Adam Membrey

REDBOX READY – WEEK OF JULY 28th, 2015

July 28, 2015 by Adam Membrey

Procrastination is not a pretty thing, guys. But it does make these Redbox Ready columns much, much longer than their weekly siblings – so it all works out! There’s loads that Redbox has to offer these days – check out the list and see if anything fits your taste. Onward!

Ex Machina

Tomatometer: 91%; Audience Score: 87%

Alex Garland has made his name as both a novelist and a screenwriter, the acclaimed wordsmith behind 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007), and Dredd (2012). He’s always been known for writing smart, thought-provoking sci-fi/horror tales, and this is his first directing experience. As far as debuts go, this is about as impressive as you can get. Even more rewarding is just how deep Garland wants to go. He doesn’t just want to throw up interesting ideas – he wants to take them to their natural and unexpected conclusions. Garland knows how to make these ideas the center of the film while still remembering how to feed them through strong characters and emotional stakes. There’s much of the unexpected in this film, and part of the beauty of it is wrestling with your own feelings about what Garland has to say.

Story: a young programmer wins a company competition that sends him to a remote location to take part in some ground-breaking experiments that involve evaluating the humanness of a female robot with the world’s first true artificial intelligence . Things do not go as planned.

Blush Factor: Rated R for graphic nudity, sexual references, and some violence.

What We Do In The Shadows

Tomatometer: 96%; Audience Score: 87%

This mockumentary has knocked over everyone with laughter at every film festival it’s been to. This is the one film – maybe more than any other on this list – that I’m actively dying to see. The trailer gives a good sense of the vibe – which mocks the self-seriousness we treat with all vampire tales, while also reminding us that they are humans, even if very unusual ones at that. How can that picture above not make you want to see this?

Story: Four vampire roommates try to adjust to the unforgiving modern world.

Blush Factor: Rated R for some comical bloodletting (these are vampires, after all), and some f-words that you may or may not miss due to that thick Kiwi accent.

Get Hard

Tomatometer: 29%; Audience Score: 49%

What started out as a simple mismatched buddy comedy became something far more inflammatory. The critics didn’t take too well to this film, with the audience only slightly more generous, and I think a lot of that has to do with a lack of self-awareness the film shockingly seems to show. It’s very common for R-rated comedies to cross the line; less so for them to inspire a plethora of think pieces, all confused by the racial elements in play here, and just how clueless (or careless?) the film seems to be with them.

But, hey: it’s very possible you won’t recognize any of this in the movie, and will laugh your way all the way through. You never know.

Story: A millionaire is busted for fraud and is set to join the notoriously tough San Quentin prison. He turns to the one black guy he knows to help him prepare. If that sounds like a racist premise, then you now know why many, many think pieces were written about this comedy’s racial politics.

Blush Factor: Rated R for “pervasive crude and sexual content” – including some very graphic nudity – and lots and lots of swearing.

Danny Collins

Tomatometer: 78%; Audience Score: 77%

Dan Fogelman – pulling writing and directing duty here – has brought to the big screen a great deal of movies with heart (Cars, Bolt, Tangled) and has started stretching to ever more adult far with Crazy, Stupid, Love and Last Vegas. With Danny Collins, he seems to be matching his affinity for stories with heart with a newfound bigger edge. He’s got a fine performance from Al Pacino to center it. Should be a crowd-pleaser for many.

Story: An aging 1970s rocker refuses to give up his bad habits until he’s gifted with a 40-year-old handwritten letter from John Lennon – meant to be sent to him – prompting him to clean up his act and find a better way.

Blush Factor: Rated R for a brief scene of nudity and for lots and lots of f-words. Some alcohol and drugs because this is rock and roll, after all.

