Identity Thief [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L) Chicago Sun-Times (2 Stars)  AV Club (C+) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (A. Shaw) review
Chicago Sun-Times (R. Roeper) review
AV Club (T. Robinson) review 

Identity Thief (directed by Seth Gordon, screenplay by Craig Mazin story by Jerry Eeten and Craig Mazin again) is an often funny that both places its two stars Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in rather familiar territory and yet also surprises.

Bateman plays Sandy Patterson (named by his father for baseball legend Sandy Koufax) who is introduced to viewers at the beginning of the film as a respectable (if "put upon" by his boss) Denver-area family man with wife Trish (played by Amanda Peet) two lovely little daughters Franny (played by Mary-Charles Jones) and Jessie (played by Maggie Elizabeth Jones) and one more child on the way.

McCarthy plays "Diana" a short, heavy-set, always with a story, modern-day electronic "grifter" introduced to us at the beginning of the film as operating out of Orlando, Florida.

Even as the opening credits roll, we hear "Diana" impersonating "a representative from an identity protection service" calling Sandy Patterson at his work telling him that "someone had attempted to steal his identity," that "they" (her firm) had blocked the attempt but that his recent brush with identity theft would perhaps make him interested in "enrolling" in the "free" identity protection service that her firm offers.  As perhaps many others would, Sandy, who had never before been a target for identity theft but perhaps caught a little offguard by this apparent recent attempt to do so, decides to enroll in "Diana's" service "as long as the service is free ."  Diana happily responds "okay!" and proceeds to ask him for his birth date, social security number and other key personal information to "enroll" him.  Wonderful.  A few hours later, Diana has printed out for herself perhaps a dozen or so credit cards in Sandy Patterson's name (she herself was an identity thief ...) and goes out on a spending spree on his dime.

A few days later back in Denver, the real Sandy Patterson finds his credit card blocked when he tries to purchase gasoline at a service station and soon afterwards finds himself stopped and arrested by Denver police because of an "outstanding warrant" for "Sandy Patterson" in Orlando, Florida (Diana Patterson had gotten into a bar-fight after a night of buying an entire bar drinks on one of Sandy Patterson's credit cards...).

What a nightmare!  When the Denver police get a print-out of the mug-shot of the "Sandy Patterson" arrested in Orlando, FL and it looks _nothing like_ him, the nice, respectable family-man Sandy Patterson of Denver, CO they are able to release him.  However, Diana has by this time destroyed Sandy Patterson's credit rating and racked-up tens of thousands of dollars of debt on his credit cards.  Would Denver's police do anything about that?  No.  It's not their jurisdiction and even if they filed a warrant for "Diana's" arrest and extradition to Colorado, Denver Police Detective Reilly (played by Morris Chestnut) tells him "if she bought something fraudulently on your credit card with Amazon, then Seattle would want a piece of her, if she bought something through Apple, then Palo Alto in California would.  She could have fraudulently purchased goods and services in dozens of communities across the United States.  It could take years before we'd finally get her here to Denver."  With his own job (at a financial services firm) in Denver on the line, good ole honest Sandy Patterson who always had paid his bills on time decides to go out to Orlando, Florida to catch Diana himself and bring her to justice back in Denver himself.  The rest of the film unspools from there...

Among the intrigues that un-spool, is, of course, that Diana is in trouble not only with nice guy Sandy Patterson but also (perhaps inevitably) with various other more unsavory underworld characters.  Hence, even as Sandy Patterson catches up with her and starts taking her from Orlando, Florida to Denver, CO she has two sets of bounty hunters a younger black and hispanic team of Julian (played by P.I.) and Marisol (played by Genesis Rodriguez) and an older, more "hickish" more traditional looking bounty hunter going by the name "Skip Tracer" (played by Robert Patrick).  Much ensues...

Among that which ensues is an appreciation by each of the characters (and perhaps by the audience as well) of the two central characters' "worlds."  Sandy Patterson (played by Jason Bateman) really was a nice honest guy who didn't deserve to have his and his family's life so grievously wounded, while "Diana" (Melissa McCarthy's character) had her own pain and truth.   Short, chunky and growing-up largely abandoned, she really made the life that she's had largely through her own whits.  The scene in which she picks up similarly short blue-collar chunkster named "Big Chuck" (played by Eric Stonestreet) at a random road-side bar somewhere in Georgia ought to run through every American moral theologian's mind when he/she writes and/or reflects on his/her work because there is pain and poverty expressed there that generally doesn't make its way into Sunday sermons of Catechetical instruction.  This is not to say that "non-photomodels" ought to get a "free pass" when it comes to sexual morality, but there ought to be an acknowledgement that life for the "not stunningly beautiful" (that is for most of us) is _not easy_ and that there is a special (and _real_) pain that is experienced by the "fat and frumpy" (and again that includes more of us than perhaps we'd like to admit ;-).

