Movie Nation

It was funny to watch the review ratings on “The Heat” and “White House Down” on Thursday.

For much of the morning, “The Heat” was in free fall, and “White House Down” was close behind it, plunging down the tomatometer. But by day’s end, “The Heat” had garnered enough reviews to rise from the low 30s to “fresh” territory — two critics out of three endorsing it.

Maybe it’s people reacting to the “Melissa McCarthy is fat debates” that have raged for months, or maybe my old bottom line maxim, “Funny is funny,” no matter how junky the movie, applies. (It is funny, in a stupidly obvious eye-rolling way. Terrible script, but hard-working stars). But it stands endorsed and set up to do “Identity Thief” numbers at the box office this weekend. Two fun supporting turns — cliches made amusing — veteran character actor Tom Wilson as the police captain frightened of McCarthy, and Spoken Reasons as the Marlon Wayans-ish street punk-perp both Bullock and McCarthy terrorize. Wayans actually turns up in the picture, a wasted opportunity.

“White House Down” is almost a parody of “Die Hard” like terrorist thrillers — WAY over the top. Preachy suggestions that Hard Right Tim McVeigh types and the military industrial complex are powerful enough to take out the whole Secret Service, absurdly comical riffs by the President (Jamie Foxx), a rather bland heroic turn by Channing Tatum, a predictably menacing one by James Woods, a tween in jeopardy, and Richard Jenkins,  and Maggie Gyllenhaal in supporting roles. “Independence Day” jokes, from the director of “Independence Day.” Congress gets blown up, which as unpopular as Congress is today, seems like commentary.

It’s only marginally better than “The Heat,” but it got the worse reviews.

“White House Down” probably won’t do the business “The Heat” will this weekend. But you never know.

Also opening — in Orlando, “Fill the Void”, a pretty good drama about ultra-Orthodox Jews and marriage and ritual in Israel.

“Twenty Feet From Stardom,” the very fine doc about rock’s legendary backup singers, also opens in Otown. Go to Fandango.com to get tickets.

“Europa Report,” in limited release, this is sci-fi with perfect production values but limited chills and a tired “found footage” format.

“Redemption,” one of the better, if still generic, Jason Statham actioners of late.

And “Byzantium,” a nasty/sexy vampire thriller starring Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton, is in limited release.

Give it up for Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. You’ll never see them work harder at a  comedy than in “The Heat,” a stumbling, aggressively loud and profane cop buddy picture where they struggle to wring “funny” out of a script that isn’t.
Plot? It’s more a collection of scenes that force the stars to riff and riff until something coarse and amusing comes out, topped by something else coarser and more amusing. Instructions must have read, “Sandy and Melissa go to a dance club, where Melissa hacks off chunks of Sandy’s costume to make her ‘sexy.'” Or “Melissa and Sandy get drunk in a bar and line dance.”
Better still, “Our intrepid, mis-matched ‘buddies’ are tied up by the bad guys and turn a simple leg stabbing into a comic escape attempt.”
Bullock, finally back to making the sorts of “Miss Congeniality” dogs she was doing before “The Blind Side,” is the know-it-all overly-coiffed F.B.I. agent Ashburn — a Miss Priss none of her fellow agents like. She is sent to Boston, ostensibly to prep for a promotion. Mainly, it’s to get her out of the boss’s (Demian Bichir) hair.
That’s where Ashburn runs afoul of the foul-mouthed detective Mullins (McCarthy), a shambling train wreck of the American junk food diet run amok. She’s so irritable that her boss (Tom Wilson of “Back to the Future”) is as afraid of her as her favorite drug dealing perp (Spoken Reasons is this caricature’s stage name).
Ashburn, who has been a bit of a Bullock in a china shop up to now, has met her menacing, mouthy match.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad.”
“They’re not wadded.”
“What IS this? ‘Training Day’?” And, sisterly advice for morning-after-boozing breath, “You’ve gotta get a mint into that dumpster.”
The jokes — often a string of profane threats strung together by McCarthy — have a sitcom/Stand-Up 101 rhythm — ba DUM bum.
Director Paul Feig, whose life changed with the fluky blockbuster “Bridesmaids,” shoots Bullock in her requisite vanity lighting and McCarthy at her chef-pants wearing worst. For a guy who has spent much of the year defending MM from XXL “Identity Thief” based insults about her short height and considerable width, he’s certainly not shy about using those attributes for a laugh.
And McCarthy, like Bullock, is nothing if not game. She wriggles through car windows, takes pratfalls, wrestles with Bullock to be the first through doorways and swaggers through the picture in the same costume, first scene to last. The woman is funny, and paired with Bullock, many scenes deliver a wincing comic punch.
The fact that we meet her braying Boston family (Jane Curtin is her shrill mom) and that McCarthy’s the only one who didn’t attempt the “Are you a naaaaaak (Narc)?” accent? We don’t dare call that lazy.
Which is more than you can say about Katie Dippold, the screenwriter.
But it’ll be a hit, Feig will work again, Dippold will get another shot and McCarthy will roll on. She has the timing, the riff repertoire and that ineffable something that film fans have loved in comics from Fatty Arbuckle and Oliver Hardy to Belushi and Chris Farley.
We’re just not allowed to say what that is.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, strong crude content and some violence
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demian Bichir, Marlon Wayans
Credits: Directed by Paul Feig, written by Katie Dippold. A 20th Century Fox release
Running time: 1:57

