Ready Player One (2018) ***

I don't see movies in the cinema all that often. When I do, I like to play a little game. After all the commercials, trailers, subliminal hunger messages, and cellphone-silencing reminders have finished, I try to remember what movie I am actually there to see. Sometimes it takes some serious brain-racking! Before “Ready Player One”, they must have shown us at least ten previews, mostly for lame-looking movies aimed at young teens. By the time the feature started, my brain felt like mush. I couldn't remember what I was there to see, and my expectations were creeping downward. Fortunately, “Ready Player One” surprised me by being a pretty entertaining action movie.

Tye Sheridan (young Cyclops from the new X-men films) plays Wade Watts, an orphaned, young man living with his white-trash aunt in a multi-tiered trailer park called The Stacks. That's not really where he spends most of his time, though. Everybody in this crummy, post-apocalyptic America spends as much time as they can wearing virtual-reality goggles and gloves, living in the virtual world of The Oasis.

The Oasis was created by an Aspergian genius named Halliday. Before his death, Halliday inserted some Easter Eggs into the game, a set of challenges leading to keys, which lead to the grand prize, which is ownership of The Oasis itself. With most of the world regularly plugged into The Oasis, this is a prize worth billions. Vying for the Egg are regular egg hunters (“ghunters”) like Wade, as well as big corporations like IOI, which employs hundreds of gamers and researchers to hunt the keys. Thus, rich and poor alike spend their time in The Oasis researching Halliday's life and playing games that they think might lead to the keys.

While everyone vies for control of this virtual world, the real world is falling apart. As Wade says, “...everyone stopped trying to solve problems and just started trying to outlive them.” We don't get to see a lot of the real world in this film, but you get the impression of a world that is corrupt, filthy, and lacking a middle class.

Forget the real world, however, because the Oasis looks AMAZING! It's a beautifully-animated world full of fantastical characters and stunning action. It's no wonder the real-world scenes look dull and drab by comparison, but it's a shameful waste of some talented real-life actors. Tye Sheridan is a perfectly serviceable, young actor. Olivia Cooke has loads of charm, which probably explains why she is suddenly in everything. Lena Waithe is amazing on the Netflix show “Master of None”. They all do fine voice-acting in the Oasis, but none of them gets to do a whole lot in the real-life portion of this movie, which, seriously, looks like a cheap, film-school project grafted onto a high-octane, animated action movie. That isn't a dealbreaker. This just looks like a mostly-animated film where they didn't have a lot of money to spend on the live-action part of the movie. It's kind of off-putting for a Steven Spielberg production, though.

“Ready Player One” is young-adult dystopian fiction, and at the end of the day, it's intended for kids. There are movies like “The Hunger Games” that are able to transcend that genre, but “Ready Player One,” while entertaining, is not transcendent. One thing about YA fiction is that it tries to get kids to think about things. “Ready Player One” tries to have a message about how video games are fun and all, but the real world is what is real and important. The film undercuts that message by focusing most of its energy on the beautiful, virtual world of the Oasis. It also ignores the point that everyone is trying so hard to win control of this world that exists only on computer servers and could be re-created by anyone with the computer skills. Rather than paying all those people to search for eggs in the Oasis, IOI could have just developed a competing virtual world. Whatever, though, it's just a movie, right? Movies, themselves, are a form of virtual reality. Here in the real world, the job of movies is mostly to entertain us, and “Ready Player One” does that. It's a pretty thin entertainment, though, one that kids will like more than adults.

3 stars out of 5

Super Troopers 2 (2018) *****

You know how sometimes you'll hope and pray for something, and then it doesn't turn out as well as you expected? Well, this is not one of those times. The sequel to 2001's genius comedy “Super Troopers” is every bit the sequel we fans would hope for. After 17 years, it's the sequel we deserve. (This is literally true, as it was a 2015 crowdfunding campaign that provided the seed money to make the movie happen. Fourteen years after the original “Super Troopers,” devoted fans ponied up more than $4 million to bring these characters back.)

“Super Troopers 2” picks up an unspecified period of time after the events of the first movie. Thorny, Rabbit, Mac, Foster, and Farva are working construction, having lost their cop gigs following a tragic incident on a ride-along with actor Fred Savage, a ride-along that they never should have done, because, “Actors shouldn't play cops anyway. They always get it wrong.”

The guys jump at a chance to be cops again, in a tiny sliver of Canada that is getting annexed into Vermont. Needless to say, the Canadians there are less than thrilled to be becoming Americans. They don't buy into the “We're all Americans...North Americans!” theory. The locals, the mayor (Rob Lowe) and the existing Canadian Mounties give the super troopers a hard time, but the guys fight back with shenanigans of their own. Meanwhile, they discover stashes of drugs, guns, and fