Monumentally stupid, ridiculously unfunny and devoid of any redeeming value, Mortdecai is quite possibly the worst comedy ever made. There may be worse, but I take a great joy in not having seen them. I have, however, seen Mortdecai and it is terrible.

Four of my favorite actors: Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and Paul Bettany manage to take a horrible plot and story elements and, with great skill and dexterity, make them even worse. Not to be too harsh, but I think a good horse whipping is clearly in order.

I cannot express enough my extreme disappointment in Johny Depp. With a goofy accent, foppish eccentricities and a cowardly aspect he manages to destroy any hope of Mortdecai, his character, being engaging. He is as close to an opposite of Captain Jack Sparrow as possible. For an actor famous in his quirky roles Depp simply flopped.

Paltrow is Johanna Mortdecai, as always, beautiful, charming and clever, but even she does nothing to elevate this worst of all films. Her character is stuck in a one joke loop with Depp and her flirting with McGregor’s Police Inspector Martland is bland.

Paul Bettany is Jock, Mortdecai’s manservant and stuck in the same type of one joke loop as Paltrow: he gets shot, stabbed and run over in place of his boss over and over again to no point.  Unfortunately Jock plays the fool. The fool that gives his loyalty to Mortdecai, a cowardly, sniveling wretch who’s only positive characteristic is that he’s not too dishonest.

Perhaps this story works as a novel but it fails horribly as a movie. Far better to have been written as the Pink Panther hero: Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers)-heroic, but clumsy. Clouseau at least has some strong positive traits. There is no trait to Mortdecai that makes him worthy, either of Jock’s respect or Johanna’s love.

The cast and creators of this reprehensible piece of work should be turned over to Seth Rogen and James Franco for six months as punishment. The inane conversation and constant dope smoking could, at the least, do no harm. And their movie, The Interview, was watchable.

Please, I beg of you…be prepared before you see this movie. Perhaps get plastered or loaded before seeing this movie. At least have a  large bottle of stout wine by your side. This movie is so bad it deserves never to be seen sober or straight.

Rating: 0 stars out of 5

Verdict: * * * ½ – –

What happens when you cross a group of big, bad, bearded egotistical men running an international prostitution ring with arrogant smiles on their faces and bigger guns than body parts… with one man who has a good heart, a hidden history, lots of patience, love for good people and skills that rival some superheroes?

Pretty much what you think happens.

Ever since Glory, Denzel has been the grounding force in every movie he’s starred in, no matter what character he plays. Good guy, bad guy, guy down on his luck… when you see Denzel, you know everything’s going to be alright.

The Equalizer is no exception. And once again the talented direction of Antoine Fuqua takes what may appear to be a simple story and squeezes the most amazing detail from it from the opening scene to closing credits. Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is a simple man, patient with an undercurrent of fathomless sorrow, who takes OCD to the next level. One day, he witnesses a heinous assault happening to a Russian-owned prostitute he just met named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz). Teri is at the end of her rope, daring to dream but knowing those dreams will never come true. Then she’s put in the hospital by her Russian pimp and Robert can no longer look the other way.

There are times when a bad thing happens and you can’t ignore it, and you get restless knowing what you have to do. What follows are sleepless nights making the decision to do the right thing or to look the other way. For some, looking the other way is the only way to survive. But for very few, there is no decision… there’s only response. Especially if they’re the only person who can do anything about it.

You are what you are and this world brings to you what you are meant to deal with, and so Robert wanders through his extraordinarily organized life working in a hardware store and straightens things up around him. This is what any mild mannered superhero does. And yet Robert doesn’t really know it, he’s just doing what he feels is right. So I would consider this a superhero movie. Lives are saved, renewed, helped along the way by someone who is able to help against extraordinary odds, yet remains hidden in the shadows as if he didn’t even exist.

The Equalizer is a superhero movie for regular folks, for those who live in inner city areas and are just trying to do the right thing. Once in a while, a superhero appears and helps out quietly, then lets you live your life the way you were meant to. Superheroes appear where you least expect them to, and save the world one person at a time.

