R.I.P.D.

First Hit:  Just didn’t work.

Nick (Ryan Reynolds) is in love with his wife.

He’s a Boston Police Detective and gets tempted to steal some gold they find on a drug bust. He confronts his partner Hayes (Kevin Bacon) about the “rightness” of this. Hayes doesn’t want Nick to turn in the gold so he shoots his partner. Nick dies but ends up with other dead law enforcement officers who are living in this “other sort of world”.

In charge of this group of these dead officers is Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker). Why does this group of R.I.P.D. officers exist? To fight crime of people who really haven’t died and who attempt to make havoc on the world as it is.

Nick gets assigned to a new partner named Roy (Jeff Bridges) who has such a forced accent that it is nauseating. He was wronged just like Nick so there are here to work together to fight the undead. What makes it even worse is that people in the real world see Nick as a old Asian man and Roy as a voluptuous blond.

This story is such a reach and then to add that Hayes is one of these characters who are collecting enough gold to reign havoc on the world is simply an out-of-bounds reach. It is a stupid story although amusing at times.

Bridges is mediocre in this role and his accent is horrible. Bacon is the most amusing and interesting character in the film – his darkness prevails. Reynolds is stuck between a rock and hard place in this role and my guess he wishes he never took it. Parker is the best part of the film; her tongue in cheek approach was fun. Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi wrote this mindless script and Robert Schwentke directed it, and I’m not sure why.

Overall:  A couple of laughs but overall a real waste of talented actors.

Red 2

First Hit:  Tongue in cheek fun, watchable and entertaining.

During the cold war Bailey (Anthony Hopkins) created a nuclear device, which was hidden in the Kremlin. He is also the only one alive that may know where the device was hidden.

The issue is that he's been lock up in a semi-insane asylum/prison. A team of retired black-ops people is reunited get him released and track down this bomb and return it to the US. This team, led by Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), is cobbled together and includes an aging Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren).

In a tangential way the team also includes Han Cho Bai (Byung-hun Lee) and Frank’s wife Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker). Frank is in love with Sarah and spends a lot of film time trying to protect her. However, Sarah is up for adventure, and is quirky enough in character to make her role very fun.

Trying to subvert the team is Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who wants the bomb as well. What everyone doesn’t know is that Baily is not crazy, just a man on a mission to make right a wrong he thought was done to him.

The actors here appear to have had fun in their roles and there is always a sense that there was a slight wink and an nod as they did their scenes together.

Hopkins is the most brilliant in his role as he switches from off his rocker to singularly focused to right a personal wrong. Willis is always a bit tongue in cheek and here he’s in his swim lane. Malkovich is great as the sidekick that is always one hair away from being off his rocker. Mirren is fabulous as the unsuspecting older refined woman that has a "take no prisoners attitude". Parker is sublime as the quirky wife looking for adventure in her life and marriage. Zeta-Jones hams it up and is in her glory. Lee is really good as the guy who switches sides for just a moment to gets what he wants. Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber wrote a fun and entertaining script. Dean Parisot married the actors and script in a way that made all this work well. 

Overall:  This is a fun film but don’t look for everything to hold together, it wasn’t meant to.

Blue Jasmine

First Hit:  Wasn’t impressed with overall script but thought Cate Blanchett was amazing to watch.

For some reason the film doesn't delve too much into the cause of everyone's anguish; the defining event being the arrest and prosecution of Hal (Alec Baldwin) for deceiving all his family and friends with investment schemes that ruin their lives.

Therefore, I found it hard to "get" that Hal actually had the smarts to be deceitful. Despite this obvious slight of hand, the prominent focus of this film is the subject of lying and self deceit. His wife, Jasmine (Blanchett), is the cause of his fall from grace because she deceived herself by ignoring until she decided to call him out.

