Movie Nation

　The various young blood suckers of “Vampire Academy” belong to warring clans, with a royal family, “guardians” of those royals, silver daggers they use to kill each other and varying degrees of sensitivity to the harsh light of day.
And just in case there’s still confusion, “They don’t sparkle, either.”
It’s a self-aware horror/action comedy, first in a possible franchise (sigh) based on Richelle Mead’s books, that sits somewhere on the border between “Twilight”, “Harry Potter” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Jokes? They bought those in bulk. Line after somewhat amusing line, most of them delivered in a near-slurred blur by the snarky half-human novice guardian Rose, played by “Suite Life” alumna Zoey Deutch.
“The ‘stakes are high? Get it?”
Rose is guarding Lissa (Lucy Fry), who is a princess, so naturally she has a British accent. They’re bonded, those two. Telepathic.
“Have you ever seen me go to the bathroom?
“No. Thanks for giving me THAT to look forward to.”
Rose and Lissa have been on the run from school, but St. Vladimir’s finally nabs them and brings them back…
Wait, “Saint? Vladimir?
That’s right. Mead’s books have student vampires learning of their patron saint, hearing Eastern Orthodox-ish sermons in chapel, in between the usual instances of high school hazing, mean girling and make-out sessions. And managing one’s magic.
Gabriel Byrne is an elder something or other at the school, Joely Richardson is the scolding Good Witch of the East queen who lords over them, Olga Kurylenko the head mistress who “could have been a model.”
Set in Montana, filmed in the U.K.’s castle-country, the school is the only place Lissa can be protected from the Strigoi, evil vampires who want to interrupt the royal line.
Tedious as all this vampire exposition is (and there’s a LOT), the jokey tone here is much appreciated, with everyone “a few corpuscles shy of an artery” and the action as predictable as “a porcupine in a hot tub.”
Deutch tends to rush her lines, but a leggy, sitcom-trained 18 year-old is what the role called for, the sort of girl who can make an “Ewww” face after handing the princess a tissue to wipe off blood from a “feeder,” a human vampire fan who submits to the occasional neck-suck to keep the pale ones in the pink.
“Once you’ve had fang…”
Sexy, PG-13 sassy, flip and funnier than it has a right to be, written by Daniel Waters (“Heathers”) and directed by his brother Mark (“Mean Girls”), “Vampire Academy” still feels slapdash, perhaps under-budgeted — sort of a hit-or-miss, low-risk trial balloon to see if “Twilight Fever” has indeed, faded. We’ll know by sunrise.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, bloody images, sexual content and language
Cast: Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, Danila Koslovsky, Gabriel Bryne, Olga Kurylenko, Joely Richardson
Credits: Directed by Mark Waters, scripted by Daniel Waters the Richelle Mead novel. A Weinstein Co. release.
Running time: 1:38

My next interview is with Elizabeth Olsen, the lovely young star of “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Oldboy”, “Red Lights”, “Liberal Arts” and many an indie film in her still-new career.

“In Secret” is a “Postman Always Rings Twice” style thriller based on a story by Emile Zola — a 19th century French period and a serious shift of her gears. She co-stars with Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) in this one.

Questions for Ms. Olsen? Comment below.