Kevin James stars as "Paul Blart" in Columbia Pictures' comedy PAUL BLART: MALL COP. — Kevin James stars as “Paul Blart” in Columbia Pictures’ comedy PAUL BLART: MALL COP.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

Tomatometer: 6%; Audience Score: 41%

Look, you either are the kind of person who enjoyed Paul Blart: Mall Cop or you’re not. Like his buddy Adam Sandler, Kevin James seems to be content with making more family-friendly fare that barely seems to charge to life. The critics never liked this one – nor have they liked any of James’ recent movies. And audiences will likely find this to be a passable movie to fall asleep through on a lazy Sunday.

Story: After doing a great job as a mall cop for 6 years, Blart takes a little, well-deserved vacation to Vegas as some bonding time with his daughter before she heads off to college. Things happen, and Paul Blart is clearly the only man who can save the day.

Blush Factor: Rated PG for some violence (mild, menacing violence – guns are held but not pointed or shot)

Run All Night

Tomatometer: 60%; Audience Score: 60%

Look, guys. Liam Neeson’s made a lot of action movies since Taken first came out 7 years ago. A lot of them seem to have one word titles. All of them have Neeson kicking ass and taking names, and often not much else built around it. Director Jaume Collet-Serra would know, as he’s already directed Neeson in 2011’s Unknown and 2014’s Non-Stop. Here, it seems, they have a better-than-average story with a better-than-average cast leading the way. If you like smart, simple crime films with some ass-kicking here and there, this could be a solid choice.

Story: A mobster/hit man (Neeson) has one night to figure out if his loyalties lie with his best friend, the mob boss, or with his estranged son. Anything involving the mob doesn’t tend to go too well or bloodlessly.

Blush Factor: Rated R for some sexually crude talk between men, lots of bloody violence (this is the mob after all!), and lots of f-words.

It Follows

Tomatometer: 96%; Audience Score: 66%

This is one of those movies where the critics sang it high to the heavens (96% Fresh), but the audience did not find themselves nearly as enraptured (66% recommendation). Anytime you have a 25-30% difference between the critics and the audience, you usually have a film that’s more respected than it is something to be loved and remembered. I’ve seen this film. I respect the filmmaking. The score is haunting and spine-tingling as hell. The actors all do a great job. But I don’t think it adds up to nearly as much as it thinks it does. Only time will tell how we remember this film, but if you’re looking for something to give you a nice scare and/or scare your teenage kids off sex forever, this is a good bet.

Story: After having sex in the backseat of a car, a young woman is followed by some supernatural force she doesn’t understand.

Blush Factor: Rated R for “disturbing violent and sexual content including graphic nudity, and language”. I would say one of the more disturbing things about this movie is the score – it is just haunting and fills you with an ongoing sense of dread.

Unfinished Business

Tomatometer: 11%; Audience Score: 29%

I’m a fan of writer Steve Conrad, who wrote the criminally underrated The Weather Man (2005), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013). Critics and audiences alike didn’t seem to get too much of out of this movie, but I believe that Conrad alone will at least create a few great, memorable moments in an otherwise unmemorable movie.

Story: a small business owner and his two associates take at trip to Europe to try and close the most important deal of their lives. And as the Laws of Hollywood decide, any trip to Europe involving a deal is bound to go very, very wrong.

Blush Factor: Rated R for “some strong risqué sexual content/nudity, as well as language and drug use”.

The Lazarus Effect

Tomatometer: 13%; Audience Score: 25%

Blumhouse Productions has climbed aboard and rocketed across the Hollywood success train with their simple, but deadly effective business model: small budgets ($2-5 million at best) horror films with name actors (such as Olivia Wilde and Mark Duplass here). Their films tend always make their money back, and often times they prove to be big hits that create tons of profit. But here’s the thing: the business model doesn’t rely on the films being good, and they rarely are. But lower budgets allow for bigger risks, and where else are you going to see a movie with a creepy-eyed Olivia Wilde come back from the dead and threaten to do awful things? I can’t vouch for this being a good movie, but it could prove to be an entertainingly bad one.

Story: A group of medical students find a way to bring the dead back to life. You saw the “Lazarus” in the title, right?

