Our Idiot Brother

Directed by Jesse Peretz.

2011. Rated R, 96 minutes.

Cast:

Paul Rudd

Elizabeth Banks

Zooey Deschanel

Emily Mortimer

Hugh Dancy

Rashida Jones

Steve Coogan

Shirley Knight

Ned (Rudd) is a lovable man-child who has three sisters: Miranda (Banks), Natalie (Deschanel) and Liz (Mortimer). True to the movie’s title, he’s arrested within a few minutes of us meeting him for selling marijuana to a uniformed officer. Yes, he sells weed to a cop in uniform. Fast forward to the day he gets released from prison. Not only has his job as an organic farmer vanished, but his girl has replaced him with a guy who could be his clone and kicks him out of the house. She won’t even let him have the dog he absolutely adores. With nowhere else to go, he goes back to mom’s house. Due to circumstances and opportunity he then winds up spending a little time living with each of his sisters. He accidentally wreaks havoc on each of their lives mostly by not knowing when to shut up.

Calling Ned an idiot is putting it mildly. The same applies to calling this movie idiotic. He’s presented as a charming dunce who has apparently never met a stranger. People freely confide in him things they’ve never told anyone else despite only recently meeting him. He can’t help but regurgitate what he’s heard to anyone who bothers to ask. In addition, he accepts any explanation given to him for things he sees with his own eyes as if he’s a three year old. The film merely plays on these things by dropping him into a vicious cycle. He moves in with one of his sisters, repeats something he’s been told or talks about something he’s seen and that sister’s life goes spiraling out of control, not they had any control to begin with. The sister then kicks him out and it’s on to the next house to repeat the process.

Allegedly, Our Idiot Brother is a comedy. However, very little of it is funny. Instead, we just roll our eyes in disbelief at how stupid this man is, wonder if he has some undiagnosed disability. Slogging through the movie is made all the more tedious because we can easily tell what this is all leading to. In case you plan on seeing this I won’t come right out and say it. I will ask you this: what happens in every other movie where a mentally challenged individual is surrounded by self-centered, busy people who think he’s a burden? If you know the answer to this question you’ve no need to bother with Our Idiot Brother.

Cars 2

Directed by John Lasseter and Brad Lewis.

2011. Rated G, 106 minutes.
Cast:
Owen Wilson
Larry the Cable Guy
Michael Caine
Emily Mortimer
Eddie Izzard
John Turturro
Bonnie Hunt
Joe Mantegna
Peter Jacobson
Brent Musberger

The original Cars introduced us to Lightning McQueen (Wilson), a championship racecar who finds himself stuck in a small town. Before getting back to the big city, fame and glory he learns some homespun values, lessons about humility and makes some friends along the way. Most notably he gets the girl, Sally (Hunt) and becomes best buds with Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). It was okay. Overhyped and overrated, but it made goo-gobs of money. That there would be a sequel was inevitable so here we are.

Given the events of that first movie, it’s only logical that the second would follow McQueen as he continues his career in big time racing, but with his new found friends along for the ride. It sort of gives us this, but not really. The sequel is actually an international spy thriller starring Larry the Cable Guy and Michael Caine. Um…okaaaayy. I’ll give you the short version. Sir Miles Axelrod (Izzard) has developed an alternative fuel named Allinoll and is inviting all the fastest racers in the world to compete in a three race series using it. Someone is sabotaging these races mainly by killing off the competitors during the events. Hmmm…a little dark for a G-rated kiddie flick but I’m game. Anyhoot, it’s up to super sleuth Finn McMissile (Caine) and his sidekick Holly Shiftwell (Mortimer) to stop the madness. Yes, they accidentally involve Tow Mater, mistaking him for a fellow spy.

As with lots of sequels, this one does everything bigger. There is more racing, more action, more jokes, etc. Narratively, it doesn’t hold together as well as its predecessor. How can it? It’s trying to reconcile two incompatible storylines and subjugates the main character of the first movie to the lesser of them. On the other hand, it is simply more fun. Where the first lumbers along at a Romero zombie’s pace until it reaches its Aesop-like moral of the story, this one zips along from one action sequence to the next. True, it culminates in a quick commercial for bio-degradable fuel but it doesn’t lecture us about it.

Cars 2 is the rare instance where the action driven sequel is at least equal to, if not greater than the plot propelled original. The first time around I got the sense that the kids enjoyed the marketing campaign far more than the actual movie. The toys, video games, books and tons of other stuff were all huge hits. However, judging from my own kids, nephews and nieces included, I never felt like it was one of their favorites. This time, the opposite seems to be true. I haven’t seen a ton of Cars 2 merchandise floating around but the movie is more enjoyable.

MY SCORE: 6/10

Harry Brown

Directed by Daniel Barber.