So many horror films, so very few with real ambition.
“A Field in England” is a period piece set during the English Civil War, and
its horrors are not of the torture-porn, splatter, slasher with a knife a
variety. This is existential fear served up on an absurdest platter, the terrors
suggested by “Waiting for Godot,” “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead” or
“Six Characters in Search of an Author.”
No nubile teens hacked up in an abandoned summer camp, no Michael Myers or
Jason or Buzzsaw. Just soldiers, fleeing a pitched battle, in search of an ale
house.
“We’re not running away,” one assures the others. “We’re going for beer.”
They are men born around the time Shakespeare died, so they speak his
English. Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) is a quivering alchemist, aid to a
“gentleman” who has sent him on a mission in the middle of this battle between
Royalists and Oliver Cromwell’s “Roundheads.”
“I am not your enemy, sir,” he pleads to a menacing soldier who has also run
from the fight. “I am a coward, sir.”
Others, common men whose combat experience is directed at robbing the dead,
hacking of fingers for rings, fall in with the highfalutin expert in
“divination” and alchemy — a cooper (barrel maker), a tradesman who makes
buttons. The battle won’t miss them, they figure.
“Would not be the first time I’ve left a wave of indifference behind me,” the
cooper (Richard Glover) shrugs.
But as they trudge through hedgerows and the sounds of battle fade behind
them, this trek to a bar becomes mysterious. The violent Cutler (Ryan Pope) is
too easy with a threat, the others lose the thread of seeking that ale house,
stopping to cook, eat and ponder what punishment God has in mind for them and
just where the Devil is on this bloody day. Are they ghosts in Purgatory,
metaphors in a Civil War parable?
And then they come across a strange, heavy rope, stretched out across a
field, tied to a strange, carved post. That’s when they meet O’Neil (Michael
Smiley), monstrous, murderous and someone the alchemist knows all too well.
“It does not surprise me that the Devil is an Irishman!”
Director Ben Wheatley, who did the minimalist
trailer-travelers-as-serial-killers film “Sightseers,” shot this in black
and white and spared every expense doing so. There’s barely a hint of effects,
just a handful of characters, grimy 1640s costumes, the odd explosion, firearms
and the occasional hallucination. Scenes drop into slow-motion or are edited
into a blur, characters strike freeze-frame poses, engage in off camera torture
and bring the battle (with firearms and pikes) to this remote field.
The performances are sharp and distinct, the action a fascinating puzzle. And
I could listen to Amy Jump’s script all day. It’s a romp through Cromwellian
England, from its medical diagnoses — “disease of the private parts brought on
by too much venereal sport” — to fortune seeking.
“The world is turned upside down, Whitehead. And so has its pockets!”
So what if “A Field in England” delivers only a few shocks and no real
frights? It turns this weary genre inside out and should shame legions of
American and Asian horror auteurs into rethinking their settings, characters and
dialogue. It doesn’t all have to look, sound and spatter the same.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with some bloody violence, nudity, profanity
Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Michael Smiley, Ryan Pope, Richard Glover, Peter
Ferdinando
Credits: Directed by Ben Wheatley, written by Amy Jump. A Drafthouse Films
release.
Running time: 1:30

