The Purge (2013)

In the year 2022, unemployment is down to 1%, crime is at an all time low, and the economy is booming again.  There's a catch for all this prosperity though: once a year, from 7 PM to 7 AM, all crime is legal.   "The Purge" allows for members of society to get all their pent up anger, frustration, or whatever out.  You don't have to participate though, and many just bunker up in large homes with elaborate security systems.  One interesting point of the film is how the poor, the homeless, etc. don't have the means to protect themselves and are usually the most likely victims of "The Purge".  I guess it's easy to eliminate unemployment and homelessness if the wealthier can just kill them off once a year, eh?

It's a shaky premise, but I can accept it as long as they commit to it.  The problem is that too many things are referenced that aren't explained, and these ideas aren't explored enough.  Like they constantly make reference to the New Founding Fathers, but never elaborate on this.  And this is set is just 2022?  Society has crumbled such a short period of time to allow for a different form of government or something?  This isn't the first Purge either.  It's clear that his has been going on for at least a few years.  The points they make about the poor are barely glossed over, and are thrown by the wayside once the story decides it wants to be a home-invasion thriller.  I know I'm overthinking it a bit, but these are the things that I can't help but ponder while watching, especially when the characters are so flat and uninteresting.  Sometimes a movie's flaws aren't apparent until you reflect on it afterwards.  Other times, a movie slaps you in the face with them. The Purge made me feel like I spent an evening at a bar delivering bad pickup lines.

Oh yes, there will be spoilers, and I apologize if this post reads as a little ranty.  This movie just bugged the hell out of me.

James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) is an wealthy security system salesman that's clearly benefit from this new society with all the need for ultra-home security.  He has a loving wife (Lena Headey), and two kids - older daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), and younger son Charlie (Max Burkholder) - that right off the bat you know are going to cause problems as the movie goes on.

We barely meet the family before "The Purge" begins, and shortly after that a bloody stranger (Edwin Hodge) pleading for help is let in by his son.  I had a hard time getting my head around why the son would have the ability and passcode to disable the security and let this guy in.  You'd think a security system owned by the very guy that sells them would have some built in safeguards or something, right?  He should have the top of the line model, too.

Shortly after letting the bloody stranger in, a masked group of weirdos shows up and asks James to give up the stranger.  If they give him up, they'll leave the Sandins alone.  This lynch mob has reinforcements on the way, and assures James they'll be able to get into the house.  The leader of this group (Rhys Wakefield) looks like a combination of Ralph Fiennes, John Malkovich and Crispin Glover, but somehow creepier looking.  The first thing the mob does though after giving this ultimatum is cut the power to the house.  Um, hey idiots, did you consider that the motorized door barricades might require power to operate?  Also, the stranger is now hiding, so without lights, he's proving difficult to find, as the house is quite large.  This is made more frustrating by the fact that James never communicates to the mob's leader that it might be easier to find the guy if they could use the lights.  Also, the idiot son that let the stranger in is continuing to help him hide, and seems to have zero guilt about the danger he's put in family in.

Time runs out and the mob is able to get into the house.  This also bugged me because they were able to simultaneously pull every heavy metal door off the house.  How did they even attach the chains to all the metal doors?  Did they all have convenient hooks on the outside?  Anyway, despite not knowing anything about the home, they run around making all kinds of noise without any care in the world.  Aren't they concerned about charging into a home where the occupants are likely armed (and they were), don't know how many they are up against, and don't know anything about the layout of the house?  Why the Sandins weren't hiding in strategic points in the house waiting for them, I don't understand either.  I also don't get how this security system wasn't designed with any defenses or ability to shoot at trespassers while they're still outside.  The Sandin family should have been able to take out half of these guys before they even got in.

Oh, I almost forgot.  Just as they let the bloody stranger in, we see that Zoey's much older boyfriend (Tony Oller) was hiding inside the house.  He tells Zoey he wants to take advantage of the lockdown to confront James and convince him he loves his daughter.  Only when he goes to do this, he immediately pulls out a gun and attempts to shoot James, 'cause you know, the best way to impress your girlfriend is to kill her dad, right?  The dumb boyfriend gets shot, and for some reason his daughter runs off with him as if on his side or protecting him.  She's upset when he dies.  Huh?  Your boyfriend just tried to kill your dad.  Do you even understand what is going on?

