Considering how perceptibly poignant his first two features are, it was hard to picture a John Michael McDonagh movie quite like the unapologetic and misanthropic War On Everyone. But hey, you know what they say: everything is bigger in America. With War, McDonagh turns away from the finesse we witnessed in The Guard and Cavalry, perhaps as a way to satirize the version of the US everyone else sees. It’s tonally erratic, loud, and rude, and a hundred times funnier than his previous works. Unhinged, like a rabid dog running around that you still have the urge to pet, this anti-hero buddy cop movie has cult status written all over it, giving us a good hard look at the funny side of Alexander Skarsgard and reminding us that Michael Pena is a comedic national treasure.

Terry (Skarsgard) and Bob (Pena) are close friends and partners on the force, a job they use as a springboard and get-out-of-jail free card to do shady, corrupt business. Never starting their sentences with “You have the right to remain silent,” Terry and Bob abuse lowlifes to score drugs and money while trying to keep their private lives in some kind of order (but not really giving a shit about it). Bob is married to Delores (Stephanie Sigman), with whom he has two overweight sons; Terry is the loner alcoholic with the vibe of private eye in the 1940s from a parallel universe with a country twist, one that plays Glenn Campbell 24/7 on the jukebox. When a major deal goes bad, a British criminal (Theo James) gets on Terry and Bob’s radar, and the shitstorm starts brewing.

If you start looking at War On Everyone as anything other than a hilarious journey with entertainment as the only destination, you’ll be left with a pretty shallow outer shell. It’s all about setting up scenes, throwing punchlines, working off of McDonagh’s zing-tastic screenplay, and the unlikely dynamic that builds between Skarsgard and Pena (oh, and Caleb Landry Jones looking he stepped out of a post-modern stage play of A Clockwork Orange is not to be missed). Underneath the garish surface, there’s philosophy a-brewing; but too many swerves to random dead-end scenes stopped me from wanting to explore further. Luckily, it keeps getting back on the main road with a mean streak of anti-PC humor that’s ballsy, vibrant and refreshing.

Rating:
7/10

What we see on-screen, for the most part, in Ridley Scott‘s The Martian (based on Andy Weir’s popular sci-fi novel) is Matt Damon playing an astronaut, stranded on Mars, who must be resourceful on a resource-less planet in order to return to earth. From that simple premise spawns more entertainment than we’ve seen from Scott in years as we follow the Martian misadventures of Damon’s Mark Watney as he “sciences the shit” out of his dire situation with the (remote) help of his earth-bound astronautic team and the bright minds at NASA.

The movie’s trailers would have you expecting a white-knuckle, isolation-horror story along the lines of Gravity. I was pleasantly surprised, however (as someone who hasn’t read the book), to find a movie that’s optimistic, warm, very funny, and very much un-scary. This is much lighter material than the marketing would have you believe, and that’s a good thing.

The tone is set from the beginning with Mark and his team surveying the martian surface for, uh, science reasons. Mark rattles off smartass quips rapid-fire, and judging from his crew-mates’ joking, amused reactions, it’s clear they’re a tight-knit group. Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) leads the team, who refer to each other on a last-name basis. Martinez (Michael Peña), Johanssen (Kate Mara), Beck (Sebastian Stan), and Vogel (Aksel Hennie) find outer-space comfort in clowning on their good buddy Watney. Suddenly, a violent rock storm barrels through the work site and a piece of equipment slams into Mark, hurtling him into the darkness. Believing their friend dead, the team leaves the planet surface before the storm tears their ship to pieces.

Despite being left to his own devices, Mark finds a way to keep yapping: returning to the Mars base, he starts keeping a video log for whoever or whatever. It mostly keeps him sane as he MacGuyvers his way through the litany of problems that comes with being stranded on an inhospitable planet. The most pressing issue initially is Mark’s limited food supply; should he eventually find a way to contact earth or his crewmates, his current stock of NASA microwaveable meals wouldn’t keep him alive long enough for a rescue team to reach him. Thankfully, Mark’s a botanist, and he figures out a way to make his own water and grow an indoor garden, which bears enough potatoes to keep him going for the foreseeable future.

