Now You See Me 2 Review

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. It is genuinely perplexing that the studio did not opt to name this film Now You Don’t. That may seem like a petty gripe at first, but in fact, it represents a great deal about what could go wrong here. Now You See Me was a surprise hit back in 2013, a fizzy slice of counter-programming that proved to be a bit more crafty than the more traditional blockbusters it played against. However, it also very much seemed like a one-off, performing its tricks and getting out before the audience started to see the strings. This creates something of an obligatory air upon entering Now You See Me 2. Sure we’ve got some fresh blood with Jon M. Chu taking over the director’s chair, and Lizzy Caplan replacing Isla Fischer but everybody else seems to be here merely because there was an ‘In Case We Get Lucky’ clause in their contract. After all, what kind of creativity can you really expect when they can’t even bother to name the thing Now You Don’t?

The story picks up roughly a year after the thieving magicians known as The Four Horsemen ripped off millions of dollars from billionaire Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) whilst showering the bills onto their fans. Now, Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Meritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) have found themselves in hiding. Their leader, FBI mole Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) attempts to cover their tracks while still planning their next great score. When that opportunity comes, along with new team member Lula (Lizzy Caplan), the Horsemen find themselves biting off a bit more than they can chew. Transported to China and forced to work under the thumb of billionaire Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe), the horseman must steal a piece of software that can hack into any computer or phone in the world.

For a movie that is all about waiting for big reveals, Now You See Me 2 shows us exactly what it is fairly early on. From the borderline laughable “Previously on Now You See Me” opening narration provided by a recently dragged out of bed Morgan Freeman, to its’ cooky opening sting, the film plays like a cartoon series adaptation of the original film. Fortunately, Chu is very aware of this shift into complete absurdity and allows the whole film to be in on the joke. Whereas the previous film was at least trying to have the audience take its borderline superhuman wizards seriously, this one simply lets us go for a ride with them, and not worry so much about where we’re ultimately headed. It may make for a lesser screenplay, but almost by accident, it has created a much more entertaining final product.

Chu, who has dabbled in the blockbuster game before with GI Joe: Retaliation, has finally found the perfect fit for his kinetic style. The action sequences here are jam-packed with quick escapes, and optical illusions and Chu’s constantly moving camera give the proceedings a constant sense of motion. While this may sound like an overblown approach on paper, Chu, for the most part, keeps the set-pieces in the perfect sweet spot between chaotic and character driven. In fact, the film’s best set-piece is more of a magical game of hot potato, with the horsemen attempting to keep a playing card with important software out of enemy hands. It’s suspenseful, beautifully shot, and above all allows the cast to have fun and not just be props in an explosion factory.

In fact, what ultimately holds this movie together is the wonderful chemistry between its stars. A major problem with the first film was in its lack of focus on The Horsemen themselves, seemingly more interested in what was going on around them. Here, we really get a feeling for who these people are, and get to see them bond as a family. You’ve got Eisenberg’s icy, arrogant wit, Franco’s pretty boy charm, Caplan for the sillier jokes, and Harrelson to seem utterly bewildered by it all. In fact, props must go to the latter two in particular. Caplan makes some truly terribly written “I’m not like other girls” shtick charming through sheer delivery, while Harrelson gets an expanded part in a way that is so cartoonish, that it doubles back in on itself and works. Radcliffe also has fun as the spoiled daddy’s boy but is also a bit underused considering his previous pedigree with magic. However, the fun does take a serious dip when we do cut away from our gang to Ruffalo and Freeman, who spend the majority of the film together. They’re given all of the same awful dialogue that everybody else is, but don’t really attempt to spin it into anything fun. They’re here to collect a check, and good on them, but it does expand the run-time of what could have really benefitted from being a leaner film.

Now You See Me 2 is about as clever as the uncle at Thanksgiving who’s still doing card tricks, and it knows that. There are no pretensions here about being anything other than a blast of dumb-fun, and frankly, it shows a whole lot of other “dumb fun” movies this summer how it’s done. Jon Chu keeps things humming along with charming characters, gleefully off the wall action scenes, and a winking sense of self-awareness that helps get through even the worst bits of Ed Solomon’s awful screenplay. It’s not a film for folks who want to poke holes in every facet of its silly little act. It is a movie for those who just want to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

It’s a proper summer movie. Finally.