Ethan Hawke does get to kick ass a little during one scene, so that part was cool.  The movie takes a lot of predictable turns otherwise.  The Purge is guilty of one pet peeve of mine where when a bad guy is killed and they don't take his weapon or ammo.  I can't stand that!  The bloody stranger is also seen wearing dog tags, so you can assume he was in the military.  He likely has some weapons training, and may be able to help you defend the house, but that never even comes up.  However, the most irritating thing about the film is that there are three distinct times (which I won't spoil) at the end the film where they could have done something really cool that would have at least let me leave on a high note and somewhat satisfied, but none were taken.  It just ends and everything goes back to normal.  Whatever...

Written and directed by James DeMonaco, The Purge is a complete misfire.  This is something that would have worked much better if it was under an hour and you didn't have as much time to pick it apart as it happened.  The setup is an attempt at social commentary, but it's not developed.  For example, they show that despite living in a affluent, gated community, the Sandin's neighbors appear to be deeply resentful of their success and how they have more than they do.  Well, maybe you guys should have gotten into the home security business then.  It's not like Sandin invented "The Purge" as a scheme to get rich.  He saw an opportunity to make money and took it.  He doesn't even own the company he works for.  He's just an employee.  It's not like he's doing anything illegal.  He has too much so we don't like him!  Jealousy is an ugly color, bank-farter.

Then, I thought about the actual Purge and how it's supposed to create some catharsis, post-Purge, but are you really creating a better society when you're basically rewarding people that are harboring deep psychopathic urges or need to commit violent crimes?  Do you really think one night is going to get it completely out of their systems?  Don't you watch Dexter?  The Dark Passenger doesn't just go away.  I think it would have been interesting to show that after a few years, law enforcement started secretly killing anyone they saw participating in "The Purge", removing those with violent tendencies from society.

The Purge is a mess of a film, and I wish I could purge it from my memory.  The setup has a kernel of an interesting social commentary, but it's dropped as the film devolves into a lame home-invasion thriller, relying on cheap jump scares, and typical conventions where characters do incredibly stupid things.  Finally, it has a terribly unsatisfying ending.  I could see this being slightly more effective while watching at home, but it's such a stupid film that it's really not worth the watch.  If you must see it, save it for rental, but otherwise, there's no need to watch this.

1 (out of 5) Death Stars

The Internship (2013)

My old, cynical self watched the first 20 minutes or so of The Internship with my arms folded across my chest, without so much as a smile on my face.  It's not that The Internship wasn't funny at all, it was that nearly every laugh during this time were all things I've seen in the trailer.  Then I thought, is that really the movie's fault?  Everyone else is laughing, and I'm betting these people don't see nearly as many movies as I do.  Would I be laughing more if I hadn't seen that trailer like 20 times this year?

After The Internship blows its trailer-wad, I warmed up to it a bit.  Don't get me wrong, it's not a great film, but I found myself chuckling a few times.  The humor's a little one-note though, and some gags are repeated a few too many times.  It's easy to say that the film is really trying to get by on the charm of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.  I'm sure that's what Vaughn thought when coming up with the story and co-writing the screenplay (co-wrote with Jared Stern).  The Internship hits all the typical beats, and busts out every underdog, and some rom-com, cliche they could throw at you.  Even the soundtrack has a cheesy, familiar feel to it.  Director Shawn Levy's resume doesn't exactly strike you with the number of huge hits, and he really doesn't take any chances here.  It's all very paint-by-numbers.

The Internship recycles so many plot elements that you'll have the whole movie figured out within that first 20 minutes.  I realized around that point that I was basically watching a retread of any high-school or college comedy where competing cliques or frats go at each other.  It's like a mix of Revenge of the Nerds, only the jocks are just type-A nerds, and Old School, where the dean is replaced by a snooty, disapproving boss (Aasif Mandvi).

