Author Archives: Neil Pond

Jul 08 2016
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Movie Reviews

Land of the Giant

Spielberg’s touching ‘BFG’ has big, friendly message

THE BFG

The BFG

Starring Mark Rylance & Ruby Barnhill

Directed by Steven Spielberg

PG

OMG, it’s a BFG!

Director Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of author Roald Dahl’s 1982 children’s book about a big, friendly giant—and the young orphan girl he befriends—comes to the big screen with humor, heart and a big, friendly message about the magical, mystical power of dreams.

Set in 1980s London, the movie wastes no time in establishing its tone or introducing its characters. We meet Sophie (newcomer Ruby Barnhill) just moments before she spies a giant in in the darkness outside her upstairs window. Seconds later, his massive hand reaches into her bedroom, sweeps her up and takes her away to Giant Country, far away from the city—and beyond the edges of any map.

Sophie, understandably, is concerned that she’s about to be eaten—but that’s not the case at all. This giant isn’t like the other giants. They eat people, but he doesn’t, subsisting wholly on a diet of foul-smelling vegetables called snozzcumbers.

The other, much bigger, much nastier giants bully the BFG.

The other, much bigger, much nastier giants bully the BFG.

At first, she tries to run away from the “big, friendly giant,” whom she calls BFG. But gradually, Sophie is charmed, especially as the kindly, introspective BFG hides and protects her from the much bigger, nastier giants—a gang of behemoth beasts with names like Bloodbottler, Butcherboy, Gizzardgumper and Meatdripper, who storm into his home, bully him and toss him about like a plaything.

nullShe learns BFG mispronounces and mangles words because he’s had no formal education, that he goes out at night to catch firefly-like “dreams” and then blows them into the sleeping heads of Londoners at night—and that he has a deep, sad secret. She finds out he had to take her away from the city because, he says, if anyone had found out she’d seen him, there would have been widespread panic about giants spread all over the “teletelebunkum box and the radiosqueaker.”

Spielberg, of course, is one of Hollywood’s leading storytellers, and Dahl (who died in 1990) was the marvelous British novelist who also wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda and Fantastic Mr. Fox. In The BFG, Spielberg’s signature touches—spunky kid; misunderstood outsider; adults who slowly come around to understanding—fit perfectly into Dahl’s narrative, which combines lightness and whimsy with whirls of darkness and spikes of danger.

THE BFGMark Rylance, who won an Oscar earlier this year for his role in Bridge of Spies, is the long, lanky BFG, augmented by digital effects and motion-capture wizardry. His BFG face is a marvel—aged beyond years, alive with expression, ever guided by his gargantuan, oversize ears. He tells Sophie that he hears everything, from the spinning of spiders in the grass to the “singing” of the stars in the sky, and “all the wondrous and the terrible, secret whisperings of the world.”

In one of the movie’s best sequences, Sophie and BFG end up in Buckingham Palace, where they dine with the Queen of England (Penelope Wilton, who played Isobel Crawley on Downton Abbey) and her staff (which includes Rebecca Hall and Rafe Spall). There BFG toasts everyone with a concoction he calls frobscottle, a fizzy homemade drink with some immediate, hilariously explosive gastro-after-effects—BFG gleefully dubs them “whizpoppers”—that even send her majesty’s Corgis into uncontrollable comedic spinouts.

“He’s magnificent, your giant,” one of the queen’s men confides to Sophie.

As they treat the BFG like a BMOC and a VIP, you’ll have to agree: Yes he is!

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Jul 07 2016
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Movie Reviews

Jungle Swinger

New ‘Tarzan’ a rollicking tale of adventure, romance and eye candy

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The Legend of Tarzan

Starring Alexander Skarsgård, Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz & Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by David Yates

PG-13

You probably know Tarzan, one way or another. Edgar Rice Burroughs launched the “ape man” into popular culture in magazines and novels in the early 1900s. Several other actors had already portrayed him before former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller put on a loincloth and grunted his way though the 1930s and ’40s for a dozen films, which ran endlessly on TV in the following decades.

