The Beach Bum

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Tom

Release: Friday, March 29, 2019

👀 Hulu

Written by: Harmony Korine

Directed by: Harmony Korine

Starring: Matthew McConaughey; Snoop Dogg; Isla Fisher; Zac Efron; Martin Lawrence; Jimmy Buffett

Distributor: Neon

**/*****

Spoiler alert for those who demand any lessons or morals be taught in a movie: The Beach Bum is not for you. It’s a hedonist adventure “from the mind of” Harmony Korine, a not-for-everyone kind of filmmaker notorious for creating dreamlike experiences that more or less forsake substantive story for hypnotic style.

His latest once again brings together a wild assortment of famous people: Isla Fisher, Jonah Hill, Zac Efron, Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence and Mr. Margaritaville himself, Jimmy Buffett. However The Beach Bum is more notable for being the first time the Gummo director has collaborated with Matthew McConaughey, who plays the titular tropical vagrant, a sun-bleached blondie who goes by the name Moondog. Once a lauded poet he has become human driftwood floating through life in the Florida Keys, getting tangled up in all sorts of situations that are perhaps best left for your own two eyes to try and process. He’s a character who is larger than life but smaller than legend, one who somehow makes James Franco’s gangster seem boring (though I raved about him in my review of Spring Breakers).

The Beach Bum is a bizarre trip full of lows but far more highs — the ones delivered by gas mask bongs, joints the size of a child’s arm and bud-producing trees kept in special rooms. With apologies to Fast Film Reviews’ Mark Hobin, I need to steal a line: The atmosphere is so drugged out you could almost get high by association. This is taken from a review of a certain Paul Thomas Anderson movie from 2014, but it is an apt description of this experience as well. Oh, and There Will Be Boobs. Like, an abundance of them. An anchor-less vessel who frequents the sun-kissed beaches and small tourist traps freckling the tropicana, Moondog just can’t help but be around and/or in between them.

If there is a story to be deciphered here it’s how Moondog draws upon his mangy, transient experiences for inspiration to return to his old writing form. I’m no judge of poetry but his seems the kind of shallow you don’t make deeper, even by getting more baked. Lingerie, played by Snoop Dogg (a real-world connoisseur of kush and good rhymes) digs it though so what the hell do I know. Accompanied by a stray kitten he finds in the opening scene, an almost endless supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon tall-boys and an actually endless supply of zest for living by his own code, the man and the narrative become one and the same, stuck in idle throughout. Zac Efron and Martin Lawrence get caught in his wake along the way, all while his daughter Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen) grows increasingly worried about his stability and his wife (Isla Fisher) pays a steep price for loving him.

The main issue with The Beach Bum is not its lack of “a point.” It’s that Korine insists this gadabout has virtuous traits. He’s not flagrantly abusive like the loser Efron portrays and even in thongs he’s not as cartoonish as the skuzzy douche of an agent Hill plays, so I suppose he’s a crop above but his Better Self is so well buried that his journey to self-actualization becomes contrived at best. This is not exactly harmful tokage but it becomes surprisingly challenging to separate in your mind the likable McConaughey from the frequently less-than-likable Moondog. Call that commitment to character. The Beach Bum isn’t a very good movie. It is, however, the epitome of a Harmony Korine experience. The cinematography is sexy and dripping with color, and that is at least enough to get a good buzz off of.

Better to float adrift than drown in sorrow

Moral of the Story: I’m a big fan of Matthew McConaughey, who winds the clock back to Dazed and Confused as Moondog, and his commitment to another memorable character here is not to be understated (it’s the reason this final rating is as high as it is) but I didn’t really find his character entirely redeemable. Anyone who saw Spring Breakers and didn’t get along with it probably should give The Beach Bum the old swerve. It’s available on Hulu though so really all it will cost you is a breezy 90 minutes . . .

Rated: R

Running Time: 95 mins.

Quoted: “I get all these things going, man, and they are all turning me on. And my wires are connecting upstairs and I start to hear music in my head. You know, and the world is reverberating back and forth and I hit the frequency and I start to dance to it. My fingers get moving, my head gets soupy, I’m spinning all over the place, and the words come out.”

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Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Tom

Release: Friday, October 21, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Michael LeSieur

Directed by: Greg Mottola

For those who have been keeping track, Keeping Up with the Joneses is the second Zach Galifianakis film to be released in as many months, and it too is terrible. It too is a silly film, a very, very silly film. What’s worse is that the film’s chief sillyhead plays it painfully straight. That’s not silly; that’s just frustrating.