Watch salesmen Nick (Wilson) and Billy (Vaughn) find themselves out of work after their owner (John Goodman, who's in everything these days) decides to close up shop without warning.   Unsure what to do next, Billy decides to dream big and takes a chance at getting an internship at Google.  The condition of the internship at Google is that they are grouped up and given a series of challenges.  The team with the best score gets guaranteed jobs.  Nobody wants to get paired with the old dudes, so Nick and Billy end up with a group of cast-offs.  Even the cast-offs aren't wild about being grouped up with fast talking guys with no tech skills.  Do you think the group will eventually come together and rally?  Oh, the suspense...

On a side note, I live fairly close to Google (as well as use their blog software), but I've never heard anything about their actual internships being as cutthroat or competition based as in the movie.  My research shows that while they got the culture part right about Google, the competition is mostly a fabrication likely added for dramatic purposes.  Everyone I've ever talked to has said it truly is the most amazing place to work.

What needs to be said about Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson at this point?  They give you exactly what you expect from them: Vaughn's hypercharged, stream-of-consciousness rants, and Wilson's aw-shucks charm.  They are pretty much playing the same characters they've always played.  At one point there's a reference to the fact that they've known each other since they were kids, and I couldn't help but think that wasn't that also the case in Wedding Crashers.  They might as well have named the characters the same and just called it John and Jeremy go to Google.  The next film can be John and Jeremy join the Army and it can be a retread of Stripes.

The rest of the cast is fine.  The group rounded out with Dylan O'Brien, Tiya Sircar, Josh Brener and Tobit Raphael.  I thought Raphael was funny, in particular.  Max Minghella effectly plays the main antagonist, and you want to just punch his character in the face the whole film.  Rose Byrne also stars as Owen Wilson's main crush.  I could have used a little more Byrne in the film, but that's probably due to my crush on her.

The Internship isn't reinventing the wheel, and for some of you this may feel all too familiar.  I do think that it's a crowd-pleasing film, but a lot of it is going to come down to whether or not you're tired of Vaughn and Wilson's act, or this formula in general.  I warmed it up to it as it went on, and got a few laughs out of it, so I guess I can't quit these guys just yet.  This hasn't been a good year for comedy, but I'm guessing this is going to likely to be the most successful of the Summer due to it's mainstream appeal.  I call it a matinee.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

(Note: Originally I gave this 3 Death Stars, but upon reflecting, I'm knocking this down a bit.)

Now You See Me (2013)

I actually saw Now You See Me several days ago, but I had a detour in Las Vegas, where money magically disappeared from my wallet.  While in Vegas I thought about the last movie based on magicians I saw, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, which was set in Vegas, whereas Now You See Me varies the locale throughout the film.

Despite having a few days to reflect on the film, I find I don't have that much more to say about it, or that my opinion has changed all that much.  I did, however, realize that despite that Now You See Me wasn't a comedy, I actually laughed more than I did while watching Burt Wonderstone.

Now You See Me is an example of a movie that I was expecting to be so awful that I'm probably giving this a little more credit than I should simply because it wasn't a disaster.  The setup alone was already something that was making me cringe a little.  Four magicians of various skill sets - played by Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson - are brought together by an unknown benefactor.  A year after meeting they perform in Vegas rebranded as "The Four Horsemen".  During their performance, they are able to rob a bank in Paris, giving the money back to the audience in attendance.

FBI Agent Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is brought in to investigate along with Interpol Agent Vargas (Mélanie Laurent).  They aren't able to make anything stick to the Four Horsemen, and charging them with the crime would indicate that the FBI now believes in magic.  Knowing there's an explanation for all of this, Rhodes and Vargas meets with Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), and ex-magician that makes a living by exposing the secrets of other magicians.  Bradley explains to Rhodes how they pulled off the first trick, but that the Four Horsemen have been planning for a long time and will likely always be a step ahead of the FBI.

You'll find that the story spends more time focusing on Mark Ruffalo's and his Keystone Cops antics than the Horsemen.  His character also seemed to be excessively angry at times, although some of that made a little sense by the end of the film.  Overall, the plot gets little muddled as it goes on and inconsistencies pop up.  I felt like resolution of the film wasn't very satisfying and a few things were left unanswered.  Oddly, this didn't bug me that much, and that's probably due to the fact that I had enjoyed the movie so much up until that point, that a few inconsistencies weren't enough to ruin it for me.

