Author: jonathankiefer

The Pineapple Express, Wikipedia informs us, is “a meteorological phenomenon which is characterized by a strong and persistent flow of atmospheric moisture and associated heavy rainfall from the waters adjacent to the Hawaiian Islands.”

It is also, the movie Pineapple Express informs us, a rare and special and presumably fictitious strain of marijuana—said to smell, when freshly harvested, like “God’s vagina.”

Up in smoke? Lovably tubby Seth Rogen saves his dealer in the pot-powered action flick, Pineapple Express.

Now, had this week’s handout from the Judd Apatow comedy empire been about a meteorological phenomenon, it still probably would have found a way to entertain. But it is, of course, about the weed. Expect copious giggles.

The plot is this: A stoner (why, Seth Rogen, of course) and his dealer (James Franco) run afoul of crooked cops and dueling drug lords, then run for their lives. They also stop periodically to banter and get baked and become closer friends.

Saul (Franco), the only guy in town dealing Pineapple Express, doesn’t need a real job (perhaps that’s for the best, as he probably couldn’t manage one anyway), but Dale (Rogen) works as a process server; one night, while waiting to deliver a subpoena, or maybe just stalling so he can blaze a little in his car, Dale witnesses a murder. The killers are a crooked cop (Rosie Perez) and the drug kingpin (Gary Cole) who just happens to be Saul’s supplier—and happens to witness Dale watching him. In his hasty escape, Dale leaves a little of the Pineapple behind—just enough, in fact, for the killers to track him and Saul down and come gunning for them.

Director David Gordon Green’s previous film, Snow Angels, was pretty much the opposite of an action-comedy buddy movie, so in a way Pineapple Express seems like a real achievement.

Well, O.K., achievement isn’t the right word. Certainly not in this context. But with Green raising the bar of stylishly composed slapstick, this must be the first movie in its genre with a sheen of real art-house cred. The script, by Rogen and fellow Superbad writer Evan Goldberg, from a story by them and producer Apatow, wanders and digresses and gets a little sloppy at times. But to complain about that is to need to relax.

It’s a movie for boys, mostly and not surprisingly, but it is commendably sensitive to the nuances of male bonding—particularly the infantile, lightly misogynistic and glibly violent nuances. True, in more excited scenes, Rogen risks upstaging his own affable deadpan with too much ham, but his chemistry with Franco—first cultivated years ago in the short-lived, Apatow-produced TV series “Freaks and Geeks”—goes a long way. And Danny R. McBride, as a (barely) higher-up on the weed chain, steals each of his increasingly ridiculous scenes.

As befits its core creative team, Pineapple Express is sweet and seemingly dumb, but at least smart enough to know how appealing that is. Maybe not a full meteorological phenomenon, but, in its mild way, palpably a force of nature.

Tell you what: If the American presidential election somehow had to come down to just one fella’s vote, you sure as shit wouldn’t want that fella to be Bud Johnson.

See, Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner) is many things, but…no, actually, come to think of it, he’s not much of anything. Well, O.K., maybe some moviemaker’s schematic idea of the American Everyman, but not much else. He’s not a terrible guy, mind you, just not a very dependable one, either. Best not to expect ol’ Bud to hold down a job for too long. Or a marriage. Best not to think he’ll be sober enough in the mornings to make sure his daughter gets to school.
 

If you vote it, he will come: Kevin Costner casts the deciding ballot as bumbling Bud Johnson in Swing Vote.

That little girl of his (Madeline Carroll), now, she’s the responsible one. She does the planning, and the cooking, and the designated driving. Oh, and she does his voting, too.

No sir, indeed she is not old enough to drive or to vote, but, see, that’s your perfect example of how it goes with Bud. And you bet it’s a problem—made much worse when, in fact, the American presidential election somehow does come down to just one fella’s vote, and, well, guess whose it is?

Next thing you know, Bud’s New Mexico trailer park is all full-up with media people, making one hell of a ruckus. Even the candidates themselves show up: One Republican incumbent (Kelsey Grammer) and one Democratic reformer (Dennis Hopper), plus their contentious campaign managers (Stanley Tucci on the red side, Nathan Lane on the blue), with everybody tripping all over themselves and their principles to score Bud’s vote. Suddenly it’s like a surreal sweeps week for new campaign commercials, with the Democrat charging through a desert scramble of illegal immigrants, the Republican cuddling up to gay couples, and the rest of us just shaking our heads ’cause we know how politicians and movies about them are.

As for ol’ Bud, well, he’s like a deer in the headlights. Richard Petty gives him a racecar ride to lunch with the president. Willie Nelson invites him to the challenger’s dinner party. (Bud used to lead a Willie Nelson cover band, which—spoiler alert—reunites at the party.) Secret Service guys monitor his every move, and pundits appear in self-satisfied cameos to offer their analysis. Says Bill Maher, “Jesus, wake up, America. Bud Johnson is a dumbass!”

