THE JUDGE: 3 STARS
You get value for your money in Robert Downey’s Jr’s new film “The Judge.” Stepping away from the superhero movies that made him a household name, he stars in a film with so many story shards and plot derivations you need a scorecard to keep up.
It’s a legal drama. No, it’s a manboy coming-of-age story. Wait! It’s also romance, a dramedy, a father-and-son tale and a mystery. The only genres missing are horror and science fiction and I suspect they will be included on the director’s cut Blu Ray.
Downey Jr is Hank Palmer, a hotshot defense lawyer. He’ll do anything to win and is proud of it. “Everybody wants Atticus Finch,” he says, “until there’s a dead hooker in the hot tub.” In court he’s Iron Man, an unstoppable force with a thick skin and a quick line. He’s the same outside of court as well, except when it comes to his father.
He’s been estranged from Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) for years—“He’s dead to me.”—but is forced to see him when his mother passes away. Returning to his hometown of Carlinville, Indiana for the funeral Hank must confront the life he left behind—ex-girlfriend Samantha (Vera Farmiga), brothers Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Dale (Jeremy Strong) and his cold-fish father. The quick in-and-out trip is extended, however, when the Judge is accused of murder and Hank becomes his lawyer.
“The Judge” feels like Oscar bait. It’s a long movie with a wide story arc that gives its leads ample opportunity to strut their stuff. Downey hands in a solid, if somewhat familiar performance while Duvall plays elder statesman, resurrecting the alpha male feel of “The Great Santini.” Both are used to good effect and the supporting cast keeps things humming along despite a story that pushes credulity to the limit.
The devil is in the details and when the details, no matter how small they are, verge on silly, they become a distraction.
Most of the silly stuff comes in the form of the clues Hank pieces together while forming the Judge’s defense and the trial itself. There will be no spoilers here, but suffice to say the whole thing hinges on a bit of information so implausible that it gives new meaning to the term suspension of disbelief. Trouble is, it didn’t have to be that way. There were any number of ways to establish the point in question (OK, HERE’S A MILD SPOILER ALERT: It involves chemotherapy and a cottage) without trying so hard, but that’s not the kind of film this is.
“The Judge” is the hardest working movie in show business. It’s a film that wants to check all the boxes and tries just a little too hard. Downey and Co. float above it all, however, touching down every now and again to introduce a new plot twist and deliver the occasional touching moment.
ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY: 3 STARS
Unsafe parenting. Reckless driving. A stoned teenager. No, it’s not the long awaited sequel to Larry Clark’s “Kids,” it’s the latest family fare from Disney.
Alexander Cooper (Ed Oxenbould) is having a bad day. It’s the eve of his twelfth birthday and nothing is going right. He got gum stuck in his hair, he almost burns down the science lab at school and worst of all, no one is going to come to his birthday party because Phillip Parker, “a really cool kid with a hot tub and ADHD,” has scheduled a wild bash for the same night.
Things are going well for the rest of the family. Teen brother Anthony (Dylan Minnette) is taking the “hottest girl in school” to the prom and is about to get his driver’s license. Sister Emily (Kerris Dorsey) is about to star in a school production of “Peter Pan,” mom (Jennifer Garner) is due for a promotion and dad (Steve Carell) has a promising job interview.
Feeling down, Alexander makes a birthday wish. He wants everyone to know what it is like to have a “horrible, terrible, no good day.” Soon Emily gets a cold on the day of her performance, Anthony gets a zit and domestic chaos reigns.
The obvious joke to make about “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” would be to suggest that it should be retitled “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Movie.” But that would be disingenuous. It’s not terribly interesting, but it’s also not terrible, horrible, no good or very bad.
It’s gently paced family fare with a few genuine laughs and few surprises. Carell and Garner are the most good-natured parents ever—when Emily vomits on dad after taking too much cough medicine he says, “Oh. I bet that felt good.”—and from that blossoms some funny situations and lines—“I’m going to need you to make an incredible effort on the potty tomorrow.”—but all are in service of the movie’s central theme that everybody has bad days.
Many of the situations don’t really feel organic. Instead they feel like set-ups to gags, outrageous filler—look Carell’s on fire!—to keep us interested until the inevitable happy ending.
Parents won’t find much to hold their attention in “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” but younger kids will likely get a kick out of the bad behavior on display. “Kids” it ain’t, although the Cooper children seem to get away with everything just short of murder.
DRACULA UNTOLD: 3 STARS
Popular culture has not been kind to bloodsuckers. No, I don’t mean agents. I mean vampires. For more than a century Dracula and his undead brothers and sisters were viewed with equal parts fear and loathing. Only seen under the cloak of night they were the greatest villains of Horrorwood. But lately liberties have been taken with Bram Stoker’s myth. Now they dazzle in the daylight and drink synthetic blood. There’s even a new movie, “Dracula Untold,” that casts fangface as a romantic action hero.