As Blanchett as the vehicle of the story, director and writer Woody Allen hopes you forgive the lack of background and gives you snippets of the past by having Jasmine zone out into an alternate reality to fill in the story. In much of the film, it works well enough, but in other aspects it doesn’t. Jasmine blames Hal for her current life of no money and no friends, while taking no responsibility for any of it herself.

Arriving at her sister Ginger’s (Sally Hawkins) in the semi-downtrodden neighborhood on South Van Ness in San Francisco, she is lost and wants to try to make something out of her life. The story is that she spent time in a mental hospital after being found talking to herself on the streets of New York City. The first lie she tells her sister is that she flew to SF in first class; the scene showing her in her seat we can easily see she wasn’t in the first class section at all. She cannot let go of the life she use to have.

Throughout the film we watch Jasmine fade in and out of past stories and her current reality. In the end we don't really know the truth of whether she was complicit in her husbands story or just didn't want to accept the truth as her reality.

For the most part Blanchett was very good and I also felt she was limited by the script. Baldwin wasn’t very believable as the master manipulator. Hopkins was superb. She was refreshing, alive and well suited to the role. Andrew Dice Clay, as Ginger’s former husband Augie, especially in his first scene, seemed like he was reading script and didn’t embody the character very well. Bobby Cannavale as Chili was very engaged in his character and was fun to watch. Allen wrote and directed this effort. The background was week and made believability of the story weak. He got some strong performances out of Cannavale, Blanchett and Hawkins.

Overall:  Not Allen’s best but not his worst either.

Blackfish

First Hit: Extremely powerful film about why we need to stop using animals, in this case Orcas, for our amusement and profit.

The story starts with a tragic event of Orca trainer Dawn Brancheau being killed by Tilikum an Orca in an Orlando, Florida Sea World show.

Tilikum had a history of being a little aggressive towards humans (out of frustration?) because of the constant attacks (scraping) he received from other female Orcas he was penned up with.

The film also notes that this frustration may have also derived from the life it had to live. One of the worst parts is that with a history of behavior no trainer knew of how how many times penned Orcas have attacked humans. 

An interesting additional note is that in the wild there are no reports of Orcas being aggressive towards humans. The film explores the possibility that Orcas have a unique and powerful social system, feelings, and are extremely intelligent.

The story of how captive Orcas are captured as small babies, ripped away from their mothers, and made to live in small pools of water is simply disastrous and heartbreaking. Many of the people featured in this film are former capturer’s of these mammals and trainers of the fluid black beauties and help to make this film come alive as their regret and shame for not seeing the truth earlier, drove the film’s point home.

Everyone thinking of going to a trained Orca or porpoise/dolphin show needs to see this film and then decide whether they want to promote this cruelty. A bit of information from the film that startled me:  Less than 1% of all wild and free male Orcas have a bent (flopped over) dorsal fin while almost 100% of captured male Orcas have this problem.

Gabriela Cowperthwaite and Eli B. Despres wrote this powerful exposing film while Cowperthwaite directed this perfectly. I also want to applaud the interviewees for sharing their truth.

Overall:  A must see.

Storm Surfers (3D)

First Hit:  Somewhat disappointed at the limited scope, and impressed at their ability to continue to push their bodies on those big waves.

For some reason, I thought the film would cover storm surfing around the world and not just around Australia.

For this reason I was disappointed because I think there are storm waves in different parts of the world that would have made the film more interesting (think Cortes Bank, Mavericks, and Ghost Tree).

This isn’t to take away from the storm waves Tom Carroll and Ross Clark-Jones surfed around their home continent. Tom and Ross have an interesting relationship.

They fight and respect each other in deep loving ways. They push each other to surf the big waves (via tow-in) at their ages of 45 and 49. Some of the waves they ride, or attempt to ride, are amazing and powerful.

Justin McMillan and Christopher Nelius directed the sequence and shots in spectacular ways.

Overall:  If you like surfing, you’ll like watching and listening to both Tom and Ross.