2009. Rated R, 103 minutes.
Cast:
Michael Caine
Emily Mortimer
Charlie Creed-Miles
David Bradley
Ben Drew
Sean Harris
Iain Glen
Jack O’Connell

Harry Brown (Caine) is having a tough go of it. He spends his days at the side of his long-time wife’s hospital bed. She doesn’t even know he’s there. At night, he medicates himself with a few beers and a game of chess with Leonard (Bradley). Though Leonard is his only friend, it’s not the greatest company. Leonard spends most of their time together complaining about the young thugs that have overrun his neighborhood and his run-ins with them.

Shortly, Harry’s wife passes away and Leonard goes and gets himself killed. Harry copes by really getting sloshed. On the way home from the pub, Harry walks everywhere by the way, one of the hooligans Harry thinks was involved in Leonard’s murder tries to mug him at knife point. This apparently re-ignites whatever it is in Harry’s past he refuses to speak of on several occasions. Harry going vigilante ensues.

Obviously, two questions arise. First, will Harry be able to wipe out all the riff-raff in the hood? Second, will he be caught? Well, since the movie holds no real surprises in that area, the question then becomes how does the movie go about its business? The answer to that begins with the star, Michael Caine.

Caine has long been a brilliant actor. He doesn’t disappoint, here. His Harry is a weary old man with a dark past whose world is crumbling around him. On top of everything else gone wrong in his life, he has to take the long way around in his travels to avoid the knuckleheads. That’s how the role is written. The magic of Michael Caine is he makes us feel it. He’s perfect, as usual.

HB is also graphically violent, and for a short time sexually also, in a good way. It creates a hyper-realistic world that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to depicting who these people are. Neatly, it turns the trick of not having any of these moments fell like they’re just for effect. Of course, this brilliantly gives it an unsettling effect.

There are issues, though. First, and foremost, it’s formulaic. As I wrote earlier, there are no real surprises except for one out of left-field character development. The only big difference between this and any other vigilante movie is the age of our hero. That would be enough if it explored that angle better. Instead of us getting to know more about the mysterious old chap, particularly about his time in the Marines and how that has affected him, which it obviously has, his age is merely a plot device that plays into the action. It works for that purpose but isn’t as satisfying a factor as it should be. This plagues the entire movie. Things are brought up as if their depths are about to be plumbed, yet time and again the movie is content to skim the surface.

Overall, it’s a solid watch that Michael Caine makes better than it has any right to be. He’s worth the price of admission because he is so undeniably believable. He alone, is not enough to make HB anything more than decent. That’s because you’ve seen this movie before. Think of it as Death Wish for senior citizens.

Shutter Island

Directed by Martin Scorsese.
2009. Rated R, 138 minutes.
Cast:
Leonardo DiCaprio
Mark Ruffalo
Ben Kingsley
Max von Sydow
Jackie Earle Haley
Michelle Williams
Emily Mortimer
Patricia Clarkson
Ted Levine
John Carroll Lynch

It’s 1954 and federal agent Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) is sent to Shutter Island to investigate the escape of a patient from the mental institution. Actually, that’s redundant. The entire island basically serves as the mental institution. We learn that it’s where they keep the criminally insane. Though the faculty seems to want the issue resolved, they put up various walls of resistance. Our hero is having a hard time getting results.

Agent Daniels also has ulterior motives. It seems he’s had prior dealings with a mysteriously inconspicuous patient and is quite suspicious of what might really be going on in this remote location. He vows to his partner Chuck (Ruffalo) to get to the bottom of things.

As we follow the proceedings, we’re sucked in and wondering how our hero is going to save the day. We get hints along the way that saving the day may be impossible. We can eventually guess where this is all going. That’s normally a death knell. Here, it’s fine because it does something lesser movies don’t. It defiantly straddles the fence, not choosing either of the two possible outcomes it gives us. Neither is very pleasant. Yet, we still feel the need to decipher what we’ve seen, trying to extract the film’s truth. To be, or not to be really is the question. Supporters of both will have plenty of evidence to support their interpretation.

Once again teaming up with director Martin Scorsese, DiCaprio turns in another great performance. For Scorcese, it’s a departure from the norm. This is no gritty urban crime drama, but his storytelling is as effective as ever.

The drawback is that it runs too long. There is a scene in which the movie climaxes by giving us the two options to decide between. The next two or three minutes flesh out one of them. If the Coen Brothers had directed this, it would’ve ended right there, probably without those few minutes but abruptly stopping right when…I’ll let you see it. Scorcese drags it on too long after that, almost explaining too much.

“SI” is a top notch psychological thriller. It diminishes its own predictability with a heavy dose of ambiguity. It also plays with our heads by using lots of smoke and mirrors, but in a good way. This isn’t your uncle pulling a penny out of your ear, it’s a really slick sleight of hand David Blaine would be proud of.

The Opposite View: A.O. Scott, New York Times

What the Internet Says: 8.0/10 on imdb.com (7/16/10), 67% on rottentomatoes.com, 63/100 on metacritic.com

8.5/10