Every now and then there’s a movie that slips through the cracks. [Okay, it’s pretty often…but hey, I’m one of the 10 people in America who saw Old Boy, that counts for something, right? No? Well okay then…] And what better way to catch up on crappy February releases–I mean, “forgotten gems from earlier in the year” than to watch them all at once, and review them in a couple paragraphs?
Beautiful Creatures…Like a more literate Twilight, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. It substitutes witches for vampires, but the big draw to this young adult bomb (don’t count on a sequel kids) is that it replaces the relentlessly dour and self-serious mood of the Twilight franchise with something a lot more playful and quirky. The “hunky dreamboat” in this film comes off as an actual person instead of a teenage girl’s idea of what a guy is like (he’s actually allowed to be neurotic and keep his shirt on), and who doesn’t welcome Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson chewing the scenery around each other? [Bonus points for casting Viola Davis and Margo Martindale.] However, the climactic battle scene is beyond cheesy and none of the effects really deliver the goods. It’s a movie that probably plays better at midnight on HBO than in a theater, so I’m sure I watched it the proper way. Grade: B-
The Call…A movie that alternates between authentically exciting and downright goofy. Certain scenes (like the ending) are outlandish enough to kill the tension, but other sequences like Halle Berry’s frantic 911 operator guiding the kidnap victim on what to do from the trunk of a car (“kick out the lights, stick your hand through the hole, and we’ll see if we get any calls about this!”) are thrilling. It’s inconsistent, but probably worth a look. Grade: C+
Gangster Squad…The only out-and-out disappointment of the bunch, and I think it’s because it’s also got the most pedigree behind it. How could a 1940’s L.A. gangster movie with Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, and Sean Penn (as Mickey Cohen) be this bad? By taking all the realism out of it, and infusing it with hyper-real, graphic-novel-gone-camp flourishes: the mannered accent Gosling uses, the cartoonish gun battles, the Robert Rodriguez-esque/Sin City-style knife fights, and a miscast Emma Stone. Even though Sean Penn’s makeup sort of makes him look like Mickey Rourke from Sin City, his Cohen is the only interesting thing in the movie, and had me rooting for the bad guy. Grade: C
Broken City…Mark Wahlberg plays a disgraced cop turned private eye who gets hired by the mayor of NYC (Russell Crowe, playing a macho version of Bloomberg) to spy on his wife (Catherine Zeta Jones, leaving no impression whatsoever). The first half works better than the second one, and even though I was letdown by the ending, I think this thing has enough interesting elements to recommend it. I particularly liked Crowe’s blustery performance, playing a mayor who may be a calculating billionaire but still has plenty of street left in him. Grade: B-