Ron Ely and others played him on television. Walt Disney turned him into a cartoon. And there were other Tarzans, too, in some 200 movies and TV shows between 1918 and today.

Now the original “Lord of the Apes” returns to the big screen in a sumptuous, sprawling epic that blends his backstory with a rollicking new tale of adventure, romance and enough eye candy to attract audiences of all sorts.

Christoph Waltz again makes a dandy villain.

Christoph Waltz again makes a dandy villain.

Swedish-born actor Alexander Skarsgård (from TV’s True Blood series) stars as British nobleman John Clayton, raised as a feral child by mighty apes of the African Congo after the deaths of his parents. Now an adult for years resettled in his ancestral home with his beautiful wife Jane (Margot Robbie), he’s lured back to the Dark Continent by a plot of deception involving slavery, revenge, railroads, diamond mines and a corrupt Belgian megalomaniac (Christoph Waltz).

Director David Yates, who made his bones with all four movies of the Harry Potter franchise, works with all the tools in his impressive kit—and what must have been every nickel of his mega-budget. The visuals are grand: mist-shrouded mountain passes, jungles with impenetrable foliage; armies of Congolese warriors; fearsome gorillas; a stampeding herd of hundreds of wildebeest. Even though most of the film was reportedly shot on soundstages and sets in England, you’d never know it: When the action shifts to Africa, you’re transported there, too.

Margo Robbie

Margo Robbie

Margot Robbie is terrific as Jane, who was raised in the jungle, as well, the daughter of a missionary teacher. A real spitfire of spunk and spirit, she’s so much more than a “damsel in distress.” Samuel L. Jackson plays George Washington Williams, an American envoy to Britain who accompanies Tarzan and Jane on their return trip to Africa. He’s got a backstory of his own, and though he may not be in prime shape to keep up with Tarzan step for step, he comes in pretty handy with a gun.

Waltz, as usual, makes a dandy villain, and Djimon Hounson (from Gladiator and Guardians of the Galaxy) has a necessary, if somewhat nasty, role as a tribal leader looking to stage a major grudge match.

LEGEND OF TARZAN

Ladies will swoon—as Jane does—when Skarsgård initially reveals his sexy, sculpted torso, in a flashback scene that recalls their first steamy jungle encounter. And moviegoers in general will thrill when Tarzan finally gets around to doing what he does best: working those jungle vines, baby!

Late in the movie, we get to hear the iconic Tarzan yell, rolling across the miles—he’s coming. “Tarzan,” says Waltz’s character, relishing the moment, knowing the man he’s been trying to catch is close. “It sounded different than I thought…better.”

Different, and better, like this movie. After years of musty, rusty so-so and too-many Tarzans, now there’s a new, sexy big-screen Lord of the Apes—and he’s swinging again.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Jun 24 2016
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Movie Reviews

Just Keep Swimming

The forgetful little blue fish from ‘Nemo’ makes a splash of her own

(Pictured) DORY. ©2013 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Finding Dory

Starring the voices of Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Ed O’Neill, Ty Burrell & Idris Elba

Directed by Andrew Stanton & Angus MacLane

PG

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming,” said Dory, the little blue tang in Finding Nemo, the 2003 Disney/Pixar hit about a father clownfish’s across-the-ocean search for his abducted son.

And keep swimming she has—Dory now splashes right into her own movie, a sea-worthy spin-off about her own search for the loving parents she barely even remembers.

In Finding Dory, which takes place one year after the events of Finding Nemo, Dory—still coping with her lifelong inability to remember anything—suddenly recalls a memory fragment of her mother and father (Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy). Overjoyed that she has a family, she sets out on a quest to locate them, bringing along young Nemo and Marlin, his reluctant dad.

Ellen DeGeneres once again provides the voice of Dory, with a perfect grasp of the delicate emotional shadings of comedy, drama and trauma in her struggle to piece together the shards of her past as she leaves her colorful coral reef and heads to the dark, debris-clogged shores of California. Albert Brooks reprises his role as Marlin, and newcomer Hayden Rolence is Nemo.

