Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)

Gary and I started watching this a couple of months back, but stopped after the first couple of scenes due to extreme boredom. But, hey. I’m a fan of acapella, liked Pitch Perfect well enough, and was just bored enough one night to give it another shot.

Basically: it's a rehash. Beca’s not committed to the group because of her producing aspirations, Amy’s hyper-sexual and carrying on an undercover affair with Bumper, there’s an acapella battle, the Asian girl says super-weird things super quietly, yada yada. But at least Flula Borg -- who can make me ugly-laugh -- is in it.

C

Dark Horse (2016)

We had no idea what this was when we walked in. Could’ve been animated, could’ve been horror -- seriously no idea. The very first image on scren was of horses running in a field with a voice over saying something like “we were a small community…” and I worriedly leaned over to Nathan and whispered “Oh no! We're at a talking animals movie!”

Thankfully, it wound up being a documentary about the racehorse Dream Alliance and the group of working class Welsh that came together to foot the bill for his breeding, training, and medical bills. I could’ve used some subtitles, but other than that it was about as heartwarming as could be.

B+

Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed (2014)

A Beatles fanatic teacher decides to take a road trip to meet John Lennon who’s in Spain shooting a film. Along the way, he picks up a young lady fleeing a home for unwed expectant mothers and a teenage boy fleeing the home of his strict father.

What a lovely film with gentle performances. It’s the kind of movie that makes me wish I were right there with them.

Just beautiful.

A-

Guidance (2015)

Out-of-work and constantly-soused actor is about to be evicted, so he decides to lie his way into the position of high school guidance counselor. He doesn’t get anywhere with the students until he starts being himself: i.e. a self-medicating, authority-hating enabler who actually likes the students and can relate because he’s in a state of arrested development.

Things go off the rails super fast. For a minute it feels like there might be something here -- these kids need an adult advocate and this guy actually does understand them and wants to help. But his only goal seems to be making them happy and getting them what they want. There’s no larger goal of getting them what they need. Even if I ignore the practical and just roll with it, anything the film was building gets tossed out the window in the third act when things don’t so much blow up as fizzle.

D+

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

It’s hard to grade this one. If I had been unfamiliar with the story and/or had seen no other adaptations, I’d probably have been charmed. But since the source novel, the BBC miniseries and the Keira Knightley version are all so masterful, this just pales.

One of the biggest issues was the casting. I love me some Greer Garson, but she played Elizabeth as more snide than smart and she was just too old (mid-30s) for me to buy her in the role.

C+

Pariah (2011)

Lee knows she’s a lesbian and is trying to explore what that means while keeping her strict family in the dark.

This is an understated film. There are no big epiphanies. Although everyone knows (or at least strongly suspects) the truth, the bravery to be open and force the rejection or acceptance is terrifying. I appreciated that it wasn’t tidy.

B+

The Fifth Estate (2013)

I’m sure this movie has some bias but, regardless of its level of authenticity, it was a decent story. Renegade truth-teller with a tragic past creates a new method of information-sharing which promises a haven of anonymity for those providing the information… but is it really safe to blow the whistle? And is it responsible to say “we publish all truth, regardless of any danger that truth could pose?”

Going in, I really didn’t know a whole lot about Wikileaks. I was familiar with their biggest stories (e.g. the “Collateral Murder” video) but hadn't followed along with the material on Assange himself. It did drag on a bit and the repeated imagery of a huge office with rows of rows of desks representing the nonexistent “hundreds of volunteers” got pretty old.

B-

Fruitvale Station (2013)

I’m assuming this is was a heavily-fictionalized look at the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, the young man who was shot by a cop while face down on the ground in front of dozens of witnesses. Now, maybe there was more some truth to this depiction of who he was, but especially in the scenes where he was alone (dumping his stash of weed, showing compassion to a dying dog), it got a little tough to swallow.

I wish the movie had trusted the audience a bit more. Just as in “The Accused,” who the victim is should be completely irrelevant. It was a crime perpetrated by those who are sworn to protect and serve and that’s tragic no matter who the victim is.

B-

Man Up (2015)

Jaded singleton Nancy is mistaken for Jack’s blind date and she just rolls with it. What a nice surprise that such a silly premise turned out to be a really fun and rather wonderful story. I didn’t have high hopes -- I don’t love romantic comedies -- but this rose above its own cliches and delighted Gary and me.

