Mr. CHURCH Review

While Mr. Church might have initially been looked at as something of a return to quality movie-making for star Eddie Murphy it is more a return to the realm of inoffensive movie making than anything else. Mr. Church is certainly no Pluto Nash or Norbit...hell, it's not even Meet Dave (which I admittedly never finished), but it isn't the high-reaching piece of transcendent cinema that encapsulates all the major themes of one's life that illustrates mistakes made and identities redeemed that it seemed to want so badly to be in its trailers either. Rather, Mr. Church is a pleasant enough distraction about a kind-hearted man that is largely elevated by the credible performances of its two leads. Both Murphy and Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland) deliver the necessary sympathies to draw on audience emotions that keep us invested in the sometimes tedious story that strings us along for decades with large stretches where little to nothing happens or is revealed. Fortunately, it isn't really the narrative that is meant to drive Mr. Church though, but rather the core relationship that forms between Murphy's titular character and Robertson's Charlotte Brody which remains the reason we become and stay as invested as we do throughout the sometimes tepid 100-minute runtime. The film, which comes from TV writing veteran Susan McMartin in her first feature film credit, feels rather episodic as a result with director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Double Jeopardy) doing little to add any filmmaking flairs as, at the age of seventy-six, seems to be on auto pilot. In that way, Mr. Church is very much a competently made and sometimes even emotionally affecting film, but most of the time it feels like a Hallmark movie that is emotionally manipulative for reasons of knowing it has little else to offer by way of connecting with its audience. It is a holiday Hallmark film that escaped the clutches of such a fate by appealing to talent such as Mr. Murphy by being a project not typically offered to the comedian and thus an opportunity after an intentional hiatus to do something different. Murphy, while doing his best to salvage this sappy if not occasionally comforting piece of melodrama can't rescue the project from total mediocrity, but he puts forth a valiant effort and that is duly noted.

LRFF: KING JACK Review

In King Jack, there is a bully, an older brother, a younger cousin and a world of adults that doesn't seem to exist. In what are the essentials for a coming of age story, our titular Jack is forced to deal with each of these things that could very well exist as nothing more than archetypes in a genre that has become flooded by an affinity for nostalgia over the past few summers. What allows these factors to be set apart, or at least find its own voice lies both in the ability of the actors on screen as well as the films knack for striking a perfect tone. There is a distinct aura around first time feature director Felix Thompson's film that gives it a quality of timelessness. Sans a few minor factors, King Jack could essentially take place at any point in time over the last few decades. The problems are the same, the struggle is identifiable and the predicaments are ones you grow accustomed to if you happen to live in a small rural town where the summers get long and often boring. Jack is on the brink. He is in transition from the boy he's always known to the man he will eventually become and because he doesn't know his way around his own mind, because the world is becoming a bigger place more unknown to him than he's ever felt prior it opens up a sliver of vulnerability in the kid who grew up forced to figure things out on his own. We are introduced to Jack (Charlie Plummer) as he tags a neighbors garage and come to know him all the more through the course of a weekend that sees him not only facing all the aforementioned opponents, but coming to terms with taking responsibility for his actions and ultimately looking out as much for himself as for the few people in his life that he truly cares about.