It’s enough to make a vampire purist go batty.
In the new film Transylvanian Prince Vlad Tepes (Luke Evans), a man so fond of stakes and staking he earned the nickname Vlad the Impaler. has turned a new leaf. He’s now a family man who dropped “The Impaler” part off his resume and lives a quiet life with his wife Mirena (Sarah Gadon) and son (Art Parkinson).
Eastern Europe is under siege, however, and Vlad is forced to do almost anything to save his family and his kingdom from the invading Turkish mobs. Anything and everything, and since this is the 15th century in a Peter Jackson-esque world where supernatural creatures (Charles Dance) live in caves, he makes a Faustian deal with an ancient master vampire in exchange for the awesome power to command bats and vanquish his enemies. “Men do not fear swords,” Vlad says, “they fear monsters.”
The old jagged-tooth ghoul gives him “dominion over the night and all its creatures” along with self-healing—“That’s useful,” Vlad says.—and other vampiric attributes that will help him annihilate the interlopers. Best of all after three days he’ll turn back into a human… that is if he can resist the overwhelming urge to drink human blood.
“Dracula Untold” is a stylish reimagining of… something. It’s not the Dracula myth, despite what the title says. Let’s just call it “Vampire Untold” or “Dracula Nah-uh” and dismiss the idea that its in anyway Bela Lugosi approved.
“Dracula Untold” is bigger and louder than any Dracula movie to come before it—Vlad doesn’t just turn into a bat, he turns into a colony of bats—and contains an arch melodramatic feel that wouldn’t be out of place in a Hammer horror, but it’s not particularly scary. The real horror here is the muddy visuals in the action scenes that often make it difficult to see who is impaling who. Dracula may live in a world of darkness but apparently so does director Gary Shore. It’s too bad because there are some nice visual flourishes. For instance a fight scene shot through the reflection of a sword’s blade is inventive and eye catching.
“Dracula Untold” doesn’t totally suck despite playing like the set-up to the inevitable modern day sequel they pitch in the film’s coda. Luke Evan (he of “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” and “Fast & Furious 6”) gives Dracula something new—vulnerability—and Sarah Gaddon makes Bella’s love for Edward look like the high school crush it really was. Vampire fans might not find it bloodsuckery enough, but fans of the high style action of “300” may enjoy.
KILL THE MESSENGER: 2 ½ STARS
Behind every good scandal there is a good journalist. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave us Watergate while muckraker Nick Davies of The Guardian uncovered the phone hacking scandal that proved the News of the World had ears and eyes in the cell phones of some very famous and powerful people. Lesser known is Gary Webb, an investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News played by Jeremy Renner in the new film “Kill the Messenger.”
When we meet Webb he’s just broken the biggest story of his career. An exposé on the inequity of the justice system’s habit of stripping suspected drug dealers of their homes and vehicles, whether they are proven guilty or not. The article attracts the attention of Coral Baca (Paz Vega), the girlfriend of a drug dealer. She contacts Webb with some the potentially explosive information that the government has drug dealers on their payroll.
Following the clues he travels to Nicaragua to meet drug lords (Andy Garcia) and crooked bankers (Brett Rice) and to Washington to meet DC insiders (Michael Sheen) to piece together the story of CIA involvement in the smuggling of cocaine into the U.S., and how that money was laundered and used arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. His articles won him acclaim, but also started a campaign to discredit him by some very powerful people. “Some stories,” he is warned, “are too true to tell.”
Crusading journalists make good characters. They says cool tings like, “The bad guys are usually more honest than the good guys,” put themselves in peril and refuse to take no for an answer. Renner embodies the swagger necessary to play Webb the journalist and, as things fall a part for him professionally and personally, is suitably hangdog. Why then, is “Kill the Messenger” such an endurance test to sit through?
It starts off well enough, piecing the clues together, building to the aha moment when the complicated clues begin to make sense as a whole, but then loses momentum when the movie becomes more about lionizing Webb than it does following the Nicaragua story. Thrown into the mix is a sad indictment of what passes for courage in the journalism racket, which only serves to move Webb closer to the glow of the heroic spotlight.
Renner and the supporting cast, including Rosemarie DeWitt (who is good but wasted in an under-written “wife” role), Tim Blake Nelson as a lawyer whose favorite word is “allegedly” and Ray Liotta (who has an all-too-brief cameo) perform admirably but are weighed down by the script. Webb would have reported the facts and only the facts and “Kill the Messenger” would be a better movie if it took his example and stuck to the truth without the prosthetizing on journalistic ethics.
