Snitch

If you're looking to see Snitch because you can't get enough of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's blend of electric charisma and unbridled machismo, you're destined to be sorely disappointed. Helmed by stuntman turned director Ric Roman Waugh, this is decidedly more father-son drama than action film, wasting Johnson's best assets and demanding he bring his acting ability to a new level. It just sets him up to fail.

Based on a true story, Snitch centers on John Matthews (Johnson), a successful business owner with a big house, loving family, bitter ex-wife and an estranged son named Jason (Rafi Gavron). But Matthews is deeply devoted to his boy, even when a stupid decision lands him in jail for drug charges that could earn Jason 10 years in prison. Seeking re-election, US Attorney Joanne Keeghan (Susan Sarandon) refuses to pull strings to get Matthews' son out of jail?unless he can snitch on a bigger dealer. So, Matthews steps into the world of hard drugs, hoping to find enough intel that he can spare his boy conviction.

This drama is earnest in its storytelling, but stumbles in its execution. Johnson is painfully miscast, playing a supposedly powerless everyman who must pose as a tough guy to win the trust of dangerous drug dealers. The costume department diligently attempts to play down Johnson's massive muscles with dress shirts, but it doesn't work. He still looks like a professional bodybuilder, which makes it laughable when he is beaten up with ease by a bunch of teen pushers. Worse yet, there are no fight scenes for Johnson to show his stuff in. There are action sequences?including a pretty intense one involving a high speed chase with loads of gunplay?but never any hand-to-hand combat, which means his trademark brawn is not just hidden, it's wasted.

Instead, Johnson is asked to rely on his acting chops?which let's be honest?is not his strongest skill set. He's a great screen presence; he's not a great actor. Scenes between him and Sarandon are actually hard to watch. The dialogue doesn't help, filled as it is with clunky and on-the-nose lines. But barred from being a badass, Johnson delivers his lines with dead eyes and a flat tone. In response, Sarandon goes into overdrive, chewing scenery to the point where?I admit?she won me over completely. It was bonkers, but at least she was entertaining.

There are also some strange structural issues. Nearly half of the movie is spent on an ex-con gone legit who Matthews bullies into getting him into the drug game. Played by The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal, the character is compelling but seems a distraction from the main plot line. The question of what would happen to this two-strike offender when Matthews brings in the DEA is ignored for most of the film, which is bizarre considering we meet the guy's entire family and get monologues about his attempts to start over. Similarly strange is Matthew's neglect of how his actions (dealing with deadly drug cartels to save his son from a previous marriage) will impact his new wife and young daughter.

Snitch is a movie that overreaches. Waugh, who co-wrote the script with Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road), doesn't seem ready for such straightforward drama. Johnson isn't prepared for a role this emotionally demanding, and really he is physically unsuited for the part of an underestimated everyman. There are amusing turns from Sarandon and Barry Pepper?as a DEA agent with the worst facial hair ever constructed?but even with Bernthal's soulful subplot, this drama lacks momentum and weight. The highlight of the film is definitely the final action sequence teased on its poster, where a semi truck careens around a highway, fending off gun-toting baddies. But there's not enough action for this feature to satisfy on that score. All muddled together, this makes for a movie that's sometimes crazy enough to work, but often bland.

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Dark Skies

There are times when I think that the horror genre is a club that?s slowly trying to exclude me because I?m not afraid of children. In the past six months I have reviewed three underwhelming horror movies that used creepy children to spook audiences, but with each one I was left pleading for studios to find another trope to run into the ground. Instead I get Dark Skies, or as I like to call it, ?Number Four.?

Unlike The Posession, Sinister and Mama, at the very least writer/director Scott Stewart?s new film trades demons and spirits for aliens, but doesn?t do much more than put a sci-fi twist on a plot device that has sincerely worn out its welcome. It?s not hard to see what the filmmaker was trying to do with the story; the problem is that it fails in execution.

