Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim - Dir. Guillermo Del Toro (2013)

"Today, we face the monsters that are at our door. Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse!"

Robots vs. monsters, is there anything else you need to know? For those of you who grew up watching Voltron and Robotech, Pacific Rim is the movie you imagined in a fever dream while playing with your action figures.

In the near future, a dimensional rift has opened up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean allowing enormous creatures known as 'kaiju' to invade our world. To fight these monsters, humanity banded together and built massive robotic suits they called 'jaegers.' The jaegers are so enormous that they must be piloted by two individuals connected to a neural bridge referred to as 'the drift.' Jaeger pilots are treated like rock stars and two of the best are Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) and Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam). A disastrous battle between their Jaeger, Gipsy Danger, and a kaiju near the Arctic Circle costs Yancy his life and leaves Raleigh a broken man.

Five years later, the United Nations attempts to shut down the jaeger program in favor of building giant walls around their coastal cities. When that plan fails miserably, jaeger commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) recruits a reluctant Raleigh back into the suit and pairs him up with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who lost her parents as a young girl to a kaiju rampage.

It's clear from the get-go that director Guillermo Del Toro has been dying to cut loose after spending years on projects (The Hobbit, At the Mountains of Madness) that never came to fruition. With Pacific Rim, Del Toro merges his unique vision with his love of anime (Neon Genesis Evangelion is an obvious influence) and Toho monster flicks to create one of the best summer blockbusters in recent years. His direction isn't without flaws. The visuals are muddled by setting most of the action at night and underwater. The climax is particularly troubling because the final kaijus look extremely similar and they aren't any more menacing than the ones seen before. However, when Del Toro turns it on, he goes for broke. The best sequence in Pacific Rim is the near-20 minute battle set against the neon glow of a Blade Runner-esque Hong Kong. Another triumph for Del Toro is the enthralling and heartbreaking flashback in which a terrified Mako is left alone in a decimated Tokyo as a kaiju roars overhead. Pacific Rim shines in IMAX 3D. No, the 3D doesn't improve anything, but the screen size and enhanced surround sound are perfect for the metallic mayhem.

The screenplay by Del Toro and Travis Beacham never drops itself to the willfully lowbrow levels of Michael Bay's Transformers franchise. Pacific Rim might paint its characters in the broadest strokes possible, but there's nary a homophobic or misogynistic bone in its body. What Del Toro and Beacham have done best is the world building that only hints at the rich history behind it. Take for example the character of Hannibal Chau (played eccentrically by Ron Perlman), a black market dealer in kaiju organs. Apparently, bone powder from an extra-dimensional beast is a cure for erectile dysfunction. Chau's headquarters in Hong Kong appear to have been built around a fallen kaiju's skeleton.

Charlie Hunnam doesn't exactly light up the screen in the lead role, but he does a fair job and gets assistance from a game supporting cast. He has some good scenes with Rinko Kikuchi while Del Toro and Beacham never allow the two to fall into the clichéd romance. Idris Elba plays the hardass drill sergeant we've seen countless times before, but he does it pretty damn well. His St. Crispin's speech will undoubtedly be heavily quoted. Stealing the show are Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as a pair of diametrically opposed kaiju scientists. Day is brash and high-strung while Gorman looks and acts like a latter-day Jeffrey Combs.

Pacific Rim is Saturday morning cartoon brought to life. A pure fanboy fantasy that blasts the rest of the summer slate right in the face with a robot rocket punch.

Rating: *** (*****)

Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses - Dir. Seth Gordon (2011)

This summer has been the season for raunchy comedies. The Hangover Part II is one of the highest grossing films of the year, despite a severe critical lashing. Bridesmaids is in the top ten for domestic grosses and received far more critical praise. The summer has also yielded Bad Teacher, the upcoming body switch laugher The Change-Up, and the workplace comedy Horrible Bosses.

Horrible Bosses plays into the dark fantasies we've all had about gaining a measure of revenge against an abusive supervisor. It also touches upon the frustrations that have been cultivated by the turbulent economic climate. However, don't expect a sharp treatise that handles those themes with a wry intelligence. Horrible Bosses earns its R rating by being a silly and profane comedy.

Jason Bateman is Nick Hendricks, a white-collar worker at a financial firm under the tyrannical reign of Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey). Harken represents the worst aspects of the corporate world. He dangles and denies a vital promotion to Nick, then laughs about his dead grandmother. Jason Sudeikis is Kurt Buckman, an account manager for a chemical company. Unlike his buddies, Kurt actually loves his job probably because he works for kindly Donald Sutherland. Unfortunately, the old man dies of a heart attack leaving the company in the hands of his odious sleazebag son. Not Kiefer, but Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell sporting a beer belly and a comb-over). Bobby plans on running his dad's legacy into the ground to feed his appetite for cocaine and hookers. Finally, there's Dale Arbus, a chaste dental assistant, who suffers from daily sexual harassment from his nymphomaniac boss, Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston).

All three buddies have their reasons for not simply quitting their jobs. Harken promises to blackball Nick from the industry should be leave. Kurt doesn't want to see Bobby destroy the company. Dr. Julia has taken pictures of herself molesting an unconscious Dale and threatens to show them to his fiancée (Lindsay Sloane). Poor Dale is also a registered sex offender, the reasons for which are too funny to spoil.