Finally, the film eventually finds itself carrying itself into the realm of asking the question of whether there are people (generally rich, arrogant people) who deserve their money stolen from them.   Interestingly, this is the second film in several weeks that explores this theme (the other being the far more violent and far less funny or convincing Parker [2012]).  Here the CNS/USCCB's reviewer reminds his readers that theft generally remains theft.  Yes, a case could be made to steal a loaf of bread to feed one's starving children.  Yet, the case really can't be made to permit stealing from one's boss simply because he/she is a rich, arrogant jerk. 

Yet, what a remarkable movie this film turns out to be ;-).  Simple as it is (and often somewhat crude.  Parents the film is appropriately R-rated.  It won't necessarily "damage" your teens if they see it.  On the other hand, you really deserve to have the right to have a "final say" on whether you'd allow your teens to see a film like this) it actually gives viewers much to think about with regards to practical "feet on the ground" morality.

Finally the film, IMHO, has a surprisingly _appropriate_ "happy ending."  Those who've read my blog over the years would know that I've repeatedly pointed out that Hollywood is not necessarily as "swinging from the chandeliers liberal" as many would portray it as being.  Yes, it wants its stories to "end well."  But actually more often that not, it also wants its stories to end in a way that's believable and acceptable to its audiences.

Crimes were committed in this film.  And to its credit, the film does not let them be simply "talked away."  Good job folks, good job!


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Side Effects [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L) Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  AV Club (B+) Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig)'s review
Roger Ebert's review
AV Club (S. Tobias)'s review

Side Effects [2013] (directed by Steven Soderbergh, screenplay by Scott Z. Burns) is a glossy contemporary noirish psychothriller that probably solidifies actress/star Rooney Mara as one of the most compelling if arguably "scariest" (in a "don't mess with her characters" sort of a way ;-) actress of her generation.  In The Social Network [2010], Mara played "the girl who dumped (Facebook co-founder) Mark Zuckerberg."  After seeing her in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [2011] and now Side Effects [2013], one would think that Zuckerberg's character in that film should probably have been grateful to have been "let off" so easily ;-).

Side Effects begins by giving the audience a blood-stained glimpse of a murder scene in what appears to have been a moderately priced apartment "somewhere in the city" (which we soon find out is New York).  What happened?  Well, the film quickly tells us that it's going to transport us to "three months before" this frightful scene.

We meet therefore Emily Taylor (played by Rooney Mara) a young adult working for some small "graphics design" firm in New York, three months before the murder, thanking her boss (played by Polly Draper) in a soft, mildly depressed voice, "for the support" she's given her over the past (unspecified) period of time.  Emily's boss responds with compassion, "Well I know that these things are always far more complicated than what we see reported."

With her boss' blessing then Emily takes the rest of the day off.  Why?  Because she's heading somewhere not altogether far "upstate" to pick-up her husband, Martin Taylor (played by Channing Tatum), who's getting released (after 4 years) from prison following an "insider trading" conviction.  Before arriving at the prison to pick-up her husband, she also stops to pick-up Martin's mother/her mother-in-law (played by Ann Dowd) to take her to the prison as well.  (Apparently, they've been on good terms throughout the ordeal as well).

So Emily and Martin's mom pick Martin up from prison.  Martin remains apologetic to both and promises Emily that quickly bring them back-up to the standard of living that they were accustomed before.  Emily kind of shrugs her shoulders in a disinterested sort of a way and drives them back to the city.  The next scene shows Martin and Emily having sex in the rather small apartment that Emily's taken-up in the city since Martin's arrest and conviction.  After four years of prison, Martin definitely seems "into it," Emily clearly does not, instead just laying on the bed, looking disinterestedly "to the side" appearing to want to avoid looking at her husband.  Again, Martin promises to make things better.  Again, Emily does not seem to care.

