950's Texas. Brad Pitt plays the domineering father; Jessica Chastain the angelic mother.

Malick shows his hand in the first few minutes. We gets beautiful shots of birds, wind, trees, blades of grass, shadows, children running, a woman smiling, whispered voice-overs, and it keeps going and going... I was grateful when it spins off into a 20-minute sequence of the Earth being formed, through the dinosaur age, until it all comes back to the O'Brien family. We get a couple scene of the oldest boy grown up, played by Sean Penn, but it's really more of a cameo.

I know of Malick's tendencies and I was braced for a non-linear story, ready for an artist to expose his palette. But this is from an artist who knows he's an artist, who acts and thinks like an artist, and if we don't get it, well, I guess we're too bourgeois. He knows what story he's telling, but he makes it inscrutable. There are lasting images and impressions, and yes, he is very talented. But it's not as profound as he thinks it is, and large sections of it are boring. That is its ultimate crime. I wanted it to wash over me, but after a while, when it became clear this was all Malick had up his sleeve, it was laborious. Gorgeous shot after gorgeous shot, and yet, what is the sum of these parts?

I wanted to love this movie, to get swept up by it, but would it kill the director to just let two characters have a conversation, to have something happen and then have the next scene be the reaction to what just happened? It's the longest 138-minute movie I've ever seen.

Penn, Gosling, Brolin in talks for 'Gangster'

Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin are in talks to star in Gangster Squad, about a secret force within the LAPD in the 1940's that focussed on organized crime, particularly Mickey Cohen.

Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) will direct.

Personally I love the idea of this project. They don't make enough noir films.