Criminal - DVD Review

Starring Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, Alice Eve, Michael Pitt, Jordi Molla, Scott Adkins and Amaury Nolasco.
Written by Douglas Cook & David Weisberg.
Directed by Ariel Vromen.

★★

A centrally interesting idea is at the center of this otherwise dumb movie.

Ryan Reynolds plays Bill Pope, a CIA agent who gets killed in the line of duty. He has vital information so his boss (Gary Oldman) orders a doctor who's been experimenting on memory transfers in mice brains, to do his first human test. They need someone with poor frontal lobe development, so their subject is Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner), a sociopath doing a life sentence.

The memory transfer works, but Jericho escapes from CIA custody before divulging the memories that they want.

Costner's performance is really good. It's not quite the character we've seen from him before. He's a man who's never felt remorse or felt a sense of right and wrong, but a side effect of getting Bill's memories is getting his emotions. But Oldman's CIA director is so moronic through this whole movie that it felt like artificial antagonism. There's a gritty messiness to it I kinda enjoyed, but I can't really say it was good. More of a painless time-killer.

Don't Breathe is #1 at box office

For the weekend of August 26-28, 2016, Don't Breathe let out the final gasp of summer by being an actual decent thriller. Assuming it does the same rapid drop of most horror movies, it should match Lights Out's domestic gross.

Mechanic: Resurrection failed to justify its existence. I can't help but think if Tommy Lee Jones looks at this and Criminal and goes "Where did I go wrong?" At least he also had Jason Bourne.

On fewer screens, Southside with You appeased Obama fans who wanted to see a light romantic movie about his first date with Michelle. Hands of Stone sank; Edgar Ramirez is a good actor but he isn't a star.

Family films that had strong holdovers were Kubo & the Two Strings and Pete's Dragon.

Opens September 2
MORGAN with Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Toby Jones and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS with Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander.

Men in Black III - Movie Review

Starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alice Eve, Bill Hader and David Rasche.
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.

★★★

The first Men in Black came out 15 years ago, and the second came out 10 years ago.  I can't remember much about the second one except that it wasn't near as good as the first.  But even so, the MiB team slide comfortably right back into our hearts, with the cocky Agent J and stoic Agent K keeping the aliens on Earth in line.

The plot here revolves around an alien villain named Boris (Jemaine Clement), who has escaped his supermax prison and stolen a time-travel device.  He intends to go back to 1969 and kill Agent K before he was imprisoned.  Therefore it's up to Agent J to stop him.

The best surprise of the movie is how good a job Josh Brolin does as the young Agent K.  He's not just doing a Tommy Lee Jones impression; we believe this is the same person forty years younger, and he and Smith quickly fall into the same chemistry that Smith and Jones have.

Boris is a good villain too.  He's up there with Vincent D'Onofrio's human cockroach in the first one. I don't even remember who the villain was in the second one.

Public service announcement: there's nothing at the end of the credits.

Captain America - Movie Review

lll 1/2

Starring Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Stanley Tucci, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke and Natalie Dormer. Directed by Joe Johnston.

I don't want to overhype this, because it doesn't transcend the superhero genre, but it does beautifully exactly what it's supposed to do. Marvel movies have really stepped up their game.

When I was a kid, I considered the Captain in the big three with Spiderman and Hulk as far as Marvel characters went. Sure, there was X-Men and Iron Man and Daredevil and Fantastic Four and Thor, but really, Spidey, Hulk and the Cap were the Superman and Batman of Marvel.

Glad to see the Captain finally get his due and have it done right. It keeps to the character's WWII roots, and if X-Men: First Class was a throwback to 1960's James Bond movies, then Captain America at times feels like an Indiana Jones sequel.

Chris Evans hits all the right notes as Steve Rogers, a little guy who really wants to fight for his country. His size and health problems prevent him from enlisting, but he catches the eye of a scientist looking for the perfect candidate for an experiment. Not sure how they did the effects of Evans being so small, but I didn't see the seams.

Rogers gets injected with special serum that makes him bigger, stronger, faster, the perfect fighting machine. Now he's ready to take on the Hitler and the Nazis, til he and the US army discover they're up against an even bigger threat - Johan Schmidt and the Hydra.

Johnston directed The Rocketeer, and the same old-school magic comes through here. Supporting cast makes the most of their roles, from the dry wit of Tommy Lee Jones to the beats Stanley Tucci takes with his lines. Hugo Weaving could play Schmidt in his sleep, but he doesn't. He makes Red Skull/Schmidt a worthy, scary opponent.

Stay til the end of the credits.