War Dogs and Lord of War

War Dogs - 3.5 Stars (out of four)

Lord Of War - 4 Stars (out of four)

This was one I was looking forward to.  It promised an interesting story on an interesting subject (gray market arms trading) with interesting actors (Miles Teller and Jonah Hill), and it delivered in spades.  It is ostensibly based on two real 20-something stoners from the Miami Beach area who won a $300 million defense contract to supply arms to US forces by gaming the system.  They made a lot of money and then it came crashing down.

Now, for those of you who have seen the superior Nicolas Cage movie Lord Of War, it's basically the same story.  An amoral guy who finds cracks in the system and exploits the legal gray areas of a pretty disgusting industry for his personal gain.  The Cage movie is better because it's not trying to be funny or edgy.  It just is.  It has a cynical streak that pervades the whole story, enough to kill a hippie in his tracks.  But the sad fact is, the guy exists and fills a need normally done by governments.  War Dogs, while it is a drama (and a good one), is trying for a more hip feel.  It was directed by Todd Phillips (of The Hangover fame) and it shows.  It has the same tone, the same chaotic feel The Hangover had.  Add in a very healthy dose of some of the blackest of black humor and another Oscar-worthy performance from Jonah Hill (whose character is a pure sociopath) and you have one of those off-kilter, quirky stories that I love.  (I would count Pain And Gain, Pulp Fiction, and Deadpool in this vein). It is not a story for everyone, even though in War Dogs, our (anti)heroes get their comeuppance which makes it more friendly for American audiences.  Despite everything, we are very pollyannaish in our attitudes.  Evil must be punished or we are left a little empty.  Lord of War, on the other hand, does not take the easy way out.  In fact, the amoral center gets reinforced as men will continue to kill, and there will always be someone their to fill that compunction, especially when nation states cannot, for whatever reason.

So, War Dogs is ultimately crowd pleasing, but it is the black cynicism of Lord of War that hits me harder.  In the end, the characters in War Dogs are punished.  They are off the street and rules are tightened as we learn from our mistakes.  But, life and fireign policy never wrap up that neatly, and Lord of War ends on that unresolved note.  To me, it feels more real.  I was massively entertained by both, but I give the edge to reality.  The other thing I didn't like about War Dogs is that it continues a disturbing trend I have seen in moviemaking lately, of a creeping moral relativism.  In Lord of War, Cage's character is totally amoral, and it makes no attempt to show him as anything other than what he is, a merchant of death.  In War Dogs, the movie goes out of its way to portray Teller's character as just a good guy who got caught up in his friend's Svengali charm, which made him rich.  Hill's character, as he described on Howard Stern is part of his "Jewish scumbag trilogy" (referring to his Wolf of Wall Street, not sure of the other one).  The movie seems to feel it needs to apologize regarding Teller because he was a good kid caught up in a bad situation and goes to great pains to paint him sympatheticly, while I think it is much more honest with Hill, that he was an opportunistic scumbag who didn't care anything about what he does to his friends or his customers.  I found the moral handwringing regarding a guy who is essentially profiting handsomely off other people's deaths slightly distasteful.  That said, I loved the movie for what it was, but I have to give the edge to the superior Lord of War.

Florence Foster Jenkins

3 Stars (out of four)

This looked like an enjoyable and uplifting tale about a woman who can't sing and yet brings joy to people because of her pure and unbridled enthusiasm for music.  That enthusiasm just makes you want to stand up and cheer.  But unfortunately, this is real life and the movie delivers on that instead.

The movie is about the titular heroine Florence Foster Jenkins (played with her usual aplomb by Meryl Streep), a VERY rich New York socialite who has had a lifetime love for music and loves to sing.  There is only one problem, she has absolutely no talent and a tin ear.  Her actor husband (Hugh Grant), who loves her deeply, has kept her surrounded by sycophants and pays off people to praise her performances.  And while he does love her, he has a girlfriend on the side that Florence doesn't know about.  One day, Florence makes a private recording for her friends that somehow gets on the radio.  It instantly becomes a big hit, especially with soldiers returning home from WWII.  What she doesn't know is they are all laughing at her.  She decides to put on a free concert at Carnegie Hall for them which starts disastrously until everyone begins to appreciate that she is singing her heart out.  And while everybody is still snickering, the concert ends with thunderous applause.

