White House Down

ACTION/ADVENTURE

Second Term

7.0 out of 10 | Rental

---

Rated: PG-13 Some language, a brief sexual image, sequences of intense action violence, and intense gunfire and explosions
Release Date: June 28, 2013
Runtime: 2 hours 17 minutes

---

Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: James Vanderbilt
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, Joey King, James Woods, Jimmi Simpson, Nicolas Wright

---

Watch Trailer

SYNOPSIS:  While on a tour of the White House with his young daughter, a Capitol policeman springs into action to save his child and protect the president from a heavily armed group of paramilitary invaders.

REVIEW: Director Roland Emmerich is known for his summer tentpole disaster films, including 2012 and Independence Day. He returns with another turn at the wheel with more mundane fare than aliens and the end of the world. James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man) writes a story about terrorists against the White House and the President.

John Cale (Channing Tatum, This is the End) is a Capitol policeman assigned to a protective detail for the Speaker of the House Raphelson (Richard Jenkins, Jack Reacher), back from serving three tours in Afghanistan and trying to get back into his politically inclined daughter's good graces. When John takes his daughter Emily (Joey King, Oz the Great and Powerful) to the White House for a job interview for the presidential secret service protective detail and afterward for a White House tour, John realizes that he has just walked him and his daughter into a terrorist ambush against President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx, Django Unchained). Torn between protecting the daughter he loves and the presidency he respects, John must make hard choices to discover if he has what it takes.

Armageddon and Deep Impact, The Prestige and The Illusionist, and countless other film pairs that share the same concept from separate studios forced to duke it out in the same film season, White House Down will take its place with the earlier released Olympus Has Fallen. The question is which one is the better film?

While Roland Emmerich has a string of successful summer disaster blockbusters under his belt, Gerard Butler's Olympus Has Fallen seems to be the Armageddon to White House Down's Deep Impact. In comparison, while White House Down has all the slick and signature look of Emmerich's films, and that Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx make a decent comedy pair, the story falls a little flat when it comes to full-on action. The fight choreography and gunfights… Olympus Has Fallen sweeps the board against what Tatum and Foxx have to offer. Both filmss have a child in jeopardy, Olympus... has the President's son and White House... has Cale's daughter in trouble. The villains in each could be a draw in terms of their dastardly motivation. Olympus Has Fallen only had Eckhart and Butler as the main acting draws. White House Down boasts James Wood, Jamie Foxx, Channing Tatum, Maggie Gyllenhall, Richard Jenkins and a few other notable actors. White House Down is the more comedic of the two… although lacking against Olympus Has Fallen's straight on hard-core action with a little dose of snarky rapport.

If these movies came out in different seasons or different years they would be judged on their own merits. Since Olympus Has Fallen came out first its review is based on its own merits, while the second in line White House Down is forced to live in the shadow of a first born twin. The Channing Tatum character is just trying to get into a job that his daughter will respect, while Gerard Butler's character was a top notch Secret Service agent who lost everything trying to keep his head above water.

Enough comparisons! White House down is a decent story of lesser value than Emmerich's Independence Day or 2012, but less epic and less well put together. Was Emmerich rushed to get this flick out quick? We may never know!

---

Django Unchained

DRAMATIC ACTION/ADVENTURE

Off the Chain

★ ★ ★ 1/2 out of 5 | Movie - DVD - Rental

---

Rated: R Strong graphic violence, language and some nudity.
Release Date: December 25, 2012
Runtime: 2 hours 21 minutes

---

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writers: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar

---

Watch Trailer

SYNOPSIS: With the help of a dentist looking for information on wanted men, a slave-turned-bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

REVIEW: Festival darling with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, instant legend writer/director Quentin Tarantino has set the standard with his unique pulpy cinematic exploitation films. He continued with Kill Bill: Vol I and II, Grindhouse, and his history skewing Inglourious Basterds. What genre hasn't he properly tackled? It looks like the western is still fertile ground for Tarantino's unique touch. Writing and directing Django Unchained will surely add all of Tarantino's flair. And look, Quentin may finally get a chance to have his characters use guns! 

Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, The Three Musketeers) interrupts two slavers walking a group of newly bought slaves to their new owners. Schultz questions Django (Jamie Foxx, Horrible Bosses) about a group of three brothers who are wanted by the law, hoping that Django would be able to recognize these men if he were to see them again. Taking ownership of Django, Schultz and he ride through Texas and into Tennessee in pursuit of their bounty. Once their task is complete, Shultz offers to teach Django what he knows of the bounty trade and promises to help find to whom Django's wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington, A Thousand Words) was sold to. Checking official documents, Schultz and Django uncover that plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar) paid for Broomhilda, and hatch a plan to buy her back.

Quentin Tarantino returns to the helmer's chair to offer us his version of the Wild West. Clint Eastwood may have had his day as the new modern western standard as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, but Tarantino twists the genre around to give Jamie Foxx's Django a chance to create a new modern interpretation on the classic gunslinging motif. Bullets still fly, vengeance is still sought, and the real good guys do not have to wear white hats. Some of the classic visuals are still in play - the snow capped mountains in the distance, the silhouettes of horsemen trailing into a burning gold and magenta sunset, the long pan shots of men on horseback on a long trek, and the twitching fingers dangling an inch above a holstered six-shooter.

What Tarantino does in Django Unchained is what he does best. Growing up in the video rental shops, his love for exploitation films is still evident. From the bright red of the title sequence to the story-filling sing song of Django's ballad, you would think you were on set for a lost Shaft in the desert movie. Mixing classic western background music with 70s folk with current day rap, Tarantino uses all the right chords to convey his thematic western message.

Cowboys, bounty hunters, and even plantation owners, are a dirty bunch. Spitting onto anything but a spittoon, bathing one a month if one needs it or not - the trails are dusty and the bodies unwashed. Only the most beautiful are pulled out from the wretches, while the rest are sent to toil in the fields. Calvin Candie's Candie Land sits in the bowels of Mississippi, marble rising from the dirt like a pale jewel in a mossy grove of trees. Every character, from Candie minion Billy Crash (Walton Goggins, Lincoln) and family lawyer Leonide Moguy (Dennis Christopher, Deadwood), to house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson, The Avengers) and Pinkerton-esque Butch Pooch (James Remar, Transformers: Dark of the Moon), has a layer of grit or the weight of the world on their shoulders.

The standouts of Django Unchained are Christoph Waltz's Dr King Schultz, Leonardo Dicaprio's Calvin Candie, and Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen. Sure, Jamie Foxx struts a mean rug, but I could listen and watch Waltz all day. Just like in Inglourious Basterds, Waltz mesmerizes with every stride and eloquent utterance. Dicaprio, as the power-hungry and vindictive slave and plantation owner, is as smooth and lethal as a near slumbering bear protecting its honey. His southern charm covers a simmering hatred for most things not his own. And Samuel L. Jackson, and Candie's head house slave Stephen, may be the most vile of them all. His "Uncle Tom" position may give him the rule of the homestead and the help while Candie is away, but his loyalties to his owner is only matched by his self-preservation.

Django Unchained is an uber-violent western effort from the mind of Tarintino - just as you would expect it would be. Funny, irreverent, clever, bloody, sometimes unnecessary, Django will not disappoint QT fans. Maybe not his best work from his canon of films, this western certainly stands out as a little more controversial than most.

---

Horrible Bosses

Working-Class Comedy

Director: Seth Gordon

Writers: Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein

Stars: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx

SYNOPSIS: Three friends conspire to murder each other's horrible bosses.

REVIEW: Seth Gordon, director of such television hits as Modern Family, The Office and Community, brings to life the trials and tribulations of three friends with different jobs and a singular problem - they work for horrible bosses. Jason Bateman stars as Nick Hendricks who works for Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) with the false promise of advancement to a key position if Nick works endless hours. Charlie Day from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia plays Dale Arbus, a dental technician with a checkered past and an inappropriate aggressive black-mailing man-eater Dr. Juila Harris, D.D.S. (Jennifer Aniston) as a boss. Finally, Jason Sudeikis plays Kurt Buckman whose happy career at a chemical plant for a great boss (Donald Sutherland) goes south when the boss' son Bobby (Colin Farrell) takes over and wants to run the business into the ground with all the employees in it. The three friends, realizing that they can't just quit due to the recession, their pasts or their skill set, set out to hire a hit man to off their respective bosses. Enter Dean "M.F." Jones (Jamie Foxx) who will not kill the bosses for the trio, but who will provide "murder consultant services" for them so they can do the wet works themselves.

