Indie Movie Binge: Which Recent DVD Releases Are Worth It

With our recent re-upping of Netflix after a time away, I've been able to hit a spate of indie flicks in the way I used to in my 20s in the mid-90s when I presumably had nothing better to do.

None of these reach Richard Linklater Boyhood levels (my movie of 2014), which, much like his past releases Slacker, School of Rock, and Dazed and Confused, holds the grand torch of best-of-the-best. But I still enjoyed this binge. From best to worst ...

Wish I Was Here

The strong soundtrack including The Shins is where Zack Braff's latest ends at being like Garden State and Scrubs, his very-high career highlights thus far. There are some funny moments, but it's mostly a serious look at midlife.

Braff plays an out-of-work actor who spends more time smoking weed than auditioning. When his father (Mandy Patinkin) announces he has cancer and can no longer pay for Braff and Kate Hudson's children's Jewish private school education, Braff decides to home school them.

This leads to much soul searching and rediscovering. Not necessarily as good as I thought it could be, this little movie is indeed worth watching.

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

Obvious Child

This flick is a mix of Louie and Ed Burns' rom-coms. With major social commentary on abortion mixed in (with conservative groups the Heritage Foundation and Family Research Council chiming in against it).

I love star Jenny Slate for her roles in TV's The Kroll Show. She is far less wacky here, playing a comedian who loses her boyfriend before setting out on some binge drinking that results in a drunken encounter that gets her pregnant. Bouts of sweetness ensue with her stranger paramour, even if the bounds of believability are stretched with their continuous random sightings of each other.

Consider it devoting the time of just more than two episodes of Girls, which seems to be getting painfully annoying in its third season (should I even attempt to keep going into season four?).

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

Inside Llewyn Davis

This is the one that really surprised me of this bunch. Nominated for best picture last year, I'm finding it harder and harder as time goes by to remember anything about it. I usually love the Coen Brothers, but Inside Llewyn Davis is particularly uninteresting.

It starts promisingly. Oscar Davis plays the title character. He is a folk singer who has lost the duo partner that brought him minor fame. But nobody likes his new solo stuff. The movie is fairly captivating during the first half in Greenwich Village, but it collapses into veery-slow meaningless by the point Llewyn road trips to Chicago with John Goodman, in a sadly pointless performance.

I really wanted to like this, but really didn't. It might have something to do with my stunning lack of interest in Bob Dylan (I know you're not supposed to say that out-loud) and this post-Dylan take on artistry.

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

The Skeleton Twins

This is another big disappointment of two actors I really like. Perhaps the world in not ready for Saturday Night Live stars playing depressed suicidal twins.

The lack of humor is the most painful point. And why any scriptwriters would think audiences would care about these two losers is almost as amazing as it actually being green-lighted. I guess they thought Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig's double likability would save it, but they can't.

Like a really bad version of Robert Downey Jr.'s exploits in Less Than Zero.

** out of ***** stars

Anchorman 2 Sucker Punches Ratings-Inspired Cable News Coverage

I’m glad I skipped Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues when it was released several months ago. Letting the overwhelming hype and crass over-commercialization die down gave me more reasonable expectations.

Of course I heard that it received very mixed reviews, and several people have flat-out told me not to watch it. But in the end, I’m a sucker for Ron Burgundy and his brand of wacked-out humor.

The biggest problem I have with the movie is its slow start. The worse choice by the filmmakers was to make it so unfunny for so long. I counted to the 17-minute mark before laughing, which happens when Paul Rudd enters as a cat photographer.

Rudd actually doesn’t garner many laughs after that. Steve Carell plays, for me, the most consistently funny role as Brick the off-the-wall weatherman. His relationship with similarly nuts Kristen Wiig is endearing, his “pre-funeral” is kind of creative, and his laughing fit in the RV as the gang gets reacquainted on their way to big new cable-TV jobs in New York is equally laugh-out-loud for the viewer.

The worst parts of the movie are when it drifts into Spoils of Babylon-like family drama. It’s no coincidence that those first 17 minutes are heavy with Christina Applegate, who has no chemistry with Will Ferrell as his newscaster wife. Every star in the universe appears in the climatic news-personality fight scene, which again doesn’t work that well.

However, most of the main characters are likeable enough to spend a couple hours of your life with. The social commentary on the rise of ratings-at-all-costs media is insightful. And the 70s yacht-rock soundtrack (from Christopher Cross to John Waite to Kenny Loggins and much more) makes Anchorman 2 a slice of media pleasure.

*** out of ***** stars

Friends With Kids: Bad Idea in Many Ways

For a movie with so many of my favorite actors, Friends With Kids could easily be considered a stinker.

Granted, Jon Hamm of Mad Men plays an unlikable and unhappy father stuck in a relationship with Kristen Wiig, but they are both given little to work with and don't particularly shine in their key scene, when Hamm's character is drunk and tells the film's main characters that having a baby while remaining friends instead of a couple will never work.

Adam Scott, as the male lead, plays a jerk who we never quite care enough about to cheer for, and Jennifer Westfeldt is squirrelly, kind of plastic looking, and not very interesting as the female lead who goes from being "happy every morning" to conflicted about the decisions she's made to become a single parent.

Chris O'Dowd, Edward Burns, and Megan Fox are all cool enough, but they each seem detached from their performances. Really, only O'Dowd and Maya Rudolph seem at all convincing as harried Brooklyn former-hipster parents.

The star power captured my attention throughout the film, but other than that, Friends With Kids is a bad idea in concept as well as in execution.

**1/2 out of ***** stars (being generous)

Date Night Not a Match with Funny

Well, I just keep seeing really bad movies lately. Does Netflix have any good new releases?

You would think Tina Fey and Steve Carell would have a pretty difficult time making a stinker. Especially when they also lure Marky Mark Wahlberg, Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Wiig, Common, Ray Liotta, Mila Kunis, James Franco, and Leighton Meester.

Somehow Date Night raked in some pretty good box-office cash and critics didn't totally blast it. I guess the action side of the movie made a lot of people happy. Action isn't my forte, and when this movie is funny, it's really only kinda funny.

Carell and Fey play an accountant and a real-estate agent who lead a typical married life in the Jersey suburbs. When they decide to go out into Manhattan for a date, Carell steals somebody's reservation at a hot restaurant called Claw (where they answer the phones: "Claw. You're welcome"). Then a case of mistaken identity sets in and the couple has to replicate Carell's spy-action performance in Get Smart.

This could have been so much more than a big payday for two of TV's biggest laugh makers.

** out of ***** stars