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Monthly Roundup – March 2017

01 Saturday Apr 2017

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Fist Fight (2017) / D: Richie Keen / 91m

Cast: Ice Cube, Charlie Day, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Dennis Haysbert, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Alexa Nisenson

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Bell’s character wants to have sex with a pupil – and doesn’t think it’s wrong), Fist Fight is a virtually laugh-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

I.T. (2016) / D: John Moore / 95m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, James Frecheville, Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott, Michael Nyqvist

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Brosnan’s character is a tech mogul who doesn’t know the first thing about the tech he’s promoting), I.T. is a virtually tension-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

Collide (2016) / D: Eran Creevy / 99m

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Marwan Kenzari, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Christian Rubeck, Erdal Yildiz, Clemens Schick, Johnny Palmiero

Rating: 6/10 – Hoult’s backpacker finds himself mixed up with rival gangsters Hopkins and Kingsley, and using his driving skills to stay one step ahead of both of them; the focus is squarely on the action, which is a good thing, as Collide‘s plot is as all over the place as the various cars Hoult throws about on German autobahns, but when it’s bad it’s Hopkins intoning “I’m the destroyer of worlds” bad.

Jimmy the Gent (1934) / D: Michael Curtiz / 67m

Cast: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Alice White, Arthur Hohl, Mayo Methot

Rating: 7/10 – in an effort to woo back his former secretary (Davis), Cagney’s brash racketeer attempts to put a classier spin on his finding “lost” heirs business, and finds himself mellowing when a case challenges his compromised ethics; worth watching just for the pairing of Cagney and Davis, Jimmy the Gent is a typically fast-paced, razor sharp romantic comedy that may seem predictable nowadays but is nevertheless a minor gem that is effortlessly entertaining.

Kong: Skull Island (2017) / D: Jordan Vogt-Roberts / 118m

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Thomas Mann, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Tian Jing, John Ortiz, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Richard Jenkins, Terry Notary

Rating: 5/10 – an expedition to a mysterious island in the Pacific yields dangers galore for its participants – Jackson’s crazed Army Colonel, Hiddleston’s ex-SAS captain, Larson’s anti-war photographer, Goodman’s duplicitous government official et al – not the least of which is an angry hundred-foot gorilla called Kong; while Kong: Skull Island may be visually arresting, and its action sequences pleasingly vivid, the lack of a decent plot and characters with any kind of inner life makes the movie yet another franchise-building letdown.

The Rezort (2015) / D: Steve Barker / 93m

Cast: Dougray Scott, Jessica De Gouw, Martin McCann, Elen Rhys, Claire Goose, Jassa Ahluwalia, Lawrence Walker

Rating: 4/10 – after a viral outbreak that turned its victims into flesh-hungry zombies is contained, an island resort opens that offers survivors the chance to hunt down and exterminate zombies with little or no risk of harm – but the resort is targeted from the inside and a group of holiday makers find themselves becoming the hunted; a strong idea that runs out of steam by the halfway mark, The Rezort leaves its cast stranded with a standard “run from this place to the next and look desperate” approach that drains the movie of any tension and makes it all look as generic as the next zombie movie.

Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday (1939) / D: Walter Forde / 90m

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Linden Travers, Wally Patch, Edward Chapman, Philip Leaver, Kynaston Reeves

Rating: 7/10 – a seaside holiday for Inspector Hornleigh (Harker) and his trusty sidekick, Sergeant Bingham (Sim), leads inevitably to a murder case involving an inheritance and a criminal outfit who target their victims with the unwitting aid of döppelgangers; the second of three movies featuring Harker’s irascible policeman and Sim’s less-than-sharp second-in-command, Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday is a simple, easy-going, undemanding bit of fun that manages to combine drama and comedy to good effect, and which still holds up nearly eighty years later.

Inspector Hornleigh Gets on It (1941) / D: Walter Forde / 87m

aka Mail Train

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley, Percy Walsh, David Horne

Rating: 7/10 – despite being sidelined from regular detective work through a stint investigating thefts at an army barracks, Hornleigh and Bingham find themselves on the trail of Fifth Columnists; the last in the short-lived series, Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It is as sprightly and entertaining as the previous two instalments, and allows Huntley to make this priceless observation: “One of them’s tall, bald, looks intelligent but isn’t. The other’s short, sour-faced, doesn’t look intelligent but is.”

Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato (2017) / D: Eugenio Ercolani, Guiliano Emanuele / 69m

With: Joe D’Amato (archive footage), Luigi Montefiori, Michele Soavi, Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi, Antonio Tentori, Carlo Maria Cordio, Mark Thompson-Ashworth

Rating: 3/10 – Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato)’s career in movies is assessed by some of the people who worked with him closely when he first started out; at sixty-nine minutes, Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato is a documentary that feels like it lasts twice as long, thanks to Ercolani and Emanuele’s decision to let their interviewees ramble on at length (and usually about themselves instead of D’Amato), and a random assortment of clips that don’t always illustrate what’s being talked about.

