Stan's Movie Dump: Late March 2016

Hey, the month is over. It's time for another move dump!

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

Bland and forgettable Woody Allen screwball comedy with an unlikely couple and a self-deprecating main man. No reason to seek this one out; I just caught it on HBO.

Advantageous

Lump this one in with all the low-budget indie sci-fi flicks that explore cool concepts but can't quite tell a compelling story at a reasonable pace. It's set in a near-future dystopia (of course) where body swap technology is in its early testing phases. There are interesting takes on aging and gender roles in here, but damn if I can remember more than three scenes with any specificity. A smart film, but one without any momentum.

Dope

Picture two high school kids. One's a straight-A student from the suburbs with geeky hobbies like video games and '90s hip hop. He's applying to college. The other's a drug dealer from a rough neck of the woods who's been shot at more than once. He's seen a friend or neighbor or several get killed by gang violence and he's barely holding it together. Ready? The protagonist of Dope turns out to be both of these high school kids. Imagine that! Someone called this "Hipster Friday" and Sweeney called it one of his favorite movies of 2015 (asterisk: small sample size). I'm just going to call it an interesting coming-of-age flick and move on.

The Kings of Summer

"A better pile of whimsy than other piles of whimsy but enough with the piles of whimsy." That's Scott Tobias on The Kings of Summer and it's a sentiment that probably perfectly captures the consensus reaction to this movie. It even came out in 2013, before plenty of "piles of whimsy" I'd throw in the same sorting bin. In this one a trio of high school seniors decide they're sick of living with their respective parents and set out to live in the woods for the summer. It's a little bit Stand By Me but not nearly as charming, since these kids are seventeen or so and not ten. It isn't precocious at all, which is nice. Nick Offerman plays one of the kids' dads, and he's just great. Allison Brie plays the same kid's sister, but she's - dare I say it - not very memorable here. All in all a fun little movie, but if you're done with all these "piles of whimsy" I can't suggest it in good faith.

The Inbetweeners Movie

Oof, a third straight movie about young adult men just making their way in the world today. I watched all three seasons of The Inbetweeners a couple years ago and posted about it on the blog. (British show - eighteen total episodes - worth a look.) The show ran from 2008 to 2010 and this movie, meant to be its finale I guess, came out in 2011. I liked it! I also liked the show. I wouldn't recommend watching the movie without first watching the show, but I'm sure it's pretty easy to do. As far as bro-comedy TV show movie finales go, this is everything that Entourage movie could have been in that it gave each of its four main characters a reasonably compelling arc to endure. It was like an extended episode of the TV series but it also forced these four twenty-ish characters to grow up in different ways. But mostly it was just crude and raunchy and funny, like the show. Again, check out the show. It's on Netflix!

Black Mass

Yeah, it's a gritty Boston crime drama about five years after people got sick of gritty Boston crime dramas. I'll give him credit - Johnny Depp was awesome here as Whitey Bulger. Menacing and frightening and basically just unrecognizable as "Johnny Depp, scarf-and-makeup-clad eccentric oddity." So, praise for Johnny Depp! Unfortunately the rest of the move was pretty forgettable, or at least an entirely by-the-numbers affair.

The Inbetweeners 2

Yep - the first movie was a hit, so a few years later they made a sequel. And it was fine! Funny, even, just like the show and just like the first movie. But this one had nothing to say. Which is fine! But not great. Here, the boys are all well into their college years (and the actors portraying them were all pushing thirty) and they decide to take a lengthy trip to Australia. Only instead of taking advantage of that unique shooting location, the movie seems content to use water parks, crazy ex-girlfriends, and shitty hippie kids to drive most of the plot and the jokes. The third act is also a bit of a head-scratcher; the boys drive out into the middle of the Australian Outback without food or water and when their car breaks down, it very much looks like they're all going to die. There's something poignant there - the boys facing their mortality together, going down as friends and brothers after all the shitting on one another they do - but the movie doesn't really earn the abrupt shift toward that poignancy. It just doesn't mix with the tone of the rest of the film (or the series) in which the stakes are rarely more than "well this will be quite embarrassing" - never as extreme as near-death experiences. Anyway, the cast and creators have all been emphatically clear that there won't be an Inbetweeners 3, which is probably just fine. This movie wasn't as good as the first one - although if you've seen all eighteen episodes and the first movie, it's not like you're going to skip this one.

Spy

This one exceeded my expectations by a good margin, which is always a pleasure. Melissa McCarthy reunites with Paul Feig, who always seems to get the best performances out of her, and Rose Byrne is here too, and she's just fantastic in everything she's ever been in. Jason Statham and Jude Law play minor characters with tremendous success - Statham especially - and the cherry on top is Allison Janney. I didn't like this secret agent spoof as much as I liked last year's Kingsman, but this one's got an undeniably broader appeal. I liked it, is all I'm trying to say, okay? Sheesh.

The Rock

Want an idea of how far movies have come since the 1990s, a decade some consider the greatest in film history? Take The Rock. This has a pitch-perfect Sean Connery, a quintessential '90s Nic Cage performance, an intense score from Hans Zimmer, and Michael Bay directing with a modicum of restraint. And despite all those elements - despite being a legitimate '90s action classic that people remember fondly to this day - The Rock doesn't hold up! It's simple and dated and over-the-top in all the wrong ways. It holds its audience's hand by having both good guys and bad guys explain what they're doing as they do it. The primary characters are broad and simplistic and there aren't many shades of grey. Ed Harris is probably the most morally complex guy in the movie and it's only because despite being the main villain he has reservations about killing hundreds of innocent people. I'm not trying to rag on The Rock - honestly, I'm not! It's good! But it's interesting to me to consider what a higher standard we hold movies to these days.

I'll see you all in April. Which starts in, you know, two and a half hours.