'Hell or High Water' takes an honest look at poverty and crime in America.

Hell or High Water is a stark and pungent film about two brothers in Central Texas who go on a bank robbing spree, and the two taciturn Texas rangers who doggedly pursue them. Although the film recalls the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men— both take place in Texas, both involve stolen money and the good and bad guys chasing after it, and both take on a generally cool, detached tone, one that matches the austere Texas wilderness—Hell or High Water doesn’t strive for grandiosity as much as No Country does. No Country For Old Men has a monumental cruelty that slaps you in the face. (And I should clarify, I think it’s one of the Coen Brothers’ finest films.) But it’s a relief that Hell or High Water doesn’t aim for such devastating depths: at its core, Hell or High Water is a simple story about a man who cannot obey the law (Ben Foster), and his brother (Chris Pine), whose circumstances draw him into the same volatile world. 

But that’s not to say this movie doesn’t have something to say. The director, David Mackenzie, situates his story in a lonely human wilderness, a vast, sprawling mausoleum of dead towns plagued with poverty like it’s a contagious disease. As Toby and Tanner drive from one job to the next and back to their isolated house, where they bury their beat-up getaway cars in the earth, we see billboards dotting the narrow highways: “Are you in debt?” Mackenzie has social consciousness, and like Bonnie and Clyde, circumstances are meant to melt our hearts toward the criminals. Toby (Pine) wants to save his sons from the chief problem of society: a lack of money. His brother Tanner (Foster) is too far gone (he's already spent time behind bars) to do anything legal. Tanner has a crazy gleam in his eye, as though robbing banks provides the only satisfying scratch to an interminable itch.

That itch haunts Texas ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) too. He’s weeks away from retiring, and his partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham), a half-Mexican, half-Native American with almost as many years of service under his belt, suspects that Marcus has fixated on the robberies to prolong his career, to stave off the inevitability of sitting on the porch with nothing to do. The itch is a need for purpose. So these two over-the-hill rangers travel to godforsaken little Texas towns and stake out banks, and eat at skeezy little dives where hard, pissed-off waitresses say things like, “I’m hot…and not the good kind.”

Marcus is old school. If it weren’t for his career as a Texas ranger, Marcus would be propped in front of Fox News waiting to cast his vote for Donald Trump. He picks mercilessly at Alberto, employing every Mexican slur and stereotype he can. “I’m half-Indian, too” Alberto responds calmly while in a cheap motel, the TV blaring some televangelist’s glad-handing promises about religion. “I’ll get to those when I run out of Mexican jokes,” Marcus assures him. Their banter—actually it’s mostly just Marcus’s one-sided insults—is supposed to be funny, and it is to a point, although it’s never clear what we’re supposed to be laughing at: the racist jokes themselves, or the stupidity of the racist. Their relationship is predictable: We know they will grow to care about each other despite the jabbering. “When you’re standing over my grave, my insults will be the thing you miss most,” Marcus promises. Amusing, but also a bit too self-conscious, as though Mackenzie and screenwriter Tayler Sheridan were themselves nervous about the racist jabs. 

What lingers in the memory about Hell or High Water, though, is the film’s sly tenderness. These hardened men do have compassion in them, tenderness inexplicable as the act of bleeding water from a stone. And, like The Big Short, this movie wages a sassy, insouciant takedown of the economic inequities that we like to pretend don’t exist. When Toby and Tanner are having lunch at a diner, Toby makes nice with a friendly waitress who’s got a mellifluous Southern drawl and a motherly figure: she’s struggling to make rent, and he leaves her 200 dollars for a tip. When the rangers interrogate her later, she refuses to rat them out or turn over the money. Hell or High Water finds nobility in looking out for yourself. These folks don’t hedge: they know what they need, and they know how to get it. That’s far more admirable than the millionaires on Wall Street, counting their millions like grubby little American Scrooges.

And that's not to say that we're supposed to approve of these men for robbing banks. The movie never gives them a pass. But, like any good crime film, it humanizes the criminals, reminding us that we aren't as far removed from them as we like to think. 