So, the movie advertises itself that it is uplifting, that despite this poor woman's obvious lack of talent, people will still love her.  However, like real life, this is not meant to be.  But what makes this movie incredible is the beauty and intimacy of those small moments we share with our family and friends.  That despite everything else that happens to us in our lives, it is in those small moments of humanity, of kindness shared, that make life worth living.  Despite Hugh Grant's character being somewhat of a heel, he truly does care and love Florence, and does everything he can to make her dreams of singing come true.  Some would say that it's cruel, playing an elaborate hoax on her, but she goes along with it, as well as all of her friends.  Her circle of friends know how much she loves what she does, and they wholeheartedly support her, even though they know she is terrible.  We can all identify when we have to tell the little white lie to someone to make them feel better.  This movie shows just how important those bits of humanity are.  My only real complaint with the movie is that the tone is very confusing. At first, they set the movie up as if it is a comedy, to laugh at Florence's ineptitude.  But then it switches tone to where we become complicit in the lie everyone tells her.  Because we know just how much she loves what she does, we end up rooting for her and feel proud of her when she finally sings at Carnegie Hall.  Perhaps there is a deeper message here.  Always pursue your dream, or whatever makes you happy, and damn anyone who tries to take that joy from you.

Hell or High Water

3 Stars (out of four)

I was a little sad about this one.  I thought it would be a rousing, sorta modern upgrade to 1967's Bonnie and Clyde.  They have similar themes born out of similar circumstances, bank robbers who rob banks in the name of social justice (sorta).  Both impart a dissatisfaction with the age in which they were filmed.  Bonnie and Clyde signaled the end of the old Hollywood Studio system and ushered in a new, arguably better age of dramatic storytelling that would resonate with younger viewers in a time of turbulent social change.  It very much mirrored the social tides of the Civil Rights Movement.  Hell or High Water sells itself on a similar theme, one more in tune with the Bernie Sanders and "Occupy" movements of late; movements extremely suspicious of corporate and government institutions.  This is the Bonnie and Clyde for the Millenial movement, young people dissatisfied with their place in life who need a convenient scapegoat, in this case, corporate America.  It has some great performances and takes its time telling a slow-burning story, but unfortunately leaves you oddly unfulfilled at the end.

Hell or High Water is the story of two Texan brothers:  a divorced father (Chris Pine) and his older, ex-con brother (Ben Foster), who rob banks to save their family ranch.  They only rob bank branches that hold the deed on their ranch, with the intent to buy it back with the money they stole, essentially paying the bank back with its own money.  Hot on their heels is a retiring Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges in a standout performance) who is convinced (correctly) that the robberies are related.

I have no real complaints about the story itself; in fact, I loved it.  The biggest problem with the movie is the brothers' relationship.  As they are the main characters, and this is very much a character-driven story, you would think there would be a lot devoted to them and their motivations.  And while the movie does touch on some of that, it is curiously haphazard.  You come out wanting to know more, especially Ben Foster's character, who is an unpredictable hellion.  Yes, they love each other and yes, they are doing these crimes for a greater purpose, but in the end, I didn't feel like I knew them very well.  You learn a lot about each one of them individually, but not the relationship that binds them together on this highway to disaster.  All we get are tired tropes: abusive father, distant mother, but since we meet neither of them, we can't judge anything for ourselves.  Ditto with Chris Pine's character trying to reconcile amicably with his ex-wife and kids.  We see the result of his character arc, how he has changed.  It would have been much more interesting to see how he got there.  That's what I mean by feeling unfulfilled with the story.  We only see the results of life-changing experiences, not the events that precipitated them.  Those events, in my opinion, are the more interesting story.  The bank robberies are merely the culmination of those events.

The Jeff Bridges character and his interactions with his half-Mexican, half-Native American partner are much more interesting and funny, if you think an older white guy throwing constant racial epithets at his partner are funny.  But there is a greater dynamic going on here, that is how rough men bond.  Many movies try to show this, Jaws being probably the best example of male bonding that I have seen.  Despite the racial slurs, both men have a real respect for each other that goes beyond surface insults, that ironically, allow these men to express their feelings for each other.  It's an odd dynamic, but it is there.  

So the movie, by those who have short attention spans, will seem slow and boring.  But it is in those moments of reflection where this movie shines.  It gives the movie deeper resonance, a time you can reflect, as the characters do, on events that transpired and what's ahead.  This helps because the movie is very ham-fisted in ramming the point home that the economy sucks and our characters are victims of something far beyond their control.  All in all, the movie is very good and worth a watch for those who can abide by a deliberate storytelling pace.

