Bad Words Battles Unlikability to Become So Good

Jason Bateman's character Guy Trilby has issues. Those issues certainly make Trilby unlikeable and threaten, for a while, to make Bad Words unlikeable.

But then that risky setup unfolds and turns a ridiculously awful premise into a really compelling and creative one.

Bateman also directed the movie and clearly had a vision and a passion for the story. Trilby has a childish streak that is rooted in abandonment issues. It becomes clearer throughout, which helps slowly build suspense for the viewer, why he has entered himself into a prestigious national spelling bee.

Meanwhile, he leaves poop at his hotel's front desk, drives his reporter "friend" batty with his brooding silence, and befriends (in a roundabout way) one of his competitors, an independent and stubborn youngster.

Bateman is excellent as usual, with some unusual dramatic acting mixed in with his comedic talents. His supporting cast is excellent too. Kathryn Hahn is his "love interest," in a plot point that kind of fizzles but perhaps rightly so. Philip Baker Hall is classic as usual as the spelling-bee chief. And it's no wonder the adorable Rohan Chand will play Mowgli in The Jungle Book: Origins. He helps make Bad Words so good.

If one chooses not to view Bateman's character as a sorta sociopath, the movie is a funny, dramatic, and touching look at how damaging a childhood-deprived life can turn out.

**** out of ***** stars

(Also, I would place this at #6 on my list of the best Jason Bateman movies.)

Guardians of the Galaxy Forgets to Be as Awesome as It Should Be

I miss a lot of superhero movies these days. How could you possibly not? But I was genuinely excited about the offbeat and obscure Guardians of the Galaxy.

Unfortunately, it ends up mostly being a cheap knock-off of Star Wars (which is certainly better than a cheap knock-off of most things). Root is a mix of Chewbacca and C3PO. Peter Quill aka Star-Lord is a mix of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Zamora is Princess Leia. I don't know what the raccoon Rocket is. And Drax is the Thing meets Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Quill (played by the always-likable Chris Pratt) is the only one who really gets a backstory. His mother dies back on Earth and he didn't give her a proper goodbye. After aliens abduct him, the only thing he has to hold on to his Earth family with is a Walkman with the songs of the 70s that his mom loved, like "Hooked On a Feeling" and "Come and Get Your Love." The soundtrack, needless to say, is one of the best things about the film.

The humor works most of the time and the bad guys are also a hoot to watch, especially the Star Wars-like Ronan and blue-skinned Yondu. The backstory on the characters and the plot of everyone chasing a silly little orb around the galaxy are where Guardians falters. By the second half, the story really drags down the entire production.

A few seemingly easy fixes and this one could have been a classic.

*** out of ***** stars

"Harry Potter for Grown-Ups" Successfully Explores Characters Amidst Magic

Where I was frequently a little bored recently reading the first Harry Potter book, The Magicians is, as the New York Times put it, "crudely labelled as Harry Potter for adults." As a result, I liked this tale of kids at magician school quite a bit more.

Authored by Lev Grossman and set to become a series on SyFy, it's about Quentin Coldwater, a young man in Brooklyn who is about to go to college when he is swept up to attend Brakebills, a school for magicians in Upstate New York.

The best part of the novel is Quentin's relationships with his friends in Brooklyn and then at the school. I didn't care that much about some of the magical and fantasy stuff, although most of it is very creative. But I was gripped by what would happen to Quentin and his friends.

Quentin is lumped with a talented batch at Brakebills called the Physical Kids (because they can manipulate physical forces). They form bonds through heavy socializing, and Quentin becomes romantically involved with Alice, who has powerful magical skills. Eliot, Josh, and Janet round out the troupe to fly as birds to Brakebills South in Antarctica for a semester before graduating and all living together in debauchery in Manhattan. The end of the novel sees the group being joined by fellow Brakebills alumni and punk fighter Penny as they slip into the magical world of Fillory that they had all read about as children.

In Fillory, they discover The Beast that had traumatically killed one of their fellow students during class at Brakebills is Martin Chatwin, the protagonist of the Fillory children's stories. It turns out that the popular fictional books had not been fiction at all. And Martin's younger sister Jane had been pulling strings for years to find someone who could kill Martin, finally finding Quentin and his friends, all of which disillusions Quentin. After leaving Fillory, he works for a time at an investment firm, and again, eternally dissatisfied, goes back to Fillory as the book ends.

I'm pretty excited to read the followups to this 2009 book, 2011's The Magician King and 2014 The Magician's Land.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Non-Flashy Sci-Fi Her Offers Endlessly Sad Portrait of Love

Her was nominated for best picture at the Oscars last year and rightfully lost to 12 Years a Slave.

Still, I really love the concept by music-video-director-examplar Spike Jonze. The classic sci-fi plot of machine overtaking man is taken to fascinating psychological extremes, with Scarlett Johansson's playful and sexy voice as the operating system that the weird and exotic Juaquin Phoenix falls for hard.