Looks like now’s about the time for Bud to be searching his soul—not to mention studying up on civics. Good thing he’ll get a crash course from that disappointed but oh-so-precocious young daughter of his, along with the eager reporter (Paula Patton) who first broke his story. Still, America really wants to know what he’s gonna do.
 
So say director Joshua Michael Stern and his co-writer Jason Richman, anyway. They just don’t say it too convincingly is all. Stern comes across like a cut-rate Frank Capra, aiming for aw-shucks Heartlandicana and contriving toothless, safely nonpartisan satire. And John Debney’s heartstring-yanking score doesn’t do him any favors. True, the clunky pacing improves and the tale gets more absorbing as it develops. But in the end, what’s it all worth?
 
See, Swing Vote is many things, but…no, actually, come to think of it, it’s not much of anything. Not a terrible movie, mind you, just, well, not a very dependable one either.

Detractors who see Step Brothers as the herald of a now fully and irrevocably declined culture may take comfort from the traditional values-intensive leadership of George W. Bush, whom it quotes by way of introduction: “Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”

Writer-director Adam McKay, the man behind Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, takes it from here, with essential help from Talladega’s co-stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, who conceived this story with McKay as well as star in it.

Only fools rush in: Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly continue to brainwash America with goofballery and floppy guts in Step Brothers. They’ll stop making these films when you stop loving ’em, people.

There’s no subtitle for Step Brothers, but it doesn’t need one. We have seen already the totally righteous film poster, a complete work of art unto itself: There they are, in the familiar canned Americana of the family photo-op, posed in complementary argyle sweater vests over button-down Oxfords, with their slightly doughy mugs, their barely Brillo-ish hair, and those guileless, sorta glazed, goofball looks in their eyes. So simple, so delightful. It’s iconic in an almost Chaplinesque way, evoking instant mirth everywhere in the world at once.

No, this isn’t to say that we have a pair of Charlie Chaplins on our hands. But we do have, pretty much, the Pacino and De Niro of retarded-adolescent comedy. Say what you will about the bit itself, these guys are completely committed.

The story? Sparks fly for Dr. Robert Doback (Richard Jenkins) and Nancy Huff (Mary Steenburgen) when they discover that they each have a useless, spoiled son who’s been living at home for about 40 years. Hers is Brennan (Ferrell); his, Dale (Reilly). They all move in together. Well, you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your family. Wait, is that how the saying goes?

While co-habitating, the almost-siblings discover things about each other and themselves. For instance, they have a common foe in Brennan’s younger brother Derek (Adam Scott), who sells houses and helicopters and is a pompous, overachieving prick—a most impressive young lad in the doctor’s estimation, but actually, in his way, more entitled (and entitled to an ass-kicking) than the two step brothers combined. It’s through him, in fact, that the movie declares itself more than just a crass celebration of childish unseriousness. Step Brothers’ most acidly funny moments come from sharp hostility toward Derek and his kind, which means real empathy for Brennan and Dale and theirs. First, the man-boys stage elaborate and fearless burlesques to frighten off prospective buyers of their house and to freak Derek out; then, they make a funny go of learning his corporo-frat-bro lingo.

Without over-Hallmarking it, Step Brothers finds room within its ridiculous, unjustified plot for a prudent comment on what we think being grown up means today, and for a triumph of incorruptible sincerity over the ultimately more stunting meanness and egotism. Sometimes the jokes stall, but there’s barely any dead air here at all. And while it helps having Jenkins and Steenburgen to class it up, it also helps having Ferrell and Reilly being hilarious. These two are pros, and have nearly perfected the low but worthy art of the movie that looks so stupid you can’t wait to see it.

Just because Batman began again doesn’t mean his life’s been easy. Stealthy though he may be, fighting crime after hours while elaborately attired as an insectivorous winged mammal has a way of attracting attention. People want to know who this guy really is. Suspects include Abe Lincoln and Bigfoot, but actually he’s the orphaned billionaire Bruce Wayne. Or the actor Christian Bale if you want to get technical.

And yes, in The Dark Knight, Batman’s purposeful, gadget-abetted, vaguely libertarian vigilantism has shown results, but still he’s got his work cut out. Gotham City keeps going to the dogs—and to the copycats and copybats who want to get in on his act. Now it’s not just the ever-bolder criminal syndicates he has to contend with, but a ragtag amateur army of dork knights, too.

Who’s laughing now? Christian Bale’s Batman faces off against Heath Ledger’s card-carrying maniac in The Dark Knight.

“Why don’t you hire them and take the week off?” his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) sagely suggests. Yet the young master doesn’t budge.  It’s official: He’s been fully reclaimed by filmmaker Christopher Nolan as the most earnest of comic book superheroes (even the fumingly humorless Hulk has nothing on this guy), and now he’s just asking for some joker to come along and ask, “Why so serious?”