FINDING DORYThe new movie does a great job, just like Nemo, of creating a world teeming with aquatic creatures—although we meet most of them not under the sea, but inside a marine institute, which is where Dory, Nemo and Marlin eventually come to the surface. Two sea lions (The Wire’s Idris Elba and Dominic West) fiercely guard their rock from interlopers. Ed O’Neill is a hoot as Hank, the misanthropic camouflaging “septopus” (an octopus with only seven tentacles) who longs to remain in captivity rather than return to the wilds of the ocean. Modern Family’s Ty Burrell cracked me up as Bailey the beluga whale, so proud of his abilities of echolocation, the sonar-like location of objects by reflected sound. Paired with Destiny (Kaitlin Olsen from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), a nearsighted whale shark, they’re quite a team.

FINDING DORYThere’s a road full of adorable otters, a loveably dorky ocean loon, Becky, who doesn’t say a word, and a great running joke about real-life actress Sigourney Weaver, who’s heard but never seen.

From the opening Pixar short (Piper, about a little sandpiper) to the credits (when Hank the octopus gets one last time in the spotlight), it’s all great fun, rollicking adventure and quite heartwarming. Director Andrew Stanton, who also steered WALL-E and Finding Nemo, and co-director Angus MacLane keep the pace lively, the jokes funny and the message clear: Friends are family, too.

There may be tears, and little ones, especially, may be more affected than grownups about Dory’s wrenching separation from her parents and her unflappable hopes that she will find them. This is, after all, the House of Mouse, the company that gave us Bambi, Pinocchio and Dumbo—not to mention Old Yeller, The Lion King and that flashback scene in Up.

But remember what Dory says: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. You’ll make it.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Jun 23 2016
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Movie Reviews

Odd Size Spies

Kevin Hart & Dwayne Johnson are mismatched pair in comedy-action caper

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

Central Intelligence

Starring Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

PG-13

If comedy is art, Central Intelligence wants to make sure the canvas is well covered—it’s got a big, tall brush, a short, little brush and some very funny painters.

Dwayne Johnson is Bob Stone, a formerly chubby, friendless high-school loser mercilessly bullied by his classmates and shown kindness by no one—except the school’s star football player, student council president and all-around over-achiever, Calvin “the Golden Jet” Joyner (Kevin Hart).

A cruel practical joke during a pep rally becomes a distant memory as the year pass. Joyner marries his high-school sweetheart (Danielle Nicolet) and settles into a dull job at an accounting firm, fretting that he peaked in 1996 and that his life is going nowhere. Stone, on the other hand, sheds his adolescent flubber, packs on the muscle and becomes a CIA agent—on a dangerous, rogue, off-the-grid mission.

CI-0117rWhen the two reconnect on Facebook, out of the blue, their reunion creates a spontaneous combustion of hilarity as Stone pulls Joyner onto a wild ride of slam-bang shoot-outs, dizzying double crosses and daring escapes in a race to track down a notorious international trader and stolen encrypted computer codes.

Very quickly, Joyner doesn’t feel like his life is a dead end anymore—even though he may not like where it’s taking him!

Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber knows a thing or two about comedy, as he demonstrated in Dodgeball and We’re The Millers. His fellow writers, Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen, honed their funny bones on television’s The Mindy Project and Madtv, and the script zips, zaps and zings with smart, sharp quips, clever set-ups and solidly crafted gags that often get extra bonus mileage when they pop up for a second—or third—laugh line.

Johnson and Hart make quite a pair, starting with the yin and yang of their odd-couple appearance. The former pro wrestler known as The Rock towers over his co-star by more than a foot, and they both find the hysterics as well as the humanity and the heart in their roles, and in the film’s anti-bullying subplot. The movie has some riotously funny scenes, like the one in which Joyner and his wife go to marital counseling, and another involving a stolen airplane, a picnic cooler and a hilarious spiel about an organ transplant.