Star Trek Beyond

3 Stars (out of four)

I have to hand it to Paramount.  After thoroughly and irreparably blowing Star Trek: The Next Generation's chance to have a movie franchise in, they wisely chose to go back to the well of what made Star Trek so great in the first place, the adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise on her five-year-mission.  However, if they aren't careful, it's still possible to totally blow this chance to keep a good franchise going.

So, we pick up with Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and the U.S.S. Enterprise beginning her five-year-mission of exploration.  Actually, we're in the middle of that exploratory mission, when the Enterprise gets sent on a rescue to help a crashed vessel in a nebula.  Of course, in true Star Trek fashion, they seem to be the only ship in the quadrant (Really?  Quadrant implies four.  Are we to believe the Federation has no more than four vessels?) that can handle the crisis.  They go in, and are immediately attacked by a really bad guy which causes Kirk to crash the ship (Yes, again.  For those of you keeping score, this is now the third time the Enterprise has been destroyed.  But since the other two crashes happened in a parallel future which has been wiped out of existence, technically, they never happened.  Are you with me so far?) on a remote planet.  Then there is a whole plot about a lost Federation starship captained by a man who now hates...oh, does it really matter? It's Star Trek!

The Star Trek new (old?) cast is finally coming into its own.  This movie has finally allowed the new cast to truly take the reins from Shatner & company and spread their wings on their own.  The first movie had to introduce us to the new cast.  The second had to finally kill the necessary nods to nostalgia so this third movie can finally be truly owned and inhabited by the new cast.  Truth be told, the criticism of this being an excellent TV episode and a not-so-great movie is absolutely on the money, but that really doesn't matter.  The writers have hit upon why the original crew made such good movies and The Next Gen cast didn't.  It has nothing to do with one cast being better than the other, but rather story structure.  The original Trek is really about Kirk, Spock and McCoy and their evolving relationship with each other.  Everybody else is secondary, no matter what Takei, Nichols, Doohan or Koenig think, Shatner is correct that the big three are the stars.  This is an ideal amount of deep characterization for movies as you only get 2+ hours every 3-4 years to see these characters.  A cast as diverse as The Next Gen was always better suited for TV.  Seven principle characters over seven years gives you ample opportunity to explore and get to know each character in detail.  Now that we completely know and love them, each character not given adequate screen time will be cheated.

Star Trek Beyond has finally began exploring the big trio's new, evolving relationship, and I loved it.  We are beginning to see the forging of what will be a lifetime friendship.  Frankly, I don't care about Uhura's love story or capability, Sulu's gayness or Scotty's emotional depth.  While the movie does a fairly good job of addressing everyone, it becomes perilously close to losing its focus.  This time, the story worked well.  A lesser writer could still botch it up in the future.  If the series is going to remain viable and not be a convoluted mess like The Next Gen movies were, it needs to stick to the Kirk/Spock/McCoy formula.  The only Next Gen movie that actually worked, (First Contact) worked precisely because they stuck to this formula.  In fact, it only focused on Picard and Data.  Everyone  else was given good, but supporting performances in service to the larger story.

So, all in all, it was a fun, but rather limited story.  The final reveal of the bad guy and his intentions gets a little convoluted.  But in the end, this is a very satisfying romp and makes me want to see more.

Suicide Squad

I'm 3 Stars (out of four)

So, considering the near-unanimous savaging this film has been getting from critics, I went in expecting a hot mess.  "But were they right?" you may ask, and my answer would be...

Sorta.

I will say, however, I was entertained by this film and did not feel ripped off.  But could it have been better?  Did it fall short of its promises?  Yes, it kind of did.  It falls short on every level, actually, but still manages to be entertaining.  So, don't listen to the critics.  That's why you have me to tell you what's good and what isn't.  It seems mainstream critics think every film should be belle arté, but I think it's fine to have artistic candy for the brain sometimes, and Suicide Squad definitely fits that category.

So, the movie is about the US government putting together a team of super villains, almost all of whom are killers and psychos, to battle even bigger threats out there.  The premise being: what if Superman tore off the roof of the White House and took the President?  How would we fight that threat?  There is a major side plot as well where the Joker (well played by Jared Leto) is trying to save his co-dependent, psychotic girlfriend (played by über-hot Margot Robbie in hooker-chic short shorts) and break her out of prison.  The movie has a lot of other bad guys, too, but do they really matter?  Not particularly.

