Clearance Sale: A Raft of Movies (Plus a Book) From the Past Few Months Gets Reviewed Here

I've seen a hodgepodge of movies lately. I'm not sure that any of them warrant their own blog posts at the moment so this compilation to help me remember what I've seen lately will have to do.

And as a side note, a book I recently skimmed was Arcadia by Lauren Groff. I was excited by this one because of all the praise it received, and I'm a sucker for anything about cults (see my articles on The Polyphonic Spree, the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene,  the Children of God-inspired band Girls, Charles Manson, and more. But this was flowery prose that had me bored 20 pages in, at which point I decided to read the starts and ends of chapters and a summary online. It's about a kid named Bit who is born into a cult at a place called Arcadia, which holds its members together in the beginning by some sort of vegan concept. Along the way, Bit grows to like the place less and less and it ends with technology and burnouts taking the place over. Criticize me for not deeply absorbing this whole book, but life is too short.
1.5 out of 5 stars.

Now transitioning to the movies but keeping in line with the blandness of Arcadia, Blended was the worst of the batch. The Wedding Singer was a true comedy classic and possibly Adam Sandler's best movie. He and Drew Barrymore killed it with chemistry. And they teamed up on 50 First Dates to nearly equal effect. But this mess of bad African stereotypes is so bad that I couldn't take my eyes off it. Like a nightmare Brady Bunch, it takes forever for the two stars to fall in love. Most jokes fall flat, but all the kids and the occasional moment that lands save this from being one of the worst movies of all time. It's so dumb, and it seems like a product of the Radical Right in that it's potty-talk free and kind of racist, but you know what, I ended up guiltily liking it.
2.5 out of 5 stars

J. Edgar
It's hard to go wrong with a fictional biopic in which the lead character is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. The focus on this one is mostly about his closet homosexuality that mostly expresses itself in asexuality.
3 out of 5 stars

Bill Murray's HBO Christmas Special
This hour-long special highlights Murray's most endearing traits, basically expanding his SNL lounge singer, laid-back, and kinda drunk-seeming guy. Highlights include a duet with Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, George Clooney popping out here and there from behind Christmas trees, Phoenix's catchy Beach Boys cover, and of course Paul Schaeffer's piano playing throughout.
3 out of 5 stars

John Dent
I'm not a big action-adventure guy, but I like Keanu Reeves a lot and this is a pretty perfect role for him, as a tortured assassin.
3 out of 5 stars

Deliverance
Burt Reynolds' brightest moment. And one of the best films ever (in fact, #15 on my list).
5 out of 5 stars

Happy Valley
This story about Jerry Sandusky and the corrupt Penn State football program is almost too sadly pathetic to truly recommend, but this story is told really well.
3.5 out of 5 stars

The Big Lebowsky
Some movies you just have to see again and again to like more each time (#13 on my all-time best list).
5 out of 5 stars

Glen Campbell - I'll Be Me
In the moments when it's not looking a little to uncomfortably like a reality TV family story or a little bit too much of an advertisement for fixing Alzheimer's, CNN's Glen Campbell documentary is good, down-home entertainment. And Campbell himself is such a great guy. His music, further, just makes any time spent at all with the country legend a joy.
4 out of 5 stars

The Stones and the Holocaust Lead the Pack of Stuff You Should Watch Now

I've been doing a lot more TV- and movie-watching lately than blogging. What have I liked and what has stunk, you ask?

Crossfire Hurricane (***** out of ***** stars), a documentary about the darker side of the Rolling Stones, including the drug busts, Altamont, and the death of guitarist Brian Jones, is hands down the best thing I've seen this spring.

The runner-up, although extremely sad and very difficult to take, is another documentary, called Night Will Fall (***** out of ***** stars). It's the story of British and American filmmakers who were given access to the final days of the Nazi death camps. They film endless horrors but also capture everyday moments of at-least-momentary sanity behind the camp walls. The Germans decided the movies would hurt their attempts to move on as a people and buried the footage for years until now. I began watching because of the promise that Alfred Hitchcock would be featured as the man hired to direct the films. I stayed watching because this part of the Jewish people's history is too important to all of mankind and it's our duty to watch.

I finally got around to Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (****1/2 out of ***** stars) and I have to admit it is pretty great. If this 2013 fictionalization isn't reason enough for Congress to reform the investment sector, then at the very least Scorsese and star Leonardo DiCaprio have taken a step forward in helping us all realize the sliminess of the profession.