It pops up early on in the new “Lego Movie,” this…song.
“Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when we’re part of a team.”
Can’t get it out of your head — bubbly tune, infectious lyrics.
“Everything is awesome, when we’re living our dream…”
It is “a near-perfect simultaneous celebration and skewing of upbeat, pop song effervescence” complains Screen Daily.
“Irritatingly catchy” gripes The Wrap. And upbeat? Oh yeah.
“Everything is better when we stick together. We’re the same. I’m like you. You’re like me. We’re all working in harmony.”
It bores its way into your head by design, and considering the source, that subtext of irony and revolt against conformity is no accident.
“There’s something resonant there,” composer Mark Mothersbaugh admits with a laugh. A little subversive?
“Maybe.”
No great surprise, if you remember Mothersbaugh’s previous life. Mothersbaugh, 63, has some 150 TV shows, film and video game scores under his belt, everything from “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” to “Rushmore,” “Catfish” to “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.” But back in the day, the guy with the funny glasses was famed for wearing yellow haz-mat suits as a uniform on stage, singing “Whip It” and “Jocko Homo” as a founding member of the influential, theatrical and confrontational New Wave quartet Devo.
“That’s the place Devo started from — subversion. By being around for the collegiate rebellion, protesting the Vietnam War, being eyewitnesses to what happened at Kent State (Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale from Devo were students there when the National Guard shot student protesters in 1970), we learned that rebellion was obsolete.
“When I looked around to find ‘How do you change things in this world? How do you change how people think?’ The people who do it best are on Madison Ave.. We decided, with Devo, that we’d adopt their techniques. Dressing like yellow cheeseburgers with a little bit of ketchup on top.”
Decades after Devo, the band’s quirky sound is echoed in many a Mothersbaugh film score, including that of “The Lego Movie.” And the lyrics to the stand-alone song in this animated toy adventure comedy? Satirical, sarcastic, vintage Devo.
“Lost a job, there’s more opportunity! More free time For my Awesome Community!”
Mothersbaugh fell in love with scoring film and TV after accepting the challenge of doing the music for his pal Paul Reubens’ “Pee Wee’s Playhouse.” While rock performers might spend a year composing songs for an album, recording that album and then rehearsing and touring with the new tunes, “in film and TV, that’s condensed to a week. I write an album a week, basically. You really learn to trust your gut and get it right quickly.”
Mothersbaugh is a voice actor and character on the Nickelodeon cartoon “Yo Gabba Gabba!,” and the composer of TV’s racier “The Carrie Diaries.” He’s done three films with his “Lego” and “Meatballs” co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — four, if you count their sequel to “21 Jump Street” — “22 Jump Street.”
“That’s not coming out until June, right? I start on that score…tomorrow!”
And then there’s this business of hitting the road with the band. Again. Devo may turn 40 this year. Or next. Or maybe they missed it.
“There’s all these dates — the date we signed the record deal, the date in ’76 when we won a prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival for this musical short we did. In ’74, that’s when we started recording. We were called ‘Sextet Devo’ for one show after the shootings at Kent State.”
Maybe they’ll play their hits, maybe some “bluesier songs — kind of Captain Beefheart-like, that we wrote before our first record.”
But they’ll be missing the boat if they forget how awesome everything is and that unforgettable ditty Mothersbaugh whipped up for a movie about snap-together plastic toy blocks.
“‘Everything is Awesome’? That MIGHT be what we open up with!”

(Here’s the tune — a DIY video on youtube)

　”The Monuments Men” is the “Last Vegas” of World War II movies. A roughly true/fictionally embellished account of the efforts of American arts scholars — drafted into the Army — to preserve the artistic patrimony of Europe from the scourge of combat and theft by the Germans, it is a cute but clunky ensemble piece that director George Clooney rarely bestows with the gravitas and jauntiness this material demanded.
They changed the names — well, of almost everyone — from the historic “Monuments Men,” whose exploits were recounted in the book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter. Clooney and co-adaptor Grant Heslov had to sex it up a bit, give the tale more thriller elements. But it still makes for a genial combat picture starring a bunch of guys “too old for this,” as indeed were many of the curators, artists and scholar-heroes who did the work.
Clooney plays the man tasked with assembling a team of men of experience, all of them shoved into ill-fitting uniforms, given rudimentary basic training and thrust into the combat zones of Europe, battling murderously thieving Germans, suspicious Occupied French and their own “No painting is worth a GI’s life” field commanders.
“This is our history, Stokes (Clooney) pep-talks his troops. “It’s not to be stolen or destroyed. It’s to be held up and admired.”
But that’s what the Nazi leadership was doing — swiping the famed Ghent Altarpiece, Michelangelo’s “Madonna of Bruges” and pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down in Paris as the Allies swept Eastward after D-Day.
John Goodman plays a garrulous sculptor, Matt Damon an art restorer and museum director with a misplaced confidence in his command of French, Bob Balaban and Bill Murray are mismatched curator and architect with enough training to track the thievery. And Oscar winner Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) and Hugh Bonneville (“Downton Abbey”) are the token Frenchman and Brit on the team.
The story skips across locations — slowly — and shows us the history, Nazi Hermann Goring’s art “shopping” in the museums of Paris and the stoic efforts to track the thefts by heroic French curator Claire, played by Cate Blanchett.
It is difficult to justify the changes made to the real-life heroine of the French Resistance, Rose Valland, to create Blanchett’s character, a big reason this movie was removed from Oscar consideration. Another is that the movie just isn’t that good.
Corny moments abound, and occasionally, the players hit their old-fashioned war movie cliches so hard you wince.
“Are you a Catholic, Lieutenant?” a priest asks the alcoholic Brit played by Bonneville, as he furiously plots to save the Madonna statue.
“I am…tonight!”
Changing names and tarting up the characters doesn’t quite spoil the generally solid attention to detail, and doesn’t ruin several genuinely poignant moments. Some of the banter sings, but much of it feels forced. The “assemble the team” scenes are squeezed in beneath the credits, spoiling the sure-fire “Magnificent Seven/Dirty Dozen” moments that promised.
And while Clooney and the producers create a somewhat lived-in World War II, nobody and no city is nearly dirty or battered enough to feel right. A telling moment, an extra cast as a GI totes a heavy belted machine gun across the screen and looks as if he’s never seen one before and that he’s not used to heavy lifting.
This could have been a lovely historical lark, a bunch of grizzled faux soldiers tracking art, outwitting Nazis and occasionally dealing with a blast of tragedy and “what this war is really about” reminders. Clooney, for the first time in his directing career (“Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Ides of March”) never finds the sweet spot, and never quite wrestled the script into a shape entertaining enough to make the liberties he and Heslov took with the facts worth it.
　
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some images of war violence and historical smoking
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville.
Credits: Directed by George Clooney, written by Clooney and Grant Heslov, based on the e Richard Edsel/Bret Witter book . A Columbia/Fox release.
Running time: 1:55