The two turn in wonderful performances, as does Juanquin's sympathetic friend played by Amy Adams and the hilariously clueless Chris Pratt as one of his colleagues.

The way we all stare at our cellphones as we walk down the street makes this story seem like a near-future possibility. The massive and futuristic Los Angeles setting is also captivating, as are the goofball 50s pants worn by most of the male characters. That Phoenix basically falls in love with his cell phone/desktop is endlessly sad, but it is indeed a bit of a stinging metaphor for our burgeoning relations with our technology over the past 20 years or so.

Her moves a little slowly in places and sometimes unfolds like a long music video. Luckily, Arcade Fire's soundtrack treatment is gorgeous. For fans of Jones' works like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, and for lovers of non-special-effects sci-fi, this flick is a can't miss.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Sugar Will Make You Fat, Too Bad There's No Escape

Several actions resulted from my viewing of Katie Couric's 2014 documentary on sugar called Fed Up.

I learned that processed sugar is 10 times more addictive than cocaine and heroin, and that pretty much all Americans are under its spell.

I made a new-year's resolution to cut back on my sugar intake. So far so good. I'm putting fruit on healthy breakfast cereal instead of eating Fruity Pebbles several times a week. I'm rationing the candy stash in my office desk and no longer candy binging to stay away in the late afternoon.

Fed Up is really effective. If you didn't already know sugar is dangerously bad for you, it makes its case persuasively. Reviewing the promotional activities of Coke and breakfast cereals, Couric shows us how we are programmed to crave sugar from the earliest ages. Then the sugar works to tell our brains that we are still hungry and need to eat more junk food to satisfy that craving.

She attributes sugar as the cause of obesity, and the science and anecdotal personal stories present a compelling case that exercise and better diets won't get us out of the fat farm. It's sugar that we have to somehow avoid.

Fed Up has been called the "Inconvenient Truth of the health movement." Of course, Congress has done little about climate change since that film was released. It's pretty sad to think they will do the same about the obesity crisis.

If they do, I might even splurge and drink 10 teaspoons of sugar, the amount that is in one 12-ounce can of Coke.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Tony Kushner Takes Too Long to Explain His "Guide"

Back in 2003, Tony Kushner's Angels in America TV mini-series probably helped open up dialogue about gay rights to a degree, but its pompousness made it difficult to really love.

The same holds true with his latest, which just wrapped up a run at Theater J in Washington D.C. After the first of three acts in the three-and-half-hour The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, the couple next to Rachel, Dan, and I mumbled, "Where do we get our money back?"

I didn't totally agree. In fact, I thought the first act had the most laughs and was the most enjoyable.

The story revolves around patriarch Gus, who is selling the family's New York brownstone, which lures his children home to find that he wants to kill himself (because the world has moved past him?). Tom Wiggin is Gus and he leads a generally excellent cast, including great performances from his kids: the incestous-impregnator Vito (Tim Getman), the triangulating gay Pill (Lou Liberatore), and the worker-rights lawyer Empty (Susan Rome).

The performances were worth remembering, but for the life of me, just two weeks after seeing The Guide, I can't remember what my theory was on why Gus wanted to kill himself. Kushner should use this play to finally realize he doesn't have to take so long to explain any of his epic pet causes.

*** out of ***** stars

Aubrey Plaza Film Career in Fits and Starts with The To Do List

Aubrey Plaza is one of the main reasons I have continued watching Parks and Recreation all these years. She's now making the leap to movies and it seemed like the first place I should start is The To Do List, which got fairly positive reviews.

She plays Brandy Clarke, a high-school valedictorian who is inexperienced in many ways. Based on all the things her more experienced sister and mother tell her, she creates a to-do list of sex moves to perform during the summer before college, culminating in going all the way with cheeseball hottie and lifeguard rocker Rusty Waters, played pretty hilariously by Scott Porter of Jason Street fame in TV's Friday Night Lights. Her conservative, Rush Limbaugh-leaning judge dad is also pretty funny, although nowhere near the league of Ted Knight's high-bar-setting Judge Smails in Caddyshack.

Despite the all-star cast, including Bill Hader, Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Connie Britton, and Andy Samburg, not many laughs stick, and some bits, like the Beaches song and Caddyshack poop-in-the-pool take-offs, are plain painful to watch.

Plaza's movie career is starting in fits and starts. Safety Not Guaranteed was good but not great. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was pretty average, and I don't think I can even consider watching Life After Beth.

Get it together April Ludgate. Parks and Recreation is about to end.

**1/2 out of ***** stars

Yo La Tengo Digs Deep into Songlist for 30th Anniversary Show

I hadn't seen Hoboken, New Jersey's finest, Yo La Tengo since the mid-90s, when they played in St. Louis on the Painful tour (still their best album) and also in an intimate setting in the basement of Washington University's student center, where leader Ira Kaplan proceeded to pound his keyboard with precision and play guitar solos like Jimi Hendrix.

