When it starts getting hot in the summer, you won't find me near a pool or on the beach. You'll find me in a dark theatre checking out whichever summer popcorn flicks look the most interesting or fun. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of superhero franchises, which cuts out a good portion of the Hollywood blockbuster fare, but I'm down for a few silly action comedies when the heat wave hits.
The Heat
Speaking of the heat, this lady buddy-cop comedy directed by Paul Feig and starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy was funny if not completely satisfying. The big gimmick in The Heat is that it's about two women cops--one an uptight FBI special agent (Bullock) and the other a slovenly, brassy Boston beat cop (McCarthy)--who are basically forced to work together despite their differences in order to take down a drug lord. These gals are about as far away from being sexual objects as Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are in the Rush Hour films, and let me tell you, it's goddamn refreshing. Paul Feig, who directed Bridesmaids in 2011, seems to be happy to put his money where his mouth is on being an ally of women in Hollywood. I love this man!
But despite its feminist credentials, The Heat is somewhat forgettable and by the book. There are some pretty hilarious scenes (McCarthy playing a game of Russian roulette with a bad guy's testicles, anyone?), but overall, the film is very formulaic. I'm glad I went to see it though, since I like to spend money on female-fronted movies, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a raunchy cop comedy to while away a few hours in the summer heat.
3.5 out of 5 stars
***
White House Down
White House Down is THE quintessential silly summer action movie, complete with jokes you can see coming a mile away and bad guys blowing up the White House. But if you can get past the eye-rolling lack of realism, it's a pretty freakin' fun movie!
Directed by Roland Emmerich, the same guy who brought you Independence Day and 2012, White House Down follows Secret Service hopeful John Cale (Channing Tatum) as he tours the White House with his daughter, Emily. When a mysterious explosion occurs, separating father from daughter, Cale has two missions: protect president James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) in order to prove his worth as a potential Secret Service agent, and save his daughter.
Believe it or not, this movie is over two hours long! You'd think they could wrap it up in a tight 90 minutes, but Emmerich wants to take his slow, fetishistic time destroying the White House, room by room.
White House Down is so over the top, it's downright entertaining. It's got everything: bad guys who can shoot everyone EXCEPT the hero, children in peril, an awesome president who's all like "Fuck you" you to the bad guys, Channing Tatum wearing less than a shirt the whole time, rocket launchers...I could go on.
I won't get into who the bad guys are and what they want, because I'd give too much away, but even that whole plot line is silly and outrageous. All I'll say is--if you see one RIDICULOUS action movie starring Channing Tatum in a wife beater this summer, make it White House Down.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Check out Tatum's massive guns.
***
The Bling Ring
You could say that Sophia Coppola's latest film captures the depths of shallowness. In a fame and material goods-obsessed culture, it's easy to understand how certain people, particularly young people, could believe that money, clothes, and celeb gossip are the most important things in life. Luckily, The Bling Ring doesn't devolve into a pat moral lesson about vanity and wealth. It removes all sympathy we have for the teens who made a hobby of robbing celebrities like Paris Hilton and Rachel Bilson, but it also removes all sympathy we have for the very celebrities being robbed. Instead of take from the rich and give to the poor, it's take from the rich and give to the rich--and no one will know, because the rich have so much tacky shit they'll never realize anything's missing!
Perhaps this is the reason I couldn't get into The Bling Ring. I know objectively that it's a good film, but it didn't really have a heart. The stakes seemed so low. Like the film's characters, The Bling Ring is beautiful and empty. I like Coppola's films, but I miss her earlier works--specifically The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. Those films had an emotional core that you could grasp on to. The Bling Ring was too slick and empty. Which may have been exactly the point.
3 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment