Tag Archives: Baseball

The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)

21 Saturday Jul 2018

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D: Ben Lewin / 95m

Cast: Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Tom Wilkinson, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Giancarlo Giannini, Hiroyuki Sanada, Connie Nielsen, Shea Whigham

In the years before the US enters World War II, Morris “Moe” Berg (Rudd) is a catcher for the Boston Red Sox. Regarded as the “strangest man ever to play baseball”, Berg is an average player, but of above average intelligence, being able to speak seven languages fluently, regularly contribute to the radio quiz programme Information, Please, and read and digest up to ten newspapers daily. A man of singular interests but also leading a very private life, Berg pursues a relationship with a woman, Estella (Miller), that he won’t acknowledge publicly, while on a trip to Japan, he takes it on himself to shoot footage of the Tokyo harbour. After Pearl Harbor, Berg uses the same footage to wangle himself a desk job with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Soon though, his expertise in languages lands him a job in the field: to track down the noted physicist Werner Heisenberg (Strong) and determine if his work for the Nazis will give them a nuclear weapon – and if it will, then Berg is to kill him…

Another tale of unsung heroics set during World War II, The Catcher Was a Spy (a title that’s both derivative and clever) is a movie that takes a real life person and spins a mostly true story out of events they took part in, but does so in a way that alerts the viewer very early on that, despite the mission, Berg won’t be put in any danger, so any tension will evaporate before it’s even got up a head of steam. So instead of a movie that should be increasingly tense and dramatic, we have a movie that plays matter-of-factly with the material, and is presented in a pedestrian, if sure-footed manner. Working from an adaptation of the book of the same name by Nicholas Dawidoff, director Ben Lewin and writer Robert Rodat have fashioned a moderately engaging espionage tale that moves elegantly yet far from robustly from scene to scene without providing much in the way of emotional impact. Partly this is due to Berg’s own nature, his muted feelings and intellectual prowess being ostensibly the whole man, and while the movie and Rudd’s performance adhere to Berg’s character, it leaves the viewer in the awkward position of being an observer and not a participant.

With Berg introduced “as is”, and with only the most minimal of character arcs to send him on, the movie soon becomes a wearying succession of exposition scenes, or opportunities to show off Berg’s gift for languages (which Rudd copies with aplomb). The early scenes with Estella show Berg trying to be “normal” but not quite knowing how to, give way to the mission to find Heisenberg, but the movie’s switch from domestic tribulations to wartime emergency – Berg literally has Heisenberg’s life, and possibly the fate of the world in his hands – dovetail at the same pace and with the same lack of urgency. Even a sequence where Berg, accompanied by military man Robert Furman (Pearce) and friendly physicist Samuel Goudsmit (Giamatti), try to thread their way through a town overrun by Germans lacks the necessary sense of imminent peril needed to make it work. Another issue is Andrij Parekh’s humdrum cinematography, which deadens the effect of Luciana Arrighi’s murky yet effective production design. Against all this, Rudd is a good choice for the enigmatic Berg, and the moments where he expresses Berg’s self-doubts, offer a rare glimpse of the man behind the façade. But, sadly, these moments aren’t plentiful enough to offset the flaws that dog the rest of the movie, and which keep it from being far more impressive than it is.

Rating: 5/10 – proficient enough without providing much more than the basics of Berg’s life as a catcher or an OSS man, The Catcher Was a Spy isn’t dull per se, just not as compelling as it could (or should) have been; Rudd aside, a quality cast is left with little to do except recite their lines in a competent manner, and any notions of political or intellectual morality are left undeveloped or overlooked.

Spaceman (2016)

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

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Spaceman

D: Brett Rapkin / 90m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, W. Earl Brown, Winter Ave Zoli, Ernie Hudson, Carlos Leal, Caroline Aaron, Claude Duhamel, Stefan Rollins, Wallace Langham

If you’ve heard of Bill Lee, one-time pitcher (and a left-handed pitcher at that) for the Boston Red Sox and the Montreal Expos, then chances are you also know about his drug-related background, his independence and need to challenge authority, plus his support for Maoist China, Greenpeace and school busing in Boston (amongst others). He was a well-known counterculture figure who appeared in an issue of the pro-marijuana magazine, High Times, and who once threatened to bite off the ear of an umpire in a 1975 World Series game. In later life, while still involved with baseball on a variety of levels, he was also asked to run for President of the United States on behalf of the Rhinoceros Party (his slogan: “No guns, no butter. Both can kill.”) If nothing else, Bill Lee has led an extraordinarily rich and eventful life.

Which makes Spaceman all the more confusing for focusing on the period that immediately follows the end of his professional career. Fired for one challenge to authority too many (walking out before a game in protest at the release of a fellow player), Lee (Duhamel) expects to get right back in the game, so confident is he that his unique skills as a pitcher will be more than enough to offset his off-the-pitch behaviour. But when the offers don’t come rolling in, Lee finds himself at a loss. His agent (and friend), Dick Dennis (Brown), keeps getting the runaround when he tries to contact the big league teams, and soon the message gets through: nobody wants him because everyone is tired of his shenanigans. He’s also thirty-six, and time isn’t on his side.

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Lee’s also trying to do right by his three kids. He’s separated from his wife (Zoli) and can only have them over by arrangement. He’s as unorthodox a parent as he is a baseball player, but his relationships with his children are one of the few aspects of his life that he gets right. Otherwise, Lee smokes a lot of weed, drinks a lot of booze, and dreams of making it back into the Big Leagues. But the offers don’t come, his eventual divorce sees him deprived of any visitation rights, and to cap it all he receives an invitation to play for a Canadian seniors team. Intrigued and offended at the same time, Lee attends one of their matches, and helps them win. His need to play keeps him with the team for a while, until Dennis swings him a tryout for San Fran at their training facility in Phoenix. Lee motors all the way down there, only for the head coach (Langham) to dismiss him, and for Lee to learn that he won’t ever be taken back into the Big Leagues. A coaching offer comes along too, but the lure of playing sees him contemplating returning to Canada and resuming playing in the Seniors’ league.