A few days later pulling out of her parking spot in a parking garage with her average-looking sedan, she first lazily stops by a parking attendant (who notices enough of her to take note that she's acting somewhat strangely) and then speeds up to smash her car directly into a wall.  We see the airbags inflate...

We next see Emily later that morning at the hospital being interviewed by a Dr. Jonathan Banks (played by Jude Law) an onstaff psychiatrist at the hospital who asks her about "what happened there?" noting that the circumstances of her accident suggested that she "wanted to hurt herself" that morning.   He recommends that she stay at the hospital for observation for a couple of days.  She instead begs him to let her go, telling him part of her sad story (that her husband was just released from prison for a white collar crime; that yes, she's been down/disoriented a bit of late; but that she simply has to be able to go home to her husband that day or else would only get worse, with him as well as with her).  He consents to her request to be released but only on the condition that she come to see him at his practice in the next several days so that she could be treated more or less obvious depression that she's suffering.  She agrees.  He also gives her a prescription to one or another anti-depressant, and they part.

The next several weeks involve Emily coming for appointments to see Dr. Banks several times a week.  During this time, see seems to only be getting worse.  She nearly falls off the platform waiting for a subway train not out of any direct attempt to commit suicide but out of drowsiness or general "out of it-ness" resulting from either her depression or the side-effects of the various anti-depressants that Dr. Banks has been prescribing her.  One day, she simply doesn't come to work to the consternation of her boss who (remember above) had been "patient" before but has been getting increasingly irritated with increasingly "detached" behavior.  Emily tells her that she didn't mean to miss so much work that day, but that she simply "forgot to get off the train."  Emily's boss shakes her head and tells her that this behavior has got to stop because "this is not working for me (as your boss)."

Emily shares these incidents with Dr. Banks who compassionately listens and wonders why none of the medications seem to be working.  At some point, she shares with him that she had been previously seeing another psychiatrist a Dr. Victoria Siebert (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) out in suburban Connecticutt where she and Martin had been living prior to and in the immediate aftermath of Martin's arrest.  Not having any idea of what to do with Emily, Dr. Banks decides to pay a visit to Dr. Siebert.

When he comes out to suburban Connecticutt to see Dr. Siebert, he finds a confident, enterprising psychiatrist who's actually something of an "industry promoter" of various anti-depressant drugs.  He tells her of his problems with finding an antidepressant which could lift Emily out of her depression, noting that "all the regular anti-depressants out there don't seem to work."  Dr. Siebert then suggests "well, maybe something new then" and drops the name Ablixa (obviously fictional) which is to have been relatively new anti-depressant drug on the market that she's been marketing and even looks in her purse to see if she has any samples (she does not).  Not particularly impressed with Dr. Siebert who seemed to him to be a rather irritating "mercenary for the pharmaceuticals," he nevertheless suggests Ablixa to Emily the next time they meet and prescribes it to her when she consents.

Boy does Ablixa seem to work!  The next scene has Emily full frontal naked ... (Parents take note...) jumping up and down all over Martin in bed a short time (a few days/few weeks?) after starting to take the drug.  After they finish, Martin, the former trader (and still trying to get back into the business) tells Emily, "whoever makes this drug is going to make a fortune!"  HOWEVER, Martin soon finds that there are some rather disconcerting "side-effects" to the drug as well -- Emily starts "sleepwalking."  Frightened by this, we see Martin with Emily at Dr. Banks' office relating to the good doctor Emily's recent sleepwalking episodes and Dr. Banks suggesting that perhaps Emily try something else.  But Emily is adamant.  After months or perhaps years of walking in a persistent "fog," Ablixa seems to work!  So Dr. Banks keeps Emily on Ablixa for the time-being, perhaps figuring that she was coming in for appointments several times a week anyway.  So what could go wrong...?

Well, Emily's sleepwalking incidents don't stop.  And one evening Martin comes home, perhaps somewhat late.  He finds her "preparing dinner" (strangely "for three") in her sleepwalking state.  He asks her what's going on?  She turns around and stabs him several times in his abdomen with her kitchen knife, then as he tries to flee, once more in the back.  She then goes back to bed ... Sometime later she finds her husband dead on the floor with the knife in his back.  She calls 911.  The police respond.  They find her husband dead on the floor and her hysterical.  They take her in for questioning and eventually arrest her for her husband's murder (her prints were all over the knife).  What now?