Sprinkled around, like movie candy, are wily Hollywood meta-references and nods to other films. Stone thinks Joyner looks like “a snack-size Denzel.” Joyner tells Stone, whose attire of baby-blue unicorn tees and a fanny pack belies his lethal skills, that he’s a “Jason Borne in jorts.” There’s a great running Breakfast Club gag, riffs on Roadhouse and Jake Gyllenhaal, and a sly Goodfellas line.

And I won’t spoil things by revealing the pair of big-name stars in super-secret cameos. You’ll be pleasantly surprised—in vastly different ways—by both.

But the real reason to see Central Intelligence: Two very funny actors who might not be anywhere near the same size, but who are perfect alignment for this hilarious spy-spoof assignment.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Jun 17 2016
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Movie Reviews

The Real Ghostbusters

Husband and wife partners fight 1970s demons ‘across the pond’

CON2-FP-122 (2)

The Conjuring 2

Starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga

Directed by James Wan

R

Beating the much-ballyhooed new Ghostbusters to the screen by several weeks, director James Wan shakes things up with a spook-fest of another kind—the second serving of his Conjuring series, based on the case files of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who claimed to have investigated more than 10,000 incidents since the 1950s.

This time, fresh off the 1970s investigation that became New York’s “Amityville Horror,” the Warrens are summoned across the pond to a working-class London borough, where a single mother and her four young children are being tormented by what seem to be malicious spirits.

CON2-FP-037Oh, yeah!

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga once again portray the Warrens, a couple whose individual childhood brushes with the supernatural eventually led them to each other, into a paranormal partnership and marriage. The movie’s soft little subplot about their strong bond, scored to the recurring Elvis hit “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (which Wilson even gets to sing as a serenade, with a guitar!), is a dollop of pure sweetness in the carnival of creepiness.

CON2-FP-146Young Madison Wolfe, 11, who plays the Janet, the “possessed” youngest daughter of the British family, may look like a greenhorn, but you’ve likely already seen her if you watch TV, on Zoo, Scream, The Astronaut Wives Club or True Detective, or in the movies The Campaign, Trumbo or Joy. She’s terrific as the bedevilments in her home send her flying into the air, crashing into walls, teleporting from room to room and taking control of her voice, personality and body.

Wan, who also directed the original Saw and Insidious, certainly knows his way around a haunted house. He never overdoes the cheap thrills or gotchas, and he gets genuine jolts out of some truly nightmarish images—particularly a demonic nun and the “crooked man” from the old nursery rhyme. But he also has fun with bone-chilling scares he builds around mundane, everyday objects, like a blinking, bleeping toy fire truck, a bedroom poster of smiling actor-singer David Soul and a TV remote that won’t stay where it’s put.

The movie will probably feel a bit familiar, at times, to anyone who’s seen The Exorcist, it could stand to be trimmed by at least 20-25 minutes, and someone should have told the music department that just because a movie is set in England, you don’t have to use songs by the Bee Gees, the Hollies and the Clash if they don’t really fit.

CON2-FP-045As the Warrens wrestle with demons, they also wrangle with questions of belief and doubt, skepticism and proof. “Your visions are a gift from God,” Ed reassures Lorriane, who worries that her trance-like visits to the “dark side” have shown her too much, especially about what might become her own future. The movie frames the Enfield hauntings, which actually took place over a two-year period, in a Christmas setting, with prominent decorations on display and weirdly dissonant versions of familiar carols signaling that something unholy is afoot. In one scene, a freaked-out Lorraine stabs and shreds pages of her Bible with an ink pen.

