New in Theaters
(Playing at the Durango Stadium 9)
About Last Night.
When David Mamet penned the first version of the hilariously vulgar stage work “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” in the 1970s, it’s doubtful he envisioned the lasting power of his sparse, four-character play about four “urban males and females” in their 20s negotiating their way through sex and friendship and one-night stands and love over a nine-week period in “various spots around the North Side of Chicago, a Big City on a Lake.”
Surely Mamet didn’t imagine the characters of Dan Shapiro, Bernard Litko, Deborah Soloman and Joan Webber played by African-Americans in a 21st-century version in which texting and phone etiquette are plot elements (as they are in every romantic comedy set in present day). And though the second film version of “About Last Night” bears even less of a connection to Mamet’s play than the 1986 version did, the four leads are enormously likable and there’s still enough sharp, raunchy, sexy humor for me to recommend this version.
Before we get to the good stuff, a few gripes.
Very little of Mamet’s signature rat-a-tat dialogue survives. (“What did I just tell you?” “She said that?” “I hope to tell you.” “Nineteen years old?” “Nineteen, 20.” “And she was a pro?” “So at this point I don’t know.”) A few lines from Mamet’s play and/or the 1986 Tim Kazurinsky-Denise DeClue adaptation do survive, and they garnered just as many laughs from the screening audience in 2014 as they did from a screening audience in 1986. (As I recall. It’s been a while.)
The other thing is, this version of “About Last Night” is set in ... Los Angeles, of all the damn places. Come on! Where’s the 16-inch softball, the Wrigley Field montage, the Division Street bar scenes?
There also are a couple of scenes where characters we really like throw temper tantrums that cross the line from believable to just ugly. Not that wonderful people can’t behave so poorly, but in both cases, it’s a bit jarring and definitely WAY out of character for these good-hearted, normally considerate people.
Now here’s the good stuff. The truth is, while the young Demi Moore and the even younger Rob Lowe were equally pretty in the mid-1980s, neither one of them could act much, and the original “About Last Night ...” suffered a bit with those two in the leads. (Jim Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins stole every scene they were in as the respective best friends.) In the 2014 edition, Michael Ealy is Danny and Joy Bryant is Debbie. They’re just as attractive, and the acting is an upgrade. The downside: The 40-year-old Ealy and the 39-year-old Bryant seem too old to be playing people who seem to be experiencing their first (or maybe second) serious grown-up relationship.
Kevin Hart’s Energizer comedic style is well-suited to playing Danny’s ever-horny, trash-talking best buddy, though it seems to be almost some sort of inside joke for Hart to be playing a guy named Bernie Litko. (Other homages to the roots of this story: a brief glimpse of Lowe and Moore in the original on a TV screen, and one character making a brief trip to Chicago.) Bernie and Regina Hall’s Joan have an immediate and combustible sexual chemistry, but once they’re out of bed and in public, they’re at each other’s throats. Some of their fight scenes are truly funny. Some are just loud and screechy.
While Joan and Bernie alternate between kinky sex and loathing each other, Danny and Debbie have a one-night stand that blossoms into something genuine, something with long-term potential. Director Steve Pink, whose resume ranges from writing the sublime adaptation of “High Fidelity” to directing the ridiculously hilarious “Hot Tub Time Machine,” does a nice job of capturing the rhythms of a relationship, from the giddy early weeks through the comfortable nesting stages through the restlessness and the arguments that are always about more than just the thing the argument is about.
We get a few half-hearted efforts at side plots: Danny’s career struggles; Debbie fending off the advances of her boss (and ex-boyfriend); the arrival of Danny’s gorgeous train wreck of an ex (Paula Patton). The veteran character actor Christopher McDonald has some nice scenes as a pub owner who was best friends with Danny’s late father.
There’s only a little sexual perversity and very little Chicago in this version of “About Last Night,” but there’s still plenty of talk about what happened on various “last nights,” and how it will play out in the bright sunlight of the real world.
The last time we saw the 1986 version of Danny and Debbie, she was wearing denim overalls and he was in a “Mother’s” T-shirt, and they both had feathered hairstyles, and she was on her bicycle in Grant Park and he was abandoning his softball game to chase after her, and we felt they had a real chance.