This movie has been hyped for almost three years and been delayed at least once for extensive reshoots.  The word is that Warner execs were panicking when they saw how dark the original cut was, and they wanted to lighten the tone for a more family-friendly, PG-13 crowd.  (Just as a side note.  Does anyone remember when PG-13 was NOT family-friendly, but warning parents this may be a bit extreme?  Now PG-13 is essentially a pussified R so they can get more butts in the seats.). Now, I'm not suggesting that Suicide Squad or any superhero film should be R-rated, particularly in a post-Deadpool world, but the studios keep wanting to make very edgy films for what is essentially a children's medium.  This is the first fundamental problem.  All film studios should follow Marvel Studio's lead and put this more adult-oriented stuff on pay-TV and concentrate on a good story rather than attitude.  DC has made two fundamental errors with their properties.  The first was making each film in isolation from all the others.  Marvel has carefully planned their multi-year strategy introducing characters and a continuing story-arc gradually, and it has reaped large dividends because of that planning.  DC is beginning to rectify this problem with Dawn of Justice, but it is too little, too late, and they are scrambling now.  The second error was going for the gritty, brooding atmosphere of Batman in everything they do.  It works for Batman, but not necessarily Superman, so now they are painted into a corner where everything is dark and joyless.

So enough of the macro issues, what about Suicide Squad?  Its biggest issue is its tone.  They're reaching for dark and gritty, especially since each of these "heroes" are villains.  There was obviously a lot of post-production tinkering, because you see glimpses of real menace underneath everything, particularly the Joker/Harley relationship.  There are hints of extreme mental and physical cruelty they inflict on each other and other people.  Frankly, I would rather see an R-rated film about these two.  That would be fascinating, but quite impossible to do.  But this malefic undertone is glossed over and diluted, so you get a confusing/irritating cognitive dissonance that falls short of being either standard superhero fare or a more gruesome psychological study.  It's almost as if the movie is just there, unwilling to commit to any tone other than banality.  The movie tries to make up for this with antihero-cool attitude, but again falls laughably short.

Other fundamental issues are that the DC rogues gallery is much more interesting than its heroes, who are pretty bland in comparison.  Add to that the fact that, outside of the Joker, we have never met any of these characters before.  So, the movie must waste time explaining everybody and what they do before the action can start.  To be fair, the movie actually did a great job doing this.  The first act, where we meet all of them and how they got caught and what drives them is actually pretty good.  It is a great Exhibit A on how to save a deeply flawed script by quick introductions to the characters in an ingenious sleight-of-hand to distract you from the other story problems.  But now we come to another fundamental issue: why should we care about any of these people?  They are killers, after all.  "Cool" does not make up for the fact they are all killers and deserve everything that's coming to them.  This movie revolves on an axis of adolescent boy-fantasy regarding how the world works.  If I'm cool or tough enough, it doesn't matter what I do or what a bastard I am.

Finally, the story has technical problems.  They are trying to use the Tarantino-esque method of non-linear storytelling (the story is not told in sequence but rather a combination of flashbacks and present action), and the timeline gets muddy because of it.  There is also inconsistent pacing.  This becomes particularly egregious when we finish the second act.  A big battle has just been won and the final battle is imminent.  Suddenly, for no particular reason, they all decide to have a drink in a conveniently open bar in a war-torn city and discuss their feelings.  After which, they make the pact of "all-for-one-one-for-all" and go on the "slo-mo" badass walk.  (See Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill Vol. 1)  This movie is cliché-ridden, not particularly funny (although it thinks it is), and really is a pointless place-holder until the good DC movies come out.  (Wonder-Woman, Justice League, Flash, Aquaman)  Dawn of Justice is at least setting up the next movie.  Suicide Squad does that only in the last two minutes.  Otherwise, it stands on its own, again in isolation, in kind of a pointless exercise of expanding the DC universe.

After all that, you're probably saying to yourself, "Gee, that's a lot of negative stuff you just said, and yet you still thought it was entertaining?"  Yes, I do.  Despite its many flaws, in the end, it is pure escapist entertainment.  It has the mentality of a not-so-mature 12-year-old boy, but it is still a fun little fantasy, A road that I didn't mind traveling down, despite everything wrong with it.  Sometimes the journey can be fun.

Jason Bourne

2 Stars (out of four)

In what is rapidly becoming the summer of missed blockbuster opportunities, Jason Bourne now adds its name to the heap of overly-hyped, low-performing tentpole thrillers.  It's becoming sad and repetitious this summer, with so many possibilities and so many failures.  I was really hoping this one would be different with the return of Matt Damon playing our titular hero.