If you’re easily spooked, The Conjuring 2 may not be the most relaxing way to spend your popcorn dollar. On the other hand, if you like getting the good, old-fashioned hell scared out of you, then step right up for a retro terror trip to re-live another harrowing, real-life event from the annals of America’s original ghost busters.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Jun 16 2016
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Movie Reviews

Reappearing Act

Do-gooder magicians return for more hocus-pocus hijinks

Online Poster - Caplan, Franco, Eisenberg, Harrelson_small

Now You See Me 2

Starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, Lizzy Caplan, Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman & Daniel Radcliffe

Directed by Jon M. Chu

PG-13

The magic of the movies sometimes makes for some nifty tricks, and this “reappearing” act is a good one—a sequel to the 2013 hit about a foursome of infamous crusading magician tricksters whose large-scale, steal-from-the-rich stunts have made them worldwide rock-star Robin Hoods.

Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco return as three of the so-called Four Horsemen, with Lizzy Caplan (Virginia Johnson on TV’s Masters of Sex) coming aboard to replace Isla Fisher from the original. Mark Ruffalo is back as FBI agent Dylan Rhodes, whose “reveal” as the Horsemen’s hidden-in-plain-sight mastermind was the first movie’s final bit of hocus-pocus.

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Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman again rounds out the ensemble as Thaddeus Bradley, a former master magician-turned-trick-debunker who was framed and sent to prison for the group’s last big caper.

Joining the cast is former Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe as a megalomaniacal tech billionaire who hijacks the Horsemen to coerce them into heisting a new super-high-tech computer chip that, if delivered into the wrong hands, would compromise the privacy of every computer—and every computer user—in the world.

The only problem is, which hands are the wrong hands, and which are the right ones? In a movie about magic and misdirection, it’s awfully hard to tell.

Director Jon M. Chu, whose resume includes two of the Step Up dance flicks, keeps things moving along briskly with a sense of fun, fizz and sizzle as the do-gooder scamps zip from New York to China to London, trying to stay one step ahead of the law. The plot gets bogged down a bit as it tries to layer on detail and backstory, but when the Horsemen get down to business, things really come alive—like in an absolutely stunning sequence in which the purloined computer chip, attached to the front of a playing card, is masterfully flipped, flung and flicked from Horseman to Horseman to avoid detection while they’re each being searched. It’s the movie’s centerpiece trick, a sexy, super-slick bit of slight of hand, and a showpiece of computer-assisted “card-istry.”

Woody Harrelson

Woody Harrelson

In one of the movie’s best running gags, Harrelson has a ball in a new, “surprise” role—in addition to the smooth-talking hypnotist Merritt McKinney, he also plays his sibling-rival twin brother, Chase, who sports a head of curly hair and a mouth full gleaming white chompers.

One of the coolest things about Now You See Me 2, like its predecessor, is how it shows the audience how its trickery is done—after the razzle-dazzle, it pulls back the curtain to reveal the nuts-and-bolts explanation behind each jaw-dropping effect, the trap doors, the trickery, the switcheroo, the behind-the-scene hustle-bustle that made the illusion possible.

Magic, it lets us know, requires practice, hard work, concentration, planning, patience and super skills. That doesn’t make it any less amazing, or any less wondrous. “The best tricks,” says Morgan Freeman’s character, “work on many levels.” Now You See Me 2 is a multi-leveled magic show, heist caper, comedy, drama and globetrotting action-adventure romp with characters whose company you’ll find most enjoyable.

Now you see them, now you don’t. And you’ll all but certainly see them again—in Now You See Me 3.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Jun 02 2016
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Movie Reviews

Go Ask Alice

Magic mirror returns plucky lass to Wonderland—or Underland

ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Starring Mia Wasikowska, Sacha Baron Cohen & Johnny Depp

Directed by James Bobbin

PG

British author Lewis Carroll’s tales of a Victorian lass and her escapades in an enchanted place of talking animals, odd humans and other curious creatures have been made into numerous movies, TV shows and stage adaptations—dozens since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was originally published in 1865. In the early 1970s, the rock band Jefferson Starship made Alice the hook of its hippy-dippy song “White Rabbit,” which used her journey down a rabbit hole as a metaphor for another kind of “trip.” The ABC-TV modern-day fairytale anthology Once Upon a Time spun off a standalone series, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, based on Carroll’s novels, in 2013.