Director Brett Rapkin has been here before. In 2003, he and fellow movie maker Josh Dixon joined Lee on a trip he was making to Cuba. The resulting footage made up the bulk of the documentary Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey (2006). Ten years on and Rapkin’s decision to revisit Lee’s life (or at least a part of it) has led to his making a movie that starts off strong with Lee’s determination to stand up for his teammate, but then it settles into an amiable groove that is pleasant to watch but eventually becomes so placid that not even the scene where he loses his visitation rights scores any dramatic depth.

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By focusing on a period when Lee wasn’t playing baseball, it seems that Rapkin (who also wrote the screenplay) has chosen to explore the nature of the man behind the legend. But when the man is the legend, there’s little room for any real exploration, and so we have several moments where Lee informs anyone who’ll listen that he needs to play baseball, several scenes where Lee mooches around at home in his Y-fronts, and even more scenes set in a bar where he squanders his time in playing the wounded, unappreciated hero. With the introduction of the Canadian seniors team, the movie does find something more interesting to focus on, but even then it continues to be more amiable than sharply detailed.

As the Spaceman, Duhamel makes up for his appearance in the dreadful Misconduct (2016) by infusing Lee with a great deal of charm and affability. The employment of a scruffy beard adds to the character, while his scenes with Zoli reveal the pain Lee is suffering at the collapse of his marriage (something that didn’t happen in real life). But on the whole, Duhamel has little to work with, and while he’s able to give a warm, occasionally disarming performance, he’s too confined by the conventional nature of the material and the flatly handled narrative. The supporting cast have even less to hang a performance on, with only Zoli making any kind of impression, playing Lee’s wife with a brittle dismay that seems all too appropriate.

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While the movie as a whole is affectionate in its view of Lee and his anti-establishment outbursts, and his self-aggrandising, it does make an effort to remind viewers that for all his grandstanding he was an exceptional pitcher. At the San Fran tryouts, and before he’s sent on his way, Lee’s gift with a baseball is used to outclass an arrogant batsman, a scene that trades on an overly familiar scenario in sports movies while doing so with a valid sincerity (look closely at any shots of Lee pitching though and you’ll see that the shot has been reversed; Duhamel isn’t a leftie). Sadly, there are too few scenes of Lee doing what he did best, but thankfully, when there are they lift the movie out of the doldrums.

Rating: 5/10 – not a bad movie per se, but one that never aspires to be anything more than good-natured, Spaceman struggles to find any dramatic traction that might keep an audience from losing interest; ultimately, Rapkin’s debut feature shows him working at a purposely even keel and forgetting to add some highs and lows to give texture to his otherwise genial look at a baseball hero and his fall from the Big Leagues.

Monthly Roundup – June 2016

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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Manglehorn (2014) / D: David Gordon Green / 97m

Cast: Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine, Chris Messina, Skylar Gasper

Manglehorn

Rating: 5/10 – in the wake of a failed romance that has left him heartbroken, locksmith A.J. Manglehorn (Pacino) decides to try again with bank teller Dawn (Hunter), but his personality puts obstacles in his way; despite the obvious talent involved, Manglehorn is a chore to sit through, as the character himself – as Dawn discovers – isn’t someone you want to spend too much time with.

The Brain (1962) / D: Freddie Francis / 83m

Cast: Anne Heywood, Peter van Eyck, Cecil Parker, Bernard Lee, Jeremy Spenser, Maxine Audley, Ellen Schwiers, Siegfried Lowitz, Hans Nielsen, Jack MacGowran, Miles Malleson, George A. Cooper

The Brain

Rating: 5/10 – a fatal plane crash sees a millionaire businessman’s brain kept alive by pioneering scientists, one of whom (van Eyck) finds himself searching for the person who caused the plane crash when the businessman’s brain communicates with him; an erratic sci-fi thriller that gets bogged down whenever it concentrates on the murder suspects, this adaptation of Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain has a great cast and a terrific premise, but is let down by Francis’ pedestrian direction and a style that wants to evoke film noir but can’t because the script hasn’t been written that way.

A Certain Justice (2014) / D: James Coyne, Giorgio Serafini / 96m

aka Puncture Wounds

Cast: Cung Le, Dolph Lundgren, Vinnie Jones, Briana Evigan, Gianni Capaldi, James C. Burns, Robert LaSardo, Jonathan Kowalsky, Sean O’Bryan, Eddie Rouse

A Certain Justice

Rating: 4/10 – Iraq veteran John Nguyen (Le) returns home and becomes embroiled in a fight against big-time drug dealer Hollis (Lundgren) when he saves a hooker (Evigan) from the violent attentions of Hollis’ men; as a showcase for Le, A Certain Justice works well enough, but this is still a muddled actioner that cuts narrative corners more often than it doesn’t, and sees Lundgren adopting a wig and ponytail that makes him look like an aging hippie instead of a menacing crime boss.

Woman on the Run (1950) / D: Norman Foster / 77m

Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, J. Farrell MacDonald, Victor Sen Yung, Steven Geray

Woman on the Run.jpg

Rating: 7/10 – when store window designer Frank Johnson (Elliott) witnesses a gangland execution he goes on the run, leaving his estranged wife (Sheridan), the police, and a persistent reporter (O’Keefe) trying to track him down before the killer does; a cleverly written film noir based on Sylvia Tate’s original story, Woman on the Run may have a misleading title but it features hard-boiled dialogue, bruised relationships, and atmospheric location work, all of which means the movie is an under-rated gem and deserves a wider audience.

