"Fighting With My Family" Review
Fighting With My Family is the definition of a crowd pleaser. It’s light hearted, but has heart. It’s got the hero’s journey ingrained in it as it’s based off a true story. If you’re a fan of wrestling, this film is definitely for you! It’s a step above your average sports movie and a good bet for your venture to the theater this weekend.
The Knight family has wrestling in their blood. With a piecemeal amateur wrestling company, the family has been wrestling in their town of Norwich, England for years. While Ricky (Nick Frost) and Julia’s (Lena Headey) glory days in wrestling are behind them, it’s obvious that they put a lot of weight on the possibility of their children Zak (Jack Lowden) and Saraya (Florence Pugh) going “all the way” and become pro wrestlers in the World Wrestling Entertainment organization.
The film boils down to a central point of two conflicts: Saraya and Zak are at odds once she makes makes the cut for the WWE after they both try out, and Saraya has to wrestle with herself to find the drive within to achieve her dream in America with her family thousands of miles away. These conflicts drives the movie forward in a way that no matter where you’re from you can relate to the issues on screen. How do you put aside your feelings to support someone you love who is doing what you were turned down from doing? How do you continue forward knowing your loved one has to stay behind? Is your dream your dream or your family’s dream? What does the weight of your family depending on you make you do? Writer/director Stephen Merchant probes and answers these questions in a delightful way.
The ensemble cast is fun to watch. They bounce off of one another with dialogue and quips with ease. Most of the film’s depth rests on Pugh as she maneuvers through finding herself and place in achieving her dream. Pugh certainly pulls off the job of playing the loner who desires relationships and the girl who walks to her own beat. With Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson playing himself and Vince Vaughn as the tough but fair WWE scout, the film gives enough star power to believe in the wonder of climbing to the highest heights in wrestling.
This isn’t the greatest sports film to be made, but it’s certainly unique and great to see a true story based on the life of female wrestler Paige (Saraya-Jade Bevis) on the big screen. It doesn’t have the macho action montages that we’re used to, but what it does offer is a nice change of pace, and genuine emotion for the genre. It’s certainly a good time at the movies this weekend.
Rating: B-
"Central Intelligence" Review
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart team up to save the world in Central Intelligence. It’s a shoot ‘em up, buddy comedy that seems far too familiar with decent laughs sprinkled in. In fact, if Twins, 48 Hours, and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion met up at the bar to discuss making a film, Central Intelligence would be the outcome!
In high school, Bob Stone (Johnson) was picked on and bullied, while Calvin Joyner (Hart) was the man on campus. (It should be noted the CGI work on the two stars to make them look younger is pretty dog on good.) Twenty years later, Calvin is an accountant, married to his high school sweetheart Maggie (Danielle Nicolet), but that may be the only accomplishment he’s had in life post high school that he is proud of. After getting a Facebook friend request by Bob Stone, Calvin decides to meet with him on a whim.
The meeting reveals Bob to be a handsome, muscle bound man with a few lethal fighting skills under his belt. No longer a nerd, Bob seems to have a low key infatuation with Calvin for sticking up for him in high school. As the film moves forward, Calvin quickly gets wrapped into the mysterious world of Bob, the CIA, and his forensic accounting skills are needed to save the world. All of these revelations are made by the time of their high school reunion the next night.
The film has its laugh out loud moments, with hilarious cameos from some of the best in the business. While The Rock is a great actor and he commits to his role in this film, the man child in a giant’s body (especially compared to Hart) feels a little forced at times, thus making Bob seem more like a caricature. At the same time, the film's underlying spy duality keeps the audience guessing as to what's what and who is who as the Rock flips between moments of the nerd in a stud's body to CIA action hero star we're accustomed to seeing. Hart playing the straight man in this buddy comedy is a change that works to let him show his acting chops while still hitting his unique, spastic physical comedy.
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, Central Intelligence is a popcorn flick probably best served for Netflix and chill. You’ll laugh while you’re watching, but forget that you saw it by the end of the year. While saving the world takes a little Hart and a big Johnson in this film, me saving you some money this weekend just took you reading this review!
