Hidden Figures - Movie Review

Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge and Glen Powell.
Written by Allison Schroeder & Ted Melfi.
Directed by Ted Melfi.

★★★½

It's a credit to this movie that we're never bored spending this much screentime staring at vast mathematical equations on chalkboards.

This film covers the true story of three African-American women at NASA who had to overcome discrimination so they could help get a man into space. Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) is the genius at analytical geometry; Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) is the programmer who figures out FORTRAN faster than anyone else on site; Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) is the engineer who should already be promoted.

Jim Crow laws are alive and well in Viriginia, 1961, and the movie deals with many of the issues these women had to face. When Katherine is moved to the main calculations room, she has to deal with the fact that the closest restroom for colored ladies is a half-mile away on campus. And on the second day of work, she finds a smaller coffee pot with the label "colored" has been placed next to the big main pot everyone else drinks out of.

I liked the light-hearted family-friendly approach to this material. Serves as a history lesson, but it's also just good entertainment. Strong support comes from Kevin Costner as the straightforward NASA boss, Jim Parsons as the office jerk, and Mahershala Ali as a colonel come courtin' for Katherine's affections.

Hidden Figures ousts Rogue One to be #1

For the weekend of January 6-8, 2017, Hidden Figures finally unseated Rogue One to be the new #1 movie in America. It had been doing well in limited release and timed its expansion just right.

The only new wide release was Underworld: Blood Wars. This franchise has been withering on the vine for a while, and the anemic opening might signal this will finally be the last installment.

La La Land doubled its screen-count and saw dividends. A Monster Calls expanded and flopped. It'll need Oscar nominations and buzz to not go the way of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

Opens January 13
SLEEPLESS with Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan and Gabrielle Union.
MONSTER TRUCKS with Jane Levy, Lucas Till, Amy Ryan and Rob Lowe.
THE BYE BYE MAN with Douglas Smith, Faye Dunaway and Carrie-Anne Moss.
(wide) PATRIOTS DAY with Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon and John Goodman.
(wide) SILENCE with Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson.
(wide) LIVE BY NIGHT with Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning and Zoe Saldana.

Golden Globes Winners

Best Motion Picture – Drama:
“Moonlight”

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
“La La Land”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama:
Casey Affleck – “Manchester By The Sea”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama:
Isabelle Huppert – “Elle”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
Ryan Gosling – “La La Land”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
Emma Stone – “La La Land”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture:
Aaron Taylor-Johnson – “Nocturnal Animals”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture:
Viola Davis – “Fences”

Best Director – Motion Picture:
Damien Chazelle – “La La Land”

Best Original Screenplay:
“La La Land”

Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language:
“Elle” – France

Best Motion Picture – Animated:
“Zootopia”

Best Original Song – Motion Picture:
“City Of Stars” – La La Land

Best Original Score – Motion Picture:
Justin Hurwitz – “La La Land”

Best Television Series – Drama:
“The Crown”

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
“Atlanta”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama:
Billy Bob Thornton – “Goliath”

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series – Drama:
Claire Foy – “The Crown”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
Donald Glover – “Atlanta”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
Tracee Ellis-Ross – “Black-ish”

Best Limited Series:
“The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Tom Hiddleston – “The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Olivia Colman – “The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Hugh Laurie – “The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Sarah Paulson – “The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”

Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Acheivement Award:
Meryl Streep

Reaction:

- Really enjoyed Jimmy Fallon's opening number.
- The Globes is known for surprises, but one thing you can guarantee. TV shows in their first season have an advantage when it comes to winning. See also: The Affair, Mr. Robot, Mozart in the Jungle.
- Guess I need to watch The Night Manager now.
- Best presenters were Steve Carell & Kristin Wiig, about seeing their first animated movies.
- La La Land now has the record for most Golden Globes wins for film.
- It was weird to have an In Memorium for Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds but not for anyone else.
- My favorite part of Meryl Streep's speech was actually the end when she paid tribute to her friend Princess Leia. Streep and Fisher became friends after Streep played her in Postcards from the Edge.

