BRIGSBY BEAR Review

At first, Brigsby Bear may seem like the definition of what has come to be expected from a Sundance movie meaning films that often break out at the Park City, Utah film festival are those that include quirky characters doing things only quirky people such as themselves have time for in light of real-world tragedies and/or challenging times. Think Me and Earl and the Dying Girl or Napoleon Dynamite. By such expectations Brigsby Bear would most definitely check every box necessary to qualify for Sundance's quirkiest of offerings, but like those aforementioned films these movies still tend to succeed in their objectives because beneath the seeming pretense of being bound and determined to be as weird and peculiar as possible there is genuine heart that exists. These pictures ultimately come from a place of real emotion, of real life experiences, and have seemingly only been materialized into a full-on motion picture due to the fact the writer or writers were able to tap into a fun premise in which they could work through their feelings and thoughts. With Brigsby Bear, Saturday Night Live's Kyle Mooney and co-writer Kevin Costello seem to be coping with the fact they've actually made it to the point they can make a living by utilizing their creativity. Coming from San Diego and attending the University of Southern California it likely always felt within the realm of possibility that Mooney might be able to reach such heights, but it also seems likely he was constantly surrounded by those also attempting to make it many of which no doubt failed to achieve such ambitions. It's a double edged sword I'm sure whereas, for someone such as myself who lived in rural Arkansas for the majority of my life, achieving such success or even coming across such opportunities always felt like a pipe dream. For Mooney though, Brigsby Bear more or less cements this feeling that he's finally being let it on the inside of the joke rather than being left out in the cold or rather, that others are finally beginning to get hip to the brand of humor and personality that Mooney has possessed for some time. Either way you slice it, Mooney and Costello along with director Dave McCary (an SNL crew member) succeed in capturing the spirit of this abstract idea that is creativity and relaying not only what it means to the creator, but to those affected by it.

KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES Review

There is a point in the newest comedy from director Greg Mottola where it seems this broad comedy might rise above the grind it seems so destined to follow, but it only ends up being a brief moment of wackiness that Mottola and crew don’t care to dedicate themselves to carrying out. Rather, Keeping Up With the Joneses continues its stride toward the mediocre with very little to serve as surprising or inspired despite being made by the guy who put together Superbad and Adventureland. Yes, Mottola, the man who directed the likes of one of the great high school comedies of the last fifteen years as well as tapping into the struggles of that weird time post-college where you’re not sure where to go from that point has made a movie for the first time in five years that in fact couldn’t feel more uninspired. My hope, when I saw that Mottola was directing, was that the trailers and TV spots for the film might intentionally be setting our expectation bar low so that when we finally saw the finished product we might be taken with how much better it actually is than we expected. And while this does somewhat happen given the trailers and TV spots indeed made this look terrible in the vein of a run of the mill comedy that says let's put your average person in the midst of a ridiculous situation and see how funny they act in response to it kind of way. Still, with the talent Mottola and the studio garnered for this project my hope was that the film might bring something deeper or more acute to the scenario of superspies in suburbia, but there is no such sly observations or social commentary to be found in Keeping Up With the Joneses. Unfortunately, all we have here is a wacky situational comedy that too often relies on lead Zach Galifianakis’ one-liners too lift it from the doldrums of the generic jokes and obvious pratfalls Michael LeSieur’s screenplay is built on. LeSieur (You, Me & Dupree) seems the type of comedy writer who comes up with an interesting or funny enough scenario and then applies it to a familiar structure making the final product more predictable than laugh-inducing. That said, Keeping Up With the Joneses is about as good (and bad) as one would expect given the terrible trailers. It’s familiar and overly safe, but the fun performances from each of the four leads lend it a spring in its step that otherwise would have left this thing dead on arrival.

