COP CAR

Kevin Bacon     Shea Whigham     James Freedson-Jackson     Hays Wellford

                                                                           Cop Car

           Cop Car is an unexpected little thriller that keeps you guessing throughout.  Written (with Christopher D. Ford) and directed by Jon Watts, it stars Kevin Bacon as the cop, and he is one of the producers.  Travis (Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Wellford) look like they are about 10 years old and have run away from home when they come upon the sheriff’s car out on the countryside.  They hide from whoever might be around for a bit, then get enough nerve to run up and touch it.  No one seems to be around, so they get in and start fooling around and pretending they are cops.  As they get braver, they explore what’s in the car and begin driving it (with only the Super Mario videogames as previous experience.

           In the meantime, the sheriff comes back for his car only to be dumbfounded at its absence.  Much of the suspense and thrill of the story has to do with why he is out there in the first place and how he will devise a way to get his car back—he is not in uniform and has left all his equipment in the missing car.  His conversations with the dispatch officer are clever in their disguise of the basic problem and his maneuverings to get his car back.

           The boys have a great time at first, driving the car over the hills and then at higher speeds on the highway.  When they get bored, they stop and explore the car further.  That’s when they find guns, a bullet-proof vest and a huge surprise in the trunk.  My only problem with the film is that present-day 10 year-olds are so much savvier about cars, guns, and electronics than these two.  With a little more creativity, the writers could have found ways for them to get into as much trouble without straining credibility. 

           The drama has clever twists with additional characters that enrich its appeal and tension, such as a woman on the highway who has to figure out what to do when she thinks she has spotted two kids driving a sheriff’s car on the highway. 

           The experienced, talented Kevin Bacon easily plays the role of the sheriff facing major dilemmas.  The two child actors are as natural as they should be, and adeptly show terror and concern when that need arises.  Realistically, one is a little wiser than the other, who offers common sense at first, but easily gives in to dares from the other.  One of the additional characters simply listed as “Man” is played very effectively by Whigham, who had a major role in the television drama, “Boardwalk Empire.” 

           A couple of good lessons contained in the film are 1) that private citizens should be cautious about their involvement in catching perpetrators—leave it to the police; and 2) that children should be taught at a fairly early age about how to handle guns, the risks of taking things that don’t belong to them, and what to do and not do in emergency situations that arise (such as how to get in touch with those who can help).  The film could be used for good teaching moments, but only if parents are comfortable with their children seeing an R-rated film.

A joy ride turns out to be life threatening for two young boys.

Grade:  C+                        By Donna R. Copeland

SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE

      Writers/directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzak are masters at storytelling—even with no dialog to speak of!  Shaun the Sheep plays on the numerous connotations of sheep (being easily led, counting sheep to go to sleep, and fluffy wool, for instance) for chuckles.  But the theme running through this feature is weighty, such as how boring life can be following strict schedules and staying in one’s own backyard (farm) and never venturing out.  Going to the big city holds excitement, adventure, and new encounters, but with countless risks, especially for animals.  Yet, the ultimate message is that such experiences change us for the better.

      Through a series of unfortunate events that come about as a result of boredom, the farmer of the sheep, cow, and pigs of the story disappears into the Big City, and the sheep follow the shepherd dog there to find him.  Because of how he was transported to the city, the farmer is suffering memory loss, and the dog and sheep encounter the nasty Animal Containment officer.  Many trials and tribulations follow, with the farmer not recognizing his farm animals, and the animals being incarcerated.  No fear, though, they are masters of disguise (“Beware a wolf in sheep’s clothing”—or sheep in human clothing, as is the case here).

      I was impressed with how many very young children in the theater got the jokes in this production or asked pertinent questions about it.  Yes, there was the usual pandering to young children—farts, excrement, burps, exposed backsides (once in red!)—by the filmmakers, which they always laughed at, but the children in the audience also seemed to get the sense of the story in terms of real cruelty or danger.  I hope they also got the message about the natural beauty of nature and its fragility.

      For the adults, there is a sequence in which the farmer becomes a popular hairdresser of a style that has gone viral on social media.  The “do” is a tuft of fluffy sheep wool on top of guys’ heads.  There are also puns in business signs, and a scene in the animal containment center where the animals are sprucing up their appearance when prospective adopters enter the building.

      I’m amazed by every film I see from the Aardman animation studio (Chicken Little, Wallace & Gromit), and applaud this as another excellent film for children.  And I hope every adult who sees it is as entertained as I was.