The Worst Movies of 2016

There are some movies where the reviews are so bad, I'm not going to see them, and there are others I'm curious if they have a so-bad-it's-good quality that I just haven't gotten around to it. Movies I've heard bad things about that I haven't seen include Norm of the North, Dirty Grandpa, The Fifth Wave, Fifty Shades of Black, The Choice, The Bronze, God's Not Dead 2, The Boss, Mother's Day, The Darkness, Me Before You, Warcraft, Nine Lives, Ben-Hur, Mechanic: Resurrection, The Disappointments Room, The Wild Life, Keeping Up with the Joneses, I'm Not Ashamed, Inferno, Shut In, Bad Santa 2, Incarnate, Collateral Beauty and Assassin's Creed.

And to give you an idea of my tastes, here were my bottom five of the past few years:

2015 - Get Hard, Pixels, Mortdecai, The Gunman, Chappie
2014 - Annabelle, The Expendables 3, Winter's Tale, Transformers 4, Pompeii
2013 - Inappropriate Comedy, Movie 43, Only God Forgives, Die Hard 5, A Haunted House
2012 - Taken 2, Branded, Beneath the Darkness, Ghost Rider 2, Underworld Awakening
2011 - Hobo with a Shotgun, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1, Sucker Punch, Sleeping Beauty, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
2010 - Grown Ups, Cop Out, Sex & the City 2, Jonah Hex, Skyline
2009 - Transformers 2, Miss March, Bruno, Year One, Crank 2
2008 - Over Her Deady Body, Repo!: The Genetic Opera, Meet the Spartans, Strange Wilderness, Babylon A.D.
2007 - Epic Movie, September Dawn, Funny Money, Code Name: The Cleaner, Alien v. Predator 2
2006 - Date Movie, The Benchwarmers, Big Momma's House 2, The Libertine, BloodRayne

So let's get to 2016.

Dishonorable Mentions:

BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE - Zack Snyder has murdered everything about what made Superman popular in the first place. Which is a real shame, because Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot give us hope that Justice League has a lot of promise... as long as Snyder doesn't direct it.

BLAIR WITCH - Super disappointed in this sequel, which just followed all the plot beats of the first one, only with six people instead of three.

THE FOREST - Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones) gets lost in a Japanese forest, but anticipated scares never come.

GODS OF EGYPT - Ridiculous sword-and-sandals CGI adventure where most of the gods and people of Egypt are white.

RIDE ALONG 2 - Kevin Hart bugs his eyes and shouts maniacally to cover up that nothing inherently funny is happening.

ZOOLANDER 2 - Tons of fun cameos can't save a second movie that revolves around a central character this mind-numbingly stupid. It doesn't take long watching this movie to go "Maybe the first Zoolander wasn't that good either."

And now.....

..... My Bottom Ten

10. SUICIDE SQUAD - This could have been really cool, but they made SO many bad decisions in its execution. It sets up a bunch of fun characters, and then it sends them down this plodding, video-game-shooter of a plot to stop two lame villains and their swirly sky-portal machine. Whoever thought of adding the Joker only to make him such a minor character needs their head examined.

9. KNIGHT OF CUPS - Writer/director Terrence Malick self-indulges and squanders an all-star cast once again. But at least it's pretty to look at.

8. ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS - This sequel takes the worst excesses of Tim Burton's movie and expounds on them. There's very little of Lewis Carroll in here but a ton of CGI nonsense and time-travel and I do not want to see what life was like for the Mad Hatter as a kid! I hope Disney reboots this in a few years and tries to be a little more faithful. If they can't be faithful to Carroll, at least try to be closer to their 1951 version.

7. LONDON HAS FALLEN - Pretty darn hard to be a good movie when Gerard Butler gets top billing. This starts with a way-too-successful terrorist plot of killing all of the West's leaders as they attend the funeral of the UK's Prime Minister, but somehow the US president escapes and is on the run. It's just ridiculous.

6. MOJAVE - Micro-budget experiment with a man who's being pursued in the California desert by a serial killer. Lots of machismo going on, but not even Oscar Isaac can save it.

5. INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE - Twenty years later... well, it turns out we didn't need this sequel. It retains a lot of the hokiness of the first movie, but there's a gaping hole with no Will Smith, and Liam Hemsworth can't fill it. I kinda wanted the aliens to win this time.

4. REGRESSION - Emma Watson doesn't do much more than furrow her brow in this lazy psychological drama from The Others' Alejandro Amenabar. Since it's obvious the whole time what the twist ending is, there's no point in slogging through the icky subject matter.

3. YOGA HOSERS - I had a great experience watching this at Sundance, with Kevin Smith talking to us before and after the movie. But this was sooooo stupid. A mad scientist is able to turn footlong sausages into Nazis who crawl up people's butts to kill them? Why?

2. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR - Sarah Wayne Callies (Prison Break, The Walking Dead) stars in this by-the-numbers rip-off of Pet Sematary but set in India. There's not a single scare in it. Not even a jump-scare.

1. THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT - A sequel so bad, the dramatic conclusion to the franchise was cancelled. This was a world that became less interesting the more it expanded. They never should have split the third book into two movies.

High-Rise - DVD Review

HIGH-RISE (R) Starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes and Sienna Guillory.
Written by Amy Jump.
Directed by Ben Wheatley.

★★½

This movie is based on a 1975 JG Ballard novel, and the director has wisely kept it in that time-period, even as it's looking forward into a dystopian future. Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) has designed a series of high-rise buildings, obnoxious blocky things that jut at the top like a concrete claw.

Dr. Laing (Tom Hiddleston) is a resident on the 25th floor of this 40-story building, and it's through his eyes that we follow the happenings of the High-Rise. The High-Rise is its own character. The interiors are garish and psychadelic; the exteriors cold and dank. The movie establishes fairly early that it's a social satire against class warfare and capitalism run amok. The richer people of the higher floors don't take long before they start exploiting their "lessers" of the lower floors.

The movie really gets away from itself once order breaks down. The camera zooms around on rich, orgiastic parties, then taking time to observe the poor people living amongst the piling-up trash of the ground floor. I've never read the book, and my understanding is that it was deemed unfilmable. Well, they certainly put forth a solid effort here, but the second half just gets messier and messier while it relentlessly hammers home its "rich people are awful" point.

I Am Not A Serial Killer - DVD Review

Starring Max Records, Christopher Lloyd, Laura Fraser, Karl Geary and James Gaulke.
Written by Billy O'Brien & Christopher Hyde.
Directed by Billy O'Brien.

★★★

This movie is based on a book by Dan Wells, and it is told in first person. The teenage protagonist John Wayne Cleaver is in his own head a lot. So how to translate that to the big-screen?

Rather than rely on voice-over narration, the movie relies on the expressive face of Max Records (Where the Wild Things Are), and it works.

John is a kid who's already been diagnosed with sociopathic tendencies, so he already has a strict code of conduct. He's like a teenage Dexter who's decided he never wants to actually kill anyone. But in his small town of Clayton, MN, someone is killing people, and he does his own amateur sleuthing to figure out who. John's suspicions eventually fall on his neighbor Mr. Crowley (Christopher Lloyd), whom John believes isn't as old and frail as he appears.

This movie benefits from being shot on location. This looks like an actual small town as opposed to strategically shot L.A. suburbs, and therefore the lived-in aspect makes the sinister invasion of a killer in their town more felt.

Records and Lloyd play well off each other, and the subtle chills throughout the movie keep it engaging. The only time the low budget hurts it is the ending, but I don't want to give anything away as to specifically why.

Term Life - DVD Review

TERM LIFE (R) Starring Vince Vaughn, Hailee Steinfeld, Bill Paxton, Jonathan Banks, Terrence Howard, Shea Whigham, Mike Epps, Jon Favreau, Jordi Molla and Taraji P. Henson.
Written by AJ Lieberman.
Directed by Peter Billingsley.

★★

This movie has a lot of interesting ingredients, but I was never sure what it was actually trying to be.

Vince Vaughn plays a small-time hood, a specialist in setting up heists, then selling the plans to highest bidders. When he gets framed for murder, he's wanted by the mob, the police, and the crooked cops who framed him. The title comes from the term life insurance he takes out on himself. As long as he can survive three weeks, then he can leave his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) a ton of money.