The Battle at Apache Pass (1952) / D: George Sherman / 82m

Cast: John Lund, Jeff Chandler, Susan Cabot, Bruce Cowling, Beverly Tyler, Richard Egan, Jay Silverheels, John Hudson, Jack Elam, Regis Toomey

The Battle at Apache Pass

Rating: 6/10 – peace on the frontier with the Apache nation is threatened by the divisive tactics of Indian Affairs agent Neil Baylor (Cowling) and unsanctioned raids by Geronimo (Silverheels); based around two historical events – the Bascom Affair in 1861, and the title encounter in 1862 – The Battle at Apache Pass is an enjoyable Western featuring good location work in Monument Valley, beautiful photography, and Chandler (as Cochise) and Silverheels reprising their roles from Broken Arrow (1950).

The Phenom (2016) / D: Noah Buschel / 88m

Cast: Johnny Simmons, Ethan Hawke, Paul Giamatti, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Yul Vazquez, Louisa Krause, Paul Adelstein, Elizabeth Marvel, Marin Ireland

The Phenom

Rating: 5/10 – Hopper Gibson (Simmons) is a talented pitcher who has a shot at the big leagues but suffers a crisis of confidence, one that threatens his future; well acted but dour and uninviting, The Phenom plods along in such a low-key manner that some viewers may well decide they don’t care enough if Hopper overcomes his slump, and may also decide to watch something else instead.

A Place to Go (1964) / D: Basil Dearden / 86m

Cast: Rita Tushingham, Mike Sarne, Bernard Lee, Doris Hare, Barbara Ferris, John Slater, David Andrews, William Marlowe, Michael Wynne, Roy Kinnear

A Place to Go

Rating: 5/10 – an ambitious young man who wants to get away from Bethnal Green gets involved with a local racketeer (Slater) and a young woman (Tushingham) at the same time, and much to the consternation of his parents (Lee, Hare); a slice of life, East London style, this kitchen sink drama is enjoyable enough but is hampered by a dreadful performance by Sarne and some weak plotting, but still has enough to recommend it, particularly the (deliberately) sad sight of Lee’s character trying to impress as an escapologist.

Shadows on the Stairs (1941) / D: D. Ross Lederman / 64m

Cast: Frieda Inescort, Paul Cavanagh, Heather Angel, Bruce Lester, Miles Mander, Lumsden Hare, Turhan Bey, Charles Irwin, Phyllis Barry, Mary Field

Shadows on the Stairs

Rating: 4/10 – a killer strikes in a boarding house where everyone comes under suspicion; a leaden whodunnit shot in a pedestrian style, Shadows on the Stairs is typical of the period with its mix of drama, comic relief in the form of Hare and Irwin as bumbling policemen, romantic triangles, and occasional flashes of social comment, but it all adds up to a movie that betrays its stage origins at every turn.

Moonwalkers (2015) / D: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet / 107m

Cast: Rupert Grint, Ron Perlman, Robert Sheehan, Stephen Campbell-Moore, Tom Audenaert, Jay Benedict, James Cosmo, Eric Lampaert, Kevin Bishop, Erika Sainte

Moonwalkers

Rating: 4/10 – in 1969, the US military sends unstable CIA agent Kidman (Perlman) to London to contact Stanley Kubrick with an offer to film a mock moon landing (in case the real mission goes wrong) – but he ends up working with a would-be rock band manager (Grint) instead; uneven and often groan-inducing, Moonwalkers takes a great idea and tramples all over it with a mix of psychedelia, undercooked comedy and inappropriate violence, leaving just a few knowing nods and winks in relation to the period to provide anything of interest.

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

23 Thursday Jun 2016

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Everybody Wants Some!!

D: Richard Linklater / 117m

Cast: Blake Jenner, Glen Powell, Tyler Hoechlin, J. Quinton Johnson, Ryan Guzman, Temple Baker, Wyatt Russell, Juston Street, Will Brittain, Austin Amelio, Forrest Vickery, Tanner Kalina, Zoey Deutch

Fresh from his success with Boyhood (2014), writer/director Richard Linklater has created a movie that begins where that movie ended – albeit with different characters. Set over a long weekend before the start of college, Everybody Wants Some!! sees freshman pitcher Jake (Jenner) arrive at a college in Texas and ready to see where college life will take him. It’s not long before he’s introduced to most of the rest of the team, and it’s even sooner when it’s suggested they all go out for a beer. While travelling round they try and tempt girls into coming to their frat house that night, but have middling luck; two girls in particular turn them down flat, though one of them does indicate she thinks Jake is attractive.

Over the course of the day Jake gets to meet everyone on the team, from coolly confident and loquacious Finnegan (Powell), to roommate Billy (renamed Beuter by his teammates) (Brittain), to knowledgeable, helpful Dale (Johnson), all the way to Jay aka Raw Dog (Street), a gonzoid character whose pitching speed is said to be around 95mph. Jake soon fits in with the established team’s sense of camaraderie, and the way they haze each other.  Made to feel at home he soon becomes aware of the various dynamics within the team and learns from other players such as Willoughby (Russell) and McReynolds (Hoechlin) that even though they might party each and every night, nothing is more important than the team and supporting each other, and that they take playing baseball very seriously indeed.

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Over the course of the weekend, Jake learns some very valuable lessons and takes a chance on contacting the girl who thought he was attractive. While his teammates concentrate on having as much “fun” as they can possibly manage with as many girls as is humanly possible, Jake gets to know the girl, Beverly (Deutch), and discovers that he likes her very much. An invitation to a Sunday night party Beverly is helping to organise for the college performing arts students leads to the team coming along too, and Jake worrying that their behaviour may cause problems, and especially for him with Beverly. But it doesn’t go entirely the way he believes based on his experiences of the previous two days.