I loved the band's early albums like May I Sing With Me and New Wave Hot Dogs. But I haven't been all that into their less poppy, more spacey releases of the past decade-and-a-half.

That's why this special "Yo La Tengo at 30" tour in only New York, Philadelphia, and D.C. appeared to be the perfect show. A career-spanning set rather than a show that would focus on the new stuff. And the band didn't disappoint, especially at the start of the night.

"Ohm," the one great song from their newest album, began the show churning at just the right pace. Then "Double Dare" from Painful soared with its diving guitar parts. Their loud-soft dynamic was displayed with a few numbers, including "Beanbag Chair" from Electropura.

The full house was then treated to oldies like "Lewis" from New Wave Hot Dogs, "The Pain of Pain" from debut Ride the Tiger, and "Satellite" from May I Sing With Me.

Late in the show, when Kaplan wasn't doing his patented freak outs, highlights included covers of "Little Honda" by the Beach Boys and "Take Care" by Big Star, along with original "Autumn Sweater."

This was by no means a best-of setlist, but it also displayed just how deep and enjoyable Yo La Tengo's catalog is over its 30-year life thus far.

Lambchop opened and convincingly played its brand of slow, mostly-quiet folk.

**** out of ***** stars

Photo by Peter Hutchins.

• 1. Ohm 
  2. Double Dare 
  3. The Point of It 
  4. Pablo and Andrea 
  5. Beanbag Chair 
  6. Lewis 
     (with Tony Crow)
  7. The Pain of Pain 
     (with Tony Crow)
  8. Satellite 
  9. Black Flowers 
  10. I'll Be Around 
  11. False Alarm 
  12. Before We Run 
  13. Little Honda 
      (The Beach Boys cover)
  14. Deeper Into Movies 
  15. Decora 
  16. Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind 
  17. Encore:
  17. Autumn Sweater 
  18. I Dream of Jeannie 
      (Hypnolovewheel cover) (with David Ramirez)
  19. Take Care 
      (Big Star cover) (with Lambchop)

Cate Blanchett Cracks Up in Blue Jasmine

For last year's Blue Jasmine, Director Woody Allen was clearly inspired by the whole Bernie Madoff financial mess. It's a dramedy about a woman named Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) whose mental state is collapsing from years of fooling herself into thinking her husband (Alec Baldwin) is a good and honest man.

At the start of the film, Jasmine is leaving her once-lavish life in New York to go live with her distant sister in San Francisco. It opens as she is trying to rationalize her living-in-denial life to a complete stranger in the airport. Through a series of flashbacks, we see how she got to this point as she tries to pull it back together out west. 

Some critics said the movie is Allen's dig at his ex-wife Mia Farrow, with whom he has had an ugly, lengthy, public falling out. Whatever the case, Blanchett is nothing short of spellbinding as a cracked person. It's no wonder she won just about every best-actress trophy last year, including the Oscar.

As for where Blue Jasmine fits within my list of Woody Allen's best films, I say it's his eighth best, right after Vicky Christina Barcelona and before Everyone Says I Love You.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Pop Culture Ephemera: 4-Star Books and Films That Everyone Has Already Seen

Here are a few items I've seen and read in the past several months.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Yes, I know, I'm the last person in the world to get around to reading the first Harry Potter book. At least I saw the movie version years ago. But my excuse is that I was waiting to read it with Jackson, who was six last summer when we read it.

It's tough to argue against a book that seems to have improved literacy among an entire generation of kids. And it is a very entertaining book, although I was a little disappointed that more didn't happen in the story. It feels like author J.K. Rowling wanted to spread the plot out a little thin over the entire series to come.

The evil Lord Voldemort kills James and Lily Potter. Son Harry is orphaned to the terrible Dursley family. Ten years later, Hagrid saves him and takes him to Hogwarts wizard school. Harry makes friends with Ron and Hermione and becomes a star Quidditch player. At the end, Dumbledore tells Harry that his mother sacrificed her life to save Harry, and Voldemort didn't understand such a thing as this - love.

**** out of ***** stars

The Road - I also read and loved this Cormac McCarthy novel (my #56 all-time favorite) about a father and his son attempting to survive in a post-apocalyptic world gone mad. In the movie version from 2009, they walk down endless roads, just trying to survive, find food, and avoid flesh-eating gangs. It is unbearably sad, but probably as poignant an apocalypse movie as has ever been created. Anyone who's ever known the power of a father-son bond can't help but be moved.

**** out of ***** stars

Daddy Day Care - I had no expectations when I started watching this kids film, but then I got into it almost immediately and loved it by the end. I mean, really, how wrong can you go with Eddie Murphy, Jeff Garlin, and a bunch of cute kids?

Murphy is a marketing exec who gets laid off and, unhappy with his son's daycare run by Anjelica Huston, starts his own with fellow marketer Garlin.

You could do much worse watching a movie with your kids.

**** out of ***** stars