The level of entertainment found in this dumbed-down action-comedy is as disposable as a . . . oh, I don’t know, something that’s really disposable; the laughs number in the negatives; hot women kiss to the delight of male viewers and the annoyance of their female partners. I went to see this as part of an (in hindsight) ill-advised solo mission and I found that moment not so much provocative — I think that’s what director Greg Mottola (Superbad; Adventureland) was going for — as it was indicative of precisely the low-brow kind of fantasy it turns out to be.

The plot’s an old rusting bucket of cliches but it could have been fun: when two boring suburbanites, Jeff and Karen Gaffney (Galifianakis and Isla Fisher) suspect their new neighbors of not being who they say they are, they turn into paranoid peeping toms bent on figuring out what combination of ridiculous factors have not only afforded them a life of luxury and bliss but that has caused them to drift into the unsuspecting cul-de-sac in which the Gaffney’s proudly have plopped themselves down. Their neighbors, of course, are the Joneses. Say that with a smile on your face — we’re the Jonesesssss!

Tim Jones (played by Jon Hamm, whose name is far superior to that of his character) is a super-duper spy of some sort — could be CIA, could be NSA, could be Melissa McCarthy in another ridiculous, albeit more convincing get-up — and he lives a life of mystery with his wife Natalie (Gal Gadot), also a spy. The Joneses are everything the Gaffneys are not. The former seem exotic; the latter have been domesticated and have settled for the routine and the mundane. The Joneses know how to fire weapons in high-stress situations. The Gaffneys . . . do not. We imagine the Joneses having just, like, the best sex ever. When pressed, Karen admits to “getting it done fast before the kids come into the bedroom.”

The script is the main culprit behind the lack of engagement in Keeping Up with the Joneses. The fish-out-of-water adventure lacks not only intelligence but creativity. None of what Galifianakis does is really humorous; his take on the suburban dad isn’t offensive but it’s far from interesting while there’s nary a hint of Fisher’s brilliantly unhinged Stage 5 Clinger in Wedding Crashers. She looks great in a skin-tight dress though, and that’s clearly the bar she had to clear for the director. On the other side of the fence, Hamm and Gadot make for a reasonably compelling pair but they’re similarly constrained by the grade-school screenwriting. And though he’s often funny in other stuff, Patton Oswalt just looks bored as the Big Bad, some dude named ‘Scorpion.’

The entire time I was watching this I couldn’t shake the feeling that these talented actors were just playing nice. They were being charitable. Their performances often register a sense of fatigue and if not fatigue then indifference. And if people who get paid to pretend are pretending not to look unprofessional, I see no reason why I have to pretend like I’m actually having fun here. Although, it’s hard to resist smirking whenever you see Matt Walsh. So there’s that.

Recommendation: Massively disposable action comedy consistently wastes the talents of this cast and the time of everyone in attendance. Or, I guess not, since everyone in the theater I was in was laughing like hyenas. Clearly I was just the grinch, and I can’t get anything out of lightweight comedies these days. But come on, really? This was made by the same guy who made Superbad and Adventureland? Hmm . . . .

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 105 mins.

Quoted: “I was making a head start!” / “On your wife?!”

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Now You See Me 2

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Tom

Release: Friday, June 10, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Ed Solomon; Pete Chiarelli

Directed by: Jon M. Chu

The implausible Now You See Me sequel — yes, this is a thing — is a magic trick you can see right through from the very beginning. For all the entertainment it seeks to provide, the film delivers an equal dose of numbing visual effects that do nothing but obscure any theoretical cinematic magic wand-shaking under the blinding lights of confused, contrived, utterly lazy storytelling.

Three of the Four Horsemen are back. And no, not from vacation. Well, it was kind of like a vacation. Since the events of the first, the pompous pranksters — J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) — have gone into hiding after exposing the unethical business practices of one Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) and fleecing him out of millions of his own easy-earned cash. (Much like director Jon M. Chu has done to us, minus the whole money coming easy part). Isla Fisher’s Henley Reeves, seemingly jaded by the realities of becoming part of the global underground society of illusionists called The Eye, is nowhere to be found. She’s better off.