Everybody Wants Some!! – the title comes from a Van Halen track off their Women and Children First album – looks at first as if it’s going to be yet another generic coming of age movie where the hero struggles to fit in and must find a way of being accepted by the clique or college fraternity he’s been assigned to. Even Jake’s first encounter with McReynolds, where he makes it clear he doesn’t like pitchers, seems to confirm the antagonism and animosity that Jake is likely to face as he tries to establish himself. But Linklater is not a director who deals in cliché, and what feels like the first of many obstacles Jake has to overcome in order to be accepted, proves to be the last, as his arrival is welcomed and he’s accepted into the fold with alacrity.

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Linklater is clever enough to make Jake quietly likeable and offhandedly friendly, taking each new introduction as it comes and avoiding being fazed by a lot of the seemingly unfriendly behaviour exhibited by his teammates. He soon comes to realise that he’s no longer the big fish in the little pond of high school, but just a little fish in a much bigger pond, and others on the team – Beuter, fellow freshman Plummer (Baker) – are in the same predicament. Jake doesn’t know how things are going to turn out but he learns early on, that whatever happens his teammates will be there to support him. From the vagaries and disappointments and minor successes of high school, Jake now has to prove himself all over again, but thankfully in a much more encouraging environment.

Of course, this being college, high spirited behaviour is the order of the day, and the movie excels in recreating the kind of unabashed hedonistic lifestyle of the very early Eighties, where excessive drinking and smoking weed and pursuing women for sex was regarded as normal for young males at the time, and whose testosterone-fuelled exploits were (rightly or wrongly) regarded as the stuff of future legend. Out of this, Linklater shows how these young men bond unconditionally, and treat each other with respect even while they’re playing pranks on each other, or treating each other with an apparent disregard for their feelings. They might not say it to each other, and Linklater stops short of saying it directly, but there is a love here that is stronger than any individual relationships they may form outside the team. And they do know how to party, whether it’s at a disco, or at the frat house, or at a country and western bar dancing to Cotton Eye Joe – these guys live for the moment in a way that successive college students (and not just in America) have been trying to emulate ever since. It was in many ways a simpler time: pre-AIDS, pre-designer drugs, and pre-social media, and Linklater highlights how little pressure college students felt as they navigated the rocky road to adulthood.

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What’s also clever about the movie and its ensemble cast of characters is the speed and succinctness that Linklater employs in allowing the viewer to get to know them. Faced with around a dozen characters, most of whom are given little or no background information to help the viewer distinguish them from each other (at first), the movie could have stumbled around introducing them, and made no impact at all. But Linklater doesn’t put a foot wrong with any of them, and broadens each character’s screen time and appeal as the movie progresses, so that by the time the movie’s reached the halfway point you may well feel you’ve known them a whole lot longer. Linklater is helped in this by some terrific performances, and though it would be a little unfair to pick out any one actor ahead of anyone else, special mention must go to Glen Powell as Finnegan. His performance is the jewel in the movie’s crown: self-assured, confident, engaging, overtly dramatic when required, and quietly impressive throughout.

Of course, Everybody Wants Some!! wouldn’t be a Richard Linklater movie set in the early Eighties without it having a killer soundtrack, and that’s exactly the case, with the director choosing a selection of songs that help both recreate the times and the social atmosphere that went along with them. There’s some iconic tunes to be sure, but it’s the way Linklater uses them that’s so effective, with the likes of Heartbreaker by Pat Benatar and Hand in Hand by Dire Straits used in support of the material and not just because they might sound good at a certain moment. The movie is also beautifully lensed by DoP Shane F. Kelly, which in turn highlights the wonderful period production design and costumes – take a bow Bruce Curtis and Kari Perkins respectively.

Rating: 9/10 – a delightful mix of comedy and drama that doesn’t short change or undermine either discipline, Everybody Wants Some!! is a movie that offers a whole host of rewards for the viewer; with a cast and crew at the top of their game, the movie is honest, reflective, heartfelt, genuinely affecting in places, and a near-perfect example of a simple story told simply and without unnecessary affectation.

Monthly Roundup – September 2015

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

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Smokescreen (1964) / D: Jim O’Connolly / 70m

Cast: Peter Vaughan, John Carson, Yvonne Romain, Gerald Flood, Glynn Edwards, John Glyn-Jones, Penny Morrell, Barbara Hicks, Sam Kydd, Deryck Guyler

Rating: 7/10 – bowler-hatted insurance fraud investigator Roper (Vaughan) is called in to investigate when a heavily insured businessman’s car bursts into flames before going over a cliff – but was he in it?; a neat, unprepossessing British thriller, Smokescreen features an enjoyable performance from Vaughan, some stunning location photography, and a script that allows for plenty of ironic humour in amongst the drama.

Smokescreen

Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day (2014) / D: Miguel Arteta / 81m

Cast: Steve Carell, Jennifer Garner, Ed Oxenbould, Dylan Minnette, Kerris Dorsey, Sidney Fullmer, Bella Thorne, Megan Mullally

Rating: 7/10 – when overlooked youngest child Alexander (Oxenbould) has the worst day ever, he wishes that his family could experience just a little of what he has to deal with – but when they do, things quickly escalate beyond anything that Alexander has ever faced; Judith Viorst’s novel gets a fun-filled adaptation that is amusing, clever, and visually inventive, but which lacks bite, and has surprisingly few characters to root for (that is, none).

Alexander etc

She Wants Me (2012) / D: Rob Margolies / 85m

Cast: Josh Gad, Kristen Ruhlin, Johnny Messner, Aaron Yoo, Hilary Duff, Melonie Diaz, Wayne Knight, Charlie Sheen

Rating: 6/10 – an ambitious though neurotic writer (Gad) working on his first screenplay faces a dilemma when the role written for his girlfriend (Ruhlin) grabs the attention of an A-list actress (Duff); a romantic comedy with few ambitions that struggles to make good comedy out of anxious indecision, She Wants Me is innocuous stuff that passes by in amiable fashion without ever really involving its audience.