Well, Dr. Banks comes to her defense.  He knew of her sleep-walking episodes after her beginning to take Ablixa and it seemed clear enough to him what happened: She may have killed her husband but she had no consciousness of what happened (hence had no criminal intent).  The courts accept the explanation and she is found "Not Guilty on account of (temporary) insanity," and is remanded then to a state psychiatric facility for at least some time with Dr. Banks remaining her court appointed doctor.  Dr. Banks was confident, in fact, that after (obviously) getting her off the Ablixa and establishing that she was not otherwise insane she could be released from the state hospital after some time.

All this would have worked-out well, except, of course, Dr. Banks himself starts to feel repercussions from the incident.  He had, after all, prescribed the Ablixa to Emily and kept her on it even after she exhibited symptoms (sleepwalking) that were potentially dangerous to her/others.  Would you want to be treated by someone who was at least partly responsible for a terrible tragedy like this, especially after both he and Ablixa made inevitable headlines in the News?  So his patient list inevitably takes a deep hit.  His partners in his practice also come to want him out their office because their association with him was hurting their credibility as well.  Finally, a pharmaceutical company with which he had received a contract to help them study another anti-depressant drug (and he was going to receive $50,000 for this work for them) terminates its contracted with him.  He and his wife Diedre (played by Vinessa Shaw) had just bought a new rather expensive home or condo somewhere in Manhattan ...

In trying to defend his own practice/reputation, Dr. Banks finds to his surprise that it was Emily's former psychiatrist Dr. Seibert who had written the clinical article warning about Ablixa's causing "sleepwalking" in some patients.  Yet, it was she who had recommended Ablixa to him in the first place... Why would she have done that?  The rest of the film unspools from there ... :-)

The film therefore plays on a number of contemporary phenomena -- (1) an addiction to the high flying "Wall Street"/"Professional living on Manhattan" lifestyle by those who've experienced it, (2) the betrayal/pain caused to loved-ones by those caught in "white collar crimes" and (3) the proliferation of all kinds of anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, etc psychiatric drugs many with various "side effects" but still prescribed (or even demanded by patients) because these drugs do actually help many people even as the risks of these treatments are often minimized -- which all combined make this a very sleek if scary "noirish" tale.

A note to Parents/Adults.  This film is definitely R-rated (for the nudity and generally adult themes) and is definitely not for the squeamish.  There is the blood from the murder of Emily's husband described above.  There's also the very convincing indeed stunning performance by Rooney Mara as the simultaneously arguably sympathetic yet clearly troubled young woman, Emily (talk about a classic but also contemporary femme fatale).  The film makes for a great thriller, but it can turn one's stomach inside out.  So honestly, as good as the film is for young adults and above, it is certainly not a film for the kids.


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Quartet [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Roger Ebert (2 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

Quartet (directed by Dustin Hoffman, original play and adapted screenplay by Ronald Harwood) is a lovely arguably too idyllic story about growing old, retirement and coming to terms with it all.  I say the story may grate some folks as being "too idyllic" because it is centered around the life at "Beecham House" a retirement community  "somewhere in England" for former operatic singers and classical musicians.  As such, this is not exactly the average "senior community," much less a nursing home that the vast majority of Americans would understand (and often honestly and with some reason fear...).

That being said, the story is a reminder that economics aside, coming to terms with "growing old," fixing what relationships need to be fixed, etc is still not easy.  And perhaps with economic questions largely set-aside in this film (though central to the story is actually the "plot device" of the residents having to perform an annual "benefit concert" to help pay for the continued operation of their lovely retirement home) the more universal concerns of "grief" / "loss" and reconciliation can come to fore.

Central to the story is the attempt to bring back together for said benefit concert the four operatic singers, all now retired and -- with the arrival last, Jean Horton (played by Maggie Smith) -- all now living at Beecham House, for a reprise of their famed performance/recording of the Rigoletto Quartet (YouTube) by GiuseppeVerdi.  This, of course proves "not particularly easy," as there are egos and past hurts that need to be overcome.  Reginald Paget (played by Tom Courtenay) had been briefly married to Jean when they were young and their marriage collapsed after Jean confessed to cheating on him (once) while she (apparently always a bit more successful than he) had been singing for a season at "La Scala" in Rome.  Reginald also has seemed to have a tougher time of retirement than former colleague Wilf Bond (played by Billy Connolly) who enjoys happily flirting young women in his old age in contrast to Reginald's (remember, he had been hurt by someone cheating with his wife ...) wounded rigidity on the matter.  Still Reginald has tried to "keep himself young" in another way: by engaging the contemporary generation of young musicians and keeping up with their styles and times (Operatic singer though he was, he seemed quite happy to engage and applaud the ability of a young rapper he encounters during a music theory/history class that Reginald continues to offer in his retirement).  Finally, there is the good-hearted Cissy Robson (played by Pauline Collins) who has remembered the four's long-ago recording of the Rigoletto Quartet as one of the high points of her life, and apparently not just from a "career" point of view, but simply that their previous time working together had brought her great joy. 