That would be the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, and as agile, as balls-to-the-wall and, for lack of a better term, as batshit crazy as everyone said and hoped he’d be. In the same way Jack Nicholson’s turn in the role for director Tim Burton in 1989 so immediately made clear a once-great actor’s decline into fatness and complacency, Ledger’s haunts with the expected reminder of how rotten it is that the movies have lost him. With help from an unnerving soundtrack, Ledger’s Joker tingles spines with reckless abandon, making a strong argument that losing one’s mind doesn’t at all preclude a career as a criminal genius.

So it’s no wonder that the otherwise highly capable Gotham police Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman) decides to call for Bat backup. That’s right: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Gary Oldman. Nolan has achieved a grand trifecta of actorly intensity.

He’s also got Morgan Freeman again as Lucius Fox, supplying the gadgets and gravely monitoring their ethical implications. Nolan even upgraded Bruce Wayne’s love interest, Rachel Dawes, from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who’s not entirely persuasive as an assistant district attorney, but certainly is alluring. Her new lover and boss (Aaron Eckhart) is the brave, upstanding prosecutor Harvey Dent, to whom Bruce hopes to hand over the city savior gig. “Gotham needs a hero with a face,” he says. There’s some grim foreshadowing there, but you need to see it
for yourself.

The Dark Knight is a movie that speaks to the exhausted, chaotic fears of our age. In fact, it won’t shut up about them—our age may be over by the time this movie is done speaking. Like some comic books, it really wants to explain its view of the world—what sort of hero its fictional city deserves, and needs, and has. The script, written by Nolan with his brother Jonathan, is polished, occasionally pleased with itself and overlong. But it offers a terrific opening sequence, many thrills, some surprises and a few remarkable transformations of character. 

By movie’s end, it’s safe to say Batman’s life has gotten even harder. So has waiting for the next sequel.

So here’s the deal. For eons, a truce has existed between mankind and a subterranean race of fantastical creatures, many of whom have eyeballs in inappropriate places. On behalf of the latter group, one ambitious, ruthless, sword-slinging and rather alarmingly pale prince (Luke Goss) has had enough. Way he figures it, humans have squandered and contaminated the world—“parking lots, shopping malls!” he cries—and the time has come to depose them.

On behalf of the former group, although poignantly apart from it as well, is Hellboy (Ron Perlman), a rough-and-ready demon conjured years ago by occultist Nazis and adopted by Americans, who these days works topside undercover for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD).

Sympathy for a devil: Ron Perlman returns as the demon with a heart of gold and guns of steel in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

Now, if you’re becoming impatient because you already knew all this, because you’re quite intimately familiar with Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comics and writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s initial film adaptation of four years ago, don’t even bother reading any further. In fact, don’t even see the new movie. Instead, go out and get some exercise, will you? Some fresh air, maybe?

O.K., then. Hellboy’s BPRD allies include a few other appealing freaks. There’s his psychic, sensitive, piscine friend Abe, gamely played by regular Del Toro collaborator Doug Jones; his new boss, a campy German efficiency expert called Johann who happens not to have a body and sounds like the talking fish in “American Dad” because he’s voiced by that show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane; and his literal old flame Liz, a pyrokinetic (played by Selma Blair, who is, sure enough, combustibly hot, and whose otherwise narrow range at last seems richly nuanced within the context of colorfully rubberized comic book characters). Together they accomplish many feats of bravery and heroic strangeness.

But can they save the world? The prince’s plan is to rouse and lead a dormant army of roughly 500 indestructible mechanical soldiers. (Out of respect for Del Toro’s aversion to banality, and his gear fetish, it doesn’t seem quite right to call them simply “robots.”) The awakening of the so-called Golden Army is the last thing Hellboy and Co. can let happen. But of course, with the movie’s subtitle being The Golden Army, you can guess what happens.

It’s no spoiler to say they have the situation under control. Or Del Toro does, anyway. His plan all along must have been to keep his movie elaborately weird, almost inscrutably dark and generally too busy to fully explain itself. Sometimes it seems off-puttingly self-enchanted; other times it allows for choice snippets of surprising dialogue, like—O.K., maybe this is a small spoiler—“I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor.” That zinger pops out in a place known as the “troll market,” which is about what you’d get if the inhabitants of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop came to life on their own, went to the cantina from Star Wars, got hammered there and became very rowdy.

Del Toro’s most distinctive gift may be his way of eliciting unexpected sympathy for even the most horrific beasts—be they insectoid flesh-eating faeries or enormous, city block-wrecking plant monsters or what have you. Who knew delighting in the grotesque could make comic book-based movies so fun to be with? What’s that? You knew? Hey, weren’t you supposed to go outside?