Blush Factor: Rated R for lots of violence and gore, with some frightening scenes, and some language.

Clouds of Sils Maria

Tomatometer: 89%; Audience Score: 69%

After the exhaustive success of the Twilight series, Kristin Stewart seemed intent on diversifying her portfolio as much as possible. She’s done strong work in a variety of films, and this appears to be one of the better ones. It’s a strong story that’s impressed those who’ve seen it. And you can’t go wrong with Juliette Binoche at the forefront.

Story: A veteran actress, asked to participate in the revival of the play that made her famous 20 years earlier, flies to the Sils Maria – a remote region in the Alps – for rehearsal. There she meets another actress who reminds her a lot of herself.

Blush Factor: Rated R for language and brief graphic nudity.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Tomatometer: 74%, Audience Score: 85%

I wrote earlier about this gem, one of the best films to come out in 2015 so far, an absolute blast of giddy fun, great humor, and other Britishisms. Hollywood has this weird habit of bringing out young male actors and putting them in as many movies as possible, as if they could make them a star purely by force (see: Liam Hemsworth; Alex Pettyfer; Jai Courtney). But director Matthew Vaughn has brought out something special in newcomer Taran Egerton, who plays the lead character. The guy has got the action look down, on top of great acting ability and a killer sense of comic timing. He’s one to watch for years to come, and has already booked upcoming roles alongside Tom Hardy and Hugh Jackman.

Another great appeal: for all you Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version, of course!) fans out there who’ve always wondered, “What would it look like if Colin Firth kicked an unholy amount of ass?”, look no further. This film provides the truth and the delight that comes along with it. You’ll have a great time, have loads of laughs, see some great action, and all down with style to spare. Highly recommended.

Story: As a global threat emerges from a high-tech genius, a raw, yet promising street kid is recruited by a top-secret spy agency.

Blush Factor: This is about as Hard R as it gets. Lots and lots of swearing (over 100 F words), a huge amount of violence and blood (especially in the now-famous Kentucky church scene), and some drinking (because they’re British, of course).

Woman in Gold

Tomatometer: 53%, Audience Score: 83%

Any underdog story that has a Helen Mirren performance at the center is going to hold up quite well. Even better when it’s based on a true story, and handled with sincere touch by all those involved. This is a film that blends art, history, Jewish identity into a blended taste that seems to have been greatly enjoyed by audiences. Ryan Reynolds, here in a rare supporting part, has been acting under the radar with a number of interesting, smaller projects. This seems to have brought out the best in him.

Story: An older woman, who was a Jewish refugee during the Holocaust, fights the Austrian government to get back artwork she believes belongs to her family.

Blush Factor: Rated PG-13 for some minor swearing (a couple swear words) and thematic material related to the fact this is about the Holocaust and the aftermath.

Maggie

Tomatometer: 51%, Audience Score: 35%

If you ever wanted to see Arnold Schwarzenegger, divorced from all his action iconography, actually act: this might be your best chance. This is one film that has divided critics and audiences alike since it first came out – there are those who came to love it, and there are those who found it a tedious bore. Finding out which part of the spectrum you land on is part of the fun of seeing movies that sneak under the radar.

Story: After a young daughter is infected with a disease that slowly turns her into a cannibalistic zombie, her father, The Terminator, stays by her side.

Blush Factor: Rated PG-13 for some disturbing thematic material (zombies and fathers!), some blood that you tend to see with zombie outbreaks, and some minor language.

’71

Tomatometer: 97%, Audience Score: 84%

Lead actor Jack O’Connell had a rather big-fanfare Oscar bait of a movie in Unbroken last year, with his performance standing out amidst all the noise. There are many who have worked with O’Connell that have spoke volumes of his ability, and perhaps working here, beyond the radar of Hollywood, he’s found another gear. This has been highly regarded by critics across the board, and seems to have struck a strong chord with audiences as well. If you’re interested in history and a gritty, suspenseful tale of humanity, here’s your pick.