She Wants Me

12 Rounds 3: Lockdown (2015) / D: Stephen Reynolds / 90m

Cast: Dean Ambrose, Roger R. Cross, Daniel Cudmore, Lochlyn Munro, Ty Olsson, Sarah Smyth, Rebecca Marshall, Kirby Morrow

Rating: 3/10 – an honest cop (Ambrose) finds himself trapped in a station house and hunted by several of his corrupt colleagues when he comes into possession of evidence that will see them put away for the rest of their lives; another depressing WWE Films action movie, 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown dispenses with the set up of the first two movies, and does its best to be yet another Die Hard rip-off, albeit one stifled by inept plotting, terrible dialogue and a performance by Ambrose that never gets started.

12 Rounds 3 Lockdown

Perfect Sisters (2014) / D: Stanley M. Brooks / 100m

Cast: Abigail Breslin, Georgie Henley, Mira Sorvino, James Russo, Rusty Schwimmer, Zoë Belkin, Jeffrey Ballard, Zak Santiago

Rating: 5/10 – two sisters (Breslin, Henley), fed up with the antics of their alcoholic mother (Sorvino) and her poor choice in boyfriends, decide the only way of improving their lives is to kill her; if it wasn’t based on a true story, Perfect Sisters would be dismissed as absurd nonsense with no basis in reality, but as it is it’s an uneven, tonally awkward movie that features average performances from its leads, but which does seem completely committed to drawing the viewer’s attention to Breslin’s cleavage at every opportunity.

Perfect Sisters

Ferrell Takes the Field (2015) / D: Brian McGinn / 49m

With: Will Ferrell

Rating: 5/10 – in support of a friend’s cancer charity, Will Ferrell takes to the baseball field to play all nine positions for ten major league teams at five separate pre-season games, and all in one day; if the charity had been the Reassure Will Ferrell He’s Still Funny Charity, then this would have made more sense because Ferrell Takes the Field is a mercifully brief documentary that sees the comedian attempt to appear relevant in an arena where he has no real talent, and where, when he gets it wrong, he’s quite rightly booed by fans, leaving viewers to wonder why on earth this idea was commissioned in the first place.

Ferrell Takes the Field

Axe to Grind (2015) / D: Matt Zettell / 81m

Cast: Debbie Rochon, Guy Torry, Matthew James Gulbranson, Paula Labaredas, Michelle Tomlinson, Dani Thompson, Adrian Quihuis, Tony von Halle

Rating: 2/10 – when the producer of her latest film tells aging actress Debbie Wilkins (Rochon) that her role has gone to another, younger actress, it sets her on a killing spree that sees her despatch the cast and crew, and anyone else who gets in her way; low-budget horror always runs the risk of being offensively stupid, and Axe to Grind is no exception, as it treats its audience with disdain while failing to appear as clever and entertaining as it thinks it is.

Axe to Grind

The Toughest Gun in Tombstone (1958) / D: Earl Bellamy / 72m

Cast: George Montgomery, Jim Davis, Beverly Tyler, Gerald Milton, Don Beddoe, Scotty Morrow, Harry Lauter

Rating: 6/10 – with outlaws running most of the nascent state of Arizona, the Governor assigns Matt Sloane (Montgomery) and a team of undercover officers to apprehend the gang involved with cattle rustling and silver thefts; a modest Western that tells its simple story plainly and with few frills, The Toughest Gun in Tombstone is acceptable fare that doesn’t exert itself too much, but is enjoyable nonetheless.

Toughest Gun in Tombstone, The

Absolution (2015) / D: Keoni Waxman / 91m

aka The Mercenary: Absolution

Cast: Steven Seagal, Byron Mann, Adina Stetcu, Vinnie Jones, Howard Dell, Josh Barnett, Maria Bata, Dominte Cosmin

Rating: 4/10 – mercenary John Alexander (Seagal) and his colleague Chi (Mann) find themselves battling both a criminal syndicate and their own corrupt boss when a contract killing proves to have larger ramifications; another mumbling, stand-in heavy performance from Seagal detracts from what is – for him – a better outing than of late, and thanks to Mann’s athleticism and Jones’ snarling villain, any scenes where Seagal doesn’t take part are actually halfway enjoyable.

Absolution

Vacuity (2012) / D: Michael Matzur / 14m

Cast: Michael Steppe

Rating: 6/10 – an astronaut, Alan Brahm (Steppe), stranded in an airlock while the space station he’s on begins to fall apart has a choice: either save his crew by jettisoning the airlock (but dooming himself), or save himself and get back to Earth (and dooming the crew) – which choice will he take?; as moral dilemmas go, the one facing Alan Brahm in Vacuity is, on the face of it, fairly cut and dried, but thanks to Matzur’s script and Steppe’s performance you’re never quite sure how things will play out, or even if either choice will be taken away from him, making this short movie a model of concisely focused drama.

Vacuity

Mini-Review: Million Dollar Arm (2014)

24 Friday Oct 2014

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Million Dollar Arm

D: Craig Gillespie / 124m

Cast: Jon Hamm, Aasif Mandvi, Lake Bell, Alan Arkin, Bill Paxton, Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal, Pitobash, Tzi Ma

Sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Hamm) is struggling to sign that one sports superstar that will make his agency a success, but when his best chance falls through, he’s on the verge of giving up.  Then inspiration strikes from two unlikely sources: Susan Boyle’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent and televised cricket.  Creating the concept of a TV show that searches for potential baseball talent in India, particularly pitchers, J.B. eventually discovers Rinku Singh (Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Mittal), two young men with no experience or understanding at all of baseball.

J.B. brings them to the US, where as part of winning the show they undergo training for a year under the auspices of veteran coaches Ray Poitevint (Arkin) and Tom House (Paxton), but things don’t go as smoothly as J.B. had hoped, and Rinku and Dinesh struggle to come to terms with playing baseball and adjusting to their new way of life. With their prospects of being signed to a major league baseball team slipping away from them, and J.B.’s business under threat too, it all hinges on a try-out designed to show just what Rinku and Dinesh can do.