Uninspired tale finds the group once more answering the call of FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), who, now firmly in control of his puppets (remember that twist?), has this big spectacle planned out during which they’ll expose a tech wizard’s . . . unethical tech-ing practices, some bloke named Owen Case (Ben Lamb), who in no short order becomes nothing more than target practice when it’s learned that the film’s actual villain is Daniel Radcliffe’s even bigger tech geek Walter Mabry.

What does Mabry have to do with anything? I’m glad you asked, because it gives me the opportunity to rave over the next rabbit Now You See Me 2 tries to pull out of its hat. Turns out, Merritt has an evil twin named Chase who works for Mabry, and in one of many underwhelming action sequences he manages to capture the Horsemen and take them to Mabry’s lair (muahaha!), where they’re informed of a high-risk but high-reward job, likely the trickiest task they will have ever pulled off. Do they have a choice? In an exchange that confesses the depths of this film’s Oscar-baiting screenplay, the Horsemen are told they either “do this or die.” Well, I don’t know about you but I’m inspired.

In the meantime, Mabry’s been busy trying to bring about the downfall of the Horsemen from afar, hijacking the aforementioned show by letting the public know that, hey, yeah, remember how Jack Wilder died? Well, he didn’t really. Also, Rhodes is a two-faced cop and is working with the Horsemen. Be outraged, people. Be very outraged. As a result, Agent Rhodes suddenly becomes Agent Rogues when he and the rest of the magicians find themselves scrapping to clear their name all while trying to eliminate the threat of Mabry.

It’s not exactly the most original conceit, but this new globetrotting adventure could have spawned a genuinely exciting mystery thriller if put in the right hands. Co-writers Ed Solomon and Pete Chiarelli were not those hands. Their story, one that at least adheres to the spirit of reckless abandon established in the original, leans entirely on the magic of post-production tinkering, and with Chu’s terribly flat direction further promoting contrivance and convenience, Now You See Me 2 quickly wears out its welcome.

Not helping matters is a runtime that eclipses two hours and a couple of surprisingly annoying performances from Lizzy Caplan, who plays Fisher’s “replacement” Lulu May — because there has to be a Horsewoman, obviously — and one half of Harrelson’s performance as the evil twin Chase. ‘Harrelson’ and ‘annoying’ don’t seem like they belong in the same sentence but then again the guy is a consummate actor. He really can do and be anything. As to Caplan, someone should have taken away the fourteenth Red Bull she was guzzling before stepping on set. This is way too much team spirit for a movie not named Bring It On.

More irksome than Harrelson’s sinister side and Caplan’s insufferably peppy presence is the film’s knack for reducing living legends like Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman to cardboard cutouts. Neither Caine convinces he’s this bad of a dude nor Freeman of his ever-complicated backstory. You could defend this as an exercise in allowing actors to have some genuine fun while collecting another paycheck. There’s no shame in putting together a supergroup of talent like this for a bit of escapist entertainment but Caine and Freeman couldn’t look more bored.

Now You See Me 2 pulls gimmicks and cheap tricks left and right in its quest to prove editing can on its own sustain a story. The approach suggests the filmmakers think audiences won’t know the difference between ‘real’ magic and clever camerawork. It’s actually pretty insulting.

Recommendation: Eyeballs, get ready to roll. Now You See Me 2 takes the worst tendencies of its predecessor and magnifies them. I can handle cheesy films, and NYSM2 is certainly cheesy but it’s more problematic in terms of convincing us that what’s happening in front of us is real. The irony of that is pretty hard to reconcile. This is the epitome of surface gloss hiding no real depth. With that in mind I can’t recommend watching this one to anyone who felt the first one was kind of silly. What follows is much sillier.

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 129 mins.

Quoted: “Hell will look like a day at the spa once I’m through with the Four Horseman.” / “You had me at ‘Hell.'”

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The Brothers Grimsby

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Tom

Release: Friday, March 11, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Sacha Baron Cohen; Phil Johnston; Peter Baynham

Directed by: Louis Leterrier

There’s something about Sacha Baron Cohen that really makes you feel like a complete idiot. He’s become really good at that because here I went, blinded by my own boredom, to a screening where I was the only viewer and thinking, ‘Okay, this might be fun. At least I can laugh obnoxiously loud and not think twice when something actually funny happens.’ The joke was on me, an idiot.