Story: Following a riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971, a young British soldier is accidentally trapped and abandoned in an area completely unfamiliar to him.

Blush Factor: Rated R for some violence that comes with bloody riots (getting shot close-range, limbs missing, etc.), and lots of swearing (these are the Irish, after all).

Slow West

Tomatometer: 91%, Audience Score: 77%

Through Inglorious Basterds (2009), X-Men: First Class (2011), Shame (2011), and Prometheus (2012) – only 4 of the 12 movies he’s made in the last 5 years alone – Michael Fassbender has shown that his greatness as an actor is not just in his intensity, but in his chameleon-like ability. There’s nothing this guy can’t do, and do well.

When I first moved to Austin a few years ago, I had the privilege of watching Jack White and the Peacocks perform an incredible closing set at ACL. I was already a little starstruck from having seen James Marsden right in front of me (he’s a lot shorter than I expected!), but just before the end of the show, I looked to my far right and froze in shock: it was Michael Fassbender himself. The weirdest thing about seeing him was just how normal he looked. He didn’t look intense or brooding or anything like he had been in his movies. If anything, he looked and acted like a complete goofball, giggling with his buddies about the most random of things.

In the time since then, Fassbender has only shown more shades and colors of his ability. Most of his roles, however incredible, have not allowed him to have too much fun or be anything but captivatingly intense. So let this be another motivation to see Slow West – word on this film is that Fassbender’s loose and hilarious like you’ve never seen him before, another color to add to the acting rainbow he’s planted in still endless horizon.

Story: A teenage boy journeys across 19th century America in pursuit of the woman he loves, and a mysterious man volunteers to help him out.

Blush Factor: Rated R for lots of violence/gore, and for strong language.

Kill Me Three Times

Tomatometer: 9%, Audience Score: 32%

This is not a good movie. So there’s really only two, possibly three reasons to see this movie. They are:

1) It was shot on the western coast of Australia. The cinematographer did a pretty great job. So you’ll get pretty images of a very, very pretty area.

2) Simon Pegg is acting in what is probably his first villainous role.

3) The guys who made this were clearly influenced by Tarantino. They take great joy in spraying blood everywhere in cartoonish, slow-motion form. If that’s your thing, well, then that’s your thing.

Story: After a botched contract assignment, a professional killer gets involved with three different cases of murder, blackmail, and revenge

Blush Factor: Rated R for bloody violence (gunshots with ramifications that involve unrealistically spurted, flowing blood), language (lots of ‘f’ and some ‘s’ words), and some brief sexuality/nudity.

Focus

Tomatometer: 56%, Audience Score: 55%

Writer/Directors Glen Ficarra and John Requa delivered an underrated gem in I Love You, Phillip Morris in 2009 and then followed it up with a film that allowed them to take advantage of a uniformly great cast and some studio polish in Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011). For their next, they combined their love of twists and turns with their love of star wattage, and brought Will Smith and rising actress Margot Robbie into the fold. Smith and Robbie are two of the most charismatic, fun-to-watch stars you can find today, so a great deal of your enjoyment with this movie is going to depend on how you feel about them. Word on this film is that it takes a few too many twists and turns, but remains buoyant solely on the chemistry and performances of its two stars.

Story: A con man (Smith) takes an apprentice under his wing (Robbie). They decide to break it off after things get messy. They meet again 3 years later, but in completely different, far messier circumstances.

Blush Factor: Rated R for lots of strong language , some sexual content (mostly suggestive dialogue), and brief violence (some graphic gunshots).