Rating: B

Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice Review

There are a lot of things I’ve come to expect from Batman V Superman over the course of the three years it has taken to arrive, but something I never counted on was it keeping me up at night. Describing exactly what Zack Snyder and company have created here has proved elusive since I left the theater. I’m positive that it isn’t the horn blaring, ass kicking redemption film needed after the painfully dry Man of Steel started the DC Universe off with a whimper, but it’s not exactly a failure either. In fact, through sheer crazed ambition that would make Lex Luthor blush, what we have here is actually something of a disturbing art installation that just so happens to have DC characters in it. It’s the Twin Peaks of the superhero genre, and while that turns out to be just as much of a cataclysmic mess as it sounds, there’s a lot of fascination to be found here.

The story finds Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) devastated by the destruction caused by the battle between Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod (Michael Shannon) in Metropolis. Ever since, Batman has been hunting for a way to combat what he sees as an immanent threat, while the human race struggles to decide if they want to accept this alien warrior into their society. Meanwhile, the devious Lex Luthor Jr. (Jesse Eisenberg) is not only also hell bent on overthrowing this Godlike figure by pitting our two heroes against each other, but is looking for a way to weaponize Kryptonian technology for his own gain.

Even in it’s worst moments, Dawn of Justice really is unlike any superhero movie we’ve seen before. Sure, there are some fairly typical tropes in the plot itself, but the way that Zack Snyder has chosen to execute them ranges from brilliant, to baffling on a moment by moment basis. At it’s best, the film does a fantastic job of examining the psychology of it’s characters and world. There’s a challenging morality play running through this story, as all of the characters cope in different ways with the notion of having a god among them. Some are in awe, some are scared, and some are violent, and we see every single shade. In fact, the film often takes such a grounded and somber tone that some of the violence is genuinely devastating, with hellish imagery that is beautifully captured by Snyder. However, on a dime, things will get really melodramatic and silly, especially in the third act which forgoes all of the interesting content the story has in favor of essentially turning into a trailer for Justice League. These tonal shifts will often occur as quickly as every other scene, with choppy editing sometimes making it feel like a bunch of fan films strung together into a big mess.

This is some dense material, but most of the cast proves to be up for the challenge, even if most of the characters come off fairly uneasy. Ben Affleck finds himself with a great deal of heavy lifting to do here, needing to make us both emphasize with, and fear his world weary, short tempered Bruce Wayne. He pulls it off in spades, giving us both the scariest Batman and smoothest Wayne we’ve seen on screen so far. However, he does this perhaps a little too well. As the film starts to delve into deeper reaches of his tortured mind, we start to see that this is a man who slipped into the void long before the movie started. Since we’re denied both the journey and really any explanation as to what happened to make him this way, he comes off a bit cold and alienating. Superman isn’t really much to root for either. Henry Cavill is still having a hard time bringing us into the soul of Clark Kent, and although all the characters seem to have an emotional connection to Superman, there has yet to be a compelling reason for us to do the same.

However, the piece that keeps every arc moving is Eisenberg’s wickedly gonzo take on Lex Luthor. While it’s easy to see this performance as a bit over the top, what the Social Network star has actually done is create a character that is both a tribute to, and reinvention of the classic villain. Since replacing Lex Luthor is such an impossible task, the film brings us a scared kid who is also desperately trying to live up to that very image (that of his father). While he possesses the cunning intelligence of that man, there is something off kilter about him, and Eisenberg goes all in on giving this strange, confused young man the social ticks and awkwardness that would come with this position. He’s not a villian just yet, he’s an insane child with a lot of money desperately trying to be a villain. Meanwhile, Jeremy Irons shines as a much more sardonic Alfred than we’ve become accustomed to, and Gal Gadot’s brief stint as Wonder Woman exudes pure presence, boding well for her solo act.

While Snyder excels at creating a moody, uncomfortable atmosphere, he falls a bit short in the action department. Sure, there are a couple fun sequences with Batfleck doing his thing, but when it comes time for our main heroes to throw down the ensuing fight is deeply anticlimactic. There’s no sense of weight, or choreography to it. It’s just a slow, short, brawl between two CGI men, that leads to an even bigger mess afterwards. Much has been made of Snyder’s decision to shove Doomsday into this film, and boy howdy, does his appearance lead to one of the most boring and wasteful action sequences in quite some time. At this point, any intrigue built up in the opening acts is over, and it’s time to play with action figures.