Rating: C+
"San Andreas" Review: Shout out to the 90's
Writer Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) must be fond of 90’s action movies, because his newly penned “San Andreas” plays like an action blockbuster from that decade but set in 2015. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on the viewer’s taste. Filled with suspense, action and drama, “San Andreas” falls through the cracks of being a great disaster film and lands in an awesomely bad popcorn movie!
Ray (Dwayne Johnson) is an LA police and fire rescue helicopter pilot. He’s just been served divorce papers from his wife Emma (Carla Cugino), and learned that she and their daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) are moving in with Emma’s new boyfriend (Ioan Gruffudd). Before he can deal with his feelings, he has to deal with the earthquake that just hit Nevada.
Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) is a seismology professor at Cal Tech who just happened to come up with a method that predicts Earthquakes. He warns the nation that there will be another massive quake to hit the San Andreas fault. With a helicopter in his possession and his estranged wife and daughter in danger, Ray goes after them.
The film plays out almost beat for beat as 90’s movies like “Cliffhanger” or “Independence Day”. There is a heart pounding, unbelievable (and I mean unbelievable) rescue in the beginning of the film. Then we get a splash of character development and background on our main characters, while simultaneously getting exposition from the “crazy earthquake soothsayer”. If you can get past the on-the-nose dialogue, corny one-liners, and one in a million death defying stunts, then you will be thoroughly entertained!
The truth of the matter is this is one of the most unapologetic, self-centered disaster films I’ve seen in a while. In “San Andreas” we have a rescue pilot that uses his position and skills to try and solely save his family. It’s so wrong, but at the same time perhaps so right. If one of the biggest earthquakes on record hit, the first thing I would do is try to save my family. Thus the film becomes a romantic comedy at times as Ray and Emma unite to try and save Blake. Lines like “Let’s go get our daughter.” become a punch line rather than a war cry.
“San Andreas” is a popcorn blockbuster that will likely get swept out of the box office after a good three to four week run. It’s a film that you’ll sit down to watch when it comes on TBS for the thirtieth time. If you’re looking for entertainment and humor in a movie that doesn’t quite realize it’s funny (or maybe it does), “San Andreas” is for you!
Rating: C-
"Furious 7" Review: Film Won't Disappoint Fans!
It’s one thing to go into a movie to be entertained, but there’s something to be said about movies that you go into with baggage and expectations. With “Furious 7”, the untimely death of Paul Walker casts a shadow on the film, but doesn’t eclipse it. In fact, for die hard fans we got what we wanted; it’s the same high-octane, unbelievable stunts that we’ve come to love, tie-ins to prior films, and the proper send off to a major character in the franchise.
Picking up where “Fast & Furious 6” ended, we get one of the best slow reveal openings I’ve seen in a while. Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) makes an oath to his unconscious brother Owen (Luke Shaw) to finish the job he started in putting the “family” in body bags. Deckard, of course, is ten times smarter and more ruthless than his brother. He’s an ex-black ops asset that was so skilled he turned into a ghost after his own government tried to terminate him due to all of the sensitive intel he knew. Deckard gets straight to it! He kills Han (Sung Kang) (as seen at the end of FF6), pays a visit to Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) to secure the locations of Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) Crew, and sends a bomb to Dom’s old house.
With that, the gang is pulled back into the life. For Brian (Paul Walker), it’s a welcomed reunion as he “misses the bullets” as a now domesticated father and husband to Mia (Jordana Brewster). It’s the fine line between the old life, and new life for Brian that gives the film some of it’s emotional gravity. For Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Tej (Ludacris), and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) it’s another day in the office.
How do you catch a ghost? Enter Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), something of a governmental ghost himself, who has been chasing Shaw for years. Mr. Nobody guarantees to help the family take down Shaw if they secure a much sought after, newly developed, global spy application called “God’s Eye”.
As per usual Dom’s crew gets strung along to do someone else’s dirty work in order to get their own personal needs met. The most annoying thing is that with each victory or setback, Shaw turns up like the kid copying off of your homework. Even with that, it doesn’t take away from the intense weight that each heist, fight, or stunt carries in the film.