Don’t count sheep, fall asleep, and then miss this movie!

           

Grade:  A                                                By Donna R. Copeland

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION

Tom Cruise     Rebecca Ferguson     Jeremy Renner     Simon Pegg    

Alec Baldwin     Ving Rhames     Sean Harris     Simon McBurney

      With a complex plot and twists and turns, Mission Impossible:  Rogue Nation does indeed appear to be impossible time after time.  As usual in this series, there are suffocating moments when you wonder how on earth (or in the air) they’ll get out of a scrape, and clearly loyal friendships become paramount.  Intrigue is heightened by a central character who keeps you guessing as to where the loyalty lies. 

      In this feature, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is part of the IMF, a U.S. secret service run by William Brandt (Renner) that is currently being threatened by CIA head Hunley (Baldwin), who believes the Syndicate IMF has been after is a figment of their imagination, particularly Hunt’s.  But because IMF is committed, they go rogue, and Hunt is aided by his old pals William Brandt (Renner), Benji Dunn (Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Rhames). 

      By the way, the movie is filled with humorous puns and references to other Missions, and in this feature, the IMF is not the only entity going rogue.  The frequent jokes and asides make the viewing fun, and offset the repeated high-wire acts (e.g., in an opera house during a performance of Puccini’s Turandot) and near escapes from fights, chases, and under-water challenges. 

      I think writer (with Drew Pearce) and director Christopher McQuarrie have successfully extended the franchise one more time, with intellectual complexity, political maneuverings, and derring-do.  The camera work of a master, Robert Elswit, increases the quality.

      Tom Cruise does his usual fine job in portraying an almost superhuman character whose hunches are infallible.  Adding an appealing, more naïve but still smart sidekick like Pegg adds another entertaining dimension.  A stunning addition is Ferguson’s Ilsa, a beautiful, intelligent, and forceful counterpart to Hunt, where there is chemistry mixed with refreshing ambiguity. 

      It’s impressive that this fifth version of the Mission Impossible series remains fresh and captivating after so many years.  McQuarrie has achieved just the right balance in all its entertaining components.

Fans of the Mission Impossible series are not likely to be disappointed.

Grade:  A-                        By Donna R. Copeland

VACATION

Ed Helms     Christina Applegate     Chris Hemsworth     Leslie Mann     Chevy Chase

Vacation did not seem like a vacation to me at all.  The writers/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein must have used some kind of formula in which each joke or episode has to be done at least twice and every so many minutes there will be a joke about sex, bodily functions, or physical or verbal bumbling.  At least partly, the formula is based on numerous versions of the original National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), which makes it outdated, but even so, additional sequels are planned.  Clearly, many people enjoy this kind of humor, but to do each joke and incident twice and not come up with anything close to creative makes me tired.

           Rusty (Helms) is a pilot for a small airline, and the story begins with his older co-pilot thanking him for sticking up for him in keeping his job.  Of course, the old man immediately begins showing he is too old by repeating himself three times (funny the first time, but overkill for the second and third) and doing such a bad job piloting when Rusty is away from the cockpit, the plane starts bouncing around throwing Rusty right into the boobs of an attractive passenger (this happens at least three times).  And this is only in the first five minutes of the film.

           Briefly, Rusty overhears that his wife is tired of going to the same place for vacation year after year, so he plans a trip to a theme park (Walley World) dear to his heart without consulting his family.  He rents a foreign car, which he doesn’t know how to operate, and which sets the scene for repeated jokes of the car being out of control and Rusty’s repeated bumbling in trying to operate it.  Of course, they have horrendous accidents, but they all come out unscathed.  Ah, how funny.  They’re going on a 2,000 plus mile journey, so there will be plenty of time for shenanigans, usually with Rusty being the butt of the jokes because of his ineptness.

           Aside from simply not being funny, Vacation is obnoxious in giving a high five to a young kid mouthing off, swearing, and being cruel; glorifying/making light of over-drinking; and solving problems by physical violence.  The adolescent son who has some appreciation for cultural and educational aspirations and nonviolence is poked fun at; whereas his cheeky younger brother is held up as a model.  When his older brother finally takes him down, this is presented as heroic because he did it by (mildly) beating him up. 

There is one scene in Vacation that I did find truly funny, despite its slapstick tinges.  I won’t give anything away, but it takes place at Four Corners, where four states meet and involves officers from each state quarreling, each trying to maintain his/her control of territory. 