It's not really a comedy, nor do the stakes ever feel high enough to be a gritty drama. His life's in danger, but he seems detached from everything. I was impressed by all the names that signed on to this project. Too bad their director didn't know what to do with them.

Zoolander 2 - DVD Review

ZOOLANDER 2 (PG-13) Starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Penelope Cruz, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Kyle Mooney, Justin Theroux, Cyrus Arnold, Milla Jovovich, Benedict Cumberbatch, Nathan Lee Graham, Jon Daly, Sting, Billy Zane, Fred Armisen, Christine Taylor and Justin Beiber.
Written by Justin Theroux, Ben Stiller, Nick Stoller & John Hamburg.
Directed by Ben Stiller.

★½

Zoolander 2 is kinda like Dumb & Dumber To. It's a sequel that would have been better about ten years ago, but now the groans of their stupidity outweight the laughs.

In fact, the laughs that are found in here come from everyone else but Ben Stiller's central male-model idiot. There are dozens of cameos in here, to an overcompensating degree. The movie starts off by explaining how Zoolander's wife died, he lost parental rights to his son, and now he lives as a hermit crab in a remote cabin.

Derek Zoolander is called back into action by a new fashion show in Rome, but there also happens to be a series of beautiful musicians who are getting killed, and so Derek and Hansel are enlisted by a fashion interpol agent (Penelope Cruz) to help solve the mystery.

The movie picks up once Mugatu (Will Ferrell) shows up, but we're an hour into a 95-minute film at that point.

Hollywood may think we want sequels to movies over a decade old, but we really don't.

Side note: Product placement is increasingly obnoxious in Ben Stiller films. It damaged his otherwise fine Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and it's too obvious here.

Fences - Movie Review

Starring Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby and Mykelti Williamson.
Written by August Wilson.
Directed by Denzel Washington.

★★★

August Wilson adapted his own 1983 play, and I can't help but think it might have been better if someone else had, to remove some of the stage-iness of it. Maybe that was on purpose.

This feels so much like a play, you'd think you were watching a Fathom Events instead of a movie. That's not necessarily a bad thing, when I think of how cool it would have been to watch Denzel Washington and Viola Davis perform this play live. But if you're going to be a movie, be a movie!

If Arthur Miller had Death of a Salesman, this is Wilson's Death of a Garbageman. Denzel plays Troy Maxson, a garbageman in the 1950's who felt like he missed his chance for greatness when he was a star in the Negro Leagues but never went to the major leagues. He works hard, he has a great wife, he has a long-time best friend (Stanley Henderson) he can talk with at work and drink with afterwards. He has a troubled relationship with his two sons, and the reasons why become more obvious as the story unfolds.

Troy eventually reveals himself to be more self-centered than originally perceived, and his destructive attitudes threaten his home life. Troy is outspoken, audacious, pernicious, a true galaxy of a man, and not a sympathetic one by the time we get to the third act. And we feel most for his wife Rose (Viola), a woman who gave up on her dreams and sense of self to stay with Troy.

I thought Michelle Williams had a pretty good shot at Best Supporting Actress for Manchester by the Sea, but now I think Davis has this in the bag.

Rogue One #1 for Third Week

For the weekend of December 30, 2016 to January 1, 2017, Rogue One stayed #1 for the third week in a row. The holiday weekend saw some rising in interest of other films too.

Sing's huge second weekend means it'll be very difficult for Illumination to say no to "Sing 2."

The real news is how the limited-releases movies are doing and how effective their staggered-release strategy is.

La La Land added a few more screens and wound up with the best per-screen average in the top ten. Fences didn't wait long to open wide, and it held its own in a crowded field. Its low budget means profitability, and it's sure to win something at next week's Golden Globes to help its marketing push.

Lion is slipping and might have waited to long to open wider sooner.

20th Century Women and Paterson had strong openings on 4 screens each. Of the holdovers, Hidden Figures, Patriots Day, and Silence are all performing well. The two that look like they're suffering are Ben Affleck's Live By Night and A Monster Calls.