Ride Along 2 (2016)

23 Saturday Apr 2016

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Ride Along 2

D: Tim Story / 102m

Cast: Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Ken Jeong, Benjamin Bratt, Olivia Munn, Tika Sumpter, Bruce McGill, Michael Rose, Sherri Shepherd, Tyrese Gibson

Overheard at a cinema in Boise, Idaho (or somewhere like that – you get the idea):

Assistant: Hi, how can I help you today?

Customer: Hi. I’d like two tickets for Ride Along 2, please.

Ride Along 2

Assistant: Two tickets? Why?

Customer: I’m sorry?

Assistant: Why do you want two tickets? Don’t you like the person you’ve come with?

Customer: I beg your pardon.

RA2 - scene2

Assistant: Look, it’s no skin off my nose, but wouldn’t you rather see something else? Like Norm of the North perhaps?

Customer: No, we’d like to see Ride Along 2. We like Kevin Hart. He’s funny.

Assistant: He is, yes. But unfortunately the movie isn’t.

Customer: Well, that’s your opinion. Now, can I have two tickets to see Ride Along 2? Please.

Assistant: Well, okay, I guess you’re old enough to know what you’re doing.

RA2 - scene3

Customer: You know, you’re being very rude. I don’t think I’ve ever been so insulted before.

Assistant: Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? Wait until you’ve seen the movie, then decide, huh?

Rating: 3/10 – a dire sequel that recreates several of the first movie’s so-called “funniest moments”, Ride Along 2 proves that recycling isn’t as good for the environment (and particularly a cinema screen) as we’ve all been told; formulaic in the extreme, and low on real laughs, this is the kind of movie that studios make when they can’t think of anything that’s better/more original/more entertaining to make.

22 Jump Street (2014)

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

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22 Jump Street

D: Phil Lord, Chris Miller / 112m

Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Peter Stormare, Wyatt Russell, Amber Stevens, Jillian Bell, Kenny Lucas, Keith Lucas, Nick Offerman, Jimmy Tatro, Caroline Aaron

Having saved the day in 21 Jump Street – and to everyone’s surprise – rookie cops Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) are given another assignment, but this time instead of going undercover at a high school, they’re off to college instead.  With the church at 21 Jump Street having been bought back by the Koreans, the pair are assigned to the Vietnamese church across the road at 22 Jump Street.  Still under the command of the ever-cussing Captain Dickson (Cube), Schmidt and Jenko have to find who’s dealing a new drug on campus called WhyPhy (pronounced Wi-Fi), and who the supplier is as well.

College life proves to be divisive for the duo, with Jenko being welcomed into a jock fraternity headed by Zook (Russell), while Schmidt finds himself welcome amongst the geeks, in particular, art major Maya (Stevens).  When Zook is revealed to have an incriminating tattoo, Jenko refuses to accept he might be the dealer; so strong is his new attachment to the fraternity life he decides he and Schmidt should go their own way.  When the college counsellor is arrested and the case officially closed, neither Schmidt nor Jenko is convinced he’s the dealer.  They resume their investigation and discover the supplier is a criminal known as the Ghost (Stormare).  They also find out he plans to distribute the new drug at the upcoming spring break celebrations at Puerto Mexico.  With the dealer’s identity still a mystery, Schmidt and Jenko travel there in a bid to apprehend him and stop the drug spreading nationwide.

22 Jump Street - scene

The surprise success of 21 Jump Street meant that a sequel was inevitable, and returning writers/directors Lord and Miller have a great time subverting the pitfalls of such an endeavour, most notably in an extended sequence featuring the hangdog Deputy Chief Hardy (Offerman) where his instructions to Schmidt and Jenko to “keep things the same because they seemed to work the first time” are carried to their logical extreme (and then beyond).  There’s even a reference to the increased budget for the movie – $70m as opposed to the original’s $42m – when Hardy says the top brass have given 22 Jump Street more money to help them with their investigation.  It’s one of the funniest scenes in the movie, and played to perfection by messrs Offerman, Tatum and Hill.

As it turns out, the investigation is of secondary (hell, even tertiary) importance, as the movie focuses on the break-up of Schmidt and Jenko’s professional and personal relationships, with Jenko’s bromance with Zook taking up a great deal of screen time (as if we didn’t get how important it is to him), leaving Schmidt to act possessive and look broken hearted, even with his budding romance with Maya taking off at the same time.  This jealousy angle, somewhat signposted from the beginning, is given far more emphasis than it needs, and there’s very little room for the actual investigation, other than a few half-hearted attempts at surveillance and a trip to the counsellor’s office that ends up mocking every couples therapy session you’ve ever seen.  But, despite these scenes being very well played by Tatum and Hill, they often outstay their welcome, and could do with some judicious editing.

With plenty of scenes that could have been excised or shortened, 22 Jump Street is a movie sequel where the saying “Less is more” is definitely not adhered to.  It’s as if Lord and Miller, by embracing the tropes and conventions that contribute to most sequels, felt that being self-referential was all they had to do, and that it would get them off the hook when things didn’t quite work out.  But by following the template of the first movie so closely, what little originality there is on display is overwhelmed by so much that is familiar.  It’s a tightrope walk, and one where not everyone manages to stay on.  That said, the jokes about the stars’ age and looks come thick and fast and are very funny, with Hill in particular being given a roasting on more than one occasion.