The Brothers Grimsby is, to put it nicely, Cohen’s own Mortdecai; it’s the stinkiest, lamest, dumbest release so far this year and like Johnny Depp’s misguided attempt at mocking the English, it marks another point of no return. While it was naïve to think that Brüno would be the nadir of the career of one of England’s great embarrassments, that movie was pretty terrible — Brüno not Mortdecai, although yes, very much Mortdecai as well — and it set quite a low bar regarding the efforts a movie should make in entertaining or offering escapement.

But what Louis Leterrier et al don’t seem to understand is that that’s not the kind of bar you play limbo with; the goal is not to see how low you can go. Lo and behold, they deliver a revolting mess of a comedy that uses bodily fluids as both literal and figurative lubricant to make up for the script’s refusal to do any of the work. There’s one scene in particular that’s offensive and sums up almost everything that is wrong with not only this film but the entire subculture of sadistically gross-out comedy. Those poor fucking elephants (and that’s the verb, not the adjective). This exercise in visual torture is what would happen if you gave Mel Gibson free reign over the fake rhino birthing scene from Ace Ventura. The excessiveness will test the sensitivity of your gag reflex, and that’s an issue that runs all throughout.

So who are ‘the brothers Grimsby?’ And why is the American release so awkwardly titled? Well, who gives a shit about the why; let’s talk about the what. The brothers are a pair of mismatched boys who were born and raised in the poor fishing town of Grimsby, which resembles the bottom of a dumpster or a very large ash tray. Cohen plays Nobby Butcher, the yoonga bruvva of Sebastian “superspy” Butcher (Mark Strong, painfully out of place). The pair have been separated since they were six years old and Nobby longs for the day they meet again.

Similar to previous outings Cohen opts for caricature over character, hoping to inflict the maximum amount of damage upon the culture that supposedly spawned his creation. Once a Middle Eastern pervert, then a one-time gay Austrian fashion journalist, he now finds himself donning the mutton chops and packing on the beer gut as a soccer hooligan with a proclivity for thick women and thick-battered fish-and-chips. He’s like a pig writhing around in the grease and sweat of intoxicated Man United fans all crammed into the pub watching The Big Match.

The world we visit in The Brothers Grimsby isn’t a pretty one, it’s populated by the so-called ‘scum’ of English society — the derelicts and the blue collar chumps, the illiterate and the really ugly and sweaty. Fans who may have been delusional enough in the past to liken the Cohen moviegoing experience to crude culture shock can’t really say the same thing now; the only thing shocking about this film is how uncultured it truly is. Nobby has far more screen time than his older bro, and that’s disappointing because ultimately Sebastian provides our only respite from the cartoonish extremism Leterrier has fashioned here. But the real question there has to be, how clear is Strong’s calendar right now? He had time for this?

Scenes featuring the MI6 agent in action — think of James Bond only with more baggage and less hair — feel like they are ripped straight from the upcoming Hardcore Henry, what with the liberal usage of point-of-view shots designed to raise both our heart rates and awareness of Go Pro cameras. While the action sequences are a welcomed distraction, they’re still not an excuse for the sheer pointlessness of everything else. A subplot involving Sebastian’s line of work is as generic as you can get: he must stop a shady organization from releasing a virus into the atmosphere at a high-profile soccer match. They’re doing this because of the global population crisis.

This paragraph that you’re reading now is definitely an edited version of what lay before, but in consideration of my readers I’ll just say that the film’s attempt to balance action and heartfelt drama with Cohen’s insufferable presence is funnier than any of the comedic elements presented here. The Brothers Grimsby ultimately fails when it tries to convince us of their shared history. I saw the look on Strong’s face during the “suck my balls” scene. He didn’t want anything to do with this. What, was Rob Schneider busy?

Recommendation: Sacha Baron Cohen may still have appeal for some but after The Brothers Grimsby, a film that fails to mine comedy out of what little interesting material it presents while continuing to mistake causing its audience to actually gag for comedic gags, this reviewer has officially stepped off the bandwagon. A film that caters to the lowest common denominator and looking really bored with itself in the process, this is an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.

Rated: R

Running Time: 83 mins.

Quoted: “Oh, these heated seats make you feel like you’ve pissed yourself!”

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Now You See Me

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Tom

Release: Friday, May 31, 2013

[Theater]

I’m sorry, but director Louis Leterrier simply shot himself in the foot when he didn’t have to here. He’s crafted a thoroughly entertaining film that is in equal doses gleefully deceptive and smartly funny. The main cast truly has the time of their lives playing four wunderkind illusionists: J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) are given terrific parts and are without a doubt collectively a good enough reason to give Now You See Me a try. However, M. Night Shyamalan may as well have been directing this with the unconscionable twist that occurs in the final act.