Clearly, something about the plucky, curious young Alice never falls out of fashion.

“Go ask Alice,” sang Jefferson Starship’s Grace Slick.

Go ask Alice, indeed, for she is a most resourceful gal in this Disney follow-up to the House of Mouse’s Alice in Wonderland, which reunites most of the cast of the 2010 film. When we meet her in the opening scene, Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) is the cool-headed captain of her late father’s sailing ship, The Wonder, excitedly exploring the globe, narrowly escaping from pirates and clearly making her own way in a “man’s world” that wants to put her—and keep her—in her place.

ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter

When the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) gets in a bit of a bind, his friends in Wonderland—now called “Underland”—know just what to do: Go ask Alice!

That sets the stage for Alice’s return—this time through a magic mirror—to the enchanted realm, where she again meets up with the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), Tweedles Dee and Dum (Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, the Dormouse and the Bloodhound.

In order to help the Hatter, Alice must make a dangerous, daring trip back in time. That’s always tricky in any movie, and here it involves stealing a device called the Chronosphere from Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen). The film’s weirdly wacky new character is a clockwork despot who speaks like German actor Christoph Waltz and is served by a staff of comical, robotic minions he refers to as his “seconds”—a time pun, get it?

Once again, Johnny Depp is all tics, weird hair and crazy quirks—three shades of eye shadow, eyebrows that look like florescent orange caterpillars attacking his forehead, ghoulish white makeup and yellow teeth. When the Hatter speaks, he sounds like he’s got marbles in his mouth and a lisp. It’s just too much.

Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Baron Cohen

So it’s practically an invitation for Sacha Baron Cohen to glide right in and steal the show with a perfectly calibrated performance of comedic timing, camp and cleverness, which he does.

British director James Bobbin (who also steered two Disney Muppets movies plus the brilliant Flight of the Conchords and Cohen’s satirical Da Ali G Show) replaces Tim Burton, who directed the 2010 Alice in Wonderland. Burton’s influence remains as one of the producers, however, and the whimsy and imagination of his original are still very much evident.

So: How long before we get our next trip to Wonderland/Underland? Go ask Alice!

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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May 27 2016
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Trouble in Suburbia

Girls bring the party—and more—in ‘Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising’

Zac Efron, Seth Rogen & Rose Byrne go undercover in 'Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.'

Zac Efron, Seth Rogen & Rose Byrne go undercover in ‘Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.’

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

Starring Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne & Zac Efron

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

R

When a sorority moves in next door to a family trying to sell their house, it’s trouble.

That’s the quick premise, but this ribald new comedy—a sequel to the 2014 hit—puts a fresh, topical spin on its predecessor, while reuniting its cast and hewing mostly to its original manic framework.

Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne), now the parents of a 4-year-old daughter (Elise Vargas) with another on the way, have sold their suburban house…sort of. It’s in a 30-day escrow hold, which means the buyer has a month to decide—or back out. That’s troubling news, because Mac and Kelly have already bought another house, no strings attached.

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Beanie Feldstein, Chloë Grace Moretz and Kiersey Clemons play sorority sisters who declare war on their “old people” neighbors.

It’s especially troubling when a sorority roosts in the vacant, broken-down fraternity house next door. But not just any sorority: The young women of the freshly minted, renegade Kappa Nu (led by Chloë Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons and Beanie Feldstein) have split from the campus Greek system, fed up with the leering bros-before-hos sexism of fraternities and the prissy, priggish constraints of the established sororities. At Kappa Nu, it’s weed, wild parties and full-throttle fem-centric fun, all the time.

And look who’s come aboard as their advisor: Mac and Kelly’s old next-door fraternity nemesis, Teddy (Zac Efron). But the girls increasingly see Teddy as out of touch, and his old college frat-boy crew (including Dave Franco, Jerrod Carmichael, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse) have all grown up and moved on faster than him.

