Review: Laggies

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★★

Movies like “Laggies” make me hopeful for the future of cinema. Here we have a brand new screenwriter and an emerging director. People like to point the lack of talented women working in Hollywood, and they make an excellent point. Hollywood seems to have a misplaced aversion to hiring women in creative roles. It can’t be because of the lack of talent though. There are plenty of talented filmmakers working in the independent scene just waiting for that big call. Case in point, Lynn Shelton’s “Laggies,” a small yet very well done indie comedy.

“Laggies” follows Megan (Keira Knightley), a young lady in her mid-to-late twenties who never quite grew out of high school. She lives with her photographer boyfriend Anthony (Mark Webber) who would like to see her get a job, but doesn’t really have to courage to force her into it. Megan is just content with spinning one of those wooden advertisement signs in front of her father Ed’s (Jeff Garlin) accounting firm. Even her best friend Allison (Ellie Kemper) is concerned about her attitude toward life. Everyone just thinks she needs to grow up.

One night, Anthony proposes to her unexpectedly. Megan doesn’t know how to handle it, so she wanders off into the night and meets Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz), a high school girl looking for booze with her friends. She finds that she enjoys hanging out with them more than her boring grown up friends. She sees an opening to get away from her life for a while by telling Anthony she’s going to a career building seminar out of town. But instead of going, she moves in with Annika and her single dad Craig (Sam Rockwell). She hopes that hanging out with Annika and her crazy friend Misty (Kaitlyn Dever) will help her figure out what she wants to do with her life. But she finds out she might actually have more in common with Craig than Annika and her friends. 

“Laggies” is both funny and a genuinely heartfelt film. It’s an accurate portrayal of today’s twenty-somethings who experience what can only be called a quarter-life crisis. I know, because I’m only a handful of years removed from being there myself. The difference between Megan and myself is I actively worked. Megan does nothing else other than watch TV at her parent’s house rather than looking for a job. Let’s be honest, I would rather be doing that but people have to work.

Director Shelton’s handling of the subject is spot on. She understands the unique dilemmas of both her lead characters and is able to portray them from an unbiased perspective. We are, in turn, able to empathize equally with both Megan and Annika despite their age difference. And maybe the age differences between them and the viewer, in some cases.

Shelton’s job is made much easier thanks to an incredibly polished script from Andrea Seigel. For her first script, Seigel chose what appears to be a pretty personal topic for herself. It’s as well crafted as some of the better scripts to come out this year. All the characters compliment one another, including those in the minor roles. There’s no extra fat to trim off of this screenplay. Everything flows seamlessly: each scene, each sequence and each act.

“Laggies” is a very enjoyable comedy, but it’s not without its own minor faults. It is a pretty straightforward story, and doesn’t leave the audience with much to ponder about. That isn’t always a bad thing, per se, but it probably won’t be one of those movies you think about a year or two down the road. But I think the one thing we can take away from “Laggies” is that Shelton and Seigel are very refined storytellers who have an unlimited amount of potential in them. Whether or not they work together again remains to be seen. But if “Laggies” is any indication on what they’re both individually capable of achieving, we’re in for some remarkable films from the two of them.  

Review: The Equalizer

by Trevor Kirkendall

★

“The Equalizer” is yet another example of how Hollywood producers have either lost their creative mentality or just don’t care about finding original stories anymore. They’re out there, though. Studios continue to buy original concepts from writers, many of them first-time screenwriters. But where are these movies? The indie houses crank them out all the time, but they never make it to the big theaters.

I have another theory though: Hollywood finds it easy to regurgitate the same formula over and over again because they know you’re going to see it. The think we – as an audience/consumer – are stupid. Everyone always says they’re sick and tired of sequels, remakes, and reboots and that we demand originality. But which ones do the best at the box office? “Godzilla” or “Pacific Rim?” Both are the same movie, just one has a franchise title on it. Same rules apply here with “The Equalizer.” Would anyone see this movie if it didn’t have the name of widely successful TV series from the 80s? Probably not.

But I digress. “The Equalizer” stars Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, a heavy lifter at the local Home Mart, a Home Depot/Lowes type of store. No one really knows what he did before he began his job at Home Mart. Every day, McCall comes to work, eats his healthy lunch, goes home, reads, and never sleeps. Since he can never sleep, he spends many nights drinking tea at a local diner near his home.

At the diner, he befriends a young escort named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz). She hates her job, but knows no other life. Turns out, she’s been brought to the United States from her Russian home and forced into this life. When her handlers brutally beat her within an inch of her life for insubordination, McCall decides enough is enough and murders her Russian bosses in their office. That’s enough for the big boss in Russia to send someone to clean up the mess, a ruthless one-dimensional villain named Teddy (Marton Csokas).

This is a big screen television adaptation in name only. Other than calling the main character Robert McCall, and a little homage to the series right before the closing credits, there is nothing about this film that remotely resembles the original series. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the story doesn’t hold up well at all. I can look the other way on the whole “adapted-from-a-television-series” thing, but a half-assed, cliché littered screenplay cannot be overlooked.

I’m sure the script in its original form was probably okay, until some Hollywood executive got his hands all over it and decided to change the main character’s name to Robert McCall and slap “The Equalizer” brand name all over it. Rather than change things around and throw an old 80s show title on the poster, they should have spent more time on the story itself because this is not good. The whole plot point the sets this story in motion is one of the most far-fetched examples of an inciting incident to come across the silver screen all year. Not to mention, it takes almost an entire half hour to reach. By that time, I assume most people will have already tuned out much of what’s already happened. But if they didn’t call it “The Equalizer” would anyone go see it? Nope.

Director Antoine Fuqua continues to prove himself as an inept storyteller. Aside from “Training Day,” which is mediocre at best, Fuqua only concerns himself with staging action sequences and concocting moments of cheap thrills. For “The Equalizer,” Fuqua delivers nothing new. In fact, he pulls out all the tricks in the book to make this film full of every crime film cliché we’ve seen since the dawn of the genre. He directs his focus to setting up brutally violent sequences rather than finding things for the audience to empathize with and gain some form of a rooting interest. Not that the script from Richard Wenk (“The Expendables 2”) had much there to begin with. Fuqua’s cast receives no favors either.

Denzel is Denzel, playing the same action hero/crime fighter he’s played in almost all his movies. I do like him as an actor for the most part, but his choice of films lately has me questioning if he really is as good as we make him out to be. But every time I start to feel this way, he ends up doing something fantastic – like “Flight” – and all is forgiven. At least, until his next atrocity. The only person worth mentioning in this film is Mortez who continues to show she is much more proficient in her ability than her age would indicate. And yet, she’s greatly misused here, taking up only a small amount of screen time despite being the catalyst for the entire story. I’m not saying she’s memorizing in this role by any stretch, but at least she does bring something new in this performance we don’t normally see from her.

For a film about brutal revenge killings, I suppose “The Equalizer” could be considered decent. But fans of the 80s television series will be supremely disappointed when they see someone masquerading around as Robert McCall not acting like the Robert McCall they all know and love. This is a cheap and blatant attempt by a Hollywood studio to capitalize on its own history again by slapping the name of a once successful series and trying to market it as something new and fresh. We shouldn’t be so easily fooled by this, but I have a feeling this film will do well and will no doubt produce some kind of sequel, or worse, a long running franchise. That’s just what we need: more vapid and uninspired garbage from studios only interested in repackaging the same exact thing you’ve seen over and over and over for the last decade or two.

Review: Carrie

by Trevor Kirkendall

★½

One day, moviegoers are going to realize that remakes really are a gigantic waste of time. Not only a waste of the moviegoer’s time, but a waste of the studios’, the directors’, the producers’ and the talents’ time. Yet, people still pay money to watch the same movie that they probably already own in their DVD collections. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Now, we have a remake of the classic 1976 horror film “Carrie”. The studio even knows it’s doomed because they’ve advertised it as a “reimagining” of the original novel rather than a remake. Their slick advertising techique is quite transparent, and its pretty evident from the beginning that this is nothing more than a simple remake.

Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a shy, quiet and troubled teen in high school. Most of the other students don’t really care for her. Carrie’s mother Margaret (Julianne Moore) is a very strict and religious woman, and she doesn’t even want Carrie attending the public schools. One day after gym class, the other girls in the locker room ridicule and embarrass Carrie.

The bullying is lead by one of the popular girls, Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday). Her friend Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) also participates, but quickly realizes how wrong this is and stops. Gym teacher Ms. Desjardin (Judy Greer) breaks up the commotion and sides with Carrie.

Chris is banned from the upcoming prom for her stunt. Sue, feeling sorry for Carrie, asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie to prom instead. Carrie reluctantly agrees despite her mother’s insistence that she doesn’t go. Chris plans for vengeance against Carrie with her boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell). What her classmates don’t know is that Carrie has a special ability where she can move things with her mind. And what would any sane person with this ability do when someone gets on his or her bad side? I think most people know what happens next.

Nothing new is brought to the table in this version of “Carrie”. I wish I could say this wasn’t a remake of the 1976 film since the source material is based on a Stephen King novel, but it’s hard to see it that way. The book has been readapted, but it’s far from a reimagining. It’s not a shot-for-shot remake but it might as well have been. More inspiration seems to have been drawn from the 1976 film than the novel.

It’s disappointing to see someone as talented as Moretz participate in a remake and bring nothing new to the role. Remakes probably wouldn’t be so awful if they find some way to make it different and unique. Moretz as Carrie White is no different than Sissy Spacek in the same role. Spacek’s portrayal is one of the classic performances in the history of horror films.

Too watch Moretz copy Spacek’s performance is egregious. She’s talented beyond her years and is one of the most gifted teen actresses working in Hollywood today. She wastes her time with “Carrie” and utilizes none of her talent in bringing this role to life. To say her presence here is a disappointment is an understatement.

Moore is the only bright spot. She does portray the role a little differently than Piper Laurie. Moore is always solid in everything she does; not surprisingly she shines here. She’s evil, but doesn’t believe what she’s doing and how she’s raising her daughter is wrong. It’s difficult for someone to successfully pull off an evil role like this, but Moore is such a great and rare talent. She has no issues here.

Director Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don’t Cry”, “Stop-Loss”) is just as guilty of copying from the original as Moretz. Brian De Palma helmed the original and really brought the horrific imagery of the original King novel to life. He deserves all the credit for the famous scene everyone knows from the original. Peirce tries to make that one famous scene her own. While the effects might be a little sharper (thanks to 2013 CGI), it’s not as effective. Outside of that, everything else feels bland and very similar to the original.

As a reimagining, “Carrie” fails. As a remake, it still fails. There’s nothing new that we haven’t seen before. I don’t understand why there’s a market for remakes these days. It seems that if Hollywood isn’t making a sequel to something, they’re remaking old properties. Was this remake really that necessary? Most aren’t but this one certainly wasn’t. It’s a lazy attempt at remaking yet another horror film. What’s really disappointing is waiting the entire film until the prom expecting something massive and getting nothing different.

To me, remakes are for people who want to see the same story they’ve already seen before, and for studios too cheap to buy new ideas from writers. If that’s the case, studios need to find property that’s good but not well known. At least then we’d be treated to something different. It’s hard to remake something everyone has seen. And if moviegoers really want to see the same story they’ve already seen before, why not just watch the original? In this case, that might be a wise decision.