Right now, I’m willing to bet you, yes you reading this post, are a superhero to someone. You may not know it yet, you’ve just been doing what you thought was right. That, my friend, is how we change the world! One person at a time.

Monumentally stupid and yet quite funny, The Interview stars Seth Rogen and James Franco. James Franco is Dave Skylark, the Jerry Springer-like star of a gotcha style tabloid show and Rogen is Aaron Rapaport, his producer/sidekick. Rapaport is fed up with the slimy, low class style of the show and is bent on leaving for hard hitting journalism. He is ripe for a change.

When Skylark discovers that North Korean President Kim Jong Un (Randall Park), is a big fan, he approaches Rapaport to propose interviewing the leader. When the communist dictator happily agrees, the CIA approaches them with a brilliant idea: lets have the idiots assassinate him. Since Skylark is a notorious lecher they send in a rather exposed CIA operative, Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan), to literally titillate him into complying. He succumbs and we have a movie.

Surprisingly, The Interview is quite funny and wonderfully reminiscent. Watching Interview is like finally seeing the sequel to Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd‘s Spies Like Us. I only wish they’d added a scene with the two Saturday Night Live superstars to add a cherry to the otherwise tasty idiocy.

The chemistry between the guys, Franco and Rogen, is classic and they’re like a marijuana hazed, and modern, version of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: great friends, but we’re always waiting for “another fine mess.” There is definitely love between the two in this classic comic bromance and I love it.

With all of the silliness it’s surprising that the directors, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, worked so hard to make Kim Jong Un and Agent Lacey such good characters. Much of the credit goes to Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan of course. Park brought a wonderful crazed humanity to his role and when he switches from loveable to insane, it’s startling. He was endearing as the good guy and scary as the bad one.

Caplan too was quite good. She brought a weird charm to her role as a recruiter for assassination. She could have phoned this one in and gotten away with it, but instead made a little magic. She was strangely likeable even in the strangest roles. I’ve liked her since her quirky True Blood and New Girl characters and would love to see her bring a little of that oddness to romantic comedy.

The Interview is, by no means, a brilliant break out comedy, but it is fun to watch with some rather good characters working hard to make the film fun. Congratulations to Sony for following through and making this movie so easy to access. You can find this one everywhere on the internet, but checkout out The Interview Website.

Rating: 3 Stars out of 5 and no reason to see it at the theater.

Verdict: * 1/2 – – –

Okay, so… I’m as much a believer in the afterlife and near death experiences as the next spiritual person. My daughter is also, being a chip off the ol’ block and she has been begging me to rent this one for her for weeks. It being a PG-13, I figured it was not an issue, even when it heavily deals with the concept of death and what happens afterwards. Her mother and I passed on it, not really interested because we’re not really into young adult flicks, so she watched it on our laptop. But then we noticed after she watched it that she was really passive. If you know our daughter, you know that the word passive isn’t even in her thesaurus app, so this was a strange new experience for us. She didn’t eat much at dinner and for for the entire rest of the evening and next morning, she was completely bummed out.

So I figured I’d check this movie out myself the next day, to try and find out what about it that ruined her evening so maybe I could help bring her back from her depression. I hit play and was immediately hit with a normal family doing normal family things. Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz), the teenage daughter of the family and the movie’s lead actress begins the story with an ominous voice over that pretty much explained why I felt like setting something on fire by the time the end credits rolled. She said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.

Okay, that makes sense to me. Depressing, but that makes sense. She is a concert cellist who meets local rocker Adam (Jamie Blackley) and they totally dig on each other. The cello is her absolute passion. Rock and roll is his. They get together somehow, but their different lifestyles totally don’t click. Somehow, they keep forcing this romance on us when every teenager I have ever met would have called it quits after the first date. Every time they looked at each other, I reminisced about the time I was drawn and quartered, then dragged over broken glass by watching the romantic scene between Padme and Annakin in Star Wars: Ep 3.

The one saving grace about this flick was the characterization of Mia’s parents (cheerily played by Mireille Enos and Joshua Leonard). These two are a blast in every single scene they chewed up and spit out and I found myself laughing out loud in some places just from their dialogue alone! It’s really too bad there are so few scenes because <BAM!> she and her entire family are in a car wreck on a snowy road outside of town and Mia finds herself standing barefoot in the afterlife next to her broken body.