Batman V Superman is a film determined to convince you that two of the world’s most popular superheroes are in fact not heroes at all. In attempting that strange mission, it tries to juggle about six movies in one, and only about three of them work. While Snyder and company have absolutely improved on Man of Steel here, they’ve made quite a mess in doing so. At one moment haunting and thought provoking, and the next trite and bombastic, the film is a franchise launcher shows you such great potential before spraying sour juice in your mouth. There are certain decisions made here that are downright narratively wasteful, but if Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman both end up working, and the returning creative team takes a more confident approach next time, perhaps Justice can still dawn after all.

Rating: C+ 

American Ultra Review

American Ultra is the kind of movie that makes you re-consider going back to the theater at all, or at least for a little while. A ludicrous and insulting misfire that inspires wonder of how people of any talent level at all could become involved with it to begin with. It’s not that encountering this kind of film is particularly surprising in the dull-drums of mid August and early September, where studios will often dump their lamest material in an attempt to stall until Oscar season. The surprising part is exactly how cringe inducingly unpleasant this stoner “comedy” turned out to be.  Perhaps it’s my fault for even trying to see a movie right now at all. I should know better.

We open inside a sleepy little town with young stoner couple Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) and Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) lovingly wasting their lives away. Mike, who suffers from anxiety so extreme that he cannot even leave town, is struggling to find the right moment to propose to Phoebe before she wises up and leaves him. However, those plans find themselves in need of further hold when Mike finds himself in grave danger. After hearing a mysterious group of code words from a mysterious woman named Victoria (Connie Britton) at the convenience store he works at, Mike finds himself being hunted by assassins, and to his utter shock, he is able to fight back to brutally fatal effect. It turns out that the young low-life is actually a government asset of some sort. Yuppie CIA agent Adrian Yates (Topher Grace) will stop at nothing to eliminate Mike, while Victoria will do the same to protect him.

This is a movie that wants to be a bunch different things over the course of its brief ninety minutes. Thrown into this rusty old blender we have stoner adventure, romantic comedy, spy thriller,  and mental illness drama. That’s right. For as much as the marketing behind American Ultra would like to fool people into thinking that it’s just a slightly more hot and heavy version of Pineapple Express,  the movie reveals itself to be a fairly depressing portrait of just how insane anxiety can drive a person. There aren’t even many attempts at jokes for the first twenty minutes or so. It’s just a simple and sad story about a guy who has his girlfriend trapped in a rut as she tries to accept it. While one might think this strange tone would make the spy elements seem welcome when they do arrive, it’s actually quite the opposite. All of the action/comedy elements here are so absurd and cartoonish, it seems like they warped in from a different movie entirely. What Chronicle scribe Max Landis’ screenplay ultimately becomes is an exercise akin to having two completely different films on at the exact same time, with the loud action movie constantly screeching over the quiet drama.

The movie’s one shining asset is Jesse Eisenberg. Fresh off of one of his very best performances in The End Of The Tour, our new Lex Luthor swerves into yet another gear to show us further depths to his talent. While he’s certainly portrayed anxious characters before, it’s never gone as far as it has here, and Eisenberg makes each word out of his mouth seem more painful for Mike to utter than the last. In fact, one of the reasons the film is so constantly depressing is because Eisenberg sells it so well, making his great performance something of a double edged sword. Meanwhile, the other performers simply aren’t up to snuff. While Stewart has certainly enjoyed some lovably off kilter chemistry with Eisenberg in Adventureland, their previous collaboration, it seems a bit more forced here. It’s certainly not completely gone, but just never fully materializes. Certainly not helping matters is a second act twist involving her character that is so insulting that it’s nearly ‘walk out’ worthy, which she does not sell at all. Manning the CIA, Grace makes for a generic and rather annoying villain with next to nothing written to fuel him other than pure snobbery, and Britton’s character is so generic she sometimes seems completely invisible on screen.