Million Dollar Arm - scene

Another true story of unlikely triumph over predictable adversity, Million Dollar Arm  – the name of the show J.B. creates – takes one of the most surprising rags to riches stories of the last ten years and gives it a bland makeover that robs it of any appreciable drama while promoting the aspirational aspects at every opportunity.  In short the movie is heavily Disney-fied, a by-the-numbers tale that treats the material with reverence but at the expense of any real emotion.  It’s a shame as Rinku and Dinesh’s story has the scope and range to allow the exploration of several wider issues, not the least of which is racism, a subject that Million Dollar Arm engages with fitfully and with obvious reluctance.

Thankfully, the cast are on hand to guide the audience through, providing assured performances – Bell, as J.B.’s lodger and love interest, steals every scene she’s in – and in the director’s chair, Gillespie musters things with enthusiasm despite the restrictions inherent in the script.  The movie is brightly lit and often gorgeous to look at – thanks to DoP Gyula Pados – and A.R. Rahman’s score is infectiously rousing and uplifting.

Rating: 5/10 – entertaining enough, though on a deliberately vapid level, Million Dollar Arm is an undemanding movie that sticks to a very rigid formula (and never lets the viewer forget it); with the outcome never in doubt, it’s left to the more than capable cast to raise this out of the doldrums it otherwise seems happy to inhabit.

Air Bud Series (1997-2003)

20 Thursday Feb 2014

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Air Bud Logo

Disney’s Air Bud series is a mostly entertaining quintet that is aimed squarely at a family audience, although parents might not be as enthralled as their children will be.  The first two movies received a theatrical release, while the rest were released direct-to-video.  After the last movie, Disney decided to shift the focus to Buddy’s offspring, and the Air Buddies franchise was created.  While that series continues to endure – the eighth in the series is due for release in 2015 – looking back over their predecessors reveals a series that for the most part tried to maintain a simple, unfussy approach to the stories, and kept Buddy’s sporting activities as credible as possible.

Air Bud (1997)

Air Bud

D: Charles Martin Smith / 98m

Cast: Michael Jeter, Kevin Zegers, Wendy Makkena, Bill Cobbs, Eric Christmas, Nicola Cavendish, Shayn Solberg, Brendan Fletcher, Norman Browning

Like a lot of low-budget Disney fare from the Nineties, Air Bud is a likeable tale of a young boy, Josh Framm (Zegers) coming to live in the small town of Fernfield and befriending an apparently stray dog.  The twist here is that the dog, a friendly golden retriever, is, like Josh, a whiz at playing basketball.

The dog is christened Buddy and after a few mishaps on the way to convincing his mother Jackie (Makkena) to keep him, Buddy helps Josh regain the confidence he lost when his father died the year before.  And when the school basketball team finds itself a player short, Josh repays Buddy’s help by getting him on the team.  Needless to say, Buddy proves to be a star player and it’s onward to the championship final, where… well, you can guess the rest.

But there is a fly in the ointment, in the form of Buddy’s real owner, Norm Snively (Jeter).  Norm is a clown, and at the movie’s beginning you see just how bad he is at it; only Buddy wins any applause from the children’s party they’re at.  Norm wants Buddy back and sues for custody.  Cue a courthouse sequence that is both funny and funnier still, largely due to loopy Judge Cranfield (Christmas).

Air Bud - scene

The cast as a whole is uniformly good, with Christmas being matched by the excellent Jeter.  Zegers – just thirteen but appearing in his eighth movie – gives an affecting performance even though he’s largely required to be moody and defensive for the first half of the movie.  The script avoids the usual syrupy sentimentality that so often mars Disney’s attempts at family fare, and Smith’s direction enables the cast to do just that bit more with characters that might otherwise have appeared as paper-thin stereotypes.

Of course, Air Bud was the first of five movies, and if you watch them back to back you’ll notice some interesting continuity issues that crop up as the series continues.  In this movie, keep a close eye on Makkena; this is her only appearance in the series, and it’s worth noting how the producers kept her replacements looking much the same.  Also, look out for the location of the town marker: there’s no prizes for guessing if it’s still in the same place in Air Bud: Golden Receiver.

Rating: 6/10 – a pleasing start to the franchise with winning performances and a slightly goofy nature; but shame on Disney for putting another dog altogether on the poster!

Air Bud: Golden Receiver (1998)

Air Bud Golden Receiver

D: Richard Martin / 90m

Cast: Kevin Zegers, Cynthia Stevenson, Gregory Harrison, Nora Dunn, Perry Anzilotti, Robert Costanzo, Shayn Solberg, Suzanne Ristic, Alyson MacLaren, Jaida Hay

Having excelled at basketball, this time around Josh tries out for the school football team after finding out he’s got a pretty good throwing arm.  When the team’s star quarterback is injured, guess who steps up to take his place?  You can’t?  Hmmm…  Buddy joins the team as well (the football powers-that-be seem to have the same lack of restrictions about players from a different species as the basketball powers-that-be have).  He’s a great catcher of the ball (naturally), and together they help the team reach… the championship final!

When it comes to the sports side of things, Air Bud: Golden Receiver is all very predictable, and it looks to have been a deliberate move on the producers’ part.  It’s only in Air Bud Spikes Back that the sport is the whole of the plot; here it’s secondary to Jackie (Stevenson) and her romance with new local vet Patrick (Harrison).  Josh isn’t sure about the relationship, and while he doesn’t go quite so far as to try and sabotage it – he does actually like Patrick – there are still enough wobbles along the way before everything works out as smoothly as expected.  There’s also a third storyline involving a couple of Russian circus owners who are stealing animals for their show, and want Buddy for their star attraction.  They make a couple of attempts to abduct him but fail so that Josh and Buddy can make it to the championship final – which is when Buddy finally gets dognapped.  Cue a frantic race against time to rescue Buddy and win the game.