[Alert! Alert! Spoilers Ahead! AaOooooooGah! AaOooooooGah!]

If you would like to remain completely surprised, read no further! You’ve been warned! Don’t worry though, I won’t give away anything really important and you probably won’t care anyway once you watch it. Just sayin’.

This entire flick is basically Mia’s life flashing before her eyes. One hour and forty six minutes of near death experienceness. Her entire family is dead and there are some relative (literally) tear-jerkerishly, rip-your-guts-out moments in some places. But for the most part I got kind of bored with the flashback scenes that focused almost entirely on Mia spending about a year and a half during high school with Adam, accompanied by subtle acoustic soundtracks like Ben Howard’s Promise, and watching her parents just be normal (albeit out-of-place hilarious) parents.

If Mia had lived a crazier life, if she’d operated somewhat in-the-moment instead of planning everything… heck, if she’d even had a friggin’ sense of humor, it might have been more entertaining. But as it was, her completely normal, vanilla flavored teenage life was completely normal and vanilla flavored and I found myself drifting off about a third of the way through it. Especially because I’m the father of an admittedly crazier, never-plans-anything, totally-lives-in-the-moment daughter with an incredible sense of humor.

The fact is, Mia was actually getting annoying about halfway through it. Mia is (was) all about herself. Everyone tried to make her happy in life. Her parents tried to give her everything she wanted but she moped about life not being fair. Adam, despite his hard upbringing and the pain he has gone through, was the nicest guy and totally went out of his way to do things she wanted to do while trying to succeed with the band, but she moped about how different their lives were. When Adam got signed to a record label, she was miffed that he was at a celebration party and moped that he didn’t pay more attention to her. When she auditioned for Juilliard and totally knocked it out of the park, he told her they should celebrate and she moped, asking him why he never wrote a song about her.

Eesh. High maintenance much? I was actually hoping this romance of theirs would just end so we could get back to the point of the story. The more exciting parts of the movie are when her spirit is running around the hospital screaming about how much she wants her old mopey life back. And just when you think Yes! She’s finally going to let it go and just pass on and she’s about to walk down that tunnel of light… something pulls her back and here comes another relentless flashback. Gah!

By this time, I wanted to tear my own eyes out and pour lighter fluid over them. When the credits rolled I was literally gritting my teeth, rocking back and forth in a fetal position and I didn’t even hit Stop on the remote. I just ejected the DVD and snapped it angrily back into the case. 

Oh my God. I don’t say this too often, but this is literally an hour and forty six minutes I will never get back and when my own life flashes before my eyes after I pass on, I just hope I can fast forward through this part of it!

Just a side note… before I even get started… Jason Bateman has always looked like a kid to me. Always, even if he’s about five years older than I am. I love the kindness in his eyes, the innocent youth that is always there. I have always enjoyed this guy on screen and look forward to many more movies with him in it. I just needed to get that out of the way.

Oh! Another side note… A huge HighFiveDownLowTooSlow to Doug and the gang here at Movie Madness for allowing me to blather all over this site about movies and a giant thank you to you <yes, you!> for intensely examining casually reading somewhat scanning vaguely thumbing my reviews and editorials here! I love you more than you can possibly know. No seriously, look out your window. That’s me across the street in the van.

Okay, where was I? Oh yes, we were talking about a review here, weren’t we? Sorry. I love family get togethers. In real life and in the movies. Love them! I have literally fallen in love with movies that have this idea in mind. I love seeing siblings reluctantly fly in from all over the world, usually meeting up at their parents’ upper class New England home during Fall or Christmas, to be there for a particular reason they all must address. Usually it’s for the funeral of a family member, which is ironic but also gives the story a strong thread to keep it on track until the credits roll.

Strong memories of past laughter and pain mixing with different personalities and experiences, all the siblings’ spouses meeting each other (some for the first time), getting to know each other, hearing the stories, sharing the love and communing in fellowship with the interesting brothers and sisters who share the same name. It’s always fun for me to mix these ingredients up and see what comes out of the oven.