The movie is about Matt Damon returning to the role of the hero that has redefined the spy thriller actioneer.  Do you really need to know anything else?  You do?  Well, he is again trying to live a life in peace, but the bad guys/good guys of the CIA can't let him be.  When more information from his past shows up, this supposedly patriotic hero (they make a point to mention this many times throughout) does everything in his power possible to dismantle the organization that protects us all.  When a traitorous coward like Snowden is praised for his patriotism (there's a movie coming out about him, too, from, you guessed it, that other patriotic paragon Oliver Stone), it's no wonder this is what is considered laudible and worthy of emulation.

So, back to the story in a moment.  First, I am very disappointed with director Paul Greengrass.  He has done the equivalent of an actor phoning in a performance.  Considering he has already directed two other fairly good Bourne movies (Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum), and basically rewrote the visual lexicon of action movies in the process, he falls back to tired and lazy directorial techniques that are beneath his abilities.  He makes extensive use of hand-held cameras (or the vomit-cam as I call it with its ability to make one nauseous).  Combining MTV-style frenetic editing with the use of the vomit-cam to get as close to the action as possible, all we are sure of is that there is something kinetic and exciting happening on-screen.  It would probably be pretty cool if we could actually see it, but all that is really visible is a blur of action.  I realize newer directors make extensive use of hand-held cameras because they think it's cool and edgy (it isn't), and that it's cheaper (it is).  But for a seasoned professional like Greengrass, who knows how to frame, choreograph, pace and shoot action quite competently, it just looks lazy and sloppy.  The Bourne movies changed the spy movie aesthetic so completely that the James Bond franchise is copying its template, much to the detriment of the last four Bond flicks.

Bourne doesn't particularly need a good performance, but Damon delivers his usual better-than-average style here.  He is the one bright spot of the movie, or rather, Bourne being in a Bourne movie is.  But the story is hackneyed and cliché-ridden through and through.  The movie is basically a simple revenge flick packaged as a chase film.  No new ground is covered, and now Bourne is in danger of picking up the tired Bond formula.  An event forces him to action, he meets a contact/lover who becomes the sacrificial lamb, he cries, then gets mad, and then spends the rest of the movie on a kill-crazy rampage until all the other guys are dead.  And while the Bond franchise has suffered trying to be Bourne, the inverse is true as well.  They are fundamentally different stories and heroes.  Yet despite studios knowing this, they are repackaging the same vanilla, crowd-pleasing over and over again to satisfy the beast.  I would rather see Bourne go back to its roots of a man out of place, or find another original hero.  If this is the best we can expect from Bourne, it is breathing its last.  Instead of a vibrant and exciting new take on the spy, it sinks into the morass of cookie-cutter sameness that has been plaguing franchises.

Ghostbusters (2016)

2.5 Stars (out of four)

So, to address the twin 800-pound gorillas in the room, the new Ghostbusters isn't that bad.  It doesn't crap all over your childhood memories too much.  After all, Ghostbusters 2 did that all on its own.  Did you really want another movie to be angry about?  It is a fairly blasé remake of the original that sort of sails into a new direction, but not any new territory that we haven't seen before.  There are some laugh-out-loud funny jokes, and I was entertained by this somewhat forgettable comedy that I probably won't remember much after a couple months.  Second, the whole woman issue.  This was such a bald-faced, fabricated, first-world, tempest-in-a-teacup issue.  Many of you remember that when the trailer came online, it had (and still has) the dubious distinction of becoming the most hated trailer of ALL time, ever since they've been keeping track of these things.  The, a lot of jerks came out of the woodwork saying it would suck because of "those four stupid, unfunny women."  Needless to say, this brought out all the feministas retorting back that men in general, and Hollywood in particular, are a bunch of mysogynous pigs who want to keep women down.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I think the actresses did journeyman's work of a substandard script.  There is only so much you can do with inferior material (more on that later).  Sony, the film's studio, knew they didn't have a really good picture on their hands, and with the extreme negative backlash, they started panicking.  But as the old show-business adage says, there's no such thing as bad publicity.  Sony decided to glom onto this ridiculous back-and-forth coming from both sides and fanned the flames in the media to create a false sense of outrage that both sides fell for-hook, line and sinker.  Essentially, Sony pulled off one of the most ingenious sleights of hand, by focusing attention on a manufactured conflict to get our minds off a mediocrely-made, cynical cash-grab remake.  One of my favorite YouTube personalities, Comic Book Girl 19 went into much more detail about this. I highly recommend you check out her thoughts here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn_vAcFGTJU