If the Looney Toons team had played with plastic blocks that snap together, “The Lego Movie” is the kind of surreal subversion they might have made. Their Looney heirs, the guys behind the original “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller), have turned a 90 minute exercise in product placement into a trippy clarion call for creativity — for not following “the instructions” of these fiendishly simple Danish building blocks.
The story — if you can call it that — is a riff on “Tron”, an alternate world out of sight of our own whose denizens lead an assault on conformity. The characters, ranging from a blind wizard (Morgan Freeman) and “master builder” ninja (Elizabeth Banks) to Batman (Will Arnett), an evil overlord named President Business (Will Ferrell) and his Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) henchman, make the case that it’s those who can improvise, invent and see the world differently who are “the special.”
Mild-mannered Emmet (Chris Pratt) is just another yellow-faced Lego construction worker who is a model citizen in a planned society. He follows the rules.
“Always return a compliment. Always root for the local sports team…”
Everybody loves the same TV show — “Where are My Pants?” Everbody’s “jam” is the same song — “Everything is AWEsome.” Mark Mothersbaugh did the music, which is a hoot.
And then Emmet stumbles onto an object of prophecy, “the piece of resistance.” That must mean he’s the chosen one, “the special.” So Wild Style (Elizabeth Banks) tries to help him get that “piece” to where it can stop President (actually Lord) Business from destroying the many Lego universes, from Bricksville and Bricksburg to the Old West to Middle Zealand.
“Send in the Micro-Managers!”
Jerky computer animation vividly mimics the shiny look and tactile feel of Lego blocks. The movie shows off these blocks as “the Original Transformers,” clickable into a wild variety of shapes, from cities to saloons, sailing ships to the plastic sea they sail on.
Slapstick violence befalls the clueless Emmet and those who help him, “master builders” honored for their crazy-quilt Lego designs, making cars, motorcycles, stagecoaches and spaceships on the fly to aid in their escape.
Batman (a growling Arnett) pitches in. The Green Lantern (a needy Jonah Hill) doesn’t.
And out to stop them at every turn is the furious and sadistic Good Cop/Bad Cop, a two-faced police Lego both voiced by a foul-mouthed Liam Neeson.
“Darn darn Darney Darn darn-it!”
A clever touch — the writers note how creative kids slip small, everyday objects into their Lego play as golf balls (Teet-leest), Q-Tips, 9 volt batteries and Xacto knives (“The sword of Exact-Zero!”) become exalted props in this universe.
The animation is a plastic-coated blur at times. Many of the jokes will fly over the heads of the intended audience, and the sermonizing about being creative gets repetitive. But from its slapstick physics to its theology (“The Man Upstairs”), “The Lego Movie” amuses and never fails to leave the viewer –especially adults — a little dazzled at the demented audacity of it all.