Movies like this can be hard to make. There have been some horrible movies made this way. The Family Stone was so far off the mark, that I figured this genre of stories was finally over and I lost all hope in family movies for Hollywood these days, but no. Along comes TIWILY and I’ve fallen in love all over again.

Judd Altman (Jason Bateman) loves his wife, Quinn. He just doesn’t really pay much attention, when suddenly he finds out she’s cheating on him. The look in his eyes broke my heart, ripped it all to pieces and threw it out a plate glass window into traffic. It hit so hard and so fast that I hardly had time to recover before his sister Wendy (Tina Fey) calls him in tears and tells him that, <Bam!> their dad is dead.

Something happened to me that hasn’t happened before: I found myself actually crying before the opening credits even splashed across the screen in a movie. Never happened before.

You read that right. This all happens before you even see what movie this is! This is not a spoiler alert because it doesn’t spoil anything. The movie hasn’t even started yet! Fortunately, it being Jason Bateman and Tina Fey, they somehow take these tragedies and twist them with laughs and, this time, something happens to me that hasn’t happened in a long time: I’m laughing while I’m crying!

Okay, now the opening credits roll. I wiped my eyes, still giggling.

The long and the short of it is that the family’s Dad had a final request before dying that all his children hold a seven day “Sit Shiva” <~ Gotta be careful saying that one! And so, all the brothers and sisters who really don’t have much in common and haven’t spoken in years get together and have to deal with each other, all while dealing with the complications that they have forged for themselves in life.

I won’t give anything else away, because after the first seven minutes (in which I had already determined this movie is being added to my DVD shelf) the movie really takes off. This is one of the most disfunctional families I have ever seen, and yet, they remind me of every family with multiple brothers and sisters that I’ve ever met. It’s amazing how down to earth this story is, and how well those who read the scripts bring it to life.

Love shows both its sides in this story, the darker side and the lighter side. The love of a family and the love of others around it supporting them and you feel it’s such a safe place to be because you know that this family is always there for each other, accepting each other’s limits and pushing each other’s boundaries as only brothers and sisters can. You see the best and worst in people throughout these seven days, you laugh, you cry and in the end you are completely smitten.

As family friend Penny (Rose Byrne) says to Judd when he talks about the complications in his life: “Cut yourself some slack. Anything can happen. Anything happens all the time.”

I very much agree.

My Dad and I went to see this at the theater primarily because it was Robin William’s last live-action film . His last movie,Absolutely Anything, in 2015 will only feature his voice. I enjoyed the first one ,still haven’t seen the second one but didn’t ever feel like they were must own dvds.. With this one I do! There are celebrity cameos that very pleasant surprises, and Rebel Wilson has a delightful role as the British Museum’s Night Guard and she flirts with Ben Stiller by saying I could have been a supermodel if only I didn’t love pizza so much !

The new character of Lancelot  is really well played by Dan Stevens, and there are some great sight gags! The museum director, played by Ricky Gervais, is always fun and he should have a bigger part. There was a planned spinoff of the Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan  characters but this idea was scrapped with Robin Williams death. The movie is dedicated to both him and Mickey Rooney, who also died earlier this year at grand old age of 93

The whole audience was laughing a lot and it is a great popcorn movie for all ages, Not going to win any awards but is perfect for a holiday weekend when you just want to relax and giggle!  I give it 4 out 5 !

The first shot of the movie shows a man at his most vulnerable and we quickly learn why. He desperately wants to be respected as an actor ,not just asked  Didn’t you used to be Birdman?  This is perfect casting as  Keaton’s most iconic role was Batman 20 years ago and his roles have decreased as he got older. Riggan Thomson is  directing and starring in a play by Raymond Carver that could get respect from the critics if he could just get a great lead actor. An  incident on the set  sends the current lead to the hospital and he says why can’t we get Woody Harrelson or Michael Fassbender?  They are in hot projects . A difficult but excellent actor Mike Shiner is suggested by lead actress (Naomi Watts)  This actor is perfectly cast as Edward Norton has a reputation of being brilliant but demanding and being fired from being a superhero (the Incredible Hulk)  it is hate at first sight for these two, but the tickets all sell out the opening night is a full house, so there is no way his stage manager  (Zach Galifinakis ) will fire him. He was the biggest surprise , playing completely against type , and the most sensible one in the cast.

