Month: January 2016

To quote “The Simpsons” (ask my friends, I do that a lot) when they lampooned Enron in their episode at Epcot Center, mmmm, now that’s good satire. “American Dreamz” looks like total fluff on the surface, the kind of thing that the Wayans brothers would do for a “Scary Movie” installment, were they still in charge of that franchise. Instead, it’s one of the funniest, most biting satires, both political and cultural, that you’re likely to see this year. It miraculously uses a terrorist sleeper cell as a subplot in a comedy, and you totally buy it. That doesn’t just take guts; it takes skill. And this movie’s got mad skills.

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2010 has become the Year of the Working Vacation at the multiplex. Amy Adams spent a couple months in Ireland shooting “Leap Year,” knowing full well that the movie she was making was her #2 reason for being there. Adam Sandler got Columbia Pictures to pay him and his buddies millions to play at a water park. Now we find George Clooney shooting a thriller about an assassin who holes up in Italy after a job gone wrong, and wouldn’t you know it, Clooney has a villa in Italy. His character even tells another character that he’s on a working vacation, so at least he’s honest about his motives.

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Being a celebrity does not automatically make someone interesting. Even with the creative license that comes with your typical Hollywood biopic, “Amelia” portrays 1930s aviation pioneer and role model Amelia Earhart as a pleasant but frankly dull person. Even the parts that dealt with Earhart compromising her integrity in order to achieve her dreams – which she did a lot – were boring.

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“Up” is an odd bird, and that’s not just because one of the movie’s co-stars is an odd bird. It’s the first Pixar movie that could possibly happen in the human world, as opposed to the fish world, rat world or insect world. Its story is pretty simple by Pixar standards, but it plunges emotional depths that the studio has not explored since, well, “Up” director Pete Docter’s last effort, “Monsters, Inc.” By Pixar standards, it’s a massive departure on a number of levels, but it also shows just how much smarter – and more courageous – they are about the movies they make. Pitch a movie with a 78-year-old man as the lead character to DreamWorks Animation, and watch them scatter like cockroaches.

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The 2007 “Alvin and the Chipmunks” wasn’t a great movie, but it also wasn’t terrible, which actually makes it the perfect candidate for a sequel, since there is room for improvement. (The fact that it grossed $217 million didn’t hurt, either.) Fox should have considered themselves lucky that the movie was such a hit in spite of its shortcomings; instead, it appears that they thought that they put too much effort into it the first time around, because the most clever thing about “Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” is the title.

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The glass-half-full take on “Alvin and the Chipmunks” is that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. The glass-half-empty take is that it’s still not very good. The kids will surely be entertained, and the movie has a surprisingly wholesome message, but the adults will be smacking their foreheads over the way that the movie all but ignores reality, and for no real reason.

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With all due respect to “The Godfather, Part II,” “Aliens” forever changed the way we looked at sequels. It contains the elements that define the laws of sequel-making – everything is bigger, faster, more elaborate – but the crucial difference with “Aliens” is that the story never takes a back seat to anything. That dedication to telling a good story results in one of the most intense, squirm-inducing movies you’ll see in this or any other genre.

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