Three little films I didn't expect much from but ended up being pleased by include:

• This Is Where I Leave You (**** out of ***** stars): I guess it's just too difficult for Jason Bateman to do any wrong. It helps that the all-star cast works really well together. It includes Tina Fey, Adam Driver, and Jane Fonda.
• The Way, Way Back (***1/2 out of ***** stars): Fourteen-year-old shy kid Duncan has to spend the summer on Cape Cod with jerky relatives played by Steve Carell and Allison Janney. Luckily, he finds shelter with a new group of friends, including Sam Rockwell and Maya Rudolph, at the local water park.
• Talk Radio (*** out of ***** stars): I haven't missed many Oliver Stone flicks over the years, but this one from 1988 slipped past me. Eric Bogosian turns in a powerful performance as the talk host who passionately and offensively argues against everyone who calls the station.

I thought I would like A Million Ways to Die in the West (*1/2 out of ***** stars), but Seth MacFarlane rips off Blazing Saddles with absolutely none of that classic's charm. Painful.

I also looked forward to the sci-fi Ender's Game (*1/2 out of ***** stars), but the story of a kid sent to military school to train for an alien attack is an absolute snoozefest. Even Harrison Ford's cool can't save it. In fact, Ford is pretty bad and seems flat-out uninterested waiting around for his turn in the upcoming Star Wars reboot.

Also worth mentioning are four TV shows I have really been getting into: Bloodline, Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, and Bate's Motel. They're all well worth watching.

2013's Great Gatsby Entertains, But Overshares the Mystery

I may be biased since The Great Gatsby has been my favorite novel for a long time, but it's a really tough one to pull off on film.

The new version tries its best with help from a host of gimmicks - namely rap music in the jazz age and over-the-top Moulin Rouge-like production pieces. (I suppose it's difficult to fault Director Baz Luhrmann for trying this approach.)

It's not that these elements are bad, they just happen to be the sections I probably dislike the most about 2013's Great Gatsby, but I think the part that leaves me most unsettled is how the creators spell out every little detail of the characters, plot, and motivations. The best thing about the book, and why I keep coming back to it every five years or so, is that I'm not entirely quite sure exactly what happens. I can't quite fully grasp all of author F. Scott Fitzgerald's intentions and meanings, and I read into it a little bit different every time.

The mystery of Jay Gatsby is, after all, what the story is all about. And the film actually does very well at withholding the secrets for a very long time. But it can't help itself, as Tobey Maguire's Nick Carraway blurts it all out towards the end.

Leo DiCaprio is probably the best Gatsby there may ever be for a film version. (I think this probably falls around DiCaprio's seventh-best movie.) He is dashing, a little bit wacky, and mysterious. Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton are also pretty perfect as the shallow and reckless Daisy and Tom Buchanan. Maguire is alright, but I've always pictured Carraway to be an equal in the looks (if not the money) department to his neighbor Gatsby. He is a little too timid for this role.

The cinematography is beautiful and should be a prime candidate for the Academy Award. Some of the dialogue scenes, when the film almost replicates what a stage production might look like, are also filmed perfectly, especially the scene when Gatsby announces he is taking Daisy from Tom.

The rest isn't quite there, but it's saying quite a bit just to pull off The Great Gatsby without it being a total disaster.

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

Django Unchained is Tarantino's Second-Best Movie Ever

Django Unchained is a stunner. I never thought I would say that a Quentin Tarantino film is almost as good as his piece de resistance Pulp Fiction, but this one comes close.

Much like Pulp Fiction, this movie is not so much about the plot but rather about the dialogue that drives the masterful suspense and the scene after scene of purely tantalizing cinematography and episodic brilliance.

Chapter after chapter roll past and the viewer rarely wants the scene to end, but it always does, and Tarantino always leaves us wanting more. Even the most graphically violent scenes never overstay their welcome, which helps make them so enjoyable and some of them even downright hilarious (like when the southern lady gets swooped off her feet and out of the room by one of Django's righteous bullets).

Christoph Waltz, who was so captivating in Inglourious Basterds at "The Jew Hunter," is flat-out the actor of the year in this one. Forget Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln. It's pretty safe to say that Waltz is the top master at delivering Tarantino's also award-deserving scriptwriting lines.

Jamie Foxx as Django and Samuel L. Jackson as an influential house slave are also great. Leonardo DiCaprio could be better as the wack-job slave-plantation owner Calvin Candie, but that said, perhaps I have too high of expectations for the actor, who may not be capable of being quite as evil as he needs to be in this part. (He's still pretty darn evil though.)

This is my movie of the year, and the second-best Tarantino movie ever.

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