Much like in Robinson Crusoe and Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway, it’s a delight to watch our hero use his brainpower and willpower to gradually build a little life for himself in a hopeless place. It also doesn’t hurt that Damon finds his groove with the smart and savvy material, adapted by Drew Goddard from the book. Some of the jokes are pretty corny, but Goddard’s always had a knack for making even the cornball-iest comedy sing. Mark’s bright-side attitude is charming: when he runs out of ketchup for his potatoes, he dips them in crushed-up Adderall and jokes bout it; when it dawns on him that, because he’s grown potatoes on Martian soil, he’s technically colonized the planet, he sticks his chin up in the air like a proud child. The movie’s nearly two-and-a-half hours long, but Damon’s so entertaining that it’s a swift, streamlined watch.

The story hops back to earth regularly, where a crowded cast of mostly insignificant NASA officials debate how to tell the grieving public that Mark Watney is not deceased, as they originally reported, as well as figure out a way to bring him back home before his food runs out or a random equipment malfunction kills him. Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor have the most prominent roles as the two highest ranking NASA brains, with the rest of the home planet cast filled out by the likes of Donald Glover, Sean Bean, Mackenzie Davis, Benedict Wong, and Kristen Wiig, who’s in such a nothing role it’s sad. Chastain and the rest of the crew rejoin the story later, after NASA decides how to break the news to them that their friend is still alive.

The visual effects are as spectacular as they need to be, but the movie isn’t enamored with them like too many sci-fi dramas are. Mars looks totally convincing and serene, but the focus is always on what and how Mark’s doing. In essence, Weir’s story is about the wonder and power of science and how the human spirit can unlock its true beauty. None of the action scenes rival anything you’ll see in Interstellar or Gravity, but the that’s not what this movie’s about, after all, which is refreshing. The Martian won’t please those expecting a dark, terrorizing thrill ride where the heroes are in constant peril, but it’ll make the rest of us laugh and cheer, which is something sci-fi blockbusters don’t do enough these days.

Right about now, a few short weeks away from the premiere of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, it’s pretty easy to forget that Marvel‘s got another movie cooking for release this summer in the form of Ant-Man. The film is set to drop July 17th and the second full trailer has arrived (though the first consisted mostly of a voiceover from Michael Douglas, so might as well consider this the first real one).

While most of the plot details are being kept under wraps, what we do know is that Ant-Man follows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a reformed small time crook, who falls under the mentorship of Hank Pym (Douglas). To save the wildly powerful Ant-Man suit, Lang must put his thieving skills back to work and pull off an impossible heist, all while the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

After all the drama with Edgar Wright finally settled, Adam McKay punched up the script, and Payton Reed (The Break-Up, Yes Man) stepped in to direct. Rudd’s supporting cast is pretty top-notch: Judy Greer, Hayley Atwell, John Slattery, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena, and Corey Stroll as Darren Cross/Yellowjacket.

So, there are a ton of questions left unresolved here (most of them being in the vein of, how great would Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man have been?), but Rudd is a lot of fun with the right material, and this trailer shows that he’s been given some room to breathe and be Paul Rudd. And, while this Ant-Man might be a more vanilla, more paint-by-numbers-Marvel-movie than the dream version could have been, we’ll be lining up July 17th to watch two tiny guys fight on a model train set.

Ant-Man Trailer

For American Hustle, David O. Russell assembles a cast largely comprised from his previous two crowd pleasing films, Christian Bale and Amy Adams from 2010’s The Fighter, and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook. His cast selection proves to be a winning formula as the most pleasing aspect of the film is the superb acting. Because the film features con artists at work it is easy to anticipate the lies on top of lies procedure, therefore, the love triangle that forms between the three leads becomes the real emphasis of the story. Regardless of being able to predict what will happen before it does, American Hustle is still a ride despite its many shortcomings.

The film begins circa 1978 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City as an overweight man named Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is seen gluing hair on his head in an attempt disguise himself as the con-artist he truly is. Irving recalls being surrounded by shady schemes all of his life—first one involved breaking store windows as a youngster because his dad owned a glass business. Since then he has dabbled into a wide range of schemes from stealing art pieces to running a dry-cleaning store that does more than just launder clothes. His partner in crime as well as love is the dashing Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who exudes just as much confidence and wit as Irving, only without the comically bad hairdo.

