by George Wolf
Sex Tape
With two kids, a job and a blog to handle, Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel) have almost forgotten what it’s like to spend some quality time alone, so they decide to over-correct that situation by making their own sex tape. You know, kind of spice things up, put some pizzazz back into their marriage.
As seems to be the case generally, the sex tape turns out to be a bad idea, and the next thing you know, they are trying to retrieve the footage before it goes viral.
Segel and regular writing collaborator Nicholas Stoller penned this ode to poor decision making with Kate Angelo (The Back-up Plan), and among them they can’t decide on a reasonable tone any more effectively than they can muster enough jokes to keep 98 minutes of comedy afloat.
Director Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard) wants badly for the film to simultaneously be a raunchy comedy and hip-but-earnest love story – an unusual combination so perfectly realized earlier this year with the Stoller-helmed Neighbors. But where Neighbors burst with inspired visuals, unexpected comedic chemistry, generous writing and frenetic humor, Sex Tape just sits there, flaccid.
The pace is leaden, the laughs scarce and scattered. The film’s prevailing, toothless humor leaves writers and actors alike falling back on foul language whenever they lack an actual punchline.
Though Segel and Diaz – both comedic talents – make an effort, they are forced to work too hard to create momentum. Their relationship – the love, the squabbles, the tension over the tape mix up – rings false, giving the comedy no grounding.
Potentially interesting characters pop up and vanish, though the diversion is sorely needed. Worse still, in the one supporting character with any screen time, reliably hilarious Rob Corddry is hamstrung in a best friend role allowed only a single, weakly recurring gag.
Rob Lowe flails, though valiantly, with an over-the-top character that never meshes with the film’s internal reality and feels like part of a set of tacked on bits from another film entirely.
A pretty big disappointment, given the talent in front of and behind the camera.
The Purge: Anarchy
In case anyone didn’t catch last year’s not-so-subtle message in The Purge, writer/director James DeMonaco is back with The Purge: Anarchy, this time wielding his class warfare sermon like a blunt instrument.
DeMonaco’s original premise – an American society that celebrates a yearly night of complete lawlessness – remains a solid one. And while the first chapter borrowed heavily from from various films (as does Anarchy), it offered enough visual style to offset the lack of nuance in the presentation.
Following the usual playbook for a sequel, it’s more of everything in round two.
The sirens that signal the start of the purge sound quickly, and we focus in on a group of five citizens who are out after dark for very different reasons. A mother and daughter (Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul) are being hunted, a young couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) are on the run after suspicious car trouble, and one lone badass (Frank Grillo) is armed to the teeth with revenge on his mind.
DeMonaco again demonstrates his flair with a camera, offering several striking images of what the purge hath wrought – a bloody young woman’s desperate gaze or a flaming semi passing quickly in the background. Too often, though, his direction becomes obvious, muting any effect from a sudden scare or even a cloying red herring.
His script is worse, hammering home the plutocracy theme again and again until it is preached via a “bad guy to wounded guy” speech for the benefit of any audience members with a taste for Scooby-Dooings.
That’s not to imply DeMonaco’s grievances aren’t valid, they are, and there might even be a solid film buried in here somewhere, but success of The Purge lingers as a doubled-edge sword.
The path DeMonaco takes for Anarchy may seem the logical one, but it flirts with camp so often you wonder how much better it might have been with an outright satirical approach a la God Bless America.
By the time the morning sun brings this latest purge to a close, what began as a decent B-movie horror show becomes a sad imitation of The Running Man.
Coherence
As a writer, James Ward Byrkit has made a name in family films (Rango, Pirates of the Caribbean), but he saved his savviest and most adult work for his debut as a director. Coherence is a lean, intimate SciFi mindbender.
Coherence combines a bit of Inception with the underseen dark comedy It’s a Disaster! A group of friends meets for a low maintenance dinner party, which turns out to be a little more fraught with drama than expected – and that’s before the comet flying overhead knocks out power.
Confused that this outage also affects their cell phones and internet, the group decides to visit the one house on the block with power, only to find a dinner party for 8 shockingly familiar faces.
The nimble (mostly improvised) story remains fresh and surprisingly coherent, even as partygoers delve into theories, cross theories, and hair-brained theoretical musings on multiple realities. Byrkit allows us to grapple with our own disbelief by focusing on his befuddled guests’ incredulity as they attempt to puzzle out the reality (or realities?) of their situation.
And by keeping the focus close – zeroing in more and more on one guest’s evolving perception of events and potential actions – Byrkit develops a sense of intimacy that provides a solid foundation for all the astrophysical nuttiness.
As the dinner guests, the impressive cast portrays the kind of familiarity that breeds drama. Their pre-comet situation feels so familiar and honest that dread settles in even before the lights go out. From there, Byrkit ratchets up tensions with little more than his own ingenuity and the commitment of his cast.
The film is as economical as they come: limited sets, no real FX, no action sequences to speak of. It joins the likes of Under the Skin, Primer and Safety Not Guaranteed in the world impeccable no-frills SciFi.
It isn’t quite at that level, and yet, it’s among the more effective SciFi thrillers to come out this summer. Yes, Snowpiercer and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are more likely to wow you, but the internal logic, fascinating choices and chilling conclusion to Coherence will leave you with just as much to think about.
Beyond the Edge
There’s a good chance you already know Sir Edmund Hillary was one of the first two men to reach the top of Mt. Everest. You may also know the other man was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Maybe you’ve seen Hillary’s famous photo of Norgay at the very top of the world.
Even after all these years, there’s more to their story, and the new documentary Beyond the Edge provides plenty of thrilling reasons to revisit the adventure.
No doubt, one of those reasons is 3D technology. Let’s be honest, if you’re looking for an excuse to play with the extra dimension, footage of Mt. Everest is a pretty damn good one.
Writer/director Leanne Pooley mixes deft reenactments with stirring archival footage and audio interviews, effectively pulling us into the launch of John Hunt’s Everest expedition in the spring of 1953.
The thirty three year old Hillary, a beekeeper and avid climber from New Zealand, was part of Hunt’s team, as was Norgay, an experienced and respected Nepalese mountaineer. Pooley lays the basic facts out clearly, and then slowly builds the drama as fate conspires to give the two men the chance to make history.
I’ve been fascinated by Mt. Everest for years and I’ve read many books on its climbing history, and the film still provided a fresh perspective. The 3D perspective is indeed a treat, but it’s the human drama of Beyond the Edge that still inspires.
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