Opens January 6
UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS with Kate Beckinsale, Theo James and Tobias Menzies.
(wide) HIDDEN FIGURES with Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner.
(wide) A MONSTER CALLS with Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones and Liam Neeson.

The Best & Worst of TV 2016

Worst

5. THE SEASON PREMIERE OF THE WALKING DEAD (AMC) - Sorry, but 90 minutes of psychological torture is too much. Even torture-porn movies know when to hold back here and there. I hung in there, but ratings suggest about a million fans decided it was a bridge too far. The good news is the midseason finale has me excited for 2017.

4. CONFIRMATION (HBO) - HBO keeps doing these revisionist histories of recent political events, and like Recount, Game Change, and numerous others, it's written to make Republicans the villians and Democrats the heroes. This felt like it was written to not only turn Clarence Thomas into a mustache-twirler but to undercut Joe Biden in case he had decided to challenge Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

3. ANYTHING ON JON-BENET RAMSAY - Look, I know the 1990's are hot again, but can we not?

2. THE DO-OVER (Netflix) - Once upon a time, I liked Adam Sandler movies. Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, and some of his stretching material like Punch-Drunk Love. Now he's the worst. Just the absolute worst. Just like The Ridiculous Six, I couldn't watch the whole thing.

1. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA (Especially CNN) - They gave Trump a free ride, letting him call into shows instead of appearing live, carrying his rallies in their entirety, letting him be the first to talk to the channel's reporter after each debate to spin it how he wanted. So few of them tried to do actual reporting that no wonder everyone was surprised on Election Night.

But it wasn't just them. Sean Hannity had his most unwatchable year yet, as he's turned into Baghdad Bob for all things Trumpism. And he made $27 million doing it.

Advice for all TV news: You're in the news business, not the narrative business. Listening to party hacks and campaign spokesfolks spin and lie and filibuster is not informative and it's not good TV.

Best

Honorable Mentions: The Americans, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Crown, Daredevil, The Good Wife, Gotham, Jane the Virgin, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Luke Cage, The Man in the High Castle, Narcos, Survivor, Westworld.

10. TRANSPARENT (Amazon) - This show isn't a comedy; it's a 30-minute drama with occasional funny stuff. This season saw the deeply dysfunctional Pfeffermans taken to new emotional places when most of their relationships from last season wind up crumbling. The secret weapon is Kathryn Hahn's rabbi. It'll be tough competition between her and Judith Light for Emmy's Best Supporting Actress this summer.

9. COLIN QUINN: NEW YORK STORY (Netflix) - Check out this, and his Unconstitutional special, and his Long Story Short special. For my money, the two best stand-up comedians working right now are Louis CK and Colin Quinn.

8. LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGY & THE AFTERMATH (A&E) - Perfect companion piece to the documentary Going Clear, Remini spends each episode interviewing new people and exposing more and more of the dangers and darkness of Scientology, and yet the most chilling aspect of the show so far to me is the legal disclaimer they put during every commercial break that Scientology disputes her claims. You know it's there because one of Scientology's main methods of fighting their enemies is by suing them into bankruptcy. Also, the way they keep hiring P.I.'s to spy on her is creepy.

7. THE GOOD PLACE (NBC) - Kristen Bell plays a fairly rotten person who winds up in heaven due to a clerical error, so she pretends to fit in so she can avoid going to the Bad Place. Ted Danson is the amiable architect who doesn't quite understand humans. It's nice to see the networks can still make shows like these.

6. BETTER CALL SAUL (AMC) - Who knew how much depth Bob Odenkirk would be able to find mining the backstory of his slippery attorney Saul Goodman? Turns out, quite a bit. The rivalry between him and his brother (Michael McKean) heated up, and rumor has it we may get Gus next season. Bring it on.

5. VEEP (HBO) - This series kept it fresh, getting into an election day scandal and scrambling for power in the aftermath. I don't know where next season can go, but I trust the makers know what they're doing. House of Cards got back on track, but this is the sharpest show about politics on TV.