Much of course needs to be fixed/reconciled as the story progresses ... but it makes then for a very, very nice story such coming to terms with the Past, the Present and even what awaits in the Future.  So it all does make for a very lovely story offering everyone much to reflect on as one considers these questions in the context of his/her life as well. 


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Warm Bodies [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Chicago Sun-Times (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (A. Shaw) review
Chicago Sun-Times (R. Roeper) review
AVClub (T. Robinson) review

Warm Bodies (screenplay and directed by Jonathan Levine, based on the novel by Isaac Marion) is a surprisingly gentle "post-Apocalyptic" teen oriented love-story between a young zombie who's still trying really hard "to communicate" but, among other things, can only remember that his name had once begun with the letter "R" (played by Nicholas Hoult) and a cute teenage/young adult girl named Julie (played by Teresa Palmer) with a "super protective dad" (played by John Malkovich).  Readers, what do these names remind you of...? ;-)

Now Julie's dad was the military officer (National Guard?) responsible for defending what's left of their town and he did so by building AN ENORMOUS WALL around it to keep the remaining healthy humans inside the walled-off city and the infected flesh/brain-eating zombies outside.  HOWEVER, every so often, he (a necessarily older/middle-aged military commander) had to allow his necessarily younger "soldiers"/"charges" (including his daughter and her other universally militarily trained friends...) pass outside the walls (in foraging parties) to search for needed supplies so that the inhabitants from walled-off city could continue to survive.  Here the analogy may not be pefect, but once again, Readers, what contemporary situation does the predicament Julie, Julie's dad and the rest of the surviving humans in the completely "walled off city"_kinda_ remind you of?

Well during one of those "military" incursions/excursions, "R" runs into Julie and after killing Julie's boyfriend (played by Dave Franco) and then necessarily "eating his brain" (after all, that's how zombies feed themselves) "falls in love" with Julie abducting (but not killing) her.  The rest of the film unspools from there.

Among what both Julie and "R" discover is that "R's" zombified condition IS REVERSIBLE.  The experience of compassion makes "R's" heart and then of his best friend "M's" (played by Rob Corddry) beat again.  This excites, above all Julie's best friend Nora (played by Analeigh Tipton).  Like all the young people of her town, Nora's had to go through military training and carry weapons to defend the town from zombies, but what she always really wanted to be was "to be a nurse."  Now "zombieism" proved to be a TREATABLE CONDITION.

However, things are still not that easy.  There are the "recently zombified people" and there are the "hard-core zombified" people called "bonies" (all that's left of them are ligaments and bones even though they are as hungry for human flesh/brains as the others) who "R" introduces as "those zombified people who just gave up hope."  These "bonies" still have to be dealt with...

Anyway, while not a perfect parable about compassion/reconciliation -- the zombified people were still treated as only having been sick (victims) without having anything positive to offer ("healthy") humanity from their experience -- I can't but be in awe at the film's BEAUTIFUL, YOUTHFUL OPTIMISM.  Even "flesh/brain eating zombies" are redeemable.  How wonderful is that!

Finally, a note to Parents:  This, IMHO, is a completely appropriately rated PG-13 film.  While the zombies may still be a bit too frightening to smaller children, by the time one gets to the "tween age" they'd probably be able to handle it.  And it's just a nice story (and arguably _less violent_ and certainly with a happier ending) than the Shakespearean story that it's largely based on :-)

SO GOOD JOB FOLKS, HONESTLY, GOOD JOB!


