"Creed" Review

It's easy to go meta when talking about Creed. Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) undergoes a balancing act, juggling his personal merits wit the pressures and expectation that befall him as Apollo Creed's son. In the same manner, Creed has to maintain the spirit of the Rocky series preceding it, but offer the kind of originality necessary to stand strong on its own, to justify its existence in a series whose last film (2006's Rocky Balboa) already served as a triumphant swan song. And it's with chest-palpitating excitement I report that not only does Creed succeed, it's one of the best in the entire franchise.

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers)

Apollo Creed (played in Rocky I-IV by Carl Weathers) was the former heavyweight boxing champion in the world, the man who gave Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) the underdog's chance at the belt. During the peak of Apollo's career, Adonis was conceived, the product of an affair, but unfortunately, before his birth, Apollo died during his match with Ivan Drago. Adonis's mother died later in his childhood, so he was kicked around from foster home to juvie detention center until Apollo's widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad) found and adopted him.

Adonis grows up, sharing his father's penchant for boxing. He studies all of Apollo's fights, sneaks across the border to participate in Tijuana bar brawls, and quits his cushy accounting job to pursue boxing professionally. Moving to Philadelphia, Adonis hopes to train under Rocky Balboa, and make his own mark outside of his father's legacy.

Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan)

What Whiplash did for Miles Teller, Creed does for Michael B. Jordan. He delivers a muscular, magnetic, multi-layered performance.  Not many actors walk a tightrope of braggadocio without either being unconvincing or irritating, but Jordan dances upon it well, reminiscent of early Will Smith.

Given Adonis' identity crisis, I find myself a bit more tolerant of his ego trips. The bulk of the movie sees him try to escape his father's shadow - he almost starts a fist fight after being referred to as "baby Creed" and there's one scene where he's watching an Apollo-Rocky fight on YouTube and shadowboxing...as Rocky. However, for all his efforts, Jordan betrays a sentiment in Adonis, that perhaps he's not fully ready to abandon his upbringing; something may be pulling him back towards his father. 

Stallone delivers his best performance in a decade, and really, what else would you expect from his career-defining role? Rocky still lives a simple life; he works at the restaurant, looks after his turtle, and continues to visit Adrian's grave, bringing flowers every time.  However, the "beast" that sat in his heart in Rocky Balboa has been purged; Rocky approaches life more peacefully, with an awareness and acceptance that he's achieved everything he ever desired, and has no qualms about waiting for time to eventually sweep him away. The film allows us to view a more developed state of introspection about Rocky's deteriorating health, a recurring theme from the end of Rocky IV onwards, and it's fascinating, though bittersweet, to witness Rocky living through such a vulnerable period of his life.

Jordan & Stallone deserve their praise, but Creed's true star is writer-director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station). His screenplay (co-written with Aaron Covington) and direction are lean and focused. No scene goes on longer than it's supposed to, and when the film starts going into familiar territory (a liar revealed, the couple fighting, etc.), he makes sure to nip it in the bud and prevent the movie from lingering on. His story deals with heavier subjects - infidelity, mortality, abandonment, but it never feels alienated from the rest of the franchise. This is one of the few times a PG-13 feels right at home with the subject material, never watered down. 

The boxing is done phenomenally. Adonis swings blows with his opponents, raw and no-holds barred, but the camerawork is smooth, tracking each fighter as they go for broke, are propped against the ropes, and formulate strategies. To the casual eye, these scenes will fly by, unassumingly. However, the best illusionists present their work unannounced. These fights are remarkable because they're seamless, a window of time in which director, cinematographer, actor, choreographer, and camera operator are in sync to present a fight from the point of view of where a referee might be standing. Coogler smooths out the motion, dims light, mutes sound, orchestrating these fights to be exhibited almost like gallery art. The boxing ring is his canvas, and he plays it well.

Creed is one of 2015's best thus far; it takes a formula we've seen before, even up to this July with Southpaw, and breathes new life into it. Coogler directs a faithful, ambitious addition to the franchise, and does it with aplomb. I keep hearing Oscar talk for Stallone as a supporting role, and I can't say I'm opposed. With this film, Michael B. Jordan should become a household name. Creed motivates, excites, tugs at heartstrings, and inspires. At the end of the film, you'll want to run up those now-famous steps of Philadelphia's Museum of Art, and really, that's when you know a Rocky movie is done right.