Where does Teddy fit in? It may be where you—and he—would least expect…

How all these comedic strands weave together and work is in the hands of director Nicholas Stoller, who also steered Get Him to the Greek, the marvelous Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the original Neighbors. He once again has a great cast, down to the cameos by Lisa Kudrow (as a deadpan dean), Selena Gomez (as a rival sorority president) and Kelsey Grammar (as a pleading parent).

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)

The heist scene is “high” on action.

Rogen, who also collaborated on the screenplay, makes sure to push his pro-bong agenda with plenty of pot jokes, including one extended weed-heist sequence that feels like an action-movie parody. But look through the haze (and the randy, raunchy jokes) and you’ll find something else: a movie with empathetic messages about acceptance and inclusion, gender rights and sexism, hypocrisy and double standards, mothers and fathers and daughters, loving families, girls who grow up to become young women, and growing up in general.

And in the middle of it all is its secret weapon, the former High School Musical star Efron, who at the age of 28 has proven his adaptability in a wide variety of roles, particularly comedy. As Teddy, he brings something to the part richer and fuller and much more dimensional than what was flat on the page, an ache to belong and to be “valued” that resonates beyond the script’s jokes about dope, crazy pranks and a raucous rift between crazy college kids and cranky “old people.”

Neighbors 2 is the rare sequel that grew up with its audience, its subject matter and its subjects—and got even funnier and more meaningful in the process.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 26 2016
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Movie Reviews, Movies

Naughty & ‘Nice’

Crowe and Gosling mix action and laughs in ‘The Nice Guys’

Ryan Gosling, Maddie Compton, Angourie Rice and Russell Crowe in 'The Nice Guys'

Ryan Gosling, Maddie Compton, Angourie Rice and Russell Crowe in ‘The Nice Guys’

The Nice Guys

Starring Russell Crowe & Ryan Gosling

Directed by Shane Black

R

The opening shot of The Nice Guys pans across the back of the iconic Hollywood sign, grimy and tagged with graffiti, as the lights of the city below glitter in the night like a gigantic box of jewels.

After the Temptations set a ’70s groove to “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” we’re off and rolling ourselves on a raucous, retro-rollicking comedy-adventure romp as a pair of mismatched investigators-for-hire (Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling) team up to look for a missing girl (Margaret Qualley of TV’s The Leftovers). But soon they find themselves in a much deeper drama involving porn stars, pinkie promises, menacing thugs, Kim Basinger in full L.A. Confidential mode, and a shocking conspiracy of catalytic converters and high-ranking collusion.

Writer-director Shane Black made his mark back in the late 1980s with the screenplay for Lethal Weapon, starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. He went on to refine his format—a high-octane mix of cheeky quips and pulpy, explosive action—behind the camera with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) and Iron Man 3 (2013).

TNG_Day#48_02022015-325.dngThe movie takes place in 1977, and it revels in the details of its smoggy, sometimes smutty setting. The background hums with tunes from Kiss, America, Rupert Holmes, the Band, Herb Alpert and Earth, Wind and Fire. Chevy Camaros, Caprice Classics and Dodge Coronets line up for 69-cent-a-gallon gas. Billboards trumpet the hottest movies: Jaws 2, Airport 77. Newspaper headlines spread the dread about killer bees from Brazil.

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Matt Bomer

You’ll recognize versatile character actor Keith David as a villain. Matt Bomer from TV’s American Horror Story plays John Boy, an assassin sharing a certain facial feature with the Waltons TV character of the same name. And young Angourie Rice, 14 at the time of filming, almost steals the show as Holly, the daughter of Gosling’s character. She’s the soft heart of this rough-and-tumble story, the tender conscience in the midst of its outbursts of casual violence.

But the real treat throughout is the pair-up of two actors not known for baring their funny bones. Crowe’s Jackson Healey is a rumpled, jaded tough guy who leads with his fists—often sporting brass knuckles. Gosling plays Holland March as a mopey, bottom-feeding P.I. with a drinking problem and a tattoo that reminds him, “You will never be happy.” Their oil-and-water styles initially clash, of course, but eventually smooth into some major movie mojo. (Pay attention and you’ll even catch their nod to classic Abbott and Costello.)