GHOSTBUSTERS Review

I'd like to think there's not as much ignorance in the world as the internet tells me there is, but the small corner of the World Wide Web known as IMDb and more specifically the user reviews for 2016's reboot of Ghostbusters would suggest everything I've hoped to be true about this world is in fact wrong. Given the film has been out in wide release for less than 24 hours at the time of this writing it's astonishing how many harsh and outlandish tirades have been hurled at this film. Of course, we're not here to discuss the inability of what are likely now forty year-old men to share in the wealth of their childhoods, childhoods that provided such pleasures at the original 1984 film, and extend those same feelings of excitement and pure joy to the kids of today and moreover the young girls and women of today who have undoubtedly always looked to the portrayal of their gender in Hollywood and wondered why they were always so restrained. As far as I'm concerned and as far as I can tell (I was born in 1987 so I don't exactly "get" the hoopla that surrounds the original) despite how much the original Ghostbusters was a huge success and universally praised at the time of its release I've never understood the level of infatuation with it. Sure, it's a perfectly enjoyable comedy with a charismatic cast and unique premise, but in the thirty plus years since its release I can't help but think the film has lost some of its charm otherwise I wouldn't feel as out of the loop. With this new, all-female version director Paul Feig has both paid homage to the original film while creating a world and characters all his own. Written by Feig with the help of The Heat screenwriter Kate Dippold this new Ghostbusters universe doesn't capitalize wholly on the gimmick of the gender swap, but more it uses this basis of an idea to explore a familiar world from a new perspective. While no matter how good the film might have turned out to be there would undoubtedly still be people decrying the fact it exists at all, but that it is a lot of fun if not necessarily an exceptional comedy will surely only anger them more. To remain focused on those who take away from the unadulterated fun that Ghostbusters can provide though is to be reminded of the disappointment this world can be whereas to simply take the new Ghostbusters on its own terms can make you believe good does in fact exist among us. In short, it's a delight.

First Trailer for KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES

Just as with this past weekend's Central Intelligence 20th Century Fox has mined the spy genre and mixed it with comedy and a broad premise that should ultimately deliver something wholly agreeable to be enjoyed by the majority of those who venture out to see it. With a headlining cast of Jon Hamm, Wonder Woman herself Gal Gadot, Zach Galifianakis, and Isla Fisher Keeping Up With the Joneses is destined to be something of a smaller scale hit for the studio that will inevitably find a bigger fan base once it hits home video. The premise is simple: we initially meet a regular suburban couple (Fisher and Galifianakis) who are in something of a rut, but who find things immediately spiced up by the presence of two outrageously attractive and seemingly perfect neighbors in Hamm and Gadot. Of course, the more they get to know their new neighbors the more they learn about them thus revealing the "Joneses" to be exactly how they appear-covert super spies! While the concept is fairly broad and the execution doesn't look to be anything more than acceptable I have hope for the project due to the fact Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) is behind the camera. Mottola is typically able to bring a certain tone and unique charisma to his comedies that allow them to stand out in the sea of studio produced comedies that seem to come off conveyor belts, but while this trailer certainly makes his latest feel like just another product in a long line of similar projects I'm hoping that when we see the actual film we get more of that specific tone and charm we usually see in the director's work. Of course, as the screenplay comes from Michael LeSieur whose biggest credit to date is You, Me, & Dupree this could really go either way. Keeping Up With the Joneses also stars Patton Oswalt, Matt Walsh, Maribeth Monroe, Kevin Dunn, Ming Zhao, and opens on October 21st, 2016.