I won’t tell you how it ends with this edition of Danny and Debbie, but we’re once again rooting for them to grow up, tough it out and maybe grow old together.
Screen Gems presents a film directed by Steve Pink. Written by Leslye Headland, based on a screenplay by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue that was based on David Mamet’s play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.” Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for sexual content, language and brief drug use). HHH
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
Endless Love.
(Not reviewed.) EAlex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde star in another remake. It’s the story of a privileged girl and a charismatic boy whose instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart. Rated PG.
RoboCop.
The original 1987 “RoboCop,” Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s first Hollywood film, isn’t so much a movie to revere as a bit of brutalism to behold.
It had a grim comic vibe, satirizing the savagery of both corporate bloodthirstiness and justice-seeking rampages. Peter Weller’s RoboCop was a techno-Frankenstein created to tame Detroit’s rampant crime: Dirty Harry for dystopia.
Remaking “RoboCop” is like trying to recreate a nightmare. That’s one reason why plans to remake the film were meant with mostly dubious derision: Hollywood, particularly nowadays, isn’t in the business of nihilism. Post-apocalyptic films may be all the rage, but a movie about a cop’s dead body shoved into a robot is a tad darker than Jennifer Lawrence running through the woods.
Directed by Jose Padilha (the Brazilian filmmaker who made the excellent documentary “Bus 174” before shifting into action with “Elite Squad”), this “RoboCop” has updated the dystopia with some clever ideas and better acting, while at the same time sanitizing any satire with video-game polish and sequel baiting.
The smartest addition comes early, shifting the story to Tehran, where the global company OmniCorp has drones stopping and frisking in the streets. We’re introduced to this by talk show host Pat Novak (Sam Jackson), who appears throughout the film, brazenly promoting Pentagon propaganda, trying to convince what he calls a bizarrely “robot-phobic” American public that OmniCorp drones can make the U.S. safer, too.
It’s a damning starting point that already positions America as the propagator of emotion-less killing machine. When the story shifts to Detroit, it gives the whole film the frame of: Would we treat ourselves how we treat those abroad?
Opening the U.S. market to its drones is judged imperative by OmniCorp. CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) is flanked by executive Liz Kline (Jennifer Ehle) and marketing wizard (Jay Baruchel, brilliantly smarmy). To turn the political tide, they decide they need (literally) a more human face.
For their RoboCop prototype, they find Detroit police detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), who has been badly maimed by a car bomb meant to derail his pursuit of a drug kingpin. Gary Oldman (always good, less frequently tested) plays the scientist who preserves little more than Murphy’s brain in his new steel body, controlling his emotions and memory with lowered levels of dopamine. From here, the film (scripted by Joshua Zetumer, from the original by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner) generally follows the original’s plot, letting Murphy clean up Detroit before his personality begins to break through and his attentions turn to his maker. Any thought-provoking satires slide away in a torrent of bullets, which fly in the way they only can in video games or (questionably) PG-13 rated movies.
Kinnaman (“The Killing”) is a Swedish actor with an urban American swagger. Whereas Weller had to do most of his acting through his chin (obscured by the RoboCop suit), Kinnaman is a considerably stronger force, raging at his dehumanization. The fine Australian actress Abbie Cornish lends the otherwise metallic film a few moments of fleshy warmth.
What leaves an impression in “RoboCop”? It’s Keaton’s trim and affable CEO. He and his cohorts make for one of the most accurate portraits of corporate villainy, not because they’re diabolical, but because they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. Keaton, a too seldom seen motor-mouth energy, plays Sellars as an executive simply removing obstacles (ethics, scientific prudence, public safety) to accomplish what the corporation demands. The film’s best moment is Baruchel cowing and explaining he’s “just in marketing.”
But PR is really the primary driver of “RoboCop,” with every action managed, refracted and spun. Will it seem at all prophetic years from now when Amazon.com drones are delivering tooth paste through the air?
“RoboCop,” a Columbia Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of action including frenetic gun violence throughout, brief strong language, sensuality and some drug material.” Running time: 118 minutes. HH½ out of four.