If you see just one terrorists-take-over-the-White-House thriller this year, make it “White House Down.” But even if you saw the dour and bloody “Olympus Has Fallen,” which has a LOT in common with “White House Down,” you owe it to yourself to check out Roland “2012” Emmerich’s preachy, goofy, over-the-top take on “Die Hard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
From the earnest but earnestly funny president in jeopardy (Jamie Foxx) who doesn’t like bad guys yanking on his sneakers (“Take your hands OFF my Jordans!”) to the eye-rolling image of a child having a “Les Miz” big-flag-on-the-barricades moment, “White House Down” is a corker, real competition for “Fast & Furious 6” as the dumbest fun you’ll have at the movies this summer.
Channing Tatum is Cale, the war vet/D.C. cop who can’t convince Maggie Gyllenhaal to let him in the Secret Service. Cale has to content himself with guarding the Speaker of the House (Richard Jenkins) and calling in favors to get his daughter (Joey King) a White House tour.
Then we see who Emmerich cast as the head of the White House Secret Service detail — James Woods. There’s “on the nose” casting, and then there’s casting Woods as a potentially volatile villain — TOO on the nose.
We go through the same “Olympus has Fallen” hyper-professional mercenary assault on the various security agencies that allows bad guys to crash into the White House. And we see Cale, the guy not good enough to get into the Secret Service, charge to the rescue — of his daughter, the president and the world.
These terrorists, who never miss until they start shooting at Cale, are glib.
“You just killed the Secretary of Defense!”
“Well, he wasn’t doing a very good job.”
The president isn’t always helpful, such as when he and Cale are searching for weapons.
“There’s some knives in the kitchen.
“Great. You can make me a sandwich.”
Nicolas Wright plays a scene-stealing White House tour guide who sometimes interrupts the mayhem to share a little White House lore, or lecture the bad guys on the priceless artifacts they’re wrecking. Emmerich makes sure there’s an “Independence Day” joke, and if that’s too subtle, he blows up the Capital. Shared plot aside, “White House Down” does stuff “Olympus Has Fallen” couldn’t afford to.
All of which undercuts the script’s lectures about the “military industrial complex,” the militia movement, the turf wars over presidential succession and the like.
Whatever messages they want to shoehorn in tumble aside in a blizzard of bullets, bombs, missiles and jokes. This is a popcorn movie, with an adequate hero, a comical presidential sidekick, a passable villain and too many deadlines, plotlines and punchlines to ever allow it to turn giddy.
But at least they were going for giddy. As “Olympus” taught us, playing this sort of assault with a straight face is downright dispiriting. You kind of need terrorists offering their buzzcut leader a slice of his retirement cake to set the tone.
“No, I don’t want cake! I’m diabetic!”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for prolonged sequences of action and violence including intense gunfire and explosions, some language and a brief sexual image.
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, James Woods, Joey King, Maggie Gyllenhaal:
Credits: Directed by Roland Emmerich, written by James Vanderbilt. A Columbia Pictures release
Running time: 2:11