After reaching their breaking point, the protagonists decide to kill their bosses. Of course, none of them have any clue about how to do that. Kurt comes up with the harebrained scheme of going into a bar in East L.A. and ask around. They meet an ex-con named Dean "Motherfucker" Jones (Jamie Foxx), who agrees to be their murder consultant.

Anybody who has ever watched an episode of CSI will figure out their plans aren't likely to be successful. What follows is a farcical series of events as these frat pack Three Stooges fumble their way through their half-assed murder plots. It is the interactions between the leads that sells Horrible Bosses. None of the main actors are doing anything new. Bateman reprises the role of the exasperated everyman he has portrayed since his comeback on Arrested Development. Sudeikis is doing his horndog shtick though Horrible Bosses is a better showcase for his comedic skills than the Farrelly Brothers' inert Hall Pass. Meanwhile, Day is basically reprising his role from FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Day also provides some of the funniest moments of the movie from his manic motions after accidentally breathing in Bobby's coke stash to singing the Ting Ting's "That's Not My Name" while alone in a car.

Day's performance also saves his particular subplot, which might be the most tenuous of them all. Let's face it, Aniston's perpetually horny cougar is the dream boss for any heterosexual male. But, Day imbues Dale with a dim-witted naiveté that makes it somewhat believable for him to be offended by Julia's advances. For Aniston, this is a drastic departure from her usual girl-next-door roles. It's not exactly the most nuanced character or the most politically correct, but she plays it with gusto. To no one's surprise, Kevin Spacey turns in a solid performance as an asshole boss, a return to his Buddy Ackerman from Swimming with Sharks with a dash of John Williamson from Glengarry Glen Ross. Colin Farrell is sadly short-changed in screen time. He is wonderfully over-the-top.

The film is competently directed by Seth Gordon, who made his debut with the excellent documentary King of Kong. He has since turned into a director of slick Hollywood comedies.

Horrible Bosses is a safe, mainstream Hollywood picture masquerading as an edgy black comedy. The characters are cartoonish and the plot moves ahead through a series of sitcom contrivances. But, it's entertaining and humorous enough to warrant at least a rental.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)

Going the Distance

Going the Distance - Dir. Nanette Burstein (2010)

Is there a genre more asinine than the modern romantic comedy? I don't have anything against the rom-com in general; I just have an aversion to the copious amounts of crap churned out by studio execs and filmmakers who seem to construct from a stock set of elements. Going the Distance attempts to change up the staid formula while still incorporating frequent clichés with an Apatow-style sense of lowbrow humor.

Justin Long is Garrett, a low-level talent scout for a rinky dink record label in New York City. He's just been dumped by his girlfriend (Leighton Meester) and decides to go out on the town with his buddies Box (Jason Sudeikis) and Dan (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Charlie Day). He meets Erin (Drew Barrymore), an aspiring journalist, over a game of Centipede. She wants to keep the relationship light because she's only in the city temporarily as a summer intern for the fictional New York Sentinel. However, Garrett doesn’t want to end things so quickly even after Erin has takes a job in San Francisco. The young lovers attempt to make it work long distance via text messages, Skype, and a very awkward session of phone sex. The usual insecurities and frustrations begin creeping in to threaten their relationship.

Going the Distance is the first produced script by Geoff LaTulippe who wrote it after learning of producer Dave Neustadter's own long distance relationship. LaTulippe tries to address the poor economy with Erin and Garrett unable to scrap the funds to fly out to see each other while working in dying industries. The film also marks the first narrative picture from documentarian Nanette Burstein who directed The Kid Stays in the Picture and American Teen. For the most part, Burstein's direction is perfectly pedestrian though it didn't need to be anything more. Some shots during a dating montage do have a documentary feel turning the audience into mere observers.

Some think that real-life couples don't translate well to the screen, but Long and Barrymore have good chemistry together. Both play characters that are merely extensions of themselves and their previous characters, Long as the wise-cracking geek and Barrymore as the free-spirit. Christina Applegate brings the funny as Erin's overprotective sister with the understated and dry wit of Jim Gaffigan as her husband.

At the very least, Going the Distance avoids the usual contrivances that come up as setbacks. One's uptight, one's spontaneous. How will it ever work out? Yet, the movie is still cluttered with the ubiquitous detritus that comes with your average romantic comedy. There's the obligatory airport scene where the man rushes through the terminal to catch his lady love although, this one takes place at the end of the first act rather than the climax. Sudeikis and Day fulfill the roles of the protagonist's wacky best friends. The humor fails to elicit anything as slight as a chuckle or a smirk. There's a labored slapstick sequence involving Long at a tanning salon, a gag that was already done on Friends years ago. The film gets worse with a scene where Applegate picks pubic hair off her dining room table after a late-night session of sex by Erin & Garrett. Just when you think they couldn't sink any lower, here comes the Hitler joke.

Going the Distance is leaps and bounds above god-awful atrocities like The Ugly Truth and Did You Hear About the Morgans? thanks to a pair of likeable leads. But, it fails to place them in anything that is remotely interesting or humorous.

Rating: * ½