4. STRANGER THINGS (Netflix) - Combines the best of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg to make a show that has sympathetic adult, teen, and child characters, with the supernatural interfering with their heretofore unremarkable lives. Glad to see Winona Ryder is back, and glad to see a star be born in Millie Brown as Eleven.

3. THE PEOPLE VS. OJ SIMPSON (FX) - I knew the story, but having it told this way made me go back and compare how much was accurate, and it made me that much more sympathetic for Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulsen) and Christopher Darden (Sterling K. Brown), two public servants who were not prepared for the media spotlight. I also like the final shot of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s OJ staring at his statue. He knows that even though he won, he still lost. But the main who really owned it was Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran.

2. FARGO SEASON 2 (FX) - I loved season 1, and season 2 gives us a story just as rich, with plenty of interesting characters. Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons were great as the young married couple in over their head, and Ted Danson was really good too, but my favorite was probably the assassin Mike Milligan, played by Bokeem Woodbine, an actor we've seen around for 20 years but he's never really had a chance to shine like this.

1. GAME OF THRONES (HBO) - The first season beyond the books was a good one. More and more characters who've never interacted are coming together, and the finale swept a few more chess pieces off the board. Jon and Sansa are a team in the North, Dany and Arya are back on the mainland, now Queen Cersei will have to see just how long her reign of terror can last. Not long, I'd venture to guess.

La La Land - Movie Review

Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, Rosemary DeWitt and JK Simmons.
Written & Directed by Damien Chazelle.

★★★★

An original musical in this day and age? Yep, and under Chazelle's direction, it works. Nice to see Gosling let his charm show.

He plays Sebastian, a jazz musician who dreams of owning his own club. Emma Stone plays Mia, an aspiring actress. Both are struggling to make ends meet in Los Angeles, a city that the movie romanticizes and criticizes at the same time. Many people come to L.A. to have their dreams fulfilled, but it's very aware that most people don't make it.

The singing and dancing won't make you forget Gene Kelly, but that's part of the charm. Anyone with a dream can star in their own musical. And that bittersweet ending is perfect.

Ride Along 2 - DVD Review

RIDE ALONG 2 (PG-13) Starring Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Olivia Munn, Benjamin Bratt, Ken Jeong, Bruce McGill and Sherri Shepherd.
Written by Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi.
Directed by Tim Story.

★½

Kevin Hart da real MVP. Even when the script is bad, the story is cliched, and the gags are lame, he will at least try his hardest to squeeze laughs out anyway. Sometimes his antics make you believe something funny is happening, but he couldn't do it here.

After the first movie, Ben (Hart) has joined the police force, and he and his soon-to-be brother-in-law James (Ice Cube) have a chance to investigate a case in Miami. It's pretty much the same plot as the first movie but in a new city. Worked for The Hangover 2, right? Heh.

This is a true example of paint-by-numbers, cover the plot-point bases sequel-making. Predictable plot, bloodless shoot-outs, and a cash-grab for everyone involved.

Regression - DVD Review

REGRESSION (R) Starring Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis, Dale Dickey, David Dencik, Devon Bostick, Lothaire Bluteau, Aaron Ashmore and Peter MacNeill.
Written & Directed by Alejandro Amenabar.

★

I had hopes for this psychological thriller from the man who made 2001's The Others. But since I was able to guess the ending in the first few minutes, it wound up being a suspenseless atmospheric slog.

Circa 1990, Ethan Hawke plays Bruce Kenner, a detective investigating a child molestation case. A father (David Dencik) is accused of molesting his 17-year-old daughter Angela (Emma Watson) as part of a satanic sex-abuse ring. Her psychiatrist (David Thewlis) engages in regression hypnosis, and it helps his patients remember more and more of what they're suppressed. Soon Kenner himself is having nightmares and visions about satanists infiltrating the police force.

The film has the gauzy sheen of a 1990 celluloid film, not to mention a score that'd be at home in Kiss the Girls or Taking Lives. Hawke knows how to make middle-grade thrillers semi-work (The Purge, Sinister), but he can't pull this off. I don't know if anyone could.

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.

Rogue One still #1, Sing #2

For the weekend of December 23-25, 2016, Rogue One stayed #1 to the surprise of no one. The real suspense was in what order the other new releases would come in, and the unquestionable winner was the animated Sing.

