Since an overwhelming glut of flattering comments has temporarily (or possibly not-so-
temporarily) shuttered my full-length movie reviews, I still thought I would share some
thoughts with you guys about each week's big (and not so big) new theatrical releases. Let's
get ready for the inaugural "Weekend Movies!"
The biggest movie of the week was one that actually opened back on Wednesday. I'm
speaking, of course, of
The Help,
Tate Taylor's handsomely made adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's bestselling novel.
It centers around a young journalist (Emma Stone) who, at the height of social unrest in the
1960s South, decides to tell the story of the domestic servants that aid white families, often
times raising the white mother's children. It's heartfelt stuff, which unfortunately dips into
sticky-sweet sentimentality towards the end (it also feels like it has more endings than
Lord of the Rings), but that doesn't exactly derail the elemental thrill of
The
Help - watching a whole bunch of amazing actresses absolutely kill it. Among the
talented thespians on hand are Viola Davis (as the titular maid), Sissy Spacek, Octavia
Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas-Howard, Alison Janney. Like I said: the deck is fairly
stacked. And with so few movies made with fully fleshed out female characters (ones that
talk to each other not exclusively about men),
The Help is recommendable for that
alone.
But the story is compelling and the photography is often times gorgeous (without ever being
showy) and you can take your mother to it and both have a great time. (It's solidly
recommendable for fans of the book, obviously.) Between this and
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
(and her brief bit in
Friends with Benefits), this is Emma Stone's summer!
Also opening in wide release is Sony's
30 Minutes or Less, which has stirred up a fair of Internet-
centric controversy in recent days thanks to the film's resemblance to an actual crime.
30
Minutes or Less, which all in all is a zippy, laugh-filled little action comedy starring Jesse
Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari, is about a pizza delivery boy (Eisenberg) who gets jumped by a
couple of thugs (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, both typically profane and funny), who
strap a bomb to his chest and force him to rob a bank in ten hours (otherwise, he'll explode).
Well, the screenplay is based in part on an actual event, in which a middle aged man was
kidnapped and a bomb was clamped around his neck, with a similar demand – rob a bank in
ten hours. Well, the cops caught up with this guy and in front of police and live television
audiences, the man's neck-bomb detonated. It's grisly, complicated stuff (police believe that
the man was involved in the plot, he just didn't know the explosives were "live") and wholly
different, tonally, than what
30 Minutes or Less ended up being, which despite
flashes of darkness, is more or less a giddy romp.
At around 80-minutes, you can go see
30 Minutes or Less and still have the rest of
your day to play with and the movie hums along thanks largely to the peerless comic cast (it
should be noted that the show is stolen by Michael Pena, who plays a manipulative ex-con).
And whatever the intermingling of fact and fiction is, well, that doesn't change the fact that
the movie is a fast and furious R-rated trifle, one that is unapologetically profane but rarely (if
ever) dips into the stomach-turning raunchiness of, say,
The Change-Up. If you want
a couple of chuckles, you could do a whole lot worse.
The only other big movie this weekend is also the only thing I haven't seen yet – the fifth
(FIFTH!) installment in New Line/Warner Bros' lucrative
Final Destination franchise, a
film series I've been inappropriately in love with since the first film debuted. The premise of
each movie is the same, basically – a group of people (the majority of which are usually
teenagers, given their propensity for disrobing and uncanny ability to slip into situations in
which they'll be horribly killed) narrowly avoid disaster (in this entry, it's a suspension bridge
collapse – ah, the dangers of civil engineering) and are pursued for the rest of the movie by
the phantom of death. Not death in a literal, skeleton-in-a-robe death, but death as a
shadowy aura that has the ability to trigger a Rube Goldberg-like series of accidents that, one
by one, viciously dispatches our nubile characters.
As far as I'm concerned, the franchise took a serious dip with the last movie, inappropriately
dubbed
THE Final Destination (capitalization mine), names because the powers that
be had decided the series had run its course. Not quite. The previews seem to suggest that
the movie is back on the right path after the lazy, way-too-short last film. I don't even care
that the director was chosen for his familiarity with 3D (he's an effects guy and this is his first
film) – everything suggests that the series is back on the right path, mixing the gallows
humor of
Final Destination 2 with the ingenious cleverness of the first film.
I'm away this weekend but I can tell you the first thing I'll do when I get back: see
Final Destination 5