Jupiter Ascending

Tomatometer: 25%, Audience Score: 42%

An important thing to remember as you watch this movie: the original script was over 600 pages long. Most movie scripts aren’t much more than 110-120 pages. And that’s even including the $200 million blockbusters. So what becomes of the other 480 pages? After seeing this film, I firmly believe they went towards creating a sci-fi mythology that was meant to be detailed and invigorating, but became quickly, horribly exhausting. I love seeing the Wachowskis indulge their imagination here, as everything but the actors are designed as beautifully as you could hope for. But the story slogs, weighed down by the stress of a thousand backstories thrown into a blender. The special effects and visuals have a texture and dexterity to them that’s rare in movies these days (even ones as expensive as this), but good luck making it to the end of this with the same energy as when you started.

Story: A young woman is working a crappy job before finding out she’s the heiress of an intergalactic nobility. She must rise to the occasion to save the citizens of Earth from a bigger threat. And Channing Tatum helps her kick some ass.

Blush Factor: PG-13 for some sci-fi violence, sequences of sci-fi action, some swearing (more than usual for a PG-13 movie), and partial nudity (some bare butts).

While We’re Young

Tomatometer: 84%, Audience Score: 57%

Writer/Director Noah Bambauch has found some great success with his new muse, Greta Gerwig, with their collaborations Frances Ha and Mistress America getting great reviews and seemingly injecting some extra mojo in Baumbach in the process. Outside of writing Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (I guess he had to pay the bills somehow), Baumbach’s last sole venture was 2010’s Greenberg. The critics raved for it at the time, just as they have done with While We’re Young, but both films suffer a huge difference of opinion from the audience. Here’s the split for While We’re Young/Greenberg:

Tomatometer: 84%/72% Audience Score: 57%/42%

With both films, there is at a 27 percentage point difference in the response. This makes both films highly divisive, with around half approving and half rejecting it. When I first saw Greenberg, I started raving about it, telling all my more cinema-minded friends about it. They almost all came back to me with a, “Wow, that was awful,” sentiment. It even somehow made them feel bad. I didn’t get this for a long time until I read a great A.V. Club article about the relative jerk nature of Stiller’s character. It was then I realized, “Wow, that Greenberg guy was an asshole.”

So here’s my point: when Baumbach is the sole writer, you know there’s a lot of thought and ideas that went into it. Sometimes they’re well made. Sometimes they’re overreaching. But the guy is a hell of writer. What I think gets people tripped up are his characters. They’re well-sketched, but they also might be too much like people you actually know. And sometimes that can be difficult for people. Sometimes that’s not a good feeling to recognize those kind of people on the screen. Who knows? You may greatly enjoy Baumbach’s latest this time out, and you might find yourself unable to bear it. It’s for you got give it a shot and decide for yourself.

Story: A middle-aged couple finds their marriage and careers at a crossroads when a new, young couple comes into their lives.

Blush Factor: Rated R for language – IMDB has calculated 38 f-words.

NEVER HEARD OF IT, SO YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN:

5 Flights Up

Tomatometer: 54%, Audience Score: 51%

I’ve never heard of this movie before. Apparently, it’s pretty good, and when you got Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton as your leads, you could do a lot worse. If you’re looking for a nice, warm story, this is a good bet.

Story: A long-time married couple who’ve spent their whole lives in the same New York apartment make a decision to move away, and find themselves overwhelmed by all the personal and real-estate issues that arise.

Blush Factor: PG-13 for some language and some nude images.

No Way Jose

Tomatometer:

There are no reviews or anything of the sort for this film. Which means its Redbox premiere is it’s premiere premiere. Adam Goldberg wrote and directed this film, and I’m going to go out on a limb with this one: he was absolutely fantastic as Julie Delpy’s American boyfriend in 2 Days in Paris. A couple years later, Delpy made 2 Days in New York with Chris Rock playing her American boyfriend. Rock later went on to make Top Five, and there’s a lot of genetic similarities between his and Delpy’s film. You can see the influence working with Delpy had on him, with him giving his characters time to talk through things with each other and enjoy nice, long walks together. So I do wonder: will No Way Jose show some of the Delpy influence?

