Gangster Squad (2013)

Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Robert Patrick

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Genre: Action, Crime, Drama

Rating: C+

I'm going to predicate this by saying that while I'm not exactly giving this a good review, I did enjoy it.  Gangster Squad was definitely over hyped and possibly even wrongly promoted, and as such going into it I was expecting one type of movie and got something a bit different.  This is a movie created by the guy who did Zombieland, and as such it's a movie like Zombieland kind of trying to be a movie like Godfather or something similar.  As such, it kind of ends up in between the two, to the detriment of the film, although throughout it it still manages to be entertaining and fun.

Gangster Squad is the kind of true, but not really, story of Mickey Cohen (Penn) and the police officers who formed a squad, the Gangster Squad, to stop him.  The head of this squad is Sergeant John O'Mara (Brolin), a decorated war hero who doesn't fit into the L.A. police scene simply because he won't take bribes and wants to persecute Cohen and his thugs.  O'Mara is joined by detective Coleman Harris (Mackie), wire-tapper Conway Keeler (Ribisi), gunslinger Max Kennard (Patrick), and his partner Navidad Ramirez (Peña).  His friend, Jerry Wooters (Gosling), who has rejected an offer to join the squad, meanwhile is carrying on an affair with Cohen's lover, Grace Faraday (Stone).

Okay, so let's see.  The action was fun, I enjoyed it.  With the exception of the Chinatown incident it all really flowed well and was, while not exactly believable, definitely entertaining.  There were a few moments that were a bit hockey, and a few add ins that made me feel like the film was trying to be the 1960s Batman - more than once I almost expected a "POW" to be displayed across the screen - but for the most part it was fun.  The humour was good too and really on key.  It wasn't an overly funny movie, but there were definitely a number of points when someone would say something that made me smile or chuckle a little.

I really liked the relationship between O'Mara and his wife, played by Mireille Enos, and really wanted more of it.  From the get go I felt the love and chemistry between the two of them and I worried about what was going to happen to each of them, and between each of them, more than any other character.  Actually, with all honesty, the only other characters that I really cared about here were the ones played by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone - although more because I like the actors themselves than because of any development of their relationship.  I do think that Gosling's Jerry was developed, and I really enjoyed the character, but Stone's Grace was less developed, and their relationship... somehow, despite the fact that I already know the two as a couple from Crazy, Stupid, Love and know that they can have amazing chemistry, the two don't really have chemistry here.  It's lacking, which sucks.  I want to see more from the two of them as a couple in this film so that I could really love them as a couple.  And now I just want to go watch Crazy, Stupid, Love again.  I will stick this out there, though, if you're filming a movie with Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn in it one of them should appear shirtless and the other should not.  I'm sorry, Gangster Squad, but you made the wrong decision there.

The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)

Stars: Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, Sarah Bolger, Seth Rogen, Martin Short
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Rating: C-
 

Even by the standard of being a film based on a not exactly good series of books, The Spiderwick Chronicles falls flat.  The film follows Jared Grace (Highmore), his identical twin brother Simon (Highmore), and their older sister Mallory (Bolger) as they encounter a series of magical creatures after moving into their great-aunt’s (Plowright) estate, Spiderwick Estate.  After moving to their new home and discovering Arthur Spiderwick’s field guide to all things magical Jared discovers that a house brownie/boggart, Thumbletack (Short), is living in the home, and that the shape shifting ogre Mulgarath (Nolte) and his goblin army wants the field guide so that they can use it to wage a war against all other magical creatures.  It’s up to the Grace children to save the day.

The movie’s biggest success was Highmore’s performance.  He has shown himself to have the potential to be a great actor, both in this movie and in some of his earlier works.  Here he plays not one but two very distinct characters, and if you pay attention you can easily tell them apart. It’s not even just that the boys have different personalities; Highmore plays them with different mannerisms and different voices – even more of a success if you consider that his accent in this movie isn’t his natural one to begin with.  The other acting isn’t bad, but the characters are all lacking substance so none of the performances really stand out.  This is a problem of the books themselves that the filmmakers chose not to address.  The one problem of the books that they did address was the lack of plot in the individual books themselves.  When taken as a whole, the entire series is good and suspenseful, but individually the books are too short and lacking in climax.  The film addresses this by trying to approach the entire series in one go, instead of each book individually.  As such a lot of the individual elements from the books are removed or condensed, but the overall story remains.  I think in that sense I preferred the movie to the books; while it wasn’t overly gripping or suspenseful, it was one complete story.  It wasn't the best movie... but it also wasn't the worst.