It all builds into a spectacular shoot-out showdown at a gleaming auto expo, where everyone is scrambling to get their hands on a canister containing a reel of film as it rolls, bounces and spins across the floor, out a window, down a street and into the flames of a burning car. That’s one hot movie, as it turns out, in more ways than one.

And so is The Nice Guys, a juicy, slam-bang action-comedy cocktail punched up, pimped out and powered down with rowdy, new-fangled film-noir fun. Hot stuff—catch it.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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May 13 2016
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Movie Reviews

Captain Crunch

The Marvel gang’s all here in superhero-packed mega-movie

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Captain America: Civil War

Starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan & Scarlett Johansson

Directed by Anthony Russo & Joe Russo

PG-13

What do superheroes do when they’re not saving the planet? A lot of the same things everyone else does—they prattle around the house, do their best to get along and sometimes get on each other’s nerves.

“Who’s putting coffee grounds in the disposal?” Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) asks his houseguests, which include Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), War Machine (Don Cheadle) and Vision (Paul Bettany). “Am I running a bed and breakfast for a biker gang?”

Crammed into a back of a tiny VW Beetle, the hulking Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) has a request of Falcon (Anthony Mackie). “Could you move your seat up?” Like a grumpy sibling on a family road trip that’s already over-stretched his patience, Falcon isn’t exactly in an agreeable mood. “No!” he snaps.

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Spider-Man (Tom Holland) gets in on the action.

Captain America: Civil War is a big, sprawling superhero mega-movie, with more spandex to the gallon than any flick that’s come down the pike in a long time. The latest in the multi-billion-dollar Marvel cinematic canon, it’s officially the third of the Captain America franchise, but it’s also a continuation of the Avengers movie arc, and it ropes in characters from other Marvel movie properties as well, including Iron Man, Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and even the new Spider-Man (Tom Holland), whose movie won’t be in theaters until next summer.

The “Civil War” in the title refers to the major rift that occurs within the Avengers when a United Nations panel wants to rein them in. The global community is concerned about the civilian deaths and wakes of destruction that accompany the superheroes’ bad-guy smackdowns—a theme that also cropped up a few weeks ago in another comics-character slugfest, Batman v Superman.

The Avengers divide into two camps about the issue—those who feel that some international oversight and cooperation is the way to go (led by Iron Man), and the rebels who refuse to sign the accord (team Captain America). That sets the stage for several spats, a couple of subplots, more than two hours of squabbles and one stupendous battle royale in an abandoned airport.

Marvel's Captain America: Civil War..L to R: Sharon Carter/Agent 13 (Emily VanCamp), Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans)..Photo Credit: Zade Rosenthal..? Marvel 2016

Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Captain America (Chris Evans) have a serious huddle.

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo keep things moving along with style, substance and significant flair, and they give all their characters time to shine—no easy task when they are so many, including newcomers Chadwick Boseman as an African prince who becomes the Black Panther; Marissa Tomei as Peter Parker’s Aunt May; and Daniel Brühl as the Eastern European über-villain Zemo. There’s also Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Martin Freeman as a CIA official, Emily Van Camp (from TV’s Revenge) as Sharon Carter, and William Hurt as the U.S. Secretary of State. Oscar-nominated Alfre Woodard pops in as an aggrieved mom.

But through it all are the Avengers, the world’s coolest, most powerful cadre of superfriends—family, actually—being ripped apart, fractured from within, pulverizing each other as the divide between them, widened by treachery, becomes filled with distrust, dark secrets and deep wounds from the past.

There’s a whole army of frozen Winter Soldiers, a funeral and a sweet kiss between two characters that may point to future romance.

How does this wham-bam, jam-packed road trip on the superhero highway end? I won’t spoil it. But you shouldn’t be surprised to know that even when it does, it doesn’t, and that the Marvel movie map is still being drawn for Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man and other characters for years to come!

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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