Story: An indie-rocker who’s spent his time performing at children’s birthday parties approaches 40 and suddenly finds himself at a crossroads.

Blush Factor: Rated R for language and some sexual references.

The X-Factor: ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’

July 5, 2015 by Adam Membrey

After X2, the (at-the-time) amazing second entry in Fox’s X-Men movie series, came out in 2003, it raised the bar in such a way from the first film that we could only be tickled with excitement for the third. I dreamed of just how epic and badass it would be. It would become the alpha and the omega, and maybe bring on the end of the world with its cataclysmic awesomeness.

But then something heartbreaking happened. Bryan Singer, the director of the first two films, left to make Superman Returns, which he considered his real passion project. He wanted to make a Superman movie all along, he contended; X-Men was just a stepping stone to that eventual opportunity. So then we, the audience, kinda felt like that jilted girlfriend who watches her boyfriend move on to something he says will be bigger and better. Enter Matthew Vaughn, the British director hot off the buzz from Layer Cake. He seemed like a good, smart fit. And then, feeling constrained by the strict deadline Fox had placed on the movie coming out in less than a year, he left.

What the world then got is X3: The Last Stand, a movie so disappointing and rushed and everything we never expected it to be. I remember having a look of constipation across my face the whole time. This couldn’t be it. This was supposed to be the beginning and end of all superhero movies! Where is the awesomeness? Did it disappear through some kind of studio lot crack?

Fox somehow agreed with us by not making another X-Men movie for 5 years. They knew the last one sucked pretty hard. So they rebooted with a younger class, this time with Matthew Vaughn back at the helm. And the ironic thing: Vaughn had even less time to make this movie than he would have with X3: The Last Stand. How ironic is that? I guess context is everything.

The movie ended up being a huge success, breathing new life into the X-Men series and giving Fox a whole new set of possibilities. So when X-Men: Days of Future Past started to gear up, Vaughn did the same thing Singer had done just 10 years before: he jumped ship to his true passion project. He always wanted to make a James Bond-type of movie, he contended. And then he was gone. Even weirder? Singer came back to the X-Men series, admitting that his Superman affair wasn’t the bigger and better thing he expected it to be. And the X-Men series, as polyamorous as ever, agreed to welcome him back into the fold.

All I have to say is that I’m glad passion ruled the day, because Vaughn has delivered an incredible movie in Kingsman that takes all the spy genre conventions we have grown accustomed to and given them a slight twist. It’s wittier, punchier, and never, ever loses it’s sense of fun.

There’s a moment in this film in which you realize thousands of people’s heads are about to explode. The last time something like this happened, those weird little aliens from Mars Attacks had their heads burst green snot all inside their helmet. We had fun with it. We all laughed. But human heads? That’s going to be bloody. And even in a bigger budget movie like this, with attitude to spare, it seems a bit much. So imagine my surprise when this moment in the movie, primed for a splatterfest, turned into something only the Cheshire Cat could have dreamt. Heads exploded, alright, but only into whirling dervishes of colorful, rainbow-stained smoke. It looked like a celebration far more than anything traumatic. It brought back memories of all those intros to Bond films, full of hues and rhymes far more hypnotic than anything your local psychiatriast could work up.

That’s the kind of film Kingsman is. Just when you expect it to go left, it goes right; when you expect it to zig, it zags. It constantly surprises and upturns expectations, and often to drive a greater truth home: movies don’t have to be gritty borefests – they can be fun.

This is a film that takes great joy in subverting your expectations of actors. Colin Firth gets to kick an unholy amount of ass (the Kentucky church scene is an all-timer for him and for all his fans), Michael Caine finally gets to be a little bit of a jerk, and Mark Strong gets to take a break from all those tough-guy roles to show some aching vulnerability and steely dorkiness. And just like Vaughn did with Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kickass, he gives another newcomer in Taran Egerton a chance to show what will make him a star for years to come (he’s already booked roles alongside the likes of Tom Hardy and Hugh Jackman).