Air Bud Golden Receiver - scene

While there was an element of slapstick in the first movie, it was legitimised by having the villain be a clown.  Here the two Russians, Natalya (Dunn) and Popov (Anzilotti) are so inept and so stupid they make a great case for involuntary euthanasia.  Why the producers decided to make them so stupid is a mystery as their inanity hurts the movie tremendously; rather than adding humour to the movie, they just leave the viewer wishing their scenes had been cut out altogether.  Where humour has been successfully added is at the championship game, where in an inspired move, Tim Conway and Dick Martin play two match commentators, foreshadowing the type of one’s barmy/one’s serious interaction seen in movies such as Best in Show (2000).

On the more serious side of things, the romance between Jackie and Patrick is handled well, and both Stevenson and Harrison keep it all grounded.  They both underplay the emotional aspect effectively, so much so that when Patrick has to decide whether or not to take up a job offer out of state, you’re never quite sure if he’s going to stay or not.

The script – Russians aside – is effective and expands on Air Bud while keeping the core elements that made that movie work so well.  Buddy and Josh still make for an attractive couple – there it’s been said! – and Martin’s direction keeps the action moving along nicely.

Back in Continuity Corner, Stevenson fits the mould created by Makkena, but now remember Harrison and see how his looks pan out with his successors in the rest of the series (and two of the Air Buddies movies).  And as for the town marker, isn’t it in a different place this time, a bit nearer to the centre of town, perhaps?  Hmmm…

Rating: 6/10 – an effective sequel let down by its simpleton villains; well-staged and amusing with good performances all round.

Air Bud: World Pup (2001)

Air Bud World Pup

D: Bill Bannerman / 83m

Cast: Kevin Zegers, Caitlin Wachs, Dale Midkiff, Chilton Crane, Brittany Paige Bouck, Miguel Sandoval, Shayn Solberg, Chantal Strand, Martin Ferrero, Don McMillan, Duncan Regehr, Patricia Idlette, Fred Keating

With the predictability of the Air Bud formula firmly entrenched from the outset – dog and master find they have a natural aptitude for ball-based sports and lead local team to a championship final with even further predictable results – the producers had begun to look at ways of focusing more on the characters rather than Buddy himself.  That said, with Air Bud: World Pup, Buddy has a larger role than in Air Bud: Golden Receiver, and the movie, while still as predictable as all the others in the series, is one of the more enjoyable entries.

Here, Buddy meets Molly and promptly falls head over paws in love.  Soon he’s sneaking out at night and returning the next morning.  Only Josh’s younger sister Andrea (Wachs) notices as he passes her window on his way out each night.  Could Buddy be spending some lurve time with Molly?

Meanwhile, Josh is beginning a fledgling relationship himself with Molly’s owner, Emma (Bouck).  She and her father (Regehr) have just moved to Fernfield from England and Emma is keen to try out for the school soccer team.  When the team proves to be a player short (and then another), guess who steps in to make up the numbers and take the team to the championship final?  (You can’t?  Really…?)

Air Bud World Pup - scene

There’s a lot to enjoy here.  Josh and Emma’s romance is handled well but stops short of their having any actual physical contact (not even a kiss, producers?  Come on!).  Zegers and Bouck are a good match and they have a relaxed chemistry together; their scenes are nicely played.  Wachs is good too as the now (much) older Andrea.  She and best friend Tammy (Strand) discover the reason for Buddy’s nocturnal excursions, and play a larger part in the general storyline.  All of which relegates Jackie (Crane, subbing for Cynthia Stevenson but given very little to do in comparison) and (now) stepdad Patrick (Midkiff) to the sidelines.  Sandoval is good as Coach Montoya, and this movie’s villains, Snerbert (Ferrero) and Webster (McMillan), are perhaps the least annoying in the series as a whole; McMillan at least displays an aptitude for comic timing.

There are various subplots: the team is temporarily suspended from the tournament because of Emma and Buddy’s participation; the villains’ plot to snatch Molly which prompts the standard race against time to get Josh, Emma and Buddy to the final in time; Josh’s friend Tom’s attempts to impress Emma; and Emma’s dad’s financial problems.

On the continuity front, Crane makes for a low-key Jackie, and only resembles Makkena and Stevenson in long shot; the movie opens with Jackie and Patrick getting married; Jay Brazeau reprises his role from the first two movies as a referee, while Frank C. Turner (a bailiff in Air Bud) reprises his role as a linesman in Air Bud: Golden Receiver; Andrea ages at least six years from the time of the previous movie; Midkiff looks completely unlike Gregory Harrison; the front of the Framm house has grown balconies; and that pesky town marker is now in the centre of town.

This was to be the last Air Bud movie where Josh would take centre stage.  It would also be the last Air Bud movie where there was as much focus on the characters, or any attempt to develop them further.  It’s a shame as, predictability aside, the series has been enjoyable and fun to watch.

Rating: 6/10 – perhaps the best entry in the series, though a little too reliant on the type of obvious humour that would scupper future instalments.

Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch (2002)

Air Bud Seventh Inning Fetch

D: Robert Vince / 93m

Cast: Caitlin Wachs, Cynthia Stevenson, Richard Karn, Molly Hagan, Patrick Cranshaw, Chantal Strand, Jay Brazeau, Frank C. Turner, Doug Funk, Kevin Zegers, Shayn Solberg

From this point on it’s easy to dismiss the Air Bud series as a series gone too far, and certainly this entry fails to add anything appreciably new to the format.  Instead it takes away a major character, Josh, and bumps his younger sister Andrea into the main role.  Josh is off to college, leaving Andrea feeling left out while Jackie (the returning Stevenson) and stepdad Patrick (Karn) concentrate on new addition to the Framm household, baby brother Noah.  Looking for something to occupy her time she lets best friend Tammy talk her into trying out for the school baseball team.  Unlike Josh, Andrea isn’t a natural and only makes it onto the team through Tammy’s intervention.  As the season progresses, she proves time and again how bad she is until Buddy helps her in the same way he did with Josh in the first movie.  Andrea improves her game, takes over from the injured Tammy – up tip now the team’s star player – and gets Buddy on the team as well.  They get all the way to the championship final and… well, you know the rest.

