Let’s get this out of the way straight away. Jack Black’s finest display of acting prowess is his 1996 Oscar nominated performance in the critically acclaimed blockbuster Mars Attacks in which Black stars as a plucky upstart U.S. Army soldier who valiantly attempts to defend the planet from the evil martians and in doing so, allows Pierce Brosnan to see less screen time. Knowing this, I entered viewing the 2012 hit film Bernie with confidence that Jack Black would shine bright as the lead role. Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Black surpasses his stunning performance in Mars Attacks by a considerable sum in this charming and very funny film.

Directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Richard Linklater and Skip Hollandsworth, Bernie was recently nominated for Best Feature of the Independent Spirit Awards. I had intended to watch this movie when it came out in August but life got in the way and it sat unwatched on my laptop for nearly three months. I wish I would have viewed it when it came out so I would have this wonderful movie in my memory for that much longer. It was so good, my wife sat down half way through the film and loved it despite the fact she had no idea what was going on. So how did this film get this reviewer to blush in admiration? Dark comedy. A healthy tablespoon full.

The narration of the film is truly what makes it stand out amongst other films. Much of the flow and plot of the film is delivered by the people of Carthage, Texas where Bernie is set. The titular character, Bernie Tiede, played by a wonderfully in character Jack Black, is an assistant funeral director with a healthy appetite of generosity. He literally is the most well liked and respected individual in the entire town of Carthage. When he is not donating his time for the high school theater club or the local youth baseball league, he is helping various townsfolk with odd jobs and tasks. Bernie is loved by all. In act one of the film, the people of Carthage sit interview style in front of a camera and tell their favorite Bernie Tiede story. The film used a large amount of support characters and where many films have too many support characters that hinders their lead role’s command, Black utterly commands the screen even when he is merely the subject of Carthage’s stories. The state of Texas is itself a subtle character in the cast, as well as the townspeople who are unintentionally funny in their Southern gentry ways. Throughout the film, the support characters deliver some extremely funny lines in lieu of the dark situation unfolding in front of Bernie Tiede’s eyes.

The conflict arises when Bernie is taken advantage of for his genuine friendliness by a cold old woman named Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine). Bernie loses his freedom as Mrs. Nugent becomes dependent on Bernie and starts to smother him. The audience watches as Bernie slowly starts to become a caged bird looking for a way out. I won’t give away much more plot other than it’s a dark comedy because this film would suffer in my eyes if the audience knew too much about it. The main conflict scene provides Jack Black a vehicle to show off some of his acting chops which may come to a surprise to some, but this dude can act. He becomes Bernie Tiede in a way only an actor who conducted lots of research could do. Black was unsurprisingly nominated for an Indie Spirit Award for Best Male Lead for this film. I hear some of you asking, “Well, does he sing in it like all of his other films of late?” Yes, yes he does. But not in a forced way like in his world renowned performance in the mega blockbuster super hit Nacho Libre which grossed over 6 trillion dollars. The singing done by Black in this film is very organic and it fits perfectly with the film because it’s what Bernie Tiede would have done.

I loved this movie. I could see this movie going down as one of the best dark comedies of recent memory. I don’t even really have anything bad to say about it. It is possible that someone may not “get” the film but that is no fault of Bernie. That’s the uneducated yokel’s problem. Some viewers may find the beginning set-up to be a bit dry, but the humor pays off in the end.

Romantic comedies. Who do they think they are? They come in here with their big name stars and their shitty contrived plots and make our wives and girlfriends swoon. Is love not funny? Does every love story have cliché plots in real life? Did I miss the part where I had to pander to my wife’s sassy black friend? Or misinterpret something so drastically, I have to redeye to New York to win her back from some studly yet somehow misogynist or majorly flawed hunk? Where are the real stories of couples having interesting and real conflicts? Where are the movies that depict the female as something more than a cookie cutter “everywoman”? If I see one more romantic comedy where the woman is a helpless stooge despite the fact that she has a high up managerial position, I’m going to write letter to the editor of my local newspaper. And it won’t be even toned.

What ho? What’s this? The ghost of Rom Com past dropping off a movie theater ticket to 2 Days in New York? Sigh… I suppose I could give this one a shot. Julia Delpy, writer director and star, I trust you. Don’t break that trust.