I wouldn’t exactly peg the director of Project X as a future action director, and it turns out that Nima Nourizadeh has in fact found himself greatly out of his depth. What we have here is a Scott Pilgrim esque senario, with an actor who cannot do his own action sequences needing to partake in some fairly exaggerated and brutal fight scenes. While someone of Edgar Wright’s talent can certainly make that work, Nourizadeh falls completely apart. So much of the combat here is just shaky cam silliness, with a few drops of blood to remind us just how brutal what we’re watching is. It feels so fake, that they might as well just pause the action to let Eisenberg’s stunt double walk into position. Even when the direction improves a tad in the film’s final battle in a hardware store, the sequence is so derivative of last year’s ‘The Equalizer’ that it remains just as laughable.

For every second of it’s run-time, American Ultra is simply hard to watch. A hodgepodge of different elements that could have perhaps worked with a bit of style, but are instead brought to the screen as limply as possible. While Eisenberg’s performance does provide the slightest hook to latch onto, by the time the credits roll that hook will have snapped off the wall.  I wager the only reason that this is even in theaters at all is because of the talent involved, and the need to have something to dump into this horrible time to be a film fan. Don’t find yourself burning at the end of this dud blunt.

Rating: D-

The End Of The Tour Review

There are a couple of great discoveries one can make in a biopic. The first, is a historical figure that previously was just a name in a hurricane of other names of apparently important people who proves to be far more interesting than expected. The second, is an actor who seems to be backed in a corner of generic roles finally given a chance to expand and melt into a deeper character, proving themselves completely. In watching The End Of The Tour, not only did I make both, but I got the privilege of seeing what is by far the year’s most heartfelt and moving film thus far.

David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) is a journalist for Rolling Stone looking for a worthwhile story that expands beyond fluff pieces on boy bands. When he stumbles upon David Foster Wallace’s (Jason Segal) one thousand page epic ‘Infinite Jest’, a great fascination with the man grows, and David lobbies for an interview with the author. He ends up finding himself on the last leg of Wallace’s book tour, and in his subject finds a man who not only serves as an inspiration for his own writing, but a chess partner for some of the deepest and darkest conversations he’s ever had.

The End Of The Tour is essentially a film about two very intelligent and deeply scared people talking, and that play-like structure can very easily feel nauseating and pretentious in lesser hands. Fortunately, we have two fantastic performers who bare their souls here. Jason Segal has spent that majority of his career coasting on his lovably schlubby persona, but here, he uses exactly that to disarm us through a man who while deeply intelligent, is absolutely terrified by social interaction. Sure he’s kind, funny, and deeply insightful, but there is a layer of self-doubt churning through every word out of his mouth. Segal so honestly portrays this type of personality, I started to reflect on people in my own life who are similar to this character, and the way I’ve often cynically approached them to a fault, which brings me to Eisenberg, who does his richest work since ‘The Social Network’ here. Although Lipsky greatly admires Wallace, he also suspects that some of his anxiety and self doubt might be a little phony given the sheer confidence it takes to release a thousand page book, and Eisenberg juggles these conflicting emotions with his signature humor and punchy delivery. He doesn’t get to show off quite as much range as Segal, but we do get to see a great deal of gears turning as he tries to get a read on this strangely smaller than life figure.

James Ponsoldt’s direction and Donald Margulies’ screenplay work perfectly in-tandem to create a conversational and emotional atmosphere. The writing manages to never feel like the points of view of the writer being reflected through characters. The conversations are always completely organic to who these people are, and that honesty keeps the film from feeling like it’s just talking at the audience for it’s two hours. Meanwhile, a lot of directors would be tempted to fill a story like this with visual metaphors and other flourishes to make the movie as literary as it’s subject, but Ponsoldt is very keen on keeping things as rotted in humanity as possible. While there a great many scenes in the film, they are mostly focused on these two guys talking, and by not cramping the space with obnoxious choices, both actors get to breathe, perform, and resonate like crazy.

It’s difficult to review The End Of The Tour simply because what makes it so fantastic are not the major flourishes that would hold it accountable to said review. The beauty here is in just how amazing these performers are, and the sadness and complexity within what they have to say to each other. Segal in particular gives the richest portrayal of loneliness even in company that I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time, and this performance absolutely must garner him some attention come awards season. It’s a brutally honest piece of film-making that may even make it’s audience reflect on it’s own insecurities. Under the right circumstances, this film may even save a life by making somebody with similar demons feel less alone, and if that isn’t film-making worthy of the highest recommendation, nothing is.

Rating: A+