66 San Diego Reader September 1, 2016


MOVIES


vey all the heart and magic that one might expect from the sequel to 2003’s masterful Finding Nemo. But that one scene is the happy exception to a largely desultory rule: here is another followup that repeats and tweaks the original and winds up feeling like a dim, distorted echo in the process. (The repeat: an epic search to reunite a family. The tweak: this time, it’s the child searching for the parents.) The worst of it is the naked grab for emotion: directors Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane make it very clear what you are supposed to feel and when you are supposed to feel it. What they don’t do is earn it. It’s a major flaw, but if you can get past it, there’s plenty of fun stuff to look at: an antisocial octopus, a friendly whale shark, a hesitant beluga, and the hilarious terror of an aquarium tank where kids can touch and squeeze. 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Florence Foster Jenkins — Meryl Streep stars as the titular doormat, a sim- pering society hostess who fancies herself an opera singer when in reality, her coloratura style approximates the sounds of barn owls being fed through an Oster- izer. As her manager/dark cully, Hugh Grant (sympathetic and syphilitic, Flo looks the other way) keeps the Empress’s new clothes cleaned and pressed, padding the audience with tone deaf shills until the night society columnist Earl Wilson (Christian McKay, all too briefly) gives her performance the proper skewing it deserves. Stephen Frears’ (The Grifters, Philomena) flat, theatrical staging saps whatever cynicism there is, turning an otherwise true- life tale of a cad living off a delusional dame into a sentimen- tal romcom. Only Simon Helberg, cast as Flo’s well -paid accompanist, shines through with enough suppressed giggles and stifled stammers to bring to mind Gene Wilder in his prime. For a slight upgrade, check out last year’s Marguerite. 2016. — S.M. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Ghostbusters — With their best days residing down memory lane, producers Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd resort to recycling their own garbage. Fanboys were outraged and feminists thrilled over news of an all-girl remake of the alleged comedy classic. Credit the filmmakers with neither group leaving hungry. A pussy fart joke replaces the traditional fart joke and the role of a stereotypical dumb blonde secretary is played by a guy (Chris Hemsworth). Loathe though I am to say anything even remotely positive about the original, at least the boys had chemistry. Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig bicker, leaving ample room for over- modulation from Leslie Jones. The whole shebang, what little there is of it, belongs to Kate McKinnon, and it’s not just the Tank Girl duds and Woody Woodpecker pompadour doing the acting. Her ever- in-the-moment background work, not the impersonal CG slop hack director Paul Feig puts before us, deserves an Oscar


for Best Visual Effects. 2016. — S.M. ★ (ANGELIKA FILM CENTER; ARCLIGHT LA JOLLA)


Hands of Stone — “Ring sense is an art,” intones legendary boxing trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro) at the beginning of this strange and scattered Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramirez) biopic, “you’re either blessed with it from the day you’re born, or cursed without it until the day you die.” It’s as good a line as any to illuminate the film’s flaws. For one thing, if it’s a sense, it’s not an art. For another, it’s the last time we ever hear about ring


MOVIES@HOME Hook JOEL JONES


President/cofounder, Nerd Con, nerd-con.com


Me, You, and Everyone We Know


CARLA NELL Artistic director, InnerMission Productions, innermissionproductions.org


Me, You, and Everyone We Know is the antithesis of an “art” film. Director Miranda July plays an artist who has a day-job as an elder cab driver. She meets a man at a shopping center. They have baggage they bring to the table and start to unpack. It’s a lovely and in some moments very inappropriate film about how we make connections in a disconnected world. I binge-watched Crazy


Ex- Girlfriend in the span of four days. Rachel Bloom has created a YouTube identity and turned her online celebrity into an opportunity resulting in a totally insane series about a woman who’s completely obsessed with a young love from eighth-grade camp. The comedy is off the charts as all of the characters navigate total relationship disasters. There’s singing and dancing, and most of it is irreverent and unapologetic, and you’ll be addicted, I promise!


ME, YOU, AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (USA) 2005, IFC Films Available on Hulu and iTunes


CRAZY EX- GIRLFRIEND (USA) 2015, CW Television Network Available on Hulu and Amazon Video


sense, Durán’s or anyone else’s. For still another, it precludes the possibility of change, which is sort of antithetical to story, so why are we hearing about it? And for the finishing touch, what story there is here has much more to do with Durán’s out-of-ring sense than anything inside, mostly as regards his anger toward Americans (or maybe just America) following an impoverished youth in Panama. There are some engaging asides


The Goonies was one of the ’80s movies that I couldn’t stop watching as a kid and even now this 30-year-old cult classic has me perched on the edge of my couch rooting for this ragtag bunch of kids. I love how the time- less feel of the movie pulls me right into the adventure and mystery. This is a MUST WATCH for anyone who hasn’t seen it and I highly recommend it to fans of adventure or mystery. The ’90s was an inter-


esting time for movies and pop culture and Hook is one of the movies that stands out in the sea of neon shorts and fanny packs. The intri- cate scenery and star-stud- ded cast brings this movie to life in the most unimagi- nable ways. When you watch Robin Williams’s Peter take on Dustin Hoffman’s Captain Hook in this epic fantasy- adventure, you’ll never look at Neverland the same way again.