Just as the duo begins to hit their stride in scams the undercover FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) busts them red-handed. In exchange for prison time Richie offers them a deal if they can setup a sting to catch four high profile targets. Their biggest target is the beloved yet corrupt mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), who sometimes does shady things for good reasons. Everything goes to plan until Irving’s wife Rosalyn Rosenfeld (Jennifer Lawrence) threatens to ruin the plot by running her loud mouth.

American Hustle’s breezy pacing makes the runtime feel half as long, but also makes the out of focus structure even more noticeable. The hard part is telling whether or not it was Russell’s intention to make such an inconsistent film. For seemingly no reason the camera will zoom in on a body part or apply a tracking shot when movement is not necessary. Often the music works brilliantly as a companion to what is happening on the screen, but then there is the out of place “Live and Let Die” sing-along that falls completely flat. The film asks whether it is the original painter or the counterfeiter who is the true master, and it is that fine line that the film itself walks on.

Although most people are likely to remember Lawrence’s flashy and loud performance, it is Adams more understated role that is most impressive. Adams convinces the audience to continuously change their minds on what side she is really on—sometimes faithful to Bale’s character and other times overly flirtatious with Cooper. The one thing all characters share in common is neither one of them have many redeeming qualities.

The individual parts that make up American Hustle work well on their own right, but do not fit seamlessly when assembled together. There are times where the comedy works, the characters are engaging, the cinematography is purposeful, and the soundtrack fits; though it is rare that any of them occur at the same time. The final reveal is remarkably simple considering the layering of lies involved within the film. But despite the overall messiness of the arrangement, American Hustle remains watchable thanks to the wonderful acting performances.

American Hustle trailer

The Good Doctor is about a lonely young medical resident who has high aspirations to be a well-respected good doctor, but he has hurdles to clear before obtaining such status. The intention of the film is to be a dark psychological thriller but there were too many missteps for it to be an effective one. The Good Doctor contains all the right pieces for a puzzle but fails to connect the pieces to complete one.

Dr. Martin Blake (Orlando Bloom) recently moved into his beach-side condo in Southern California, which is minimalistically furnished, similar to the sterile hospital environment he works in. He is just six days into his residency and already he has started off on the wrong foot by mistakenly giving a Spanish-speaking patient penicillin when he is allergic to it. Having an incident like that does not look good on his record considering he is trying to stand out from his peers to win an infectious disease fellowship.

One of his other patients is a young attractive woman named Diane Nixon (Riley Keough), who cultivates an instant crush on him. He explains to her that her kidney infection is not serious thus making her hospital stay short lived. In order to show gratitude for the quick recovery, the Nixon family invites the doctor over for dinner. Because he began to develop romantic feelings for Diane, he knows the ethical implications of pursuing this means he is treading on thin ice. Despite all of this, he will do whatever it takes to ensure seeing Diane again.

This is when the train begins to derail from the tracks as the potentially fascinating story begins to show its flaws. When he shows up to the dinner, the whole family is there except for Diane. That should have raised more flags than it did, but instead it is more or less shrugged off by everyone involved. Because situations are too conveniently set up and largely implausible, the film results in a lot of eye-rolling.

The largest offender of the film is the writing itself; specifically lacking direction of the lead character. At first he seems really determined to further his career by being the best doctor that he can. Then the character is suddenly content with jeopardizing everything in order to stay closer to this girl. His motives were never fully realized or explored.

Most of the flaws in The Good Doctor can be linked to the poorly written script but Orlando Bloom’s performance did not enhance the film at all. Typically, Bloom is a decent actor but in this film he does not look like the veteran that he is. Because there was no conviction from the character, the audience is not able to believe in any decision he made. Which is funny because someone tells him, “You know what the secret is to being a good doctor, don’t you? You act like one”, too bad he did not follow that advice.

The Good Doctor starts off with an interesting concept but quickly suffers from lack of direction and implausible circumstances. There is no better way to describe the last act other than atrocious. Acting performances and the story get noticeably worse, making the flawed film even more problematic. Instead of deciding on one ending, the film opts to show two distinct outcomes; although neither one of them are satisfying.