Horrible Bosses 2

Surprisingly, I liked Horrible Bosses 2 better than Horrible Bosses 1. At its core, the set-up is basically the same, but the laughs are more sustained and the comedy fresher. The three leads—Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day—manage to transcend the one-dimensionality of their characters and at times create great comedy. There’s a wonderful moment when they’re hiding in Chris Pine’s closet (with plans to kidnap him and hold him for ransom so they can retaliate against his father, a businessman who burned them in a deal) and his maid is absent-mindedly hanging clothes on the rack. She slides a bunch of slacks to the left, revealing terror-stricken Charlie Day, who had been hiding behind them. He moves to the left too, to re-conceal himself. Then the maid, still completely unaware, slides the pants to the right, adding another pair of slacks to the rack. Rinse and repeat. It’s hysterically funny, and it’s the kind of ingenious, silly, wonderful thing you’d see in the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges.

The timing in this movie is absolutely perfect. Jason Sudeikis, whose character is the man-whoriest of the three, diverts his easily distracted attention at always just the right moment. Charlie Day hones his skills at being the last one to get the joke. Only Jason Bateman seems to have stagnated, playing the perpetually annoyed straight man that he hasn’t had to perfect since Arrested Development. (The only change is that he unexpectedly falls in love with Jennifer Anistion’s character and dotes on her without reciprocation. But this little nugget is barely utilized.)

As for Jennifer Aniston, she’s even deadlier (and more delightful) than she was in Part 1. She and Kevin Spacey reprise their roles as the horrible bosses from the first movie, only their parts are secondary now. But their characterizations have also improved the second time around. Spacey is now behind bars, but manages to send the boys with their tails between their legs on multiple occasions. (He seems to be having a wonderful time playing such a detestable man, and yet, there comes a point in the movie when you’re on his side more than that of the protagonists.) Aniston, who you may remember was cast as a nymphomaniac dentist, is now attending sex addiction group therapy sessions. But she’s not particularly committed to beating her sexual problems, and she inserts herself into the kidnapping scheme of the three heroes as a kind of naughty foil. The guys break into her office in order to steal nitrous, only to be derailed when Aniston and her group therapy group arrive unexpectedly. Bateman, who’s supposed to be playing watch dog, is forced to interact with the group, and there are some genuinely horrifying lines of dialogue exchanged between him and Aniston. Horrifying and funny, of course. I was surprised no one walked out of the theater.

I looked back at my review of the first film, and was reminded that the movie seemed slightly off-kilter, and not always in a good way. Yes, it was funny, but with the sequel now in mind, it’s obvious the actors had not yet hit their stride. They find a rhythm in Horrible Bosses 2 that really sells the humor, from the cheap shots to the overly gross sexual innuendoes to the purely insane moments that only work out of pure luck, or maybe pure talent. My only problem with the sequel was that the heroes began to annoy me with their constant stupidity. Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis reminded me of every annoying kid I grew up with who couldn’t shut up, and I found myself, like Jason Bateman’s character, wanting to smack them both repeatedly. But their performances were terrific even if they grated on the nerves at times.

With Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx and Jonathan Banks. Directed by Sean Anders. Written by Anders and John Morris.

Star Trek Into Darkness

I felt compelled to go back and re-familiarize myself with the plot of Star Trek (2009) in order to be fresh enough to see the sequel, although I must say it wasn't necessary. Star Trek Into Darkness is a lucid follow-up, both visually and structurally, and for that I was extremely grateful to the filmmakers. Why other movies of this variety aren't following suit is baffling to me, but generally when you go see a big, eye-popping fantasy movie like this, ten to one you'll have no idea what's going on, particularly during scenes of large-scale conflict. It's usually a combination of unfocused editing and camera work--which is a foolish attempt to tell a story through chaos--and sloppy, user's manual style writing.