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Movie 43 [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Chicago Sun-Times (0 Stars)  AVClub (D-)  Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Chicago Sun-Times (R. Roeper) review
AVClub (N. Rabin) review

Movie 43 is actually a series of shorts each written, directed and acted by different people.  Coherence, such that it is, to the film is given by narrative featuring a writer/director named Charlie Wessler (played by Dennis Quaid) pitching the idea of a film composed of a series of shorts to a mid-level studio exec named Griffen Schraeder (played by Greg Kinnaer).  The central joke in the film is that Charlie Wessler is, of course, completely insane and the film that he's proposing is, except as a joke..., utterly unmakeable.  But then even as he's talking about these series of really stupid, generally over-the-top ridiculously offensive shorts, the viewers get to see these really stupid, often obscene shorts (often acted-out by some of Hollywood's top actors/actors) play out.  So we see an "utterly unmakeable" movie being "made" even as it is being simply "discussed as a hypothetical..."

The result is a really, really stupid R-rated with a huge capital R film.  Honestly parents, there's no reason at all to take a minor to this film and plenty of reasons not to.

That said, I do have to say that a number of the shorts, if borderline unspeakable, are very very funny.

Consider a couple of the vignettes:

(1) Kate Winslet plays Beth, a busy Manhattan executive being set-up to go on a blind date.  As the short begins, she's listing to her friend all the concerns that she has as she approaches this blind date.  Is he an unemployed "loser"? (No, he made senior partner at his law firm at 28).  Is he therefore "all business"?  (No, he's volunteered weekly at a homeless shelter for years and is on the board of numerous philantropic boards across the city).  Is he therefore fat, out of shape?  (No he's "run triathlons" or whatever...).  So they meet by the restaurant, Kate's character is impressed.  "Davis" (played by Hugh Jackman) is the good looking, benevolent, witty lawyer that she's been told that he is, EXCEPT when he takes off his scarf as they enter the restaurant, he's shown to have ONE utterly UNSPEAKABLE (and, indeed, obscene...) "defect" on his neck ;-).  The rest of the short proceeds from there ...

(2) Samantha (played by Naomi Watts) and Sean (played by Alex Crammer) share "the joys" of "homeschooling" their teenage son Kevin (played by Jeremy Allen White) to their new neighbors (played by Liev Schriver and Julie Ann Emery) telling them that they've wanted their son to have "the whole experience of high school" even if he was studying at home.  So Samantha (Kevin's mom) repeatedly knocks Kevin's books down as he carries them around the house (presumably to go to different classes) calling him a "loser."  His dad has him performing exhausting and humiliating drills on their drive way as part of after school "sports practice."  They even wanted him to have the "awkward experience having his first kiss."  So _both_ of Kevin's parents, Samantha and Sean, "hit on him." Sean (dad) in particular sitting next to Kevin tells him ever so awkwardly, "I'm not like into guys, but if I was, you'd be like totally who I'd be into..." (Insanely "Yuck" ... but also, honestly IMHO very funny.  What a nightmare THAT would be...!)

(3) Vanessa (played by Anna Faris) and Jason (played by Chris Pratt) have been dating for 16 months.  Both want to "take it to the next level."  Jason wants to propose, but before he can get the words out, Vanessa confides to him that she wants him to "poop" on her ... leaving him both disgusted and suddenly wondering if he really wanted to go out with her at all ... ;-).

And the other vignettes are all basically of the same vein, all both almost unspeakably disgusting and yet ... most actually "with a point."

Once again, parents, clearly this film is _not_ for your "young ones" and FILM MAKERS TAKE NOTE that it's REALLY HARD for potential viewers to justify paying anything near "full price" to see this gross-out fest.  Still, I suppose I found the film to be funnier than I expected.  Did this film "need to be made?" certainly not.  But it is (or can be) quite funny :-)


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Parker [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Chicago Sun Times (1 1/2 Stars)  AV Club (C+)  Fr. Dennis (1 Star)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
Chicago Sun-Times (P. Sobczynski) review
AV Club (J. Modell) review

Parker (directed by Taylor Hackford, screenplay by John. J. McLaughlin based on the character by the same name from Donald E. Westlake's crime novels) is another of several rather poorly produced films that were released this past weekend.

The story in this film centers on Parker [IMDb] (played by Jason Statham) who is conceived in Westlake's novels as a "criminal with a code."  Indeed, he first appears on the screen in this film dressed as a Catholic priest (even as he leads a raid on the central bank at the Ohio State Fair...) telling the money counters there (even as he asks them to lie down on the floor while his cohorts tie their hands behind their backs...) that "I don't steal from anyone who can't afford it, and I don't hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it."  