Through every explosion, every one-liner, every kick, punch, and scream for vengeance, you can practically hear Vaughn and Goldman cackling just off to the side. This is a team of artists working with such passion and craft, creating something that wears its influences on its sleeve but never forgets there are times to take the jacket off and just have some good old fun.

Giants From Another Land: ‘The Other Dream Team’

July 5, 2015 by Adam Membrey

Anyone who has used Netflix knows this inherent dilemma: having so many choices and yet not knowing what to pick. But another side effect of having such a deluge of choices is that your brain never quite buys competely in to your choice. Unless it’s 100% what you wanted to be watching – which, frankly, only happens when you’re binge-watching your new favorite show and got to see the next episode – the realization that you can simply stop at any time and make a different choice is always there, just standing by the door, ready for your signal to open it and walk right back outside.

All of this to say that I wanted so badly to bail on The Other Dream Team. We made the choice to watch it based on my cousin’s recommendation, who tried to let us know just how good it is without overselling it. But the opening scenes of the film are almost entirely subtitled. I’m used to watching movies with subtitles, but hearing some of the dialogue that matches the words makes it easier to just flow with it. When they’re talking in a different language and I still have to read in English? It feels more like homework. And no one wants to do homework on a Saturday night.

But sometimes there’s a reward for sticking with things. And, boy, does this movie reward you.

The true story, about Lithunaian basketball – their rise, their struggles, their future NBA stars – is as fascinating as it is heartbreaking. Lithuania had the true misfortune of being stuck between two super powers in Russia and Germany during World War II. This resulted in many fleeing the country, as well as stranding many who were unable to escape. It’s a dark history to start a story with, but it informs the joy and ownership the country takes with basketball. It is their true sport, they remind us, and it is the thing that propels them through the darkness.

Even more interesting is learning about their superstar players who nearly missed their chance to dominate in the NBA. I was familiar with Arvydas Sabonis, mainly because I never understood how someone who looks so slow and unwieldy could be so damn good. He frustrated me in every playoffs I saw as a kid, leaving me uneasy whenever he ran into my Malone-and-Stockton-led Utah Jazz, like a slow-moving buzzsaw you couldn’t retreat from. Even more amazing? Sabonis, due to the draconian rules the USSR held over all their future NBA players, didn’t get to play in the NBA until he was 32 years old. So we missed his prime. And, as you’ll see in this film, we missed something even more incredible.

Even more incredible to me is how Sabonis wasn’t even the best Lithuanian player at the time. That honor belonged to Šarūnas Marčiulionis, who, like Sabonis, joined the NBA late in his career. We didn’t get a chance to see his frightful prime, of which the film gives us short glimpses of.

You will learn some incredible things about Lithuania in this film, such as how you had to pay the government for your new car and wait 10 years for it to arrive. The players describing their first trip to America – where they sat amazed at all the food we could eat, and even tried to make a couple bucks by selling our goods in their home country – will give you some nice perspective.

Perhaps the most incredible part of this whole story is just how a band such as the Grateful Dead became involved. Even on your best Mad Lib days, you would never associate a country like Lithuania with a jam band like The Dead. But understanding how the two became intertwined is one of those great discoveries you make as you don’t allow a heavily-subtitled film to deter you. The rewards are great. Give it a chance.

This movie is no longer streaming on Netflix, but can be rented through Amazon Prime for 99 cents. Here’s the link.

Book Review: ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ by Garth Stein

July 5, 2015 by Adam Membrey

I will always appreciate this book for it’s opening chapter. I gave it a shot one night, curious if the large print copy I had found at the local Goodwill would help me read faster. I wanted to start and finish a book at some point, I thought, and why not this?