Save your money; just rent the original National Lampoon’s Vacation, and you will have seen a better version of this.  Go only if bodily functions, stupidity, and sex make you roll over with laughter.

Grade:  F                                           By Donna R. Copeland

IRRATIONAL MAN

 Joaquin Phoenix     Emma Stone     Parker Posey

Abe (Phoenix) is a very good but disconsolate philosophy professor who teaches summer classes at a university lecturing on rational arguments about different approaches to understanding life.  It’s a bit surprising then when he comes up with an irrational plan for solving a problem that is not even his own.  Nevertheless, this plan gives meaning to his life, and he immediately becomes purposeful and even ebullient; hence, the title of the film, Irrational Man.

           Right from the start, it’s troubling to see Abe continually drinking booze from a flask in his pocket.  He is known as a controversial figure from his published works and his lectures.  When he is aggressively pursued by colleague Rita (Posey), he easily gives in, although depression keeps him from performing up to his ideal.  He holds off on another crush from a student, Jill (Stone), as long as he can, insisting simply on friendship; but she is also persistent, and he succumbs to her as well.  One day, she gets caught up in a conversation going on in the restaurant booth next to them, and has him come closer so he can hear.  From this brief snippet of information, Abe comes up with his plan.

           Writer/director Woody Allen often comes up with moral dilemmas (e.g., Crimes and Misdemeanors, Magic in the Moonlight, Match Point), as a way of telling a story; this one, like some of his others, having to do with murder.  He is careful to set the stage so that the act has a certain degree of justice and righteousness to it.  Allen’s interest also seems to be in illustrating the self-righteousness of academics and women’s naiveté, and sometimes lack of a moral compass. 

           Phoenix captures the moody philosopher’s role, and easily transitions to the man who has come up with an answer that satisfies his need to help someone in trouble and vent his anger toward the system.  Stone is just as good at playing a bright young woman who is able to challenge an older intellectual by asking probing questions and having a mind of her own.  Posey carries off a devil-may-care attitude in going after what she thinks will save her from life in a rut.

           Irrational Man is light fare, but becomes interesting in its twists and suspense during the last half of the feature.

An irrational plan to relieve an existential crisis.

Grade:  B                         By Donna R. Copeland

THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

Billy Crudup     Ezra Miller     Tye Sheridan     Thomas Mann     Michael Angarano     Olivia Thirlby

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a docudrama about a well publicized research project conducted at Stanford University by psychologist Philip Zimbardo attempting to show that the environment in prison shapes guards’ and prisoners’ behavior more than their dispositions or past experiences.  The film, directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez with script written by Tim Talbott, is based on Zimbardo’s 2007 book, The Lucifer Effect.  Zimbardo saw this research as a follow-up to a study in the previous decade by another psychologist, Stanley Milgram, who showed that subjects would comply with an authority figure even to the point of increasing shocks to other subjects to lethal levels when instructed to do so by the research observer.  (The person pressing the button was unaware he/she was not actually delivering a shock.)  The point in both studies was that authority figures and the institutional environment wield a considerable degree of influence over an individual’s behavior. 

           Undergraduate students at Stanford were recruited for a psychological study of the effects of the prison environment on prisoners and guards and paid $15 a day for their participation.  They were only superficially screened for psychological problems, criminal background, or medical problems.  Nine students and one alternate were randomly assigned to be guards, and the same number for the prisoners. 

         To test his hypothesis of inherent characteristics of the participants determining behavior, Zimbardo instructed the guards to foster disorientation, depersonalization, and loss of identity.  This was done by having them arrested in their homes, strip searched, put in dresses and stocking caps, given numbers for their names, and chains put around one of their ankles—all done in order to make the prisoners feel powerless.  To reinforce this, guards were put in standard khaki garb, given mirrored sunglasses to avoid eye contact with the prisoners and wooden batons.  They were instructed not to hit or harm the prisoners in any way.

            The experiment was conducted in a building on campus, with offices converted into cells and using the hall for dining.   The prisoners were to stay in their cells day and night for the duration, except when they were eating, and then they couldn’t talk to one another. 

Early on, within a day or so, the guards—who were told they would be observed by research staff at all times—began using abusive tactics, including hitting and psychological torture.   Even when this was brought to Zimbardo’s attention, he frequently chose not to intervene or he would make promises to the prisoners that he had no intention of keeping.  Any act of rebellion on the part of the prisoners was met with harsh punishment, such as taking away their beds and giving them a bucket for toileting but not allowing it to be emptied. 