The main reason why I enjoyed the film so much is that the dialog is actually very snappy and funny.  I was really expecting a much more serious film, so the humor was a pleasant surprise.  The pace of the film is also very brisk with more action and chases than I expected.  I didn't realize going into Now You See Me that it was directed by Louis Leterrier, who's directed films like the first two Transporter films and Unleashed.  It looks like he went into his bag of tricks to add some action elements and it served the film well.  You know what I just realized?  Louis Leterrier directed Edward Norton's The Incredible Hulk, and directed Mark Ruffalo in this film, who was The Avengers' Hulk.  Does mean we should expect Eric Bana in Leterrier's next film?

Another really strong element of the film was that there's great chemistry between the Four Horseman.  The cast, especially Woody Harrelson, seemed to be having a lot of fun together and you really feel that on screen.  Despite the good chemistry, there's not a lot of character development.  At the end of the film, we really don't know nothing about this group of people. Again, I wasn't terribly upset by this, but fleshing out the foursome would have been nice.

Now You See Me is a surprisingly entertaining film, that has a great pace, funny dialog, and a good cast that plays well off each other.  The story is definitely the weak point, but I think you'll have enough fun with the film that you won't notice or bug you too much.  I think it's worth a matinee.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars

After Earth (2013)

Is the twist that M. Night Shyamalan and George Lucas are really the same person?

That's the thought that kept running through my head through most of After Earth.  It has many elements that reminded me of the Star Wars prequels: weird accents, flat characters, bad dialog, overreliance on CG, and it centers around an annoying teen you never really care about.  Is there a typical M. Night twist in the film?  If you count a totally predictable plot/character development that's telegraphed from the opening scene of the film, then yes.

After Earth takes place 1000 years in the future.  Humanity has relocated to another planet outside the solar system called Nova Prime.  While on Nova Prime, they encountered an alien force that operated on sensing human pheromones, especially fear.  Cypher (Will Smith) was able to defeat these aliens, as he has no fear, so he's effectively blind to these aliens since he doesn't give off any fear pheromones.  This is all explained in the first five minutes with a really awful narration delivered by Cypher's son Kitai (Jaden Smith).  What makes it awful is that he's speaking with a weird, made-up accent that made it very difficult to understand what he was saying at times.  The other characters in the film spoke with it as well (Will Smith's seemed to disappear as the movie went on).  It was a totally unnecessary detail thrown in the film that added nothing to the story, other than make it harder to understand the characters.  It's odd that they even spent so much time creating an accent for this society (even though they are from Earth), and desigining all of these cites when they spend maybe five total minutes on this planet.

Cypher and Kitai don't have much of a relationship, so his wife (Sophie Okonedo) urges him to take Kitai along on a routine mission.  The ship is damaged in flight, however, and they are forced to crash land on Earth.  Coincidentally, Cypher and Kitai are the only two survivors.  Their ship is beyond repair and Cypher is hurt and cannot move.  Kitai must get to the tail section of the ship to activate an emergency beacon, but it's several days away.  Earth is a much different and dangerous place since humanity left it, but if Kitai follows Cypher's instructions he believes they will succeed.

That's pretty much all there is to the story, which is a problem as it slugs along.  It's never very exciting or even all that interesting.  We're forced to follow Kitai as he continues to disobey his father's direct orders for no reason.  He even falls asleep at crucial moments.  Part of the problem is that Jaden Smith is just not a strong or charismatic enough actor to carry the movie in the first place.  It's worsened by the fact that his character is written as a typical, annoying teen.  Plus, he always looks like he's about to cry.

If you think his Dad could save this, he doesn't.  In fact, Will Smith barely even feels connected to the film.  Since he can't move, he spends the entire film sitting in a cockpit delivering instructions through a communication device.  If this was supposed to be a movie about a father and son bonding, it would have been more effective to keep these two together for the duration of the adventure.  There's no connection or chemistry between the two as a result.