The film stars Kerri Russell and Josh Hamilton as parents of two kids (Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett) who are dealing with the usual suburban family problems when they begin to experience strange events that could be the work of extraterrestrial forces. Of course, it?s the children that have the most direct contact with the otherworldly beings and come to harm as a result. To his credit, Stewart broaches on interesting themes and social conflicts, like innocent parents being suspected of abusing their children, but anything even remotely interesting is dragged down by the languid pace and overuse of clich?s. How many more times do I have to see a stoic youngster draw a crude crayon drawing of their spooky invisible friend?

Dark Skies isn?t a found footage film, but it uses a very similar story structure to the Paranormal Activity films and succeeds in being just as boring. Each night Russell?s character wakes from her sleep, walks around the house and discovers something weird. The next day they deal with the weirdness, call the proper authorities, and try and figure out what?s going wrong while the youngest son acts strange and talks about the Sandman visiting him at night. This pattern is repeated multiple times with each night escalating the situation and therefore the drama between family members. It doesn?t take long to see the structure and it gets old fast.

Slow as it may be, the film shows some flashes of subtlety. While Stewart has a long background in visual effects he keeps them to a minimum here, taking the Jaws approach and understands that sometimes less is more. The film does occasionally take a heavier-handed approach to scares, such as scenes where small birds suicide bomb the family?s home and Russell gets put into a trance and bashes her head against a sliding glass door (which comes across as absurd more than frightening), but sometimes you have to appreciate convention being bent when it?s not being broken.

In the film?s second act the parents go to visit an alien expert played by J.K. Simmons who proceeds to give them a test to see if they are legitimately experiencing extraterrestrial contact. As he reads off the list of strange events and the parents begin to nod and share worried expressions you begin to realize that this was the same list that the writer/director got his hands on before writing the script and used it to structure the film. But while Dark Skies may live up to ?Believer? codes, that doesn?t make it an entertaining time at the cinema.

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Escape From Planet Earth

It?s one thing for a movie to have weaknesses. Even the better films released every year have some flaws, or at least a few areas that could use improvement. The problem with Escape From Planet Earth is that it doesn?t have one single strength to counteract any of those weaknesses. Every single facet of the film is at best, slightly below average and at worst, downright terrible.

The characters are poorly conceived stereotypes that lack depth. The animation is not bad but still below recent standards set by DreamWorks and Pixar. The jokes are mostly obvious, base level gags that will seem too foolish and immature for any child above the age of four that?s ever been described as ?advanced? or ?accelerated?. The song choices are misguided and occasionally even uncomfortably disconnected from the action. And the plot, well, multiple paragraphs need to be devoted to that lunacy.

The basic premise follows two brothers named Gary Supernova (Rob Corddry) and Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser). The former is an inventor and proud employee of the Mission Control Department of planet Baab. The later is an astronaut and arguably, the most famous member of the blue species. Together, they partner to save babies and fight the more malevolent alien races, but after a falling out, Scorch winds up imprisoned on Earth by the evil General Shanker (William Shatner), and it?s up to the normally reserved and office-bound Gary to save the day.

Along the way, Gary meets both aliens and human beings, but more importantly for viewers, he also meets that aforementioned story arc that doesn?t stand up to scrutiny or even a basic level of common sense. Anyone paying attention will be left with dozens of unanswered questions that director Cal Brunker doesn?t even bother attempting to answer. For the hell of it: let me throw out a couple of questions I?m still wondering about.

How is a fired employee able to steal a large spacecraft from a secure facility? Why is General Shanker allowed to make universe-altering decisions without anyone informing the President or anyone else in government? How do so many different aliens from so many different races land next to desolate 7-11s that it?s a running joke? Why does Ricky Gervais? OnStar knockoff sometimes have agency and sometimes behave like he?s powerless to counteract orders? Why? Why? Why? There are no good answers.