“Fill the Void” is an intimate, sensitive portrait of life, love, tragedy and tradition within the world of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews. Writer-director Rama Burshtein turns her camera on her own community and presents a tender look at people bound by faith, ritual and traditional gender roles.
The story Burshtein tells reveals not just the patriarchy — where rabbis, fathers and matchmakers decide who marries whom — but the female power behind that insular “man’s world.”
Shira (Hadras Yiron) is 18, marriage age. Her mother (Irit Sheleg) fairly obsesses over this, with anxious calls to a matchmaker, furtive “check out this guy” treks to the supermarket where they can eyeball a potential mate without him knowing it.
All mama Rivka wants is a guy like the man her oldest daughter Esther (Renana Raz) married — a “good man” of the faith who will provide for her and keep her close to home. Rivka’s wishes become paramount when Esther dies in childbirth. There’s a grandchild to care for and dote over. Yochay (Yiftach Klein) cannot raise the baby himself. He’ll need to remarry, perhaps to someone far away. And that sets a grief-stricken Rivka to scheming.
Hadras Yiron, sort of a younger Greta Gerwig look-alike, plays Shira as a mature-for-her-age 18 year-old. But not that mature. She’s indecisive. And she’s not a young woman willing to marry her brother in law, which is her mother’s plan. That’s “too close,” Shira thinks. That’s “too Old Testament” the rest of us think. Yochay, who might have been the villain of this tale, is slow to warm to the idea as well.
As much as this community allows, Shira speaks her mind. “This isn’t right.” She can seem flighty, which is age-appropriate. Her sadness and indecision truly comes through in the music she lapses into as she plays accordion for the local school where she works.
She’s under the influence not just of her nagging mother, but of her armless spinster aunt (Razia Israeli) who long ago took to wearing the married woman’s head scarf “just to stop the embarrassing questions,” and of sad spinster-to-be Frieda ( Hila Feldman), who figures she would be the right one to step in of the dead Esther.
Burshtein, whose film was Israel’s submission to the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (it’s in Hebrew with English subtitles),  maintains the mystery of the story as she delicately films the people and traditions of this closed community. The men, with their beards, their archaic head-wear and uniform dark clothing, meet and sing and negotiate and plan. And the women serve tea and sit awaiting the men’s decisions — some of which the women have themselves set in motion.
Burshtein’s sharply-observed film misses many opportunities to make broader statements on this subculture and refuses to pass judgment on it, no matter how limiting the life can look to an outsider. “Fill the Void’s” greatest virtue is in the ways her characters take us beyond stereotypes even as she herself questions the value system of a culture that is so focused on religion, marriage and procreation that it holds few attractions to those not born into it.

MPAA Rating: PG for mild thematic elements and brief smoking
Cast:   Hadas Yaron, Yiftach Klein, Irit Sheleg
Credits: Written and directed Rama Burshtein. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Running time: 1:30

The cast is first rate — Pitt, Bardem, Cruz, Fassbender and Cameron Diaz.
The plot — not much revealed in this teaser. It’s a thriller about a lawyer who gets mixed up with drug trafficking.
But we’re intrigued, which is the whole idea. “The Counselor” opens Oct. 25.

Central Florida native screenwriter Brad Copeland, a veteran of a lot of TV sitcom scripting gigs, has landed the job of adapting “Knight Rider,” the talking Pontiac cop show of the ’80s, into a movie.

Copeland also wrote “Yogi Bear.” Which further raises expectations.