Stand Up Guys

COMEDY

Bad Boy Bucket List

★ ★ ★ ★ out of 5 | DVD or Rental

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Rated: R Sexual content, language, brief drug use and violence.
Release Date: February 1, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes

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Director: Fisher Stevens
Writer: Noah Haidle
Cast: Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Alan Arkin, Juliana Marguiles, Mark Margolis, Lucy Punch, Addison Timlin, Vanessa Ferlito, Katheryn Winnick, Bill Burr

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SYNOPSIS: A pair of aging con men try to get the old gang back together for one last hurrah before one of the guys takes on his last assignment -- to kill his friend.

REVIEW: Writer/Actor/Director Fisher Stevens, moves back to the director's chair for a piece of fiction that is a little different than the documentaries and documentary shorts he is more known for. Stevens is joined by another member of the team who is moving from shorts to a full feature. Noah Haidle writes his first full-length feature, both attracting A-list talent with the likes of Christopher Walken (Seven Psychopaths), Al Pacino (Righteous Kill), and Alan Arkin (Argo).

Doc (Christopher Walken) loves to spend his time painting sunrises, then spending time at a diner talking to the waitress Alex (Addison Timlin, Californication). Today he changes his routine in order to pick up newly released convict Valentine (Al Pacino) - known as Val to hi friends - who he ran with doing mob jobs when they were younger. Now twenty-eight years later, Val and Doc are together again. The only problem is that Doc was given the contract to kill Val for killing the mob boss Claphands' (Mark Margolis, Immortals) son during a botched robbery which landed Val in prison in the first place. Knowing that his friend has been given a contract, Val decides to make it one hell of a night before Doc needs to "deliver the package" at 10am the next morning. Along the way they visits whorehouse, do lines of prescription drugs, have a few beers, and break out their old friend Hirsch (Alan Arkin) out from a adult living facility. As a night burns away the trio reminisce about old times and how this might be the end of the line.

Touted as an ex-con bucket list, Stand Up Guys is a sentimental look at regrets, aging, and things left undone and unsaid. Can Val cram all his last wishes into one night? Doc and Hirsch try their best to try to make it happen. Not only is Stand Up Guys about getting old and thinking about the younger years, but it's also about how the world is changed - And not necessarily for the better.

Director Fisher Stevens does a great job with the symbology in this film. A brand-new sports car represents how everything has changed around the old retired mobsters. Keyless ignition, horsepower, and all the gauges on the dashboard represents a new modern technological era that the retired mobsters just don't fit into anymore. Walken, Pacino, and Arkin prove to the younger thugs that sometimes the old ways are the best ways - even if the older generation may have lost a step or two.

Walken, Pacino, and Arkin give performances that you've come to expect and love from these actors. Walken, with his distinctive voice, cadence and mannerisms, shows that Doc is a happier man now that he's retired. Pacino brings back his typical devil-may-care attitude, just looking to fulfill his last night with food, booze, drugs, and women before the clock strikes 10 AM. Arkin is his typical gruff and quiet self who also wanted to fulfill one last wish since he was broken out of the nursing home. The trio is supported by Timlin's Alex, and victim Sylvia (Vanessa Ferlito, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) whose found in a compromising position. Add in Hirsch's daughter Nina, played by Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) who slips comfortably into the familiar role of an ER nurse, and a Madam named Wendy (Lucy Punch, Bad Teacher) and her employee Oxana (Katheryn Winnick, Love and Other Drugs) and you have several avenues that the old timers can explore to serious or comic effect.

Stand Up Guys is a tight dramatic comedy about old-timer mobsters who make realizations about their mortality, regrets, and how the old ways are still the best ways. Walken, Pacino, and Arkin make the film their own, letting us indulge in their practiced arts of being wise guys. It's time to either kick ass or chew bubble gum... and I'm all out of bubble gum!

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Bad Teacher

Doing The Minimum Effort

Director: Jake Kasdan
Writers: Gene Stupnitsky, Lee Eisenberg
Stars: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch, Phyllis Smith, John Michael Higgins


SYNOPSIS: When a disinterested junior high teacher Elizabeth Halsey gets dumped by her rich fiancee, she sets her sights on a wealthy substitute teacher to make end meet, much to the chagrin of a well-loved teacher.

REVIEW: Director Jake Kasdan, best known for helming Orange County and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, takes a script from Year One and television's The Office scribe team Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg to bring a raunchy, randy look at junior high school life - this time from the point of view of the overworked and underpaid staff.

What happens when you team Cameron Diaz, How I Met Your Mother's Jason Segel and the always watchable, in demand and busy Justin Timberlake? How about an adult sexy school comedy is part adult Mean Girls and School of Rock.

Where School of Rock takes a desperate broke musician and thrusts him into a private school substitute teacher role with an ulterior motive to try and win the Battle of the Bands competition using the kids in his class, Bad Teacher takes a desperate full-time public school junior high teacher Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) found out by her fiancee to be a gold digger, forcing her to return to the school system she just left to make the rent. Along the way, she attempts to woo a wealthy substitute teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), clashes with the goody-goody, super chipper fellow teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), and shields against the advances of the gym teacher Russell Gettis (Jason Segel) while trying to raise money for a boob job in an attempt to make herself feel better about herself.

Cameron Diaz is sultry cool as Halsey, her piercing blue eyes, wicked mouth and golden blonde curls eating up her scenes. She wears her character's distain, displeasure and disinterest like a tight, curvy well-loved T-shirt. Fellow educator Amy Squirrel played by Lucy Punch provides a perfect ticky, twitchy foil to Diaz, a teacher with goofy methods and a dedication to the children of her class and a threadbare sunny deposition ready to crack at any moment - like what happened back in 2008, according to dolphin-loving Principal Wally Snur, played by John Michael Higgins. The real scene-stealers, though, are Jason Segel's gym teacher Russell Gettis with his laid back,"ah shucks", water down a duck's back tireless pursuit of Halsey, Phyllis Smith's quirky, timid teacher Lynn Davies who always follows the rule, and sub teacher Scott Delacorte (Timberlake) who seems to have all the wrong moves with his singing and dancing but still draws all of the attention of the lady teachers.

Bad Teacher focuses little on the plight of the 7th graders, other than one kid who is head-over-heels with a popular girl who thinks she's too good for him. Instead, we are treated with various money-making schemes by Diaz to raise the up-front money for her chest enhancement appointment, a high noon feud that brews with fellow educator Amy Squirrel, and some weird passions by Timberlake, most notably an original ballad sung to sweetheart Amy or a strange passionate moment with Diaz in a hotel room during a class trip.

Many of the best gags are in the trailers, but there are a few surprises along the way that get a few laughs. We are treated to plenty of breasts and some choice curses throughout the film, some perfectly placed and some simply sprinkled in to spice up the dialogue. The ending is typical romantic comedy fare, but I did feel a little cheated by the lack of "just deserts" - almost like how Halsey gets her hands on the State Aptitude Tests!

WORTH: Matinee or Netflix