Release the doves! Sound the horns! I finally found a bench setting romantic comedy that I loved. 2 Days in New York is everything I hoped it would be. Fleshed out characters, real conflict, real humor, minimal clichés and most importantly, no helpless woman lead that needs a man to sort things out for her. I have to admit however, I did not know this was a sequel to 2 Days in Paris until afterwards but it is not necessary to watch that film to understand or appreciate this one. 2 Days in New York simply relies on strong characters and strong writing to propel the film into greatness.

Written and adapted for the screen by Julia Delpy, she also directs and stars in the film which co-stars Chris Rock as her boyfriend Mingus. The conflict is established right away.  Marion’s (Delpy) family is coming to visit from Paris and unbeknownst to Mingus, is bringing a lot of emotional baggage to disrupt Marion’s normally calm demeanor. Marion’s sister Rose brings a dimwitted loser, Manu, along for the trip who is enthralled with the multiculturalism of America and stereotypes all the minorities he encounters.  Rose herself is an opinionated free spirit who irritates Marion to the point of violence. Her father Jeannot, played by her real life father Albert Delpy, is recovering from the loss of his wife and is much happier being around family. He is a source of radiating silliness throughout the film.

The problem lies when Mingus is driven to distraction by the family’s inability to keep their emotions in check coupled with Manu’s awful behavior in front of Mingus and Marion’s kids from past marriages. It may sound like a typical formula for a romantic comedy involving in-laws, but the strength of the film is that it knows how to balance the characters’ screen time and to use the characters to move the plot forward instead of relying on a drop-in, replaceable and boring MacGuffin to move things along. I’m looking at you When in Rome.

The characters are clearly the strength of this film. No one is zany, no one is over the top, everyone is real, and relatable. Jeannot is still in mourning from the passing of his wife of many years but since he is around family, one could hardly tell by the way he acts. He is a constant source of silly physical comedy and his commentary on America through the eyes of a Frenchman makes for some funny moments. The script for all the characters were thoroughly thought out and there is no vacant and deadlines in the entire film. It makes for a very enjoyable 96 minutes.

The only thing I could take issue with for the film is simple. For most of the film, I really didn’t know what the movie was about. But that is a product of its pace and chemistry. 2 Days in New York doesn’t come right out and tell the viewer how they should feel or what they should expect. It does have some classic narration throughout the film but it is only there to provide a little insight on some of the characters. At about three/fourths the way through, I finally understood that the movie was simply about a weekend where the main character’s family was in town and how much it threw her off. It wasn’t about some impending wedding that everyone had to be on their best behavior for or some zany situation that is about as probable as throwing magic coins in a fountain in Rome and suddenly having six hunky guys chasing after you. I’m looking at you When in Rome.

2 Days in New York was organic, it was funny and most of all, it was believable. I might have to expand my viewership of her movies. If all of her films carry this much manic comedy, I will definitely consider myself a fan.

Footnote is a film that requires a few days to digest whether it is a great film, or just a good film. As I watched the credits roll, I blinked a few times and said, “Huh,” and made myself a giant cocktail. Director Joseph Cedar, whose other Israeli made and produced films such as 2000’s award winning film Time of Favor, and 2004’s award winning film Campfire, has a great body of work in his young career. Footnote was nominated in 2011 for an Academy Award in best foreign language film but lost to A Separation from Iran. Knowing it has some awards pedigree, I held this film in high hopes to blow me away. Three days and thirty six cocktails later, I decided it was a great film. However, it is not without its faults.

The film starts out with an awards ceremony doling out a prestigious membership to the Israeli Academy of Science to a Israeli professor working with the Jerusalem Talmud. The opening shot is a long take somewhere around 5 minutes and it focuses solely on the very apparent frustration of an old man who ends up being the father of the award winner. The old man, professor Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar Aba), resents his son, Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), for obtaining membership before he did. This very first scene is emotionally heavy and sets the tone for the movie as you learn more and more about the relationship between Uriel and his father Eliezer and between Eliezer and the greater Israeli science community.

Right away, the faults are easy to pick out. The editing and act one narration was clunky and choppy. The film opts to tell the viewer, “A few things you should know about Eliezer Shkolnik,” in a cut away narration piece that goes back into Eliezer’s past. I disliked this scene greatly. It would have been much easier and more organic to have a character establish through dialog that Eliezer was short changed recognition of his life work by a rival researcher than to have a whooshing and stylized narration cut away that stands out as awkward. At this point in the film I was saying, “Uh oh, I’m going to need a drink to get through this.”

