Martin's Musings

The calendar may say 2013, but at the multiplexes this year, it sure feels like 1988.

In January, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone both headlined their own action flicks.

Now Bruce Willis is reviving his John McClane character for another Die Hard sequel.

What’s next? A revitalization of the three actors’ Planet Hollywood brand? (If so, then pass me the Chicken Crunch!)

But anyway, that’s right: Wisecracking New York cop John McClane is back, for the fifth time. Don’t get too excited. In the earlier films in the series, McClane was the right man in the wrong place at the wrong time, completely outmatched against some real bad guys, but winning anyway thanks to his resourcefulness and charm. Those were great movies. In fact, the first one is a true classic.

As the series has gone on, however, McLane has increasingly been the wrong man in the wrong movie. And in this latest go-round, the cumbersomely titled A Good Day to Die Hard, he’s as unnecessary as he’s ever been.

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The new comedy Identity Thief couldn’t be more timely, what with the whole Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax story, the popularity of the MTV show Catfish, increasing concerns about privacy on Facebook, and instances of actual identity theft becoming more common.

Plus, it has Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in the lead roles, and Seth Gordon (who directed the very funny Horrible Bosses) behind the camera, so it’s primed to tap into the zeitgeist in amusing fashion.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really make good on that promise. Continue reading →

In Contagion, Steven Soderbergh made us all compulsive hand-washers, lest we come down with a sickness worse than the flu. After all, if Gwyneth Paltrow wasn’t safe, then what chance do we have?

With Magic Mike, he had men everywhere worried that our wives and girlfriends would leave us for Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, or any other member of the cast.

Now, in Side Effects, he’s making us think that medications intended to help us could instead have adverse, unpredictable effects.

What is Soderbergh’s problem? Is he trying to make us all paranoid?

Well, if he is, it’s working. Continue reading →

There’s a scene, late in Zero Dark Thirty, in which CIA director Leon Panetta and his team are sitting around a table, looking at a model of what may be Osama bin Laden’s compound.

The analysts are giving their thoughts about just how sure they are that he is there, and whether they should take action, but none of them can say it definitively.

Then, from the corner of the room, one analyst announces that she’s 100% sure that’s it.

Who are you, Panetta asks.

“I’m the motherfucker who found this place,” barks Maya (Jessica Chastain), the redheaded analyst who spent more than 10 years tracking down Public Enemy Number 1, and is the only person in that room full of men who has the conviction and, quite frankly, the balls to stand her ground.

A decade of such obsessive work will do that to you. Continue reading →

Hey girl, Ryan Gosling is in a new gangster movie.

He plays a Los Angeles detective who is part of a secret under-the-table squad (headed up by Josh Brolin) that tries to take down a local division of the east coast mafia that’s run by Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn).

He gets to wear stylish clothes and be all charming and stuff.

And best of all, he’s paired up once again with Emma Stone, with whom he had amazing, white-hot chemistry in Crazy, Stupid, Love. Lucky guy.

But don’t get too excited, because in Gangster Squad, Gosling is not the cool guy we’ve come to expect, and his scenes with Stone are lukewarm. Blame it on the squeaky voice that Gosling uses if you want. I’m blaming it on the movie itself, which is big and loud, and employs nearly every gangster-movie cliché you’ve seen before in much better movies.

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December 26, 2004 was a day like any other.

In Thailand, it was peaceful, warm … a nice day for a family vacation.

And then, just like that, it all changed.

As you may recall, this was the day that a giant tsunami hit southeast Asia, devastating Thailand and leaving death and destruction in its wake.

Among the people who got swept up by the wave were the Belon family, who were on holiday. It’s their story that inspired the new movie, The Impossible.

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Matt Damon is a very likeable guy, and someone moviegoers can easily root for, whether he’s playing a genius from Southie, an amnesiac CIA assassin, or a corporate informant who makes a lot of stuff up.

But in the new film Promised Land, we know pretty early on that Damon is not the guy we want to see come out on top.

Here, he’s playing Steve Butler, who, with his partner Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand), tries to convince the residents of a small farming town hit hard by the tough economy to sell their land and allow an energy company to drill there. These two city folk arrive and quickly establish a local story and appearance, buying clothes from a town store (managed by the Man in Black himself, Titus Welliver) and emphasizing their Midwestern upbringing. It’s sketchy and inauthentic right off the bat. Continue reading →

The D is silent, but not much else about Quentin Tarantino’s new film is.

Django Unchained is the gleefully violent story of a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) who teams up with a German bounty hunter named Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to track down and kill some slave owners and other bad men, then convinces Schultz to help him find and free his wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington, and yes, that’s really her character’s name), from plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

It’s the funny, bold, bloody, and oh so very cool revenge fantasy that Inglorious Basterds should have been — with a killer soundtrack to boot.

It’s also QT’s best film in years, and one of the best of 2012.

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It sounds like a double feature from hell.

Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Barbra Streisand starring in two movies with similar plot lines: Older Jewish parents have a hard time connecting with the younger generation.

Both films are aimed squarely at a mainstream crowd, and are being released within days of each other.

Should you see them as a double feature, is one of them enough, or should you skip them both altogether?

Here are my reviews.

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