It comes out on Wednesday. Head to the theater and have a blast.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

"Love the Coopers" Review

Readers, if I may be frank with you all for a moment, there are days when I hate doing this. This schtick of not choosing my review until I get to the theater, often leaving it up to a coin flip, has landed me in some pretty deep dung - The Gallows, Max, etc. My reactions result in anything from disillusionment to violent, vocal hatred, and while the review serves as a way to purge myself (that's another franchise with a tendency to boil my blood), the initial experience remains a test of patience. 

So during Love the Coopers, if you were to walk in, you'd find me in the far back corner, hoodie up, fist under cheek, contorted in a manner that grasps at straws to be comfortable. I'd convince myself that twenty minutes had to have passed by now. I check my phone, and it's only been eight. I do this three times. And as I continue to watch talented people portray miserable, unfunny characters, I feel like a schoolkid, coiled up and waiting for the bell. What runs through my mind? "Just remember all the good the purge does."

Love the Coopers follows the members of the Cooper family on the days leading up to their big Christmas dinner. The reunion's at Charlotte (Diane Keaton) and Sam's (John Goodman) house; they're falling out of love forty years into their marriage. They have two kids. Eleanor (Olivia Wilde), a failed playwright hiding her sadness behind sarcasm and a martini, and Hank (Ed Helms), a recently unemployed divorcee trying to get a job in time to pay for his kids' Christmas presents. Who are his kids? There's Charlie (Timothée Chalamet), an awkward teen crushing on a girl; Bo (Maxwell Simkins), a goodhearted kid searching for the perfect present to remedy his and Charlie's friendship, damaged after the divorce; and Madison (Blake Baumgartner), a slightly potty-mouthed version of Michelle from Full House. Also arriving at the dinner table are Charlotte's jealous kleptomaniac sister, Emma (Marisa Tomei); Charlotte and Emma's lonely father Bucky (Alan Arkin) and his lover or maybe just a good friend, Ruby (Amanda Seyfried); and Sam's memory-loss-stricken Aunt Fishy (June Squibb).

...did you get all that?

Let's not kid ourselves - I don't expect Shakespearean development from a Brady Bunch-sized ensemble cast. And it's not like we need that to make a good film, case in point, Love Actually. Love Actually also featured simple characters with problems of their own, but they were written in a manner that allowed us to empathize and sympathize with their choices. They charmed us, warmed our hearts, resembled us in our bright and dark moments. So when in Love the Coopers, Eleanor denigrates a soldier (Jake Lacy, one of the film's few highlights) for his Republican and Christian beliefs for no reason, or Sam whines about a trip to Africa he was going to take with Charlotte before they had kids, citing this as a solution to save for their crumbling marriage, it confuses me. These characters don't resemble us, they're caricatures - hollow, tiresome caricatures.

Jake Lacy possibly inspecting a sudden growth on Olivia Wilde's face.

And that's not to say these characters are invalid or boring because they're jerks. In recent memory, Aaron Sorkin's script for Steve Jobs surprised me by making the man out to seem even more of a douchebag than in Jobs featuring Ashton Kutcher. However, Sorkin writes with eloquence. I understand why his Steve Jobs thinks and acts the way he does, and even though I think the character's a jerk, the script provides a comprehensive and unique spin on the archetype. It can be done with a skillful script, something Love the Coopers sorely needs.

The film's directed by Jessie Nelson (Corrina, Corrina) and her direction seems confused. Some scenes, especially near the beginning, are shot almost like a documentary or news footage as the film shows montages of Christmas images, in reference to the holiday's spirit and commercialism. This is juxtaposed with moments of random CGI - most odd being Olivia Wilde's spontaneous glassy combustion (Just had a moment of sobriety - that sentence is a strange one). Conversations are often choppy - one character is shown, then the other, back and forth with such little variety that I can't help but wonder if the actors are even in the same room.