When I read this quote, it struck me for obvious reasons: not just because I love animals (well, most of them) but because I work with students that often have to use some form of gesture to communicate what they don’t have the vocabulary for. I think we’ve come in contact with someone who feels this way:

“Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question. I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences.” (1)

I finished that first chapter full of awe and wonder. The story, told from the perspective of the dog at the center, managed to escape that cutesy twee feeling you get from narrative overreaches. I could hear this dog’s voice – and it was far more interesting than any humans’ I had heard in a while. So I told everyone about this book – on the first chapter alone. I knew I was probably overselling it, but I didn’t care. That first chapter. Damn.

But the story continues beautifully until about halfway through the book – that’s where the elegant tone Stein has so well-crafted is occasionally threatened by some rather cartoonish characters. He etches in the details of the owner, his wife, and his daughter through the particular lens of this incredibly philosophical dog. They are spare, but they leave you room to imagine. When he introduces the grandparents and some minor characters who take up the second part of the story, however, the balance is threatened. They feel like characters from a different, far-less subtle story. They do, however, provide an obstacle that the characters we side with must overcome. If there’s anything that works well about the dramatic characterization, it’s that our immediate hatred towards them makes us pull that much more for the characters we care about.

I also want to give credit to Stein for descriptions of what it’s like to race in the rain. Part of what gives the dog’s owner, a race car driver, an advantage over other drivers is his ability to drive well in the rain, something that many drivers tend to struggle with. The descriptions of racing here are so gracefully detailed, without become too much, that you feel you’re in the car yourself. It’s a great way to take something that could easily be an overwrought metaphor, and commit to it with detail and sincerity. It works beautifully.

In the end, this book isn’t nearly as sappy as I expected. I finished it – which felt like an accomplishment in itself. But your enjoyment with this book will depend on what you demand of your stories. If you want a simple, (melo)dramatic story with some great grace notes thrown in and told from the perspective of a dog, then this is a book for you.

We Are Human: 2014’s ‘Dear White People’

July 5, 2015 by Adam Membrey

When we first meet Sam White (Tessa Thompson), she’s speaking on her college radio show, Dear White People. She’s got opinions about the racial culture of her Ivy League college, and the serve both as a manifesto for the black students who want to be heard and a reminder to everyone else – who think seeing Good Hair means they know everything – that they know nothing.

As we meet the characters that populate this fictional college, it feels as if the radio show never stopped. It continues throughout, with each character’s dialogue feeling like it’s own radio channel. Opinions are given and expressed, and it becomes difficult to understand where the speech ends and the character begins.

But that’s the point. Everyone at this school is a walking facade, trying their best to establish their place in the world by espousing the cultural conversation they think they should push. Sam wants everyone to know the black students won’t be pushed around; the main white character, Kurt Fletcher (Kyle Gallner), wants his little college magazine to mean something. They’re all chasing something, even if they’re not sure exactly what it is. And so it goes – characters getting angry and struggling with the intangible.

The movie continues to build towards an all-out culture war on campus until it hits an almost literal crossroad: just before Sam is about to join a protest that her followers have been clamoring for, a protest she’s not even sure is the right thing to do, she gets a phone call that stops everything. For the first time in the film, she seems human. She has feelings. She has family she cares about. And she retreats. It’s a necessary reprieve from the escalating atmosphere, a way to show us that deep down, these are just kids struggling to find and fight for their place in the world.

The film’s climatic moments, at an incredibly racist college campus party that’s unfortunately ripped from the real world headlines, show just how far we haven’t come. The culture is still bruised and tattered. Misunderstandings are as ever-present as before. The school’s president and vice-president show they’re not as interested in fixing it as they are in getting some cash and attention off it.

But writer/director Justin Simien, understanding that underneath it all we’re built with the same needs and wants, pulls back the focus at the end to show us what motivates Sam. It’s not about the radio show. It’s not about the uprising. It’s about having a place in which you can comfortably hold the hand of someone who looks different from you and no one will care. Of course, the student body walking by notices Sam’s final gesture. It shows how far we haven’t come and still have to go. But Dear White People is an impassioned, entertaining reminder that we’re made far more of the same things than we’re not.