You know how great children?s movies work on two different levels in order to entertain both kids and adults? You know how mediocre children?s movies work on one level to entertain kids? Escape From Planet Earth doesn?t work on any level, and even worse, it doesn?t seem bothered by that failure. It?s as if every single person involved thinks children are so stupid that they don?t deserve entertainment with any effort behind it. It?s as if someone thought, ?They?re kids? so, who gives a damn?? In short, kids do. They do give a damn, and there?s a reason why they?ll rewatch The Lion King until they?re blue in the face and immediately forget this waste of time even exists.

As we speak, people involved in this production are currently in court arguing over who should get the profits or lack thereof from this movie. Well, let me save the court some time. No one should profit from this movie. No one. Not one single person. If there is any money left over, which there shouldn?t be, it should be burned because not even a charity should see a piece of this blood money. Everything about this movie sucks. It's so boring and listless that I can?t believe so many talented people were a part of it.

If you?re looking for something to do with your kids this weekend, take them to the park. There?s nothing for you or them to see here except frustration.

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Side Effects

Side Effects is set in New York City, but it barely looks like it. Steven Soderbergh, acting as always as his own cinematographer, makes the city look colder and more modern than ever, putting his characters in front of anonymous glass buildings and generic streets, robbing the city of its character and warmth at every turn. It's a brutally effective choice for what he claims is his final theatrical release, a twisty and surprisingly sexy thriller that, despite its heat, is actually about how cold and disconnected the world can be.

The film, written by Soderbergh's frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns, is being sold as a tense drama about evil pharmaceutical companies and the beautiful young woman Emily (Rooney Mara) who becomes their victim, but that's barely the beginning of it. To talk about much about how Catherine Zeta-Jones, playing Emily's former psychiatrist Dr. Siebert, fits into the story would be spoiling too much. It even hard to talk about Channing Tatum, who plays Emily's white collar criminal husband newly released from jail, and whose gentle goodness Soderbergh once again brings out beautifully, but with sinister results.

Hopefully it's not unfair to reveal that Jude Law, not Mara, is the true star of the film, playing the psychiatrist she turns to when she falls into depression after her husband's return. He prescribes her the drug Ablixa for what seem like the right reasons, but it's not hard to see the factors that might lead him astray-- fancy lunch meetings with drug reps, offers of cash from pharmaceutical companies who want his seal of approval, and a wife (Vinessa Shaw) and kid who need his support. When the Ablixa causes some tragic, uh, side effects for Emily, Law's Dr. Banks seems like a well-meaning guy blindsided by a bad drug? but, again, like those shiny corporate surfaces on New York City skyscrapers, what's beneath it is a whole lot more complicated.

After stellar supporting work in Anna Karenina and Soderbergh's own Contagion, Law slips marvelously into the main role here, a would-be hero of his own story who is also, clearly, unraveling. He's well-matched by Mara, whose implacable stillness makes her seem quiet and enigmatic, until it's too late to recognize what was actually happening. The story that surrounds the two of them is more of a mixed bag. It is satisfying to watch Soderbergh tighten the screw on the audience, leading us in one direction then dropping us off a cliff, sliding in new character motivations and backstory at finely tuned moments. But where the story goes isn't necessarily as satisfying as where you thought it would, and though the film still leaves room for some pretty scathing commentary on the pharmaceutical industry, it's ultimately more about the tingling thrills than a larger social purpose. It didn't have to be Traffic, but it could have used a bit more heft to fill in the gaps.

If Soderbergh is indeed retiring, this will be his swan song in the movie theaters, and a not entirely inappropriate one-- the crisp digital cinematography, fine performances and air of cynicism about the modern world are perfectly Soderberghian. But it's more of a clean shot down the middle than one of Soderbergh's wild curveballs, like The Informant! or Magic Mike, that make him great. In the end it might be the upcoming HBO film Behind the Candelabra, a Liberace biopic, that is the best way to Soderbergh fans to say goodbye to this iconoclastic, irreplaceable filmmaker.