I'm far more compliant with big movies that operate the way Star Trek did: they tell a vivid story visually, and are bent on having fun. Of course, the studios are bent on wowing the viewer with marvelous special effects (especially now that everyone wants 3-D, even from The Great Gatsby!). The studios, who churn out these expensive adventure flicks quicker than second-tier public universities churn out Bachelor's degrees, somehow manage to let someone like director J.J. Abrams inject enough good in with the bad, neutralizing it or when he's really on fire, transcending it. Abrams doesn't spend a lot of time trying to create new problems: he's more interested in letting these characters interact inside the old ones, and that is what gives the two latest Star Trek films their pull, their ability to make people like me--who generally despise giant epic fantasy movies--go see them.

Admittedly, Into Darkness began to wear on me toward the finale: there were about three too many false endings, and I was apparently invested enough in the story and the characters to be annoyed when something happened that I didn't like, but it was still an enjoyable two hours. There's always a delicate balancing act for what I must assume is the middle film of a trilogy: the middle entry has to move things along to a resolution while simultaneously not resolving them ultimately, so that Part Three can manage the finishing touches.

The plot picks up with Captain Kirk (the magnetic Chris Pine once again filling William Shatner's shoes) and Doctor Spock (Zachary Quinto) fleeing an angry, primitive tribe on an unknown planet that is enveloped in red foliage. These plants look something like potpourri if it grew naturally. The crew of the Enterprise is trying to neutralize a volcanic eruption that would unquestionably wipe out the entire race of the indigenous people living on the planet, but these people don't know that. There's some argument over the momentous act of allowing them to see the ship emerge from the sea and into the air (since they won't have any clue what it is), and we're left with this tribe tracing an image of the vessel in the sand. Surely this is a little bit of foreshadowing. Abrams leaves it behind for another movie.

There are plenty of other complications that hound the crew of the Enterprise once the story gets back to Earth, where we find that the Starfleet is under attack from an unknown human assailant (played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who's equal parts rogue and British mastermind and plays both of these to the hilt). As is to be expected, there are various twists and turns and clashes of character that occur here, most of which are either believable or at the very least intriguing and therefore worthwhile. Captain Kirk leads his crew in a retaliatory mission after Cumberbatch bombs their archives building in London, and soon we discover that he's got a lot more on his mind than destroying public records.

The design of the film tries to merge old with new: London-set two hundred or so years in the future--has that "space station" look mingled with remnants of the Victorian and Georgian eras: an old Tudor hospital that has a futuristic expansion melded onto it like an artificial limb where the real magic happens. The trick of designing a realistic looking future world has always been somewhat of a fools' errand: the technology of 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't look anything like reality, but perhaps this is the advantage of setting a movie in the 2200s: who in 2013 will be around to notice that they did or didn't get it right?

The movie has a lot more energy than it knows what to do with, which might explain why it clocks in at two hours and ten minutes or so, but feels half-an-hour longer: every time one problem gets resolved, another one is compounded, and the solutions grow increasingly less convincing. But by the time you get to the end, you're so emotionally invested, you can't do much but hang on and let whatever comes come. I suppose this is one of the signs of an effective movie, or perhaps of an affective one. I was certainly riveted, but at some point it started to feel like overkill.

What saves Star Trek Into Darkness--and this is true of just about any movie, really--are the characters, who have a ridiculous banter and a bond between them which is genuinely disarming and fun to watch. And I suppose there's a bit more weight to this sequel, even though I think I enjoyed the previous one more. Abrams seems bent on not treating this like an unsatisfying middle film: it has its own beginning and end, even if the story threads are meant to connect both backwards and forwards. Abrams, and his scriptwriters--Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof--do a good job of keeping this balance and making it work--most of the time. And yes, the visuals were stunning, even if some of them seemed unconvincing. (One example: the photos taken of the after effects of the London bomb: the people and buildings in the pictures look too XBox 360.) Still, cinematographer Dan Mindel manages some nice little touches. For example, he juxtaposes two scenes with something being dropped into a glass: in the first one, a ring (filled with some kind of explosive material) sets off the explosion of the archives building in London. Then we cut to a round ice cube falling into Captain Kirk's drink at a bar in San Francisco.