When you consider budgets, the biggest disappointment has to be Assassin's Creed. It was not only the worst-reviewed new movie of the week, but the most expensive. Why Him? has to be happy they came ahead of them. Also disappointing, but to a lesser degree, was Passengers, starring two of Hollywood's hottest young stars in Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.

It's also important to remember with Fences' numbers, it expanded on Sunday. Had it expanded Friday, it could have finished as high as third.

In limited release, the new releases in order of per-screen average: Silence, Patriots Day, Hidden Figures, Julieta, Live By Night, A Monster Calls, Toni Erdmann.

No new releases next week, save for a couple Oscar-qualifying limited releases like 20th Century Women.

RIP Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher - whose credits include Shampoo, The Blues Brothers and When Harry Met Sally - who wrote the best seller "Postcards from the Edge" - who is best known as Princess Leia from the Star Wars franchise - has died at age 60 following a heart attack.

Just a reminder of many of the famous deaths of 2016:

MUSIC
David Bowie
Prince
Leonard Cohen
George Michael
Glenn Frey
Vanity
Merle Haggard
Bobby Vee
Sir George Martin - Beatles manager
Paul Kantner - Jefferson Airplane
Pete Burns - Dead or Alive
Frank Sinatra Jr.
Ricci Martin, son of Dean Martin

MOVIES/TV
Alan Rickman
Anton Yelchin
Florence Hendserson
Debbie Reynolds
Carrie Fisher - Leia
Kenny Baker - R2-D2
Gene Wilder
Garry Shandling
Patty Duke
William Schallert - The Patty Duke Show
Doris Roberts
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Alan Thicke
Abe Vigoda - Barney Miller, The Godfather
Ron Glass - Barney Miller, Firefly
Pat Harrington - One Day at a Time
Bob Elliott - Get a Life
George Gaynes - Police Academy, Punky Brewster
Tony Burton - The Rocky movies
Robert Vaughn - The Man from UNCLE
Jon Polito - Miller's Crossing
Andrew Sachs - Fawlty Towers
Angus Scrimm - Phantasm
Peter Vaughan - Game of Thrones
Bill Nunn - Do the Right Thing
Burt Kwouk - The Pink Panther
Jerry Doyle - Babylon 5
George Kennedy - The Naked Gun
Dan Haggerty - Grizzly Adams
David Huddleston - The Big Lebowski
James Noble - Benson
Bernard Fox - Bewitched
Kevin Meaney - Uncle Buck TV show
Alan Young - Mr. Ed, Scrooge McDuck
Steven Hill - Law & Order
Larry Drake - Dr. Giggles
Garry Marshall - Director of Pretty Woman
Michael Cimino - Director of The Deer Hunter

ALSO...
Muhammad Ali
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Nancy Reagan
Antonin Scalia
Morley Shafer
Gwen Ifill
Arnold Palmer
LaVell Edwards
John Glenn
Rob Ford
David Gest
Buddy Ryan
Pat Summit
Janet Reno
Shimon Peres
Craig Sager

Jackie - Movie Review

JACKIE (R) Starring Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt, Richard E. Grant, John Carroll Lynch, Beth Grant and Max Casella.
Written by Noah Oppenheim.
Directed by Pablo Larrain.

★★★

This movie daringly focusses on the immediate after match of JFK's assassination, but it does so in a framework that jumps between that, and an interview she gave with Theodore H. White (Billy Crudup) a week later. We simultaneously feel the shock of the moment and the week-after dread, which is how memories work. It's a good job from the makers, but the success of this movie is hands-down because of Natalie Portman.

This is no straightforward biopic. This breaks down some of the worshipping walls around the Kennedys to try to convey what it was like for Jackie to remain poised even while dealing with death and the sudden loss of power. Her main shoulder to cry on belongs to her brother-in-law Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard), who as attorney general also has to deal with the politics of the smooth transition of power.

This movie made me want to look up the 1961 White House tour footage again. I've seen clips, but Portman's so good here, I wonder how close her impression really is. In fact, I would have no problem with Portman winning her second Oscar for this.