Air Bud Seventh Inning Fetch - scene

As usual there are villains that are up to no good, this time around in the form of Professor Siles (Brazeau) and his accomplice Carlton (Turner).  Siles is intent on kidnapping Buddy and his offspring in the hope of isolating the “super gene” that makes all of them so good at sports.  Then he can sell it to “professional athletes all round the world”.  One by one they abduct four of Buddy’s puppies – Shooter, Zack, Duke and Striker – and Buddy before being brought to justice by Sheriff Bob (Cranshaw) and Andrea and Tammy.

On the minus side, Brazeau and Turner’s constant mugging becomes tedious quite quickly, the proceedings are more predictable and more banal than usual, the performances stilted, and the baseball matches are filmed with an underwhelming approach that would only be topped by the approach in Air Bud: Spikes Back.  Producer Vince, making his debut as a series director (though he was previously responsible for the MVP: Most Valuable Primate movies), lets things drift along without any real pace, and Buddy is criminally underused.

However, there are some things to like.  The photography, by Glen Winter, is the best in the series, giving Fernfield and its environs a pleasing glow, while the inclusion of villain helper Rocky the Raccoon gives the movie a different “ahh” factor from Buddy and his crew.  Also, there is one short scene where Shooter’s owner reports him missing to Sheriff Bob that is as funny as anything in the whole series; the set up isn’t new but it is bulletproof.

On the continuity side, sharp-eyed viewers will be wondering what happened to the other two puppies seen in Air Bud: World Pup; third stepdad Karn bears no resemblance to previous stepdads Harrison and Midkiff; the front of the Framm house is back to its usual façade; and that darned town marker is back out on one of the roads into town, though now on the opposite side.

Rating: 5/10 – a poor sequel that badly needed some energy to raise it up; a muddled script and indifferent direction haven’t helped either.

Air Bud: Spikes Back (2003)

Air Bud Spikes Back

D: Mike Southon / 87m

Cast: Katija Pevec, Cynthia Stevenson, Edie McClurg, Tyler Boissonnault, Jake D. Smith, Patrick Cranshaw, Nicholas Harrison, Chantal Strand, Malcolm Scott

The last in the Air Bud series – before the Buddies took over – sees our erstwhile canine hero showing an aptitude for beach volleyball.  The movie also shows just how tired the series has become.

With Josh now out of the picture(s) altogether, the focus falls entirely on Andrea (Pevec) who’s devastated to learn that her best friend Tammy (Strand, the only cast member in all five movies) is moving to San Diego.  Andrea desperately wants to earn enough money to visit Tammy and so starts up a business as a dog sitter, with predictably disastrous results.  Then new neighbour Connor (Boissonnault) introduces her to the less-than-exciting world of beach volleyball, and wouldn’t you know it, the local team needs new players and are heading for the championship final, where the prize is… a trip to California!  Will Andrea and Buddy help win the championship, and will will Andrea get to visit best friend Tammy in San Diego?  Is Kevin Zegers lucky not to be in this movie?

There is also the inevitable subplot involving a couple of incompetent buffoons posing as villains.  Here it’s Gordon (Scott) and Justin (Bishop), a couple of would-be jewel thieves out to steal a large diamond on display at the Fernfield museum.  They can’t get past the lasers protecting the diamond but once they see Buddy winning an agility contest, they know he’ll be able to snatch the gem.  Of course, they put this move off continually until the day of the championship final, thus necessitating the ritual last-gasp chase and rescue sequence series’ die-hards have come to know and love.

There is a difference here in that Buddy rescues himself this time, and arranges for the villains to land themselves in the matchstick clutches of Sheriff Bob.  These two are still not the biggest idiots in the series – that honour still goes to Natalya and Popov from Air Bud: Golden Receiver – but they are painful to watch.

Air Bud Spikes Back - scene

And so is the rest of the movie.  This is by far the worst in the series, and there are several reasons, all emanating from the tired script.  The characters are mere cyphers now; whatever made them interesting or sympathetic in the previous movies has been systematically erased.  Pevec is bland and so too is Boissonnault; there’s supposed to be chemistry between them but they come across more as brother and sister than as a potential couple.  Mom Jackie and stepdad Patrick (Humphreys) are reduced to walk-on parts, being shipped off to a veterinary convention for most of the movie, and while the introduction of Gram Gram (McClurg) initially seems promising – she’s there to look after Andrea and Noah (Smith) while Jackie and Patrick are away – she’s given so little to do other than dote on her parrot and look sad when he disappears that it’s a waste of McClurg’s talent.  The direction by Southon (normally a DP) lacks focus and drains the movie of any energy it might have had, and the volleyball matches are repetitive and lifeless; the script can’t even keep track of the scoring properly.

Woeful as it is, Air Bud: Spikes Back still manages to raise the odd chuckle but by the movie’s end the level of fatigue on display, and affecting the viewer, is overwhelming.  On the continuity side, Humphreys is a much older Patrick; Pevec bears no resemblance to Wachs or even Alyson MacLaren; the puppies from the previous two instalments are nowhere to be seen (or even mentioned); Harrison moves up from being an umpire in Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch to being the team coach here; and the town marker… is nowhere to be seen.

Rating: 4/10 – saved from a lower score because of the production values and because the sight of Smith trying to bath a Great Dane is a minor moment of inspiration.

All reviews originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.