The CG was terrible.  Most of the creatures looked completely fake, and was of the quality you'd expect to see on an original movie on SyFy.  The main threat not only had a bad design where you can't tell its head from his ass, but it does that thing I can't stand where it moves so impossibly fast that there's no way anyone would last in a fight for more than two seconds against it.  It's as if the CG was almost an afterthought, and then I find out that when Will Smith came up with the story for this, it wasn't even originally conceived as a sci-fi film.  In fact, the title itself is misleading as this could have taken place anywhere, or at any time.  It didn't need to be in the future, or even on Earth.  It could have taken place in just a random forest for all it mattered.  It's like Smith, Shyamalan, and co-writer Gary Whitta randomly decided to set in the future simply because they thought it would be cool.  Plus, they could pump up the budget with unnecessary CG.  Instead, they created a world that we're all totally detached from, when it could have been an uplifting stroy about a father and son.

After Earth is a boring, lifeless, uninspired sci-film that seems to serve only as a vehicle to push Jaden Smith on us again.  It also shows us that M. Night Shyamalan is completely out of gas as a director.  This was not worthy of a release during the Summer blockbuster season.  Skip this one.

1.5 (out of 5) Death Star

Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

They're still making Fast & Furious movies?

I complained in my The Hangover Part III review that The Hangover franchise was a good movie where they forced two sequels of descending quality, because they didn't know where to take the characters or the story.  The Fast & Furious franchise seemed to be following a similar path of each sequel being worse than the original, but at some point after the fourth, it's as if they all sat down and said, "You know what?  Let's just make these movies as over-the-top as we can!"  It seems to have worked as many consider Fast Five to be the most entertaining of the series, and now we have Fast & Furious 6, which continues the trend.

This is one of those testosterone-fueled action films that just gets your adrenaline going.  I left the theater well after 1 a.m. and all I wanted to do was go lift weights and drive my car home really fast, and I drive an old Honda.

You want car chases?  They got car cases!  You want gunfights?  They got gunfights!  You say you don't like gunfights, but want brutal fist fights?  Girl fights?  There's lots of that!  Oh, want a tank?  There's even a tank!  You want sophisticated?  Go look for that somewhere else, nerd!

The plot is pretty ridiculous, but this isn't a movie you're watching for it's nuanced and solid plot.  Even the film seems to be saying, "Whatever, just go with it."  An ex-British Special Forces soldier Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) has committed a series of heists and the DSS needs help catching him.  Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) works a deal with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew.  Help him bring Shaw in, and it's full pardons for the team.  To stir the pot even more, Hobbs reveals that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who's been presumed dead (since Fast 4), is working with Shaw.  Dom's in no matter what now, as he just wants to find out what happened to Letty.

From that point, it is just an orgy of car chases and fighting.  Almost all of it is ridiculous, and the rational side of your brain can't help but watch some of these sequences and wonder how they are always escaping serious bodily harm, or even death, with each crash or bone-crushing hit.  Then again, it just so fun to watch that you really don't care that much of it doesn't obey the laws of physics.  Some of the scenes are so crazy that it becomes cartoonish.  Cars get flattened, yet there's no blood or bodies even though you didn't see anyone get out of the car.  You can actually tell what's going on in these scenes though.  They actually trusted that their action sequences would entertain without having to distract the audience with weird camera movements, quick cuts or shaky cam.  My eyes were so glued to the screen during some of these scenes that they would keep drying out (I'm a contacts wearer) from lack of blinking, and I would always look for an opportunity to put eye drops in.

Another thing that impressed me was that the film managed to avoid looking fake despite the craziness of some of the action scenes.  I don't know how much CG was used, but it sure seemed like a lot of it was practical.  In some ways this felt very old-school.  Even most of the cars used were older, muscle cars.

There are a few lulls here and there, mainly when there's any kind of dialog or exposition in between action scenes.  However, much of this is made bearable by the surprisingly humorous dialog.  There's good chemistry within the group, and you get that feeling that these guys are really friends just ripping on each other.

Overall, I really enjoyed the cast.  This is a group not exactly known for their acting chops, but for the type of film Fast & Furious 6 is, there's nothing wrong with them, and they all looked like they were having fun.  I have to give special notice to Gina Carano, who plays Hobbs partner, and has many of the best fighting scenes in the film.  I think at this point any film that features women fighting must star Gina Carano.  This should be enacted into law.  Also, I could have used a little more Dwayne Johnson.  He only pops up from time to time, but maybe they had to limit his time on film when they'd run out of baby oil or arm butter.  Jeez he's a beast of a man!