As Love the Coopers nears its ending, I've already checked out. The last half hour is predictable, save for a disappointing resolution with Bucky and Ruby's subplot, and (mercifully) rushes by so fast, I don't have time to let it sink in before the credits roll. As soon as the credits scrolled up, I was out of my seat and gone. Though you shouldn't try to beat my land speed record, this movie's not worth your time.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

"The Peanuts Movie" Review

The Peanuts Movie is the comic strip, and that's just what it needed to be. For Peanuts as a property occupies one of the few truly unique places in literary history, a genuine look at childhood through a child's eyes, filtered through adult sensibilities. As opposed to many pieces of family entertainment, which operate on a sensory level, with blasts of color, motion, and light, Peanuts focuses on emotion. Whether it's Charlie Brown's melancholy, Lucy's bitterness, Linus' empathy, or Snoopy's zaniness, Charles Schulz took his characters seriously, even if they were dealing with small stuff - losing a kite in a tree, pretending to be an ace war pilot. As adults, I think we forget that a child processing their emotional understanding of the world is a legitimate act, and I think Schulz argues just because our experience gives us wider perspectives of understanding, we shouldn't belittle, trivialize, or patronize them. Thankfully, the movie keeps Schulz' spirit in mind, crafting a faithful homage to his vision - the kind of family entertainment we need.

The film focuses, as it always does, on Charlie Brown (played with surprising range and depth by Noah Schnapp; he also plays Tom Hanks' son in Bridge of Spies), a wishy-washy, goodhearted kid for whom nothing seems to go his way. He can't fly a kite, can't throw a pitch down the plate, and when he messes up, weathers the groans, eye rolls, and cries of "YOU BLOCKHEAD!" from the other kids. However, when a little red-headed girl moves in across the street, Charlie falls head over heels, and tries everything to make the best first impression.

Peanuts is laid-back, and more episodic than linear. As a result, the movie's rhythm varies, and can progress leisurely. Fans will be used to this; Peanuts has always, to me, resembled a lazy summer afternoon with my friends. I'm not sure how kids growing up on Hotel Transylvania, Despicable Me, and the Ice Age sequels will respond, but the film is definitely a change of pace.  

I own two Peanuts collections: Peanuts - A Golden Celebration and Peanuts Treasury. I read them nigh-religiously in my youth, so as a fan, I'm pleased to spot all the references to the comics. Fans will find a smorgasbord of Easter eggs; the screen is laden from top to bottom with nods to specific strips, creators and producers, and little secrets that give insight into the Peanuts universe (the sequel will probably split into two parts and make Charlie Brown into Hawkeye). My pleasure's not with the amount of references, however, but with how well they're integrated. There's a callback to the comics when Marcie tries to wake up Peppermint Patty in class; in the strips, the punchline ends in either Patty blurting out a wrong answer, Marcie inventing a ludicrous device to make it look like she's awake, or some witty banter with Marcie and Miss Othmar (here, she's played appropriately by jazz musician Trombone Shorty). The joke from the comic hits, and in a lesser adaptation, that would be the end of it, but it comes back at the end of the scene, becoming the catalyst for another plot point. These scenes showcase the great care Craig and Bryan Schulz (Charles Schulz's son and grandson, respectively) took in writing the script, to not only jam every comic into ninety minutes, but service the film first. 

Each voice actor nails their character perfectly (I give special shout-outs to Alexander Gaffin's Linus and Venus Schultheis' Peppermint Patty); it's not easy to deliver this kind of dialogue. The Peanuts kids aren't your regular kid characters. These are the kids that forgo lemonade stands to be psychiatrists, use Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace for a book report, and lean on brick walls for hours philosophizing about their existence and happiness. They also ride broomsticks like cowboys, go ice-skating, ride carnival rides, and trick or treat. Schulz wrote his characters like actual kids, curious enough to explore the adult world, but naive enough not to fully get it or be disillusioned by it.

And this is where I think these characters shine and what the film understands and gets wonderfully. Oscar Wilde, in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying, theorized that "Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life," and thus sparked a debate in what's better, characters that reflect how we are, or characters that we aspire to reflect. The genius of Charlie Brown is that he is both - as much insecure and prone to failure as he is brave and compassionate. Both sides of Wilde's coin are satisfied and can find comfort in Charlie, can empathize and sympathize with his plights and his hopes. He is both eternal pessimist and optimist, reflecting the entire gamut of our emotional understanding. Through his stories, we can hold up the mirror to ourselves, and through Schulz's spirits and his descendants' writing, find strength, hope, and the joys of life in its most irritating. After all, it's only through falling on our backs that we finally learn to kick the football.