THE DARKNESS Review

If one tends to keep up with things such as what type of films studios or production houses make or acquire it is possible to be excited for a film based solely on the people backing it. Whether it be the ever-reliable A24 or Megan Ellison at Annapurna Pictures if either of these studios are attached to an upcoming release I tend to be interested solely because they make interesting and diverse choices in the movies they choose to release. In the realm of horror-especially smaller, more independent horror-there has been one name that has risen above the rest in recent years and that would be Blumhouse Productions run by its founder and CEO Jason Blum. The guy has had a pretty strong track record as he's been behind some of the biggest recent horror franchises including the Insidious and Paranormal Activity films, even resurrecting M. Night Shyamalan's horror career last year with The Visit, but that isn't to say there haven't been a few stinkers along the way either. Every genre has them, but horror somehow seems to suffer the most. With The Darkness Blum and co. have, for some strange reason, decided it was a good idea to give the guy who's directed two Wolf Creek movies a nice enough budget to cast the likes of Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell in a screenplay (written by director Greg McLean and a couple of Shane/Shayne's) that is more than happy to go through the obligatory horror movie check list and mark off every cliché imaginable. The Darkness is a bad movie. There are no if's, and's, or but's about it-it flat out sucks and there is hardly anything to redeem its many, many shortcomings much less being worth anyone's time lest they might waste it on this schlock. Even worse, this outright terribleness is apparent right from the get-go. For some reason actors like Matt Walsh and Jennifer Morrison (who I assume are generally busy people) agreed to show up for what couldn't have been more than a two day shoot to capture what is the set-up and a handful of expositional dialogue in such strained and phony ways that there was no denying the quality of what was to come. When ones dialogue can't even be conveyed believably by someone as incredibly endearing as Walsh, there's a problem.

First Trailer for GHOSTBUSTERS Starring Melissa McCarthy

Much has been made of director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy) taking on a new installment in the Ghostbusters series when, for a long time, it was thought there might be a chance of a third installment featuring the original cast. When Harold Ramis passed over two years ago now though, the script for the third film was said to be getting a re-write, but eventually director Ivan Reitman left the project and a slew of directors were offered the job afterward, but nothing came to fruition until Feig got involved with the idea of doing more of a reboot than a sequel, but this time with an all female cast. While not much is known or has been seen of the film sans a few images and the posters included below, I've been interested to see what direction the gifted comedic director would take this franchise given he'd stated prior to filming that he wanted to make this scarier than the originals, but in turn hired one of the dreamiest comedic casts imaginable. Melissa McCarthy was a natural choice given she's headlined each of Feig's films since their 2011 breakout, but it was also nice to see him reunite with Kristen Wiig and bring her back to the kind of big, mainstream comedies she seems to have been avoiding while the additions of current SNL highlights Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones only upped the anticipation even more. These always felt like both wise and rather bold choices and given what we see in this first trailer it seems those choices might pay off big time. At this point I have complete trust in Feig as a director of comedy and can't wait to see what he's done with this property moving forward. Also starring Chris Hemsworth, Andy Garcia, Michael Kenneth Williams, Matt Walsh, and Cecily Strong, Ghostbusters opens on July 15th, 2016.

GET HARD Review

The question I kept repeating to myself as Get Hard continued on and on was how could such a supposedly intelligent man be so stupid? There is a hint of something interesting in the beginning though so let's begin there. It is suggested in the opening credits sequence as the striking comparisons between the morning routines of the wealthy and the working class are displayed, much of the time in split screen, that the balance is more than off. It is imagery that much of who I imagine the audience to be will both recognize from both their real-life experiences and the dreams they have of one day hitting it rich. It demonstrates the reality of our routines and the fantasy that feels just out of reach. The most appealing thing about this choice though is not only that it establishes the worlds of our two leading characters, but also because it evokes a reaction. It is a moment of recognition, one that forces thinking audience members to contemplate not who each of these men are today, but the roads they traveled to arrive at their current destination. Even as the film continues through to after the title card it further demonstrates the reasons these two mean have landed in their current situations are due as much to opportunity and association as they are hard work. This begs the question of how much of a clean slate do we all start out with and if hard work is truly all it takes to get to where you want to be or does having the right people in the right places help significantly. The answer is, of course, pretty clear and it's obvious Get Hard knows that, but beyond this observation and the ability to display it provocatively one would think the film might delve into what it thinks of this predicament, an unavoidable one, really and use that fuel to create satire from the actual downfalls of our society. Instead, writer Etan Cohen's directorial debut, offers little more than a few inspired moments. There are some solid ideas that are glimpsed by the jokes that really land, but much of the time the film skates by on it's over-reliance on vulgarity and close-ups of Ferrell doing his schtick with nothing but the hope you'll laugh at anything Ferrell does supporting it.