*Spoiler Alert: Paul Walker Homage- skip the next paragraph*
I hate doing spoilers, but the construction of the Brian/Paul Walker send off was extremely well done and worth breaking down. First, the subtext of the entire ending was that while Brian is saying goodbye to Dom, the cast didn’t get to say goodbye to their friend in real life. As Dom pulls up to a crossroad, Brian joins him dressed in white and in a white car (no coincidence). Reminiscent of the two racing each other in the past, they both take off for a stretch, as Dom’s voiceover tells a story of their unbroken bond. The camera then cranes up as Brian’s car pulls off to the left from the main road. We follow Brian’s car for a while and then lift to the heavens as the screen dissolves to white. It’s an absolutely majestic way of saying so much without being on the nose, and a great homage to Paul Walker.
*End Spoiler*
“Furious 7” will not disappoint and it continues the new legacy of over the top action, hard nosed characters, and emotional beats to match. I would love to be in the writer’s room as they discuss “what could we do to top the last film and push this even further?”! It seems we’ll find out that answer in the 8th installment. For now, the true fans of the franchise will soak up and appreciate the beautiful film we were given in spite of the tragic real life occurrences in “Furious 7”. That has to be commended and respected!
Rating: B+
"Pain & Gain" Review
I’m perplexed by “Pain & Gain”. It was a pain to sit through at times during those two hours and nine minutes, but it made some profound statements on the American Dream and greed that I don’t think it even knew it made. Or did it? So therefore I may have gained appreciation for Michael Bay in that he used his stylistic direction to take an unbelievable real life crime story and show us how stupid criminal activity can be.
Mark Wahlberg is Daniel Lugo, the brains of the criminal operation, and that’s not saying he has much brain power. All of his heroes are self made, and he believes in working hard to make something of himself. Tired of being where he is in life, Lugo comes up with a plan to relieve millionaire Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub) of all of his assets through a kidnapping scheme. In order to do this, he has to recruit other people in his plan.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is Paul Doyle, a former coke addict inmate turned to Christianity, and Anthony Mackie is a wanna be muscle man with an impotency problem as Adrian Doorbal. The three men have two common bonds, a love of fitness and the desire to achieve their own version of the American Dream. To them, the goal of having what they see on TV, in movies, and other forms of media is worth having to the point that they’re willing to kidnap and eventually kill for it.
Every major character gets their own voiceover and tells their side of the story as it’s unfolding. Lugo is envious of Victor but when Victor tells his story he had equal tenacity and desire to be where he is in his economic status. As much of a rich snob that Victor is, he worked extra hard to get there. While Lugo’s hero Scarface inspires him to take, and as the movie’s one liner goes, “be a doer!” The parallels to Lugo and company’s rise and fall is very similar to that of Scarface in that their pride and lust for more becomes their downfall.
The fine line in society between thinking about major crimes and acting it out is for a small percentage of people (I’d like to think). So how do you show the insanity of crossing that line? Give Michael Bay the director’s seat and let him use every tool in his bag of low angle, slow motion, spinning camera moves to make these three men look as dumb as their plans. Bay is known for his larger then life filmmaking and something about his slick style and this stupid/sad but true story does a great job of showing the glamour of the American Dream and the pitfalls of achieving it illegally. Whether he’s using the camera to objectify women in this film’s world, give the zeros their hero shot, or emphasize their stupidity, Bay does it well. While this may not be one of his best films, it does seem like one of his most- dare I say- thought provoking.
Wahlberg leads his cast of merry men as you’d expect with the usual solid performance. Mackie, who undoubtedly has acting talent, was poorly cast in a role that should have gone to a loud mouth comedian. Yet it’s Johnson who gives one of his better performances taking the role of a dumb jock man-child to new heights. He’s aware of his physical stature and uses it to his advantage with subtlety in his acting decisions to make his character a comical but complex “weak link” as he’s called in the trio.
Overall I wasn’t expecting to have my mind blown in seeing this film and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s one of those films that you walk out of the theater, greeted by the light of day, and everyone is collectively in silence thinking about what’s for dinner, or what’s next on their plate for the day. An unmemorable film with a few profound statements on society.
Rating C-