But as soon as I started losing faith, Footnote hit its stride with the beginning of act two with the introduction of the main conflict. And boy is that a conflict. The film went from being clunky to emotionally powerful in a single scene. I refocused into the movie and it never let me go. From that point on, the characters become dynamic and real and at times, it’s difficult not have a facial reaction to certain powerful scenes. I felt myself hang onto every scene like I was in the room with the characters. The actors play their roles like they knew them for their entire lives.

To top it off, the film employs some of the most subtle physical humor ever used in cinema. In one particular scene, Uriel meets with a dozen or so high ranking members of the Israel science community for an extremely tense meeting in a tiny closet sized room that could comfortably hold about four people. These old and weathered researchers and board members shuffle around and bump into each other as they try to make room for Uriel to sit down. I have no idea why, but I laughed out loud at the hilarious juxtaposition.

After all of the wonderful build up and great character development, we arrive at the ending. It’s like someone kicked open the doors of the production studio and trashed their cameras before they could shoot the final scene. It just ends. No resolution provided except for a slight hand touch that could be interpreted dozens of ways. Some people may have liked that ending for its artsy abruptness but I thought they could have made a great film even better by just providing the audience one more little interaction between father and son.

All faults aside, Footnote still a great movie. It could have been better if it had just stuck to the strength of its character driven story telling instead of the disjointed narration techniques and had an ending that didn’t act like a brick wall. The second and third acts were superb and the characters will stick with me forever. I just needed three days to realize it.

Ten years ago Hollywood graced the world with their Tobey Maguire led rendition of Spider-Man which helped pave the way for a generation of super hero movies to litter our summer line up. Then, Hollywood upped the ante and delivered upon us Spider-Man 2 which was met with critical and financial acclaim. With dollar signs in their eyes and arguably the best source material in the entire Spider-Man universe, Hollywood churned out Spider-Man 3, and came up about two feet short of home plate and was tagged out by a mob of pitchfork wielding critics and fans. Poor Hollywood retreated into its cave of remake henchmen and stewed upon the decision of what to do with the Spider-Man franchise. “We will remake it!” They cried as they threw stacks of $100 bills at each other. “Yes! And we won’t even bother with any of that Nolan-esque gritty reboot nonsense either!” And they made it so. With new directors, writers, and actors, Hollywood was ready to rock-and-roll with their shiny new Spider-Man vehicle in The Amazing Spider-Man!

And rock-and-roll they did not. I can’t imagine a more flat remake than this. It literally treads the same water as the original only more failingly. Andrew Garfield may make an arguably better Peter Parker/Spider-Man with his British-ness and super hair, but everyone forgets that in 2002, Tobey Maguire was being hailed as the true savior of all things spider related.

The Amazing Spider-Man sticks closer to the source material in that they invite Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy to the party and provides a more fleshed out and real super science corporation Oscorp versus the cartoonish one provided in 2002. But the film has the much of the same origin story as the ten year old Spider-Man.

Even if it isn’t exactly the same plot-wise as the original 2002 version, it feels the same. The film still has that sappy ham-fisted moment where everyone agrees to help Spider-Man at a moment of great need. I imagine if a Brooklynite man saw a teenager dressed in a spandex unitard shooting ropes out his wrists and limping around sixty stories overhead, they wouldn’t say, “My good gracious, that man needs our help! Quick! Frank! Help conjure the manpower needed to help this poor unitard wearing teenager in his swinging ways!”

The Amazing Spider-Man also falters with some of the action scenes as well. One particular scene that stands out as especially awkward is one where the villain, a scientist lizard-man, attacks the school Peter Parker attends in an attempt to destroy him quickly. During the whole fight, the musical score accompanying the fight is a wailing and triumphant orchestral movement that is a very strange juxtaposition of the fight scene in which Peter Parker is getting his spider face smashed into everything.

The biologist in me also cringed when the villain grabs a couple of unlabeled beakers of presumably colored water and mixes them together to form a perfectly sized explosion to knock Spider-Man out from his hiding spot. Hollywood still hasn’t grasped the concept that their audience can tell when their being spoon fed fake science. Although, I say this whilst viewing a Spider-Teenager fly around a city fighting crime. But my point is still valid!

