Danny Greene was a two-fisted Irish-American street tough who became a force in the Cleveland mob of the 1970s before meeting his predictably unpleasant end.
“Kill the Irishman,” the movie about him, is just as predictable — a synthesis of stuff we’ve seen in every gangster movie since the ’70s — from the ethnic slurs gangsters use to describe their rivals to the tough guy talk that tough guys exchange when they’re about to brawl.
“C’mon Joey, let’s dance.”
“Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules” takes our intrepid wimpy hero through seventh grade — more struggles to be “popular,” more efforts to make his unaffected, unpretentious and childish pal Rowley less of an embarrassment. It makes more of an effort to connect the big screen “Kid” with the Jeff Kinney “Diary” books — lots more animation in the Kinney stick-figure style.
It just takes a very long time to get going. Apparently seventh grade doesn’t pack as much potential for amusing, scarred-for-life trauma as sixth grade.
The remake of “Arthur” goes wrong some time before the tipsy millionaire shows up in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It’s merely the latest amble into tone-deafness for a movie that, despite a lot of funny lines and a committed performance by the big screen’s newest professional drunk, Russell Brand, fails.
The fortieth time you hear the F-bomb in a Medieval setting isn’t nearly as funny as the fourth or fifth. That’s the shortcoming of the central conceit of “Your Highness,” a raunchy stoner comedy in tights from Team “Pineapple Express.”
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“Terri” is a character dramedy about a depressed, morbidly obese high school boy who wears his pajamas to school “because they’re comfortable.”
That’s a sure sign that Terri (Jacob Wysocki) has given up. But he’s depressed with good reason. His parents are nowhere to be found. He takes care of his heavily-medicated uncle, lives in a rundown house in the woods and faces school each day with a mix of dread and disconnection. Yes, the kids pick on him — pinch him, call him “Double D,” in reference to his man-breasts. No, he won’t participate in phys-ed class.
Then he runs afoul of Assistant Principal Fitzgerald, given another winning, winsome and w0rld weary turn by the great John C. Reilly. Fitzgerald appears to take an interest in the kid, playing the role of “cool” administrator to problem students. He calls Terri “Dude,” says he sees his “good heart.” Terri is won over, until he sees the other members of this special tribe who meet with Fitzgerald before classes — for pep talks, disciplinary lectures, etc. Just another way for Terri to not feel special, one high school “monster” among many.
Terri tries to befriend the creepy/skinny rebel Chad (Bridger Zadina, amusingly annoying) and the pretty, possibly troubled girl (Olivia Crocicchia, a bit off) Terri saves from expulsion from school.
Does his life change, or theirs? Was this very stiff turn by Wysocki (of TV’s “Huge”) directed and scripted that way, or simply all he’s capable of?
It’s a movie of thematic dead-ends. Director Azazel Jacobs and writer Patrick DeWitt give us a a slow SLOW and somewhat morose tale that isn’t remotely funny or profound enough to sustain that pace and tone. The odd life-lesson about how valuable “I’m sorry” is, and the pretense of acting as if you care about anybody other than yourself is too little to hang even this downbeat comedy (a few solid laughs) on.
“Terri” has one leaving the theater thinking “And?”
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some drug and alcohol use – all involving teens
Cast: Jacob Wysocki, John C. Reilly, Bridger Zadina
Credits: Directed by Azazel Jacobs, written by Patrick DeWitt and Azazel Jacobs. Running time: 1:45
The most basic rule of a screen romance is that you have to root for the couple to become a couple. And that just kills “Something Borrowed.” The winsome, girl-next-door charms of Ginnifer Goodwin and the witty way with a one-liner of John Krasinski can’t overcome chemistry-free casting and a flawed premise.
“Of Gods and Men” is a quietly compelling and sober-minded, if not particularly emotional treatment of an infamous incident in the global clash of “Islamo-fascism” and the West. In Algeria in the mid-90s, a small monastery of Trappist monks elected to stay on duty, providing health care to the village where they lived, despite the rising danger all around them.
Pairing up Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu pays dividends in the daft feather-light French farce “Potiche,” a period piece designed to remind us of just how far and how fast women have come in the Western world.
Absurdly long, absurdly over the top and absurdly absurd, “Five Five” — the fifth movie in the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, still manages to be more fun than any movie with its outrageous carbon footprint has any right to be.
A battle-scarred lawyer starts to wonder what he was fighting for when he faces a military court bent on revenge and a nation willing to forget the Constitution to have that revenge in “The Conspirator,” Robert Redford’s courtroom drama about the Lincoln Assassination.
Wonderfully cast and carefully shot, there’s barely a hint of a great filmmaker working with a fraction of his normal budget in this period piece, which focuses on Mary Surratt, one of the people accused of conspiring to murder President Lincoln.