So, with that out of the way, "what was so bad about it," you may ask?  Well, as it turns out, plenty.  Most of the problem comes down to the story.  A wise move on the producers' part should have been to go in a different direction altogether, instead of just rehashing the old movie.  The original Ghostbusters works precisely because nobody knew what they had or what to make of it.  They didn't know it was going to be a monster hit outside of the fact that the writers, directors and actors involved were the creative forces who brought us some of the most amazing comedy ever made, including:  Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Caddyshack, Meatballs, and Stripes.  Also, comedy has evolved over the years.  In the comedies from the late 70s and early 80s, while there was broad, screwball stuff, you actually had to have some brains to "get" some of it.  You were required to think a little.  Comedy was written mostly for adults, not to family-friendly groups or rubes.  Comedy has devolved back to its more broad roots of The Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy, where everyone is waving their arms at you screaming, "Look!  We're being funny!" like hyperactive kids.  And while I am a fan of their work, the stylings of Will Farrell, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, and Mike Myers are the result of this dumbing-down.  When you watch Ghostbusters, it is not special-effects-heavy (they didn't have the budget), walks a very fine line between being genuinely scary and outright hilarious, and relies heavily on nuanced dialogue and action, being performed by some of the undisputed masters of the craft.  In other words, they had to be clever.  While the giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is over the top, what makes Ghostbusters funny are lines like ""You're endangering our client.  The nice lady who paid us.  In advance," "My parents left me that house.  I was born there," "I collect spores, molds and fungus" or "That's a big Twinkie."  Unlike the new version that delivers everything with a wink and a nod, the original Ghostbusters is dead serious about its material, no matter how over-the-top it got.  There aren't sly nods at the audience, but rather fully invested actors in their respective roles grounded in its own reality, which makes it more believable, relatable and therefore more real feeling.

But, let's talk about our new stars quickly.  They did great with what they had.  Melissa McCarthy (Abby Yates-the Ray Stantz of this group) wisely sheds her gross-out persona of Bridesmaids and instead inhabits her mousy persona of Spy, which works well for the character.  Unfortunately, the character is a tad pathetic, but McCarthy makes you care for Abby.  Kristen Wiig (Erin Gilbert-the less-confident but no less smart Peter Venkman character) is the oddest of the lot.  She plays the straight one, the Abbott to the rests' Costellos.  I found her character a wasted opportunity, essentially fawning over the beefcake but dumb receptionist (Chris Hemsworth playing the Annie Potts role).  Leslie Jones (Patti Tolan-the every(wo)man Winston Zedermore part) actually has the most laugh-out-loud lines.  In my opinion, her jokes were the funniest of the movie.  But the real revelation is Kate McKinnon (Jilian Holtzman-the Egon Spangler mad-genius character).  She doesn't get that many lines.  On top of that, Jilian is incredibly weird.  But her off manner and totally incongruous reactions to characters and situations are the absolute best thing about the movie.  Since most of them tend to be in the background, it only heightens their comedic punch, and she steals EVERY scene she is in.  I haven't been watching Saturday Night Live a lot recently, but if she is consistently this good on the show, it's no wonder why people rave so much about it.

Besides the stars' performances , there's not a lot to talk about.  The effects are over the top, which keeps us from becoming fully invested in the world, and instead remind us we're watching a movie.  The movie is basically a remake, never straying too far from the outline of the original.  But instead of grounding us in a "reality," like the first one, it one-ups everything with classic deus ex machina-style.  For instance, in the original movie, everything looked slapped together with wires and duct tape.  Their equipment looked as it was pieced together with odds and ends.  It looked used, lived-in.  In the new movie, new stuff just shows up when they need it because the plot says so.  Everything was quickly and conveniently invented and built by Jilian from God-knows-what and paid for from God-knows-where.  In the end, the movie felt like a cheap copy of the original with an amazing paint job so you won't realize the engine is burning oil and has thrown a rod.  If you can wait, rent it instead.  The only way Hollywood will stop making these crappy remakes is if the audience doesn't go.  Hate all the remakes lately?  Vote with your feet and see something original instead.  I know it's scary, but you probably liked the original Ghostbusters because you never saw anything quite like it before.  But if you must--go see it. There is some funny stuff, and despite all I have said here, it is entertaining.  I did not leave the theater feeling ripped off.  I left feeling regretful nostalgia teamed with an empty realization  that what I just saw was, in the end, only mediocre.  And in the end, that would be great for a lot of films, but makes this Ghostbusters only a pale pretender to one of the greatest comedies ever made.