In this regard, The Peanuts Movie is rare, a brief microcosm of not just society, but life. Through careful and skillful film making, the film finds ambition in familiarity, and in its wonderful balancing act of modernizing Peanuts and keeping the comic's identity alive, comes off just as timeless, just as unique, and just as important to us all.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off. 

"Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse" Review

Watching Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is a frustrating experience, not just 'cause of the sight gags or the kind of hashtag/selfie/twerk dialogue that advertisers and executives love to string together aimlessly, but because under the surface lies a decent horror-comedy ready to chest-burst, one that loves the '70s and '80s classics, their effects and style. Guillermo Del Toro tweeted recently that when a movie comes out, three are released: the movie the audience wants (in this case, a goofy, gory horror-comedy), the movie the studio sells (a bloody, dorky time with some heart), and the one that we get. We got Blake Anderson (Workaholics) lip-syncing to Iggy Azalea's "Black Widow".

Damn it.

The film centers on three scouts (making sure not to show, in any feasible fashion, an association or affiliation with the Boy Scouts of America©): awkward every-teen Ben (Tye Sheridan), snarky and infuriatingly offensive Carter (Logan Miller), and sheltered, clueless Augie (Joey Morgan). The trio became childhood friends through scouting, but Ben and Carter want to quit, in order to save their quickly-waning high school popularity. Carter's older sister, Kendall (Halston Sage), for whom Ben has the goo-goo eyes, invites the duo to the coolest party of the year (full of seniors!); unfortunately, this is the same night as a special scout trip, where Augie will receive his final badge. Ben and Carter hatch a plan: they'll go camping, but sneak out in the middle of the night and have the greatest night of their sophomore lives.

Oh, yeah. And a scientist does science, it goes wrong, due to a bumbling janitor's (the aforementioned Anderson) antics, and zombies are let loose. 

It's surprising how much the zombies feel like an afterthought. The movie starts with their creation and release, but switches gears for almost forty minutes into a semi-knockoff of Superbad (with none of the charm). When the zombies finally show up, the movie isn't consistent with what kind it wants to parody. At times, the zombies lumber slowly a la Night of the Living Dead, then with no warning, they'll race after the scouts like the remake of Dawn of the Dead. The zombies will sit around, brainless, chewing on a limb, but in another scene, a zombie will sing, remembering every lyric and melody. The movie makes the cause seem like a viral infection, but if so, how would zombies survive decapitations, or being burned alive? Am I putting more thought into the mythology than the screenwriters whose idea of a joke is having a zombie cop's breasts flop in slo-mo?  

Films like George A. Romero's Dead series looked at zombies with a satirical eye, as representations of consumerism and Communist paranoia, focusing on the tension between survivors and their makeshift societies. This film, the collaboration of three screenwriters, including director Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones), features none of this commentary. The penis jokes are a welcome replacement.

Miller plays an obnoxious, truly hateful character; Carter is an idiot, a bully, and an insulting caricature of Generations Y and Z. If we're supposed to hate the character, Miller does a decent job, but falters when compared to the extremes Daryl Sabara took his character in World's Greatest Dad. Tye Sheridan, an otherwise highly promising actor, with great performances in Mud and Joe, goes on autopilot here. I can't blame him too much, but as someone who's currently getting praise for his role in Entertainment and will be featured in next year's X-Men Apocalypse, he should know better. Halston Sage, curiously enough, has made a name for herself in films like Paper Towns and Goosebumps, as the dweeby guy's love interest. She's not a bad actress, persay; in Paper Towns, some charm shone through, but she's never given enough to do in a role to really stand out. I hope the typecasting stops soon. 

I don't think this premise is brain-dead (embrace the pun); there's potential for a funny horror-comedy. With a Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi at the helm, this could turn out an irreverent, balls-to-the-wall jokefest. And honestly, some of the effects have a D.I.Y. low-budget charm, reminiscent of B-movies of 30 years ago. The filmmakers have seen these horror films, as nods to Halloween and Re-Animator show, but showcase none of the atmosphere or playful tone.

In the end, I can get as mad as I want, and rage about how I wanted the movie to end in the first ten minutes, but the movie will be gone by the second week of November. If the filmmakers, studio, and distributors don't care, why should I?

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.