Director Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan, who've been collaborating on the series since Tokyo Drift, really seemed to have hit their stride with the series, and turned it into something that is simple, audience- pleasing, Summer fun.  They even managed to tie up the continuity with Tokyo Drift really well (note: for those that aren't aware, despite Tokyo Drift being the third film in the series, chronologically it takes place after Fast Six).

Oh, and there's a really great surprise as the credits roll.  You don't need to stay at the very end, but there's a scene during the credits that might be one of the best sequel teases I've ever seen.

If you want some crazy, balls-to-the-wall action and don't want to have to think too much, Fast & Furious 6 is for you.  It's not going to win any Oscars, and sure it's a little dumb, but it's the type of film that fits in just fine during the Summer blockbuster season.  It really does have a little bit of everything for action lovers and I think it's a fun way to spend a few hours.  I thought it was a blast to watch, and definitely worth a matinee.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

The Hangover Part III (2013)

Just like real hangovers, the more you have them, the less fun they become...

After the lazy, disappointment that was The Hangover Part II, I heard many reports from people involved in the production of The Hangover Part III that we'd be getting a much different story this time around, as opposed to yet another rehash of the first (which Part II was).  While Part III is finally a different story than either Part I or Part II, that doesn't mean it delivers on the fun or laughs promised.

The Hangover franchise is a perfect example of trying to squeeze blood (money) from a stone. The first Hangover was a perfectly-contained, raunchy comedy.  There simply wasn't a need for a sequel.  There were no unanswered questions that we needed to revisit in later chapters, and we didn't catch up with these guys to see how their lives turned out.  It's one of the reasons why there's not much of a story in either of the sequels.

Case in point, the main plot of Part III has more to do with Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) than it does with The Wolfpack.  Chow wasn't much more than a side character in the first film.  Hell, the movie doesn't even revolve around the premise of these guys recovering from a hangover and trying to piece together the previous night.  It's more of an attempt to refer back to events of the first film and close the circle.

After the death of his father, Alan's (Zach Galifianakis) friends and family stage an intervention.  He's been off his meds for a while and needs help.  While driving him to a care facility, The Wolfpack is attacked and kidnapped by a mob boss (John Goodman), who wants them to track down Chow.  Chow has stolen a large amount of gold from him, and thinks The Wolfpack are the only ones that can find him.  Why a mob boss would force these doofuses to track Chow down instead of using his own henchmen is beyond me, but whatever.

The Wolfpack spends the rest of the film catching up to Chow.  They don't even end up in Vegas until almost the very end.

The most disappointing aspect of Part III was the lack of humor.  Sure, there are a few chuckles here and there, but otherwise, there just isn't that much to laugh at.  It's more of a action movie, with a few comic elements thrown in.  Many of the biggest laughs in the movie come from longer versions of what you've already seen in the trailer.  So, if you really love that scene where Zach Galifianakis is singing at the funeral, or when he cries at his intervention, you can look forward much longer versions of those.  The giraffe scene played out a little differently than I expected though, and that was probably the biggest laugh of the movie for me.  Unfortunately, that was the opening scene of the film.  I've always said that hallmark of a good comedy is quotability, and this definitely lacks that.  It's actually pretty forgettable.

The rest of the film is Alan saying weird stuff, and Stu (Ed Helms) and Phil (Bradley Cooper) reacting to either him or Chow's antics.  This leads to another big problem I had, which is after three films you can only conclude that Alan really is an awful person.  Granted, he's mentally ill, but there's no reason for these guys to be friends with him.  There's a scene of him involving a kid that I found a little disgusting and not in a raunchy way.  It just illustrated to me what a terrible person Alan is.  Don't get me wrong, awful characters sometimes make for the best comedy, but the schtick has gotten old.

I don't know why director Todd Phillips, who also co-wrote with Part II writer Craig Mazin, didn't bring back the original writers of The Hangover (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) to give this film the energy it desperately needed.  It's clear they didn't know what to do with these characters, and the script desperately needed some punch up.