Bateman brings his Arrested Development defeatist angst to the gig. Sudeikis travels straight from Hall Pass with the same kookiness and disregard for the boundaries between the sexes. Charlie Day is equal parts brilliance and stupidity in his role. Spacey is a boss that I would be afraid of crossing. Aniston as a comical sexual predator (is there such a thing?) is gorgeous and devious, with piercing eyes and a rockin' body. And Colin Farrell, with his hair combed over his bald spot and his coked-up disregard for his fellow man (or pregnant woman), steals every scene he enters - similar to Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.

Horrible Bosses is funny, although many of the best bits are in the commercials and trailers. Farrell, Day and Foxx provide the best laughs not previously seen. The situations the boys get themselves in are comedy all by themselves. Imagine the boys' surprise upon meeting a Wet Works specialist (Ioan Gruffudd) who supposedly will carry out the job for all three people for $200, or the amateur surveillance Nick, Kurt and Dale attempt in their bosses homes.

Not as memorable as The Hangover or Wedding Crashers as the ads may want you to believe, Horrible Bosses manages to capture the feelings that many have in their workplaces, but can not rate against all-time workplace struggle films like Office Space or 9 to 5. Even so, Horrible Bosses has enough in its story and characters to get a few laughs out of you if you ever get a day off.

WORTH: Matinee or Netflix

Due Date

Running On A Full Tank

[Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan]

image from hollywoodgo.com

RANT: Hello November. The leaves are changing color. The landscapers have traded in their mowers for blowers as their primary gasoline driven tool. As I return from the theater today, I apologetically drove through a pile of leaves the workers had blown together on the driveway. It hearkened back to being a kid, running through the leaves, except this time with a 2,000 lb. car!

SYNOPSIS: Peter Highman needs to get across the country to be with his wife for her scheduled C-section of their first child. Put on a "No Fly" list because of aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay, Peter is forced into a road trip with him in an attempt to get to Los Angeles in time.

Todd Phillips, director of comedy gold such as "The Hangover", "Old School" and "Starsky & Hutch", re-teams with Zach Galifianakis and adds Robert Downey, Jr. to the roster to bring us a good old-fashioned at-odds, must-get-home buddy road flick. In the spirit of "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and "Tommy Boy", Downey, Jr. stars as high-strung, impatient architect Peter Highman, trying to get home to Los Angeles for the birth of his child. Galifianakis co-stars as aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay, who from the first time they meet in passing at the airport causes Peter nothing but problems and barriers to getting home to the west coast.

Of course Ethan accidentally switches bags at the airport departures curbside, causing Peter to be detained for contraband. Of course, Ethan decides to spout to Peter about turning off his cell phone while getting ready for takeoff, mentioning terrorists and bombs, causing both to be escorted off the flight and onto a 'no-fly" list. With no wallet or ID, Peter cannot rent a car and is forced to travel with Ethan as he attempts to make his way to Hollywood to become a television actor, with hopes to scatter his father's ashes at the Grand Canyon on the way.

There are great moments of laughter in the film. Be sure to look for the coffee grounds incident at Peter's friend Darryl's house in Texas. The moment of understanding between Peter and Ethan's Craig List "glaucoma pharmacist's" son is unexpected, oh so wrong, and hilarious. And try never to mistake a Mexico border crossing for a Texaco gas station when you are low on fuel. But this film has heart too.

Where Zach's Ethan is a constant source of amusement and frustration for Robert's Peter (and laughs for us), he gives some touching moments as he is as uncomfortable and tortured in his own skin as we know he must be. The mission to scatter his father's ashes is as much an emotional and spiritual journey as a physical one.

Sometimes the switches from comedy to drama and back again is disconcerting, but it supports the growth of both Peter and Ethan on their cross-country quests. At the end, you will definitely know and care more about them both, without resorting to asking Ethan's endless series of questions.

Worth: Matinee

I am also trying out a new rating system shown below based on reader reaction to my somewhat complex monetary rating scale. I will give both ratings and see what kind of reaction I muster. A movie can receive up to 5 popcorn buckets. Why popcorn buckets? Because I am a slave to the thousand + calorie delight! Enjoy!