            In a short amount of time, some of the prisoners started to fall apart, and ask to leave the study.  It was determined later that not only had 1/3 of the guards resorted to sadistic behaviors, Zimbardo acknowledged that even he had lost his objectivity.  When an observer who came on the scene toward the end of the first week, deemed the experiment as unethical, Zimbardo was convinced to end the research on the sixth of the planned 14 days. 

          In retrospect, Zimbardo concluded that his expectation that the study would prove that, under certain conditions, even good people might behave badly was met.  He subsequently testified as an expert witness in the court martial of one of the Abu Ghraib guards that the man’s behavior was a function of the system, as opposed to his being a “bad apple”, as the government claimed.

           Criticisms of the Zimbardo study include a small sample size, a biased selection of the participants (all white middle class young men), and my own thought that the research staff and guards acting as if the “prisoners” had actually committed and been convicted of crimes, invalidates the study.  Additionally, no personality measures were administered or background information of the participants was obtained.  Without this information, the conclusion that it was the environment that brought out sadistic behavior is weak.

           To me, this is a horrific film to watch; the cruelty and unjustified behavior on the part of the guards made me take a number of breaks during the screening (I watched it at home via a link).  This made me question why the film was made at all; it’s an example of what not to do when people have power over others.  There is a well-known, accepted principle in psychology that to improve people’s behavior it’s more effective to model good leadership than to show poor/bad/evil modeling. 

           Unfortunately, there is no explanation of the study results at the end of the film by Dr. Philip Zimbardo.  I doubt the general public will be able to come away with a clear understanding of the rationale of the work or Zimbardo’s interpretation of it.  This would have greatly enhanced the film, and provide give an illuminating picture of the Abu Graib phenomenon that would be helpful.  

          As far as the film, the actors do a fine job in depicting the characters in the study.  Billy Crudup is especially noteworthy as Zibardo.

Viewer beware.

Grade:  D                                    By Donna R. Copeland

SOUTHPAW

Jake Gyllenhaal     Rachel McAdams     Forest Whitaker     50 Cent     Miguel Gomez

Redemption comes at last when a slow learner finally masters his destiny in Southpaw.  It’s a hard-won battle every step of the way.  Billy “The Great” Hope (Gyllenhaal) is boxing at the top of his game after he and his wife Maureen (McAdams) have crawled up from an orphanage, always sticking together.  Then tragedy strikes—helped along by hotheaded Billy—and he begins to lose everything that is meaningful to him.  At rock bottom, he looks to Tick Wills (Whitaker) a former trainer who owns a gym, but is rejected because he appears not to be willing to make changes.  When it looks like this will be his only chance, he agrees to start at the bottom and see if he can work his way up to the point where he regains custody of his daughter.

           This is a brutal film (rated R for its violence) with long, bloody boxing scenes and agonizing sequences, so not for the faint of heart or those with weak stomachs.  Gyllenhaal bulked himself up for the role, and adapted his ordinarily clear voice to curt mumbles and grumbles to fit the character.  Just as much a star, Whitaker delivers philosophical truths (“Stopping punches with your face is not defense”) quick, targeted comebacks, and behavioral conditions that will be essential to Billy Hope’s rehabilitation and ability to fight strategically.  McAdams is well cast as a loving wife who takes care of her husband as much as she can.  Young Oona Laurence as the Hopes’ daughter Leila deserves recognition for her portrayal of a grief-stricken child who faces overwhelming losses.

           Director Antoine Fuqua realizes writer Kurt Sutter’s script in well-paced, believable sequences, and he works closely with his colleague in other films, Mauro Fiore, to produce stunning camera work, alongside an inspiring musical score. The film is dedicated to its award winning musician and popular film composer James Horner (Titanic, Avatar, A Beautiful Mind), who was killed last month in a plane crash.

           The film is a bit slow to get started with its real drama beyond the fight sequences (and some of the fights occur before you get a chance to invest in the characters), and the struggles between the Hope couple are excruciating to sit through.  A good bit of it is watching the wife trying to rein in her drug-addled, fight-obsessed husband, often to no avail.  I think trimming some of these scenes would have made this a better film.  When it moves into showing the psychology of Billy Hope and his rehabilitation and relationship with his daughter, it becomes much more engaging.

Redemption for a slow learner.

Grade:  C+                          By Donna R. Copeland