Time to clean out the stuff that I had seen, but didn't really write about. Here are three other films in major release that I just never got around to talking about.
The Change Up - Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman star in this crude (and proud of it) body swapping comedy where a pothead lothario (Reynolds) and a high strung family man (Bateman) have their wish to have each others lives come true after pissing in a magical fountain. The wish of course was totally facetious and brought on by too much booze, but both men realize that their jobs and lives both equally suck and that they are in need of a change. Director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) throws a whole lot of unnecessary bodily function jokes at the screen, but Reynolds and Bateman make the film work quite well. It's nice to see Bateman get to cut loose and play the Reynold possessed version of his character, and Reynolds once again shows his reliable comedic talents. The film doesn't have to try very hard to work, but a last minute stab at sincerity rings utterly false and comes in the shadow of a film that wasn't trying to be sincere for the first hour and a half.
Rating (out of five stars): ***
The Help - Without getting into arguments about how the film portrays and somehow celebrates white privilege and the art of racial and sexual subjugation (which is a longer and much more cyclical argument that I don't feel like rehashing on a Saturday afternoon), The Help is a passable bit of feel good pap that somewhat accurately portrays the lives of Mississippi women in the 1960s. Viola Davis and Jessica Chastain do great work eliciting sympathy and gravitas from archetypal characters, while Bryce Dallas Howard straddles the fine line between reality and going over the top as the film's most prominent racist. Emma Stone feels kind of wasted and left adrift as Skeeter, a budding journalist determined to make a grand statement about race relations as it pertains to working with "the help." In a way Stone is kind of a surrogate for writer/director Tate Taylor who is trying to make a statement in a heavy handed way, but it is a sentiment that has been done before that holds few surprises. It's not all that great and at nearly two and a half hours it is far too long, but the performances keep things moving along and earns a lot more good will than the film should probably have.
Rating (out of five stars): **1/2
The Whistleblower - Rachel Weisz gives a commanding performance as a former police officer on loan to a UN task force in Bosnia in the late 90s who uncovers a sex trafficking operation that implicates several of her superiors. In a summer of blockbusters aimed squarely at the teen crowd, it's nice to have a film come out that is aimed squarely at thinking adult audiences. Canadian director Larysa Kondracki has created a swift conspiracy thriller and a call to arms against a private contracting company that still gets work in peace keeping and security missions despite only caring about profits. Weisz heads up an incredibly stellar cast by giving a multilayered performance that can elicit comparisons to Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and Gene Hackman in The French Connection (even if the movie itself isn't on that level of excellence). Also standing out in the cast is Monica Bellucci as a bureaucrat who genuinely thinks she is helping the world by toeing a staid corporate line that hurts more than it helps. A conclusion that is somewhat more convoluted than it needs to be takes away from things slightly, but it doesn't take away from the fact that this is a really solid thriller.
Rating (out of five stars): ****
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