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Identity Thief

Shitting in a sink is a tough act to follow.

Melissa McCarthy may have logged hours on Gilmore Girls and Mike & Molly, but her star broached the stratosphere the moment she soiled a posh, cream-white dressing room in Paul Feig?s irreverent Bridesmaids. That scene-stealing performance earned McCarthy two chances this year to convince audiences she?s capable of carrying oneleg of a harmless buddy comedy (the next being Feig's The Heat). So far, though, the gifted comedian?s only being asked to recycle the obnoxious, uncouth and inappropriate persona that she already milked for laughs.

If you weren?t paying attention to the credits, Identity Thief could be mistaken for the latest Todd Phillips comedy. Whether that?s an endorsement or a warning depends on your tastes.

McCarthy plays Diana, an unseemly Floridian con artist who ? in the opening scene ? dupes her mark into sharing his vital statistics (name, date of birth, credit card number) over the phone. That would be Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Jason Bateman) a mild-mannered Denver accountant with a gorgeous wife (Amanda Peet), two precocious kids, and a selfish boss (Jon Favreau) who is screwing him at every turn.

Sandy?s thrown a lifeline by an entrepreneurial colleague (John Cho) starting his own company. Better salary. A vice president?s title. It all sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately, before Sandy can move in to the corner office, he?s told that his credit scores are in the toilet and he?s wanted in the Sunshine State for skipping a mandatory court date. His identity has been stolen.

Proper authorities would attempt to assist Patterson at this point. But because Identity Thief was plotted by Craig Mazin ? whose screenwriting credits include two Scary Movie sequels, two Hangover sequels and Superhero Movie -- we instead plunge headlong into the improbable and flail around in search of broad comedy.

Sandy convinces his employers to give him one week to lure Diana back to Denver. He cooks up an elaborate sting operation that will trick the diminutive crook into confessing her crimes. Apparently flying from Florida isn?t an option (because a deceptive identity thief like Diana supposedly doesn?t have false credentials that will get her on an airplane), so Mazin and director Seth Gordon do their best impersonation of Due Date, putting polar opposites behind the wheel for a series of ludicrous, violent and demeaning pit stops.

McCarthy and Bateman riff on variations of the established snob-and-slob personalities. Twenty years ago, this vehicle would have been shaped around Chris Farley and David Spade. The pair does find ways to make the inevitable odd-couple clich? click, though. Thief works best when its leads can dance around whatever silly situation Mazin hands them, be it a motel tryst with an amorous cowboy (Modern Family?s Eric Stonestreet) or the film?s purest blast of guilt-free comedy involving Bateman and a six-foot-long snake.

For whatever reason, though, Thief keeps slowing down to introduce new characters through subplots that ultimately add little to the mix. Comedy might be the only genre that can be done in by too much plot. Do we really need Genesis Rodriguez and hip-hop artist T.I. as gangsters looking to kill Diana because she scammed them with bogus credit cards? No. They answer to Paolo (the great Jonathan Banks), a Godfather-type mob boss who pulls strings from his prison cell in a series of scenes that likely beefed up a subplot that landed on the cutting room floor. Speaking of, that?s where Gordon should have left Robert Patrick?s contributions as Skiptracer, a bounty hunter also assigned to capturing Diana. Remove any ? or all ? of these characters from the mix and you?re left with a blessedly shorter version of basically the same movie.

Identity Thief isn?t odious. It?s just predictable. Lazy comedies cast the overweight McCarthy as the bullish deadbeat and the conservative Bateman as the buttoned-down bean counter. Gordon could have helped his film establish its own identity by having his talented leads switch characters. Make Bateman ditch his uptight comedic crutch to play a low-life criminal dirt bag. Gamble on McCarthy as the respectable female executive who?s victimized by a con. The gifted comedian has to start playing against type in big-screen comedies if she wants to be remembered as anything other than that heavy-set woman who crapped herself in a Kristen Wiig comedy.

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