JAKE COYLE, AP Film Writer
Still Showing
Animas City Theatre
(128 E. College Drive, 799-2281, www.animascitytheatre.com)
Inside Llewyn Davis. (Through Tuesday) A folk singer tries to make a name for himself in the early 1960s. Rated
La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty). (Begins Wednesday) Journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and social circles, but when his 65th birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty. (In Italian w/ English subtitles.)
Gaslight Cinema
(102 Fifth St. Next to the railroad depot, 247-8133, www.allentheatresinc.com)
Winter’s Tale. Will Smith, Jennifer Connelly, Matt Bomer, Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe star in a story of miracles, crossed destinies and the age-old battle between good and evil set in a mythic New York City and spanning more than a century. Rated PG-13.
Dallas Buyer’s Club. In this fact-based drama, Matthew McConaughey portrays real-life Texas electrician Ron Woodroof, an ordinary man who found himself in a life-or-death battle with the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies. Rated R.
Oscar nominated: Six categories including Best Picture, Best Actor (McConaughey) and Actor in a Supporting Role (Jared Leto).
August: Osage County. This is a dark and deeply touching story of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose lives have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Midwest house they grew up in, and to the dysfunctional woman (Meryl Streep) who raised them. Rated R.
Oscar nominated: Best Actress and Actress in a Supporting Role.
Durango Stadium 9
(Next to Durango Mall, 247-9799, www.allentheatresinc.com)
2014 Oscar Nominated Short Films – Animation. (Wednesday only.)
Get a Horse!(Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim, English, 6 min.) - Mickey Mouse and his friends are enjoying a wagon ride until Peg-Leg Pete shows up with plans to ruin their day.
Mr. Hublot (Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares, Non-dialogue, 12 min.) - The eccentric, isolated Mr. Hublot finds his carefully ordered world disrupted by the arrival of Robot Pet.
Feral (Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden, Non-dialogue, 12 min.) - A wild boy who has grown up in the woods is found by a hunter and returned to civilization.
Possessions (Shuhei Morita, 14 min.) - A man seeking shelter from a storm in a dilapidated shrine encounters a series of household objects inhabited by goblin spirits.
Room on the Broom (Max Land and Jan Lachauer, in English, 26 min.) - A genial witch and her cat are joined on their broom by several friends as they set off on an adventure.
HIGHLY COMMENDED ADDITIONAL SHORTS:
A La Francaise
Subconscious Password
Missing Scarf
Blue Umbrella
The Lego Movie. (In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge.) An ordinary LEGO minifigure, mistakenly thought to be the extraordinary MasterBuilder, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil LEGO tyrant from gluing the universe together. With the voices of Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett and Morgan Freeman. Rated PG.
Vampire Academy. Rose Hathaway develops a mental and spiritual bond with her BVFF (best vampire friend forever) Princess Lissa. The two girls attend a strict school for vampires designed to retain their humanity where it is Roseas task to protect the Princess. Among the everyday issues faced by teenage vampires Rose falls for Dimitri, their dreamy guardian, and together the three battle the mysterious forces of the evil Moroi who are set on destroying the Princess’s bloodline. Rated PG-13.
The Monuments Men. George Clooney and Matt Damon star in what passes for a true story in Hollywood about a special unit on the hunt for Nazi art plunder during World War II. Rated PG-13.
Frozen. Inspired by the 19th-century fairy tale, “The Snow Queen,” by Hans Christian Andersen, “Frozen” marks another Disney film modernizing one of the Danish author’s stories. Also showing, a new version will feature on-screen lyrics with a magical bouncing snowflake to follow along. Rated PG.
Oscar nominated: Best Animated Feature Film.
Ride Along. Ben wants to become a cop so he can impress James and win his blessing to marry Angela. James thinks Ben is a clown, so he comes up with a plan to scare Ben away from becoming a cop and from marrying Angela: He’ll take Ben on a “ride along.” PG-13.
Lone Survivor. The more-or-less true story of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, who was the lone survivor of a mission in Afghanistan that went tragically wrong. Rated R.
Oscar nominated: Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.
Ted Holteen and Associated Press