If I have any hopes for this genre, they are rooted in the fact that these two Star Trek movies managed to show a non-fanboy a good time. With Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Weller, Alice Eve, Noel Clarke, and Leonard Nimoy. ★★½

Bottle Shock

I've decided that one day, when I have a career and money, I am going to travel California's wine country for a couple of weeks. Drinking in the beautiful scenery--spitting out the wine samples--and who knows what else. It sounds like an ideal vacation to me. A friend of mine recommended the movie Bottle Shock, which I guess will have to suffice as a means of vicariously experiencing wine country. Along with Sideways, Bottle Shock is part of a distinct sub-genre of wine-lovers' movies. I was intrigued by Sideways for its eccentric fascination with wine, but turned off by the two douche bag characters in the movie. So I liked Bottle Shock much more because it offered the same eccentric love of viniculture and characters who were far more likable and just as human.






Chris Pine, who we all know from Star Trek, plays an aimless young man who works on his father's Napa vineyard. His dad (Bill Pullman) is tired, disappointed with himself for leaving a law firm to make his own wine, and facing insurmountable piles of debt. Meanwhile, a condescending British wine connoisseur (Alan Rickman) is facing problems of his own in France, where he runs a school for wine studies. Rickman reluctantly ventures to California's wine country, a term he acknowledges with not a little disdain, and tries to discern whether or not those unsophisticated Americans are actually making anything worth spitting into a tin cup after you sample it and describe the taste with phrases like "firm, robust, full of body, and a hint of tangerine." Essentially, it's Amadeus all over again, and Chris Pine is the delightfully mad genius to Rickman's taciturn, irretrievably jealous Salieri.



At first Bottle Shock appears a meandering tale of some folks who love wine. However, the more I got into the movie, I began to really enjoy its idiosyncratic subject matter. Combining Alan Rickman's tasteful Britishness and Chris Pine's whole "I thought showering was optional" persona is just eccentric enough to suit a movie which finds its roots in both French haute culture and 1970s Western Americana. Even Bill Pullman is good--and usually I find him to be somewhat subdued. Freddy Rodriguez co-stars as Pine's buddy, a natural-born vintner who's got his own dreams about making wine. Rodriguez is sort of the James Dean of the cast. He gets taunted with but never gets the glory or the girl.



I think my favorite scene was of Pullman popping a wine cork with a sword at his old law firm. I'm pretty sure Jesus turned water into wine with as much alacrity.

Directed by Randall Miller. With Dennis Farina, Rachael Taylor, Eliza Dushku. ★★★

Star Trek

I have never seen any of the other Star Trek films in their entirety, although I remember watching part of the first one in school a long time ago. So, I did not have a lot of expectations or foreknowledge about the most recent incarnation of this incredibly long-lasting storyline.

It's been a while since I've really enjoyed a movie like this. It pulls you in immediately, but not simply because of astonishing visual effects, but because from almost the first moment the audience is able to care about the characters, even ones who have very little screen time.

Without a doubt, Simon Pegg's portrayal of Scotty was the funniest part of the movie.



He came in kinda late, and you could instantly see the difference with his comic appeal. Meanwhile, however, the story is momentous and absorbing enough to maintain itself all the way. Most space epics seem to run out of steam, but I was glad to see that the new Star Trek carried its weight.

What was really amusing about Star Trek 2009 was observing how much it clings to the past in spite of its attempt to be hip. I'm really not trying to criticize the story at all--again, it was thoroughly engrossing--but you can see how much its roots are in the 1960s with those Vulcan haircuts and goofy sayings (a la "live long and prosper.") I think my favorite was the emotionally charged exchange between Uhura and Spock: "I'll be monitoring your frequency!"

Note that this is J.J. Abrams' feature directing debut. Up until now, his directing work has been confined to television shows. I think he made a fairly smooth transition, although one of the things that bugs me about many of today's movies is a lack in directorial style. Sure, special effects can be effective, but only the style of a director can make a movie special.

But, ultimately, the movie delivered some enjoyable escapism, and not the cold, cynical kind that has become vogue in Hollywood, but something a lot more sympathetic and disarming. ★★★