 B+

Wish I Was Here (2014)

Braff is an out-of work actor with a patient provider-wife & a couple of kids. His dad decides to pull the tuition cash he's been using to pay for the children’s private school because he’s dying and wants to use it for his treatment. Fair enough. So Braff takes on the kids’ schooling in what I think was supposed to be a free-spirited way (camping trips, wig shopping, pool plastering), all the while carrying around an institutional-sized “swear jar” full of cash to finance their exploits.

Just ugh. It was forced and boring as hell. When they “insisted” a man take a sexual harassment seminar “seven times” while also getting him fired for giving voice to his fictional half-boner, it was just one more thing in this movie that doesn’t reflect life at all. Has Braff ever met real people? Hated every single bit of this. Every. Single. Bit.

D-

Paper Towns (2015)

When enigmatic Margo discovers she's been betrayed by her popular-clique friends, she drags her neighbor (and former childhood bestie) Quentin along with her for a night of revenge-lite. Next day, she’s gone and Q is determined to find her.

It's possible that today's teens delight in this the same way that I did in “Breakfast Club," but I sure pity them for having to make do. The story reeks of cliches and was all surface. It's my guess that, for whatever reason one sits down to watch this movie (e.g. for a good laugh, a little romance, or something fresh), it's just not going to do the trick.

C-

Ricki and the Flash (2015)

Mom Meryl Streep left her midwestern husband and three young children to be a rock star on the West Coast. Now the kids are grown and she's fronting the house band at a small bar by night and scans groceries by day. When her ex-husband calls to enlist her help in pulling their daughter out of depression, she finds herself back in the lives of the family who’ve had to do without her for 20 years.

I wanted to like this movie. I remember that the trailer made me weepy -- it's that part where Rick Springfield tells Meryl that it's her job to love her kids, not the other way around. But, despite some nice moments, it lacked any real depth.

C+

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Allen Ginsberg arrives at Columbia, excited to be free of his stifling home life. He's immediately gets drawn into a circle of friends who challenge him to sample everything he’s offered. Together, they form “The New Vision,” which boils down to an often-high anarchist group having the time of their lives.

The film starts out strong. I’d kind of forgotten how the first couple of months of college feel. There's so much freedom, endless possibilities, and a shaking off of who you were just a few days ago to become someone much more interesting -- someone much more you. It’s scary and unreal and the film captured it perfectly. But then we get into the “main” story, which has to do with a murder & a homosexual affair when homosexuality itself was a crime. Things get a a bit less relatable and a lot less fun at that point, which slows down everything considerably.

So there’s a fun half and then there’s a miserable half. Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that and, since it’s based on a true story there’s probably not much that should’ve been done about it anyway. Maybe if I was a beat poet enthusiast I would’ve been captivated throughout. 

B-

Tracks (2014)

Australian loner decides she wants to trek almost 2000 miles across the desert with just some camels for carrying and her dog for company. In order to finance this endeavor, she strikes a sponsorship deal with National Geographic, which means she has to suffer several meet-ups with a photographer along the way.

Robyn’s incredibly prickly, which is part of what I liked about this film. It felt brave for a woman to allow herself to show her annoyance and to insist on doing things her way, especially 40 years ago when I'm pretty sure the majority of women were working hard to be amenable. Even with a strong lead, the film came off as almost too restrained, though. There were a couple of moments where the situation must have felt especially frightening (e.g. waking up to her camels nowhere in sight), but the panic never came across on screen.

B

Unfriended (2015)

Six friends chatting over skype are annoyed by a random account in their call that they can’t delete. Even worse: the account purports to be controlled by a friend who committed suicide exactly one year ago.

What an effective little movie. It’s just over an hour and takes place completely online -- our view is what the main character is seeing on her computer screen. It could probably be picked apart, but it moves so quickly and the kids are uniformly terrific at being panicked that there’s just not time to complain. I was definitely entertained.

B

Jurassic World (2015)

Was this movie made for kids? I truly don't know what they were going for here. The tone was so detached & light and no one seemed very fazed by the body count that was being racked up. The kids in peril were off-putting enough for me to actually be kind of rooting for them -- along with that red-head park manager or whatever she was -- to be dino-chow.

It was boring and had absolutely no heart or sense of wonder.

F

The Nice Guys (2016)

Although I’d probably be interested in reading/seeing another story featuring these two main characters, this movie didn’t do nearly enough with them. The whole affair felt disjointed -- brutal murders sitting right alongside complete silliness -- and jokes that should’ve gotten big laughs just sort of sat there. Whoever edited the trailer should’ve been given a shot at editing the movie as well as I genuinely had more fun watching those highlights than the film itself.

C+