Most of original cast returns, along with a few cameos.  Forgotten member of The Wolfpack, Justin Bartha, once again is barely in it.  Poor guy, he never gets to have any of the fun.  Then again, maybe it's better that that nobody will remember his involvement in this series.

There's a short scene after the credits start (which actually was kind of funny and makes you wish the movie would have followed that story more), but nothing else, so there's no need to stay to the end of the credits.

The Wolfpack disappoints again.  The Hangover Part III is yet another uninspired sequel to a film I used to love.  It's not so bad that it made me angry, but it's just not that funny or even entertaining.  It's missing all the energy of Part I or even Part II.  Part III is a movie that I have no desire to ever watch again.  Hopefully, this really is the last of the series. I know you guys probably really want to see this, but save your money and wait for rental.

2 (out of 5) Death Stars

Disconnect (2013)

Every year I make a resolution to 'disconnect', but it never lasts more than a few days.  It's not that I have any kind of internet addiction, it's just easier to ping someone on Facebook than it is to pick up a phone, even if it's the same phone I'm using to look at Facebook.  Kind of sad, really...

Disconnect follows a familiar format where you have several stories that eventually intertwine as they develop.  There are three main stories that all center around some kind of technology.  First, we have a reporter (Andrea Riseborough) that's investigating underage teens being used in online, sex chat rooms.  She interviews one boy (Max Thieriot) and hopes her report will be her big break as a reporter.

Then, we have a couple (Alexander Skarsgård and Paula Patton) that's having marital issues after the death of their child.  They've grown apart and she spends her time reaching out to people in chat rooms as her husband won't talk to her.  While on a business trip, they find out that someone has stolen their identity and cleaned out their bank account.  As the police are moving too slow, they hire a private investigator (Frank Grillo) to track down the man that stole from them.

Finally, a boy (Jonah Bobo) is cyberbullied by two classmates (Colin Ford and Aviad Bernstein) by creating a fake Facebook profile and tricking him into an extremely embarrassing situation.  Things spiral out of control and his father (Jason Bateman) is left trying to find out what happened.

Sometimes these types of films suffer from having too many characters, or not giving them enough depth, but one of my favorite things about Disconnect is that you learn a great deal about everyone without tons of exposition or explicitly being told.  You aren't spoonfed info and director Henry Alex Rubin trusts the audience to be smart enough to figure this stuff on their own.  I found myself caring about each story, so there was no drop off or drastic shift in tone when going back and forth.  A lot of times when watching movies that follow this format, I find that there's usually one story or set of characters that's not as interesting or that I don't care about.  That's not the case here and I credit writer Andrew Stern as well as Rubin for creating a story with relatable characters and situations.  I also credit them for staying away from too much melodrama while gradually building tension as things escalate.

My only real complaint about the story, is that I thought some of the details regarding the identity theft thread felt a little forced to me.  I'm primarily basing this on my own personal experiences with identity theft, and I understand that not every situation is going to be the same, but my experiences have been much different than what they went through in Disconnect.  It's a minor complaint though.  It didn't ruin the film for me or anything like that.

It's interesting that the title is called Disconnect, when that seems to be the message or goal for the audience, rather than what actually happens in the film.  I see the phrase "cautionary tale" being thrown about a lot in discussion of this film, but I didn't really feel that it was preachy enough to be a cautionary tale as much as it was a character drama.  After watching Disconnect though, I did come away from it feeling like I need revisit my resolution to stop spending so much time on Facebook or Twitter and work on actual in-person interaction.  I think the world would be better off if we all worked on that a bit.

While there aren't a lot of huge names in the cast, there really isn't a weak performance in the group.  All of the characters (even the bullies) manage to come off as sympathetic.  I give Jason Bateman crap for playing the same role over and over, but Disconnect is a movie finally that allows him to play a different type of role and show a side of him we don't normally see.  It really is well-acted across the board.  Even scenes where characters aren't even verbally communicating, but communicating through online chat, you get some kind of emotional depth from them.

Disconnect is easily in my top five of the best films I've seen so far in 2013.  It's a wonderfully acted dramatic thriller, that'll make you think a little about how we use technology in today's world.  It might actually get you to disconnect a little yourself.  Don't miss this one.

4 (out of 5) Death Stars