(Roger Moore’s interview with composer and Devo genius Mark Mothersbaugh is here)

MPAA Rating: PG for mild action and rude humor
Cast: The voices of Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson, Will Forte
Credits: Written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, from a story by Dan and Kevin Hageman. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 1:31

We first spied him in a sharp supporting role in “Scent of a Woman,” first “noticed” him in an absurdly showy bit part in “Twister,” and then, pretty much from “Almost Famous” onward, saw him step into the spotlight and remind people of Brando and DeNiro, a name uttered with the greatest actors not of his own generation, but of generations past — all generations.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, larger than life in films from “Capote” to “Charlie Wilson’s War,” was found dead in his New York apartment today, according to the Wall Street Journal. He was just 46.

A great character actor, a generous and serious performer he brought a stage actor’s loyalty into the movie business. In the tradition of John Malkovich, Gary Sinise and others, Hoffman wasn’t shy about supporting friends (pal Bennett Miller became a director, on “Capote,” thanks to Hoffman) and lending his name to projects that would launch careers. Hoffman is remembered for everything from “The Big Lebowski,” to “Jack Goes Boating,” a “Mission: Impossible,” “The Ides of March” and “Moneyball.” A stellar career, but one absurdly cut short.

No definitive cause of death, but this is a grim shock to anybody who loves movies.

His friend Bennett Miller, talking about the inner resources the actor called on for his Oscar winning work in “Capote,” referred to “dark places” in Hoffman’s psyche and his past. The New York Post has come out and said “apparent drug overdose.” And The New York Times, citing a single unnamed police source, echoes that. Doesn’t make it any less sad.

It’s hard to know what someone who appears to have it all is thinking when they feel the need to escape their reality through hard drugs. Maybe a lot of people are depending on you. Maybe you can’t trust anybody once you’ve gotten that famous, because so many want a piece of that fame and perhaps the cash that comes with it. You can’t meet a potential lover without wondering “Are they just a star f#$@%^?” Reading the new J.D. Salinger biography, I am amazed that anybody is able to handle fame and privacy and manage a life that makes them happy once they’re that well known.

So many great performances — “The Master,” “Magnolia,” “Savages,” “Men Who Stare at Goats.” A stellar career, with perhaps one hollow note (“Twister” saw him try to chew the scenery).

Below the page break I’ve re-posted my last chat with him, about “Jack Goes Boating” — a little film that he gave his all to. Amazing artist.

Here’s that story.

Continue reading →

As late as October or so, Jason Reitman’s “LAbor Day” had Oscar buzz. A melodramatic novel with thriller elements, Oscar winner Kate Winslet held hostage (hostage in LOVE) by Josh Brolin, a Joyce Maynard best seller adapted with care and skill.

Then the studio thought better of that and moved it to the dead zone of late January.

“Labor Day,” a romance novel more in the mold of the works of Nicholas Sparks (set over a holiday weekend, Brolin’s character is a vet, and a convicted murderer, the Sparks touches are there) will be lucky to earn $6 million on its opening weekend. Thousands of screens, nobody’s buying. Poor reviews didn’t help.

“Frozen: Sing Along” is giving the Disney toon a little new life. It’s still in the top three.

“That Awkward Moment,” a racy romance from the bro’s point of view with Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan as the guys and Imogen Poots as the female lead, will hit $10 million or so, just behind the slow-to-fade “Ride Along.” Weak reviews didn’t help this one, either.

I remember a college costume party where a bunch of frat boys I knew showed up as Devo.

And then, lo all those years later, Mark Mothersbaugh turns into a film and video game music composer and “Rugrats” character. Couldn’t be the same character, I thought. “Can’t be two people with that name and a music background” I counter-thought.