Overall, The Amazing Spider-Man languishes in dull territory and left me wanting some grittier content over the already overcooked and cheesy Spider-Man story. It was steering towards campy but narrowly avoids it with some humor, well done special effects and close ups of Emma Stone. It simply lacks any heart. However, Hollywood knows a money maker when they see it and I’m sure there will probably be two more multimillion dollar installments of Spider-Man and we will have two more chances to see random New Yorkers delivering pancake flat lines like, “He needs our help!” Until then, I will be figuring out how to make wall demolishing explosives out of blue and green colored liquids in my nearest science classroom.

As someone who has played some variation of baseball since the age of 6, and as someone who has compiled a single home run in their 20 year long career, I feel uniquely qualified to handle a review of Ballplayer: Pelotero; the independently produced documentary about the Major League Baseball’s farm system in the island nation of the Dominican Republic. Director/producer trio Ross Finkel, Trevor Martin, and Jonathan Paley met some resistance from the MLB due to some unsavory portrayals of MLB affiliated scouts and organizations in the Dominican Republic. A documentary that has the MLB’s knickers in a twist? Count me in.

It’s not a great wonder why the MLB paused at this movie. The version of the game the MLB tries to sell everyone is the “Good ole’ boys of summer.” We go bananas over stat crunching in baseball so much so, it has spawned professions like “Sabermetricians” who break down players according to easy to understand stats like Value Over Replacement Player, Ultimate Zone Rating, and Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. We love it so much, we tend to glaze over the fact that a lot of our international players get dehumanized in the process. This documentary shows the shady underside of baseball’s international involvement through the eyes of two young Dominican prospects; Miguel Angel Sanó who was arguably the best prospect of that year by a considerable amount, and Jean Carlos Batista, a upper-middle of the pack player who tends to overestimate his ability. Pelotero shows the MLB engaged in a harsh cutthroat game of Dominican Roulette where players are treated as commodities and nobody even bothers to stay hush-hush about it. Multiple times from multiple levels during Pelotero, the interviewee tells the camera straight out that these players are nothing more than dollar signs. All at the ages of 15 and 16! When tough questions are posed, trainers, scouts and facility directors unabashedly tell the interviewer that these players are regarded, and treated like capital. It really sets the mood for the unethical behavior on display from some of the scouts and directors.

Because Pelotero is a documentary, it has a different set of criteria upon which to judge it by. A good documentary should tell a story, keep interest, and leave the viewer with a sense of emotional involvement. Pelotero does all three of those things and more. For one, the story of Miguel Sanó was national headlines in the baseball world a few years back. This movie shows you the inner workings of the drama that unfolded due to Miguel Sanó’s age dispute. It really sheds a bad light on the MLB in this regard and the scouts and directors handling the situation come off as corrupt.

Some documentaries have to fabricate or edit the story to make someone a bad guy but Pelotero does a good job of showing the entire situation in a believable way and doesn’t fall prey to sensationalism, albeit, only through the eyes of Miguel Sanó’s family and agent. Jean Batista’s story also lends itself to some tense moments although I was a bit less emotionally invested in his story. Pelotero plays out like a movie in that it has a concise beginning, middle, and end. There is a sense of resolve that the documentary supplies that leaves the viewer satisfied instead of saying, “Wait, tell me more!” Comparisons to Bully come to mind in that regard.

Music also plays a big part in this documentary. The Dominican Republic has a culture of music that is lively and fast and Pelotero smoothly uses these music bits to add a great depth to simple scenes like 16 year olds shagging pop flies. Pelotero also has great cinematography and directing. There are some beautiful shots through withered wrought iron gates and dramatic close ups of the stars’ faces which could only happen if the director was adept at his job. Anytime a camera is around a self aware 15 year old, it’s a bit more difficult to film intense questions like, “What happens if you fail?” The emotion comes through strong.

Pelotero‘s directors, writers and cameramen allow the viewer to receive a slice of the Dominican Republic in only a way experienced filmmakers could do. John Leguizamo’s narration also provides an excellent voice over to scenes that aren’t just white on black text. Overall, Pelotero left me with a better understanding and appreciation for where these Dominican and other international players come from and entertained me in the process.