THE GOONIES (USA) 1985, Warner Brothers Available on Amazon Video and Google Play


HOOK (USA) 1991, TriStar Pictures Available on YouTube and Vudu


KIRSTEN MCCALLION Writer


Michael Caine and Lawrence Olivier in Sleuth: two of the most powerfully charismatic actors of all time engaging in psychological warfare. I remember how hard my jaw hit the floor the first time I saw “Inspector Dop- pler” reveal himself. The dialogue shifts so seamlessly from lighthearted banter to deeply serious, and you’re never sure who’s lying. One of those rare movies I could show to literally anyone and know with absolute certainty that they will dig it. I’ve seen Coraline doz-


ens of times and always notice something new. It took years to shoot this, frame by frame, and the level of detail is astonishing. The story gets a little dark at times, which I find wonder- fully appealing. Best part: Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders voicing two retired burlesque dancers with a penchant for schnauzer taxi- dermy. And the soundtrack is outstanding.


SLEUTH (US/United Kingdom ) 1972, Twentieth Century Fox Available on YouTube and Putlocker


CORALINE (USA) 2009, Focus Features Available on HBO Go and iTunes


Sleuth


direction.” That sort of thing. Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as Toby and Tanner, luckless but savvy brothers just setting out on a controlled spree of bank robber- ies. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham star as Marcus and Alberto, the aging Texas Rangers out to stop them. The outlaws believe their cause is just, or something close to it: they were dealt a bad hand at the outset, and that was before the house started rigging the game. The Rangers, on the other hand, have the luxury of simply enforcing the law. (Then again, that means they have to chase gun-toting outlaws.) And the rotten world keeps on spinning. Director David Mackenzie tells a sad story about desperate characters that is somehow as thrilling as it is heart- breaking. 2016. — M.L. ★★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Hollars — John Krasinski directs and stars in a family dramedy involving an uncertain young man on the cusp of fatherhood who returns to his hometown when his mother falls ill. With Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Anna Kendrick, Charlie Day, Sharlto Copley, Richard Jenkins, and Margo Martindale as Mom. 2016 (LANDMARK HILLCREST)


Indignation — Longtime screenwriter and producer James Schamus adapts longtime novelist Philip Roth’s novel of love and death and Midwestern collegiate life, and turns what might have been an exercise in mordant mid-century nos- talgia into something vital and resonant (as opposed to the trendier, emptier “rel- evant”). Something that lives and breathes and feels and fights: you don’t have to care about Bertrand Russell’s essay on Why I Am Not a Christian to sympathize with Jewish undergrad Marcus Messner (a fierce yet cuddly Logan Lerman). You just have to know what it feels like to be flailing away at a system that seems thoroughly comfortable with its failure to understand the subtlety and significance of the particular, the internal dramas that shape our lives and set our destinies. (It’s not that Winesburg College is Evil; it’s just that it’s so thoroughly Other.) That includes its view of romantic love, a thing that moves from external to internal with frightening ease (no pun intended). Messner’s affair with a troubled but generous co-ed sets him against not only his chosen institution, but also the one he inherited, and what seems like a simple act of affection sends our hero headlong into the mouth of fate, and ultimately, his eternal reward. 2016. — M.L. ★★★★ (ARCLIGHT LA JOLLA; LAND- MARK HILLCREST)


Find more S een on DVD re views at SDReader.com/dvd


about Arcel’s struggles with boxing’s dirty underbelly, but they feel like they belong to a different movie. (De Niro’s superflu- ous and soporific voiceover, however, belongs in no movie whatsoever.) The boxing itself is notable chiefly for its use of quick cuts and bone-grinding sound effects during the clinches. Directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz. 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Hell or High Water — The stars align in the Western sky. Hell or High Water is the sort of film that tempts the critic — well, this one, anyway — to start writing the sort of copy that might end up as a promo-poster pullquote. “Timeless and yet supremely timely,” “A movie with tre- mendous action that, wonderfully, doesn’t turn into an action movie,” “Hooks you hard and reels you in, but not before it pulls your sympathy in every conceivable


Jason Bourne — What happens when “complicated” gives way to “convoluted.” It’s 10 years since super-amnesiac CIA super-agent Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) learned the awful truth that he volun- teered to become a mindless government assassin, and now he is living off the grid, tortured by guilt and punching people for money. Only maybe he’s not as guilty as he thinks and what’s this about his dead dad and he still loves America and who’s that shooting at him and gosh, the head of the CIA (Tommy Lee Jones) is pretty much a monster, no matter what he says about wanting to keep this country safe. No wonder his pretty young protégé (Ali- cia Vikander) seems hesitant to execute his orders! Damon’s bulldog mug, Jones’s hound dog mug, and Vikander’s angelic visage occupy huge swaths of screen time and space; much of the rest of it is given over to people walking here and there: upstairs and down, through corridors, across plazas, you name it. Director Paul Greengrass tries to up the perambula- tory drama with lots of cuts, swishes, jiggles, and wobbles from his camera and swellings from his soundtrack, but the


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