Hill and Tatum still make for a great double act, though it’s Tatum who edges it here, his physicality and willingness to look foolish having more appeal than Hill’s strident comic style.  Cube is, well, Cube playing every other foul-mouthed, aggressive character he’s ever played (he’s in danger of becoming his own caricature now), while the rest of the supporting cast deal well with a range of underwritten characters.  There are cameos from Rob Riggle and Dave Franco, and the usual attempts to make it difficult to work out who the dealer is (not easy but not difficult either), and there’s a great moment when Jenko uses a girl on the beach to see off two of the Ghost’s thugs (who appear out of nowhere).

Enjoyable for the most part, with one absolutely standout moment about halfway through – watch for Jenko’s reaction when he finds out something about Schmidt’s love life – 22 Jump Street coasts along for much of its running time, riffing off the previous movie and doing just enough for the most part to avoid being looked on as a “contractual obligation”.  There are laughs to be had, but the action scenes are low-key and not very exciting, and there’s an incredibly indulgent end credits sequence that is amusing to begin with but soon runs out of both steam and imagination.

Rating: 5/10 – too long, and too uninterested in its drugs-related storyline, 22 Jump Street will nevertheless please fans of the original; if there is a 23 Jump Street (as seems likely) then a tighter, less self-reverential storyline will be required.

Ride Along (2014)

07 Friday Mar 2014

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Ride Along

D: Tim Story / 99m

Cast: Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, John Leguizamo, Bruce McGill, Tika Sumpter, Bryan Callen, Laurence Fishburne

There’s a moment in Ride Along where the viewer – even if they’ve only ever seen one other mismatched buddy-cop movie – has to say to themselves, “Whoa, hang on!”  The moment occurs when Ben (Hart) walks into a strip club convinced he’s dealing with a 126 (a nuisance call) and finds two guns pointed at him.  He doesn’t realise he’s in trouble and berates the two gunmen and challenges them to shoot him (he even throws in some reverse-racist taunting as well).  It’s the moment when the viewer has to throw his or her hands up in the air and say to themselves, “Okay, I know this isn’t the best mismatched buddy-cop movie in the world, but really, am I supposed to believe Ben is this dumb?”  Sadly, the answer is yes.

Ride Along is yet another dispiriting movie where the premise of two mismatched people having to work together to solve a mystery or crime is trotted out with ever decreasing results.  Ben is planning to marry Angela (Sumpter) but first has to get the approval of her brother, James (Cube).  James is a cop and thinks Ben isn’t good enough for Angela; he’s also trying to track down and apprehend a mysterious criminal called Omar (Fishburne).  Ben wants to impress James, and lets him know he’s been accepted to the police academy.  In an effort to dissuade him, James invites Ben on a ride along, a day spent with James to see if Ben has what it takes to be a police officer.

Ride Along - scene

There’s no prizes for guessing that while Ben makes mistake after mistake, he still manages to stumble onto clues that help James get closer to catching Omar.  It’s a tried and tested (and trusted) formula, but here it’s so wrung out and poorly plotted that even the average viewer is going to shake their head in disappointment.  It’s the same problem that most of these movies have to overcome: just how dumb or stupid does the main character have to be, and yet still be able to credibly help resolve whatever problem, crime or investigation is at the centre of the movie.  Hart is a promising talent – he’s like a less high-pitched Chris Tucker – but as Ben he’s unable to show a through line to both parts of the character.  He plays video games and it’s this that’s supposed to help him when he and James get into a firefight; but other than being able to recognise the sounds different guns make, it’s baffling how this could be of any real benefit, yet it’s treated like a major asset (and then only as briefly as it will take to read this).  Hart also falls into the trap of thinking that if he shouts something loudly enough it will be funny (it’s not).

Cube clumps through the movie like it’s a contractual obligation, using his trademark scowl as if it’s the only piece of characterisation he needs.  He has two expressions: mad and angry, and he uses them like weapons to batter the other characters.  It’s like watching someone who’s been told he’s got a week to live and the only item on his bucket list is to be as miserable as the situation demands.

With scenes that either outstay their welcome after a couple of minutes, or fail to advance or add to the storyline, Ride Along stutters and stumbles its way from the  lacklustre, poorly edited opening action sequence to the ridiculous denouement that inevitably involves Angela being put in danger by Omar.  By that point, anyone who’s stayed the distance will be hoping Omar wins out and shoots both Ben and James so that we don’t have to endure the inevitable – and recently announced – sequel.

Further down the cast list we have John Leguizamo, an actor with such a varied range and filmography that he can be forgiven his involvement here, while Fishburne pops up to provide unconvincing menace as Omar.  In the director’s chair, Tim Story brings a journeyman’s approach to the material, failing to add anything special to proceedings and shooting in a predictable, straightforward style.  It all adds up to something that’s actually less than the sum of its parts.

Rating: 4/10 – a dire retread of an already overworked “comedy” formula, Ride Along is about as rewarding as a cold sore; derivative, embarrassing and just plain bad.