Consider that more of a caution flag than a spoiler, though. While some films are best enjoyed when you go in without any substantial knowledge about what’s going to be happening, here’s a case where the potential for enjoyment could be maximized if you are at least warned beforehand. Now You See Me is a film that likes to take the scenic route to the conclusion — whether or not you are satisfied with the ending is beside the point at this juncture. The point is, however, that you should try to enjoy the ride while you can.

The build-up of anticipation and drama, (most of) the dialogue and the kinetic spirit amongst the characters is absolutely fantastic. The film in a very general sense is a whole mess of fun, and it’s nice to see Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman back in a movie where they are playing opposite one another, and in slightly less favorable roles.

Now You See Me begins with, yes, a magic trick. Eisenberg’s overly confident Daniel Atlas is showing off some sleight of hand card tricks for his vastly female audience, and you guessed it — this works like a charm on a few. Meanwhile, Isla Fisher is the alluring stage presence otherwise known as Henley and she’s really good at getting out of ‘fishy’ situations. . .(when you see this film you’ll realize how corny that line is). Then the camera swings around again to introduce us to two more brilliant performers. Woody Harrelson is what is known as a mentalist, and is perhaps the funniest of them all. Franco rounds out the ‘Four Horsemen’ as Jack, who seems to be more of a professional pick-pocketer and con artist than a magician. Alas, we have four very different acts who are one day randomly brought together when they each receive a calling card of some kind, with the same address printed on the back of all four cards. They unite in front of an apartment door, and, following some bickering thanks to their overblown egos, discover the apartment to be more or less abandoned.

From here on out they’ll be known as this Four Horsemen act, touring the country and performing to large audiences some of the most inventive and crowd-pleasing tricks ever attempted. They pull off a bank heist in France from the comforts of their Las Vegas stage and shower the audience in millions of stolen bills (I wonder if they would have been pissed knowing all of that was just in Euros?); they successfully strip a high-profile millionaire of most of his riches in front of his own eyes during another gig in New Orleans; and they create quite a commotion in the climactic scenes in New York City.

The long-distance bank robbery attracts the attention of the authorities, of course. Detective Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is a cranky law enforcer bent on capturing the magicians who have just crossed the line into criminal status. With the (read: unwanted) help of Interpol agent Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) they must stop the Four Horsemen at all costs, lest they all be made fools of by a group of stage performers.

This game of cat-and-mouse endures for the remainder of the film, and although there’s nothing special about the chase itself, the notion of cops going after these evasive magicians/illusionists/robbers….whatever the hell you want to call them — is very compelling and somewhat original. (There are more than a few comparisons one can make to Ocean’s Eleven, or even The Italian Job, but make no mistake, this is far less realistic a caper than either of those were.)

Where the movie simply falls apart is in the reveal of one particular character. I am not going to be as nasty as some have been and dismiss the movie any earlier, but the film quite literally collapses in one five or ten-second shot. It’s not only disappointing, but perversely cliched.

And damn it if I haven’t gone completely cynical by now and hold little to no hope for the type of film Now You See Me is modeled after: the mystery that likes to unravel until the very last second, where it becomes more and more obvious that even the characters involved don’t seem to know how they are going to wrap things up effectively. You can’t call this movie a cash-grab, but it’s closer to being one thanks to how quickly the third act turns to old, familiar territory. To be very cheesy yet again, the final magic act feels like a cop-out. Whoops. Whoa, that play on words is actually a little more revealing than I meant for it to be. (If you don’t see this movie, maybe that reference also will remain more vague…)

Recommendation: I feel as though I may have covered this part sufficiently in the above review. But, in case it’s not clear already ….. this film is worth checking out, but beware of the twist. (Again, it’s remarkable how Shyamalan-y it feels to have this element in here.) The acting is great, the characters all likable (for the most part) and there’s plenty of action and brain involvement to ensure you don’t nod off in one of the magic acts. That said, I could totally see a release of this movie on DVD coming with an alternative ending featurette or something. . . .

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 116 mins.

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Thomas J

My Journey Through Film

Tag Archives: #islafisher

The Beach Bum

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Now You See Me 2

The Brothers Grimsby

Now You See Me