No doubt the hope is that movie goers see in Parker a modern-day Robin Hood [IMDb].  That Parker be  introduced in the film in this way -- dressed as a Catholic priest -- is, of course, rather jarring (to be kind) or appalling (to call it for what most, especially older, Catholics watching the film would see it as).  One of course remembers that Friar Tuck [IMDb] was a member of Robin Hood's "Merry Men."  One even remembers that the recent film For Greater Glory [2012] portrays a gun-toting (and arguably mass murdering...) Catholic priest as a "hero" (one who led a raid that blew-up a train killing several hundred innocent passengers ... But apparently his cause was deemed by the film-makers to be "good" so it was "okay" while priests merely suspected of sympathizing with left-wing guerrillas fighting appalling social and economic inequalities in Latin America during the 1980s were routinely investigated by the Vatican and often defrocked...).  Finally, one remembers that during the infamous crime wave that hit the United States in the early 1930s during the early years of the Great Depression, many common people, including many common Catholics considered bank-robbers like John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde to be Robin Hood like heroes as well.  All this said, however, the film makers here have chosen to make their product so needlessly bloody/violent that it's honestly difficult find any sympathy for Parker or whatever "code" that he chose "to live by."

And beyond the blood and the gore of this film of which there is plenty (Parents take note that this film features definitely an R-rated bloodbath of violence, which in the context of the recent real-life massacres in Aurora, CO and Newtown, CT has become all the more difficult to watch), critical aspects of the film appear to have been left on the "cutting room" (editor's) floor.  For instance, the primary usefulness to Parker of the "Palm Beach, FL real estate agent" Leslie Rogers (played by Jennifer Lopez) was that she could help him escape Palm Beach island after a second, climactic heist near the end of the film, without detection.  She had told Parker, in effect, "The people of Palm Beach are smart, they all know each other, they are all well connected with the local authorities and you won't know how to get off their island (after your heist) without someone like me."  Yet, after the heist and the police as a matter of course lift all the draw bridges leading from the island, we're _not_ shown how the two get off the island effectively reducing Lopez' character in the film to simply eye candy.  And frankly both Lopez and the audience deserved better.

So between the blood and the poor execution of the film one's left with a really disappointing product which given the allusions to past folklore and history mentioned above could have been far more intriguing than the film turned out to be. 


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Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Roger Moore (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Moore's review
AVClub's review

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (directed and cowritten by Tommy Wirkola along with Dante Harper) is IMHO one of several surprisingly poor films released this past weekend.

To be fair, I do think that some aspects of this film were certainly fun/creative.  For instance, the film plays with, indeed, glories in an aesthetic that resembles that of the recent Sherlock Holmes movies (with lots of grudgingly "plausible" if generally "over the top" anachronistic gadgets and time altered action scenes) the SH films themselves no doubt influenced by earlier sci-fi The Matrix movies.  Thus the Hansel and Gretel of Grimm's fairy tales, the children who were abandoned in the woods by their parents and who escaped from the clutches from an evil witch who wanted to cook/eat them, triumphantly emerge in this story from the forest as confident young-adults, Hansel (played by Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (played by Gemma Arterton), toting semi-automatic cross-bows and Gatling-gun style shot-guns (one can't really make a musket into a Gatling gun ...) setting themselves on a crusade to rid Europe of witches with news of their exploits spreading via "press clippings" made possible by, well, the then "recently invented" Gutenberg press.

I'm in awe with the amusing take on the story.  However, the film deteriorates into a needless Matrix style bloodbath as the two splatter their way through a CGI medieval Germany ridding it of some really grotesque looking and generally Evil, child-eating witches.  Further there is a truly (in our day) surprising nude scene in the film in which an inevitably good witch slowly strips in front of Hansel (and the viewers) and takes a slow leisurely dip in a magical mountain spring giving us all a truly _leisurely opportunity_ to take in the view of far more of her (up down, pretty much all around) than could possibly be justified by the plot's demands.  Don't get me wrong, the actress was drop-dead beautiful, but other than for the sake of "getting to see her naked" (and then from a fair number of angles ...) there's really no justification for the way that scene was filmed. 

So while the underlying concept is rather cool, the execution is needlessly violent/crude.  Tone down the violence and rewrite "magical mountain spring scene" and this could have been a 3 1/2 star PG-13 winner.  Instead, it's a 1 1/2 star R-rated groaner/disappointment.


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