His adorable,cool, bored assistant is also his daughter played by a blonde Emma Stone. She and Norton have sizzling chemistry in a couple scenes.

Both preview nights go wrong but  a bad night when Keaton gets locked out of the theater ends up with him streaking through a crowd  with very  little clothes desperately trying to get back in and going viral on Twitter! He got the fame he wanted,even if it was in a humiliating way!

This movie is totally unpredictable, a blast from beginning to end, a satire of both actors, and the theatre world. This movie is not for everyone , it has strong language and is a black comedy  and I was surprised to see 3 guys get up and walk out 20 minutes into the movie! I think if they had stayed 20 more minutes they would have liked it better.

I do hope it wins a few of the 7 Golden Globes it has been nominated for and I give it 3.5 out of 5 .I would like to see Keaton in a lot more roles.

I like to say if you see me it’s the worst day of your life! -Lou Bloom

Jake  Gyllenhaal is Lou Bloom, a driven man desperate for money who wants more from life than  just stealing items like chained up bikes and selling them to pawnshops. He tries to get hired at places that he sells hot merchandise yet but is snarled at in contempt ” I’m not hiring a thief!”

He stumbles into a  carjacking one night in LA  and sees how fast the paparazzi arrive on the scene, even faster than the cops  and overhears  Bill Paxton on the phone selling a single shot for 300! He asks him if he’s hiring and he says no but he realizes he could work for himself if he just had a decent camcorder and police scanner.

He gets his first graphic footage and sells it to news director  Nina (Rene Russo) at a low rated station she is impressed at how close he got and says bring us more urban crime whenever you can

He takes that a little too literally and will do anything to get the first scoop! this is a movie  with not a wasted moment . It is  sad just  how news has stooped to  showing  graphic stories for shock value and ratings  “if it bleeds it leads” Really makes you see paparazzi in an even more unflattering light  and shows just  how  immoral ethically  news media has become , as we also saw in Gone Girl.

Jake physically transformed himself by losing 30 pounds and his eyes look so haunting when combined with his piercing gaze. His performance here is reminiscent of  Edward Norton’s breakout performance in Primal Fear where you never know what to expect from moment to moment  good side or psychopathic side who ALWAYS gets what he wants. He also wins Worst Boss of the year award from me. I do think it would be a crime if he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar next year!  4.5 out of 5

This epic 3 hour motion picture was by far the most emotional of all that Nolan has directed! This is a real family movie as well, there is something for everyone in the family. There is  action and special effects for the men and kids, and there is a strong father -daughter love story that will tug at the ladies heartstrings! I know it did with mine! There is also very little strong language so its suitable for 8 to 80 years of age..The supervillain in this movie is climate change! The world is now  a  21st century dust bowl,with no crops growing , except corn,and lots of kids with horrible coughs getting lung disease! I hope our future isn’t that depressing!

I think the McConaissance is still going strong, Matthew  has a great cast to work with and he is not playing himself at all! Not once did he say his signature catchphrase but that was probably because  nothing was going the way it should!  Anne Hathaway had a great chemistry with him and Jessica Chastain as  Matthew’s (Coop) daughter (Murph). It was amusing to hear the reason why she was named after Murphy’s Law!  I love how she gives 110 % to every role I see an Oscar in her future! The always excellent  Michael Caine is the NASA science professor and  Hathaway’s (Dr Brand) father who is also a scientist

The movie is a cross between Inception and Gravity but I liked it much better than either! I loved how the characters have a backstory .

I am happy to announce the movie was the first 3 hour movie I didn’t have to leave to go to the washroom! For the last half hour I just crossed my legs! That shows you how intense the action was,When walking out I laughed when I heard a couple say  3 hours! Holy Crap ! it didn’t feel that long.

I still like the Dark Knight Trilogy better but this is a masterpiece  and I rate it 4/5