He does the music to “The Lego Movie,” which looks like the sleeper hit of February.

“Fanboys,” “Catfish,” “22 Jump Street” — dude has a looooong list of of credits. And since Danny Elfman is such a fun interview, I took a flyer. Let’s talk to the movie’s composer, for once.

Questions for Mark as Devo celebrates its 40th anniversary? Comment below.

“So” is how “That Awkward Moment” begins every “awkward moment.” As in “So, what are we doing here?” Or “So, where do you see this relationship going?”
That’s the dating man’s lesson of “That Awkward Moment,” that “For girls, nothing good ever comes after ‘So.'” It’s a chatty romantic comedy in the modern mode — rude, nude and crude — with some funny, writerly riffs on relationships and how to avoid them.
There are laughs, in the lead couple’s “meet cute” moment in a bar, when she (Imogen Poots) trots out that fortune telling trick common to sex-obsessed sitcoms, rebuffing a suitor by forecasting an entire failed relationship based on how a guy is dressed, the manner of his approach and his lame pick-up line.
But the movie, like its star Zac Efron, and its writer-director, never lets us forget that it’s trying too hard, straining to spit out sexy, silly patter, reaching for that raunchy costume failure at a dinner party, grasping for gross takes on trips to the toilet.
Efron, Miles Teller (“The Spectacular Now”) and Michael B. Jordan (“Fruitvale Station”) play three New York pals who vow, when the doctor of the trio (played by Jordan) is dumped by his wife, to stay single and enjoy the mingling. Together, they will build “a roster” of booty calls. And the moment a woman starts “the talk” with “So,” they’ll bail. That’s the plan.
Which all of them ignore. Jason (Efron), a smart-aleck designer of book covers, falls for this cute one-night-stand, Ellie, who works for a publishing house (Poots). The hilarious chatterbox Daniel (Teller) starts to realize that his gorgeous, able-bodied lady wingman (Mackenzie Davis) is all the woman he’d ever need. And Mikey (Jordan) clings to the hope that his cheating lawyer wife (Jessica Lucas) will hear his reasoned, “We checked off all the boxes” appeal to maintain their partnership masquerading as a marriage.
“That Awkward Moment” is a writer’s comedy, and it’s easy to see why this cast was drawn to writer-director Tom Gormican’s script. It’s a less emotional, less consequential updating of “About Last Night,” the David Mamet play (“Sexual Perversity in Chicago”) turned movie which, coincidentally, has earned an urban/African American remake this Valentine’s Day. The quips and riffs are sharp and sometimes spot-on.
“Giving up eye contact,” Daniel cracks, watching how Jason acts around Ellie. “He’s ENGAGED.” Some of the women talk this way, too. A sensitive moment mid-copulation?
“You’re gonna go all GIRL with it?”
As Ellie and Jason stroll through the upscale neighborhood around Gramercy Park, with its locked “private” park, we hear “New York’s charm is you’re surrounded by things you can’t have.”
Efron never quite holds his own with the much funnier Teller, whose swagger and confidence always seem to be compensating for his knowledge he’s nobody’s idea of a hunk. Poots, a British actress whose real accent only pops up in the outtakes at the end, is game but never quite achieves “You had me at hello.” Jordan has few demands made on him, dramatically.
The quirkiest “awkward moments” in the picture come from Josh Pais, as the pathologically shy and clumsy boss who re-introduces himself to his creative team (Jason and Daniel) every time he meets them. “Hi, it’s Fred.” Squirm inducing and funny. The rest of “That Awkward Moment” isn’t awkward at all. It’s over familiar, a movie that plays like recycled, R-rated outtakes from “Rules of Engagement” or “How I Met Your Mother.”

MPAA Rating:R for sexual content and language throughout
Cast: Zac Efron, Imogen Poots, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Mackenzie Davis, Jessica Lucas
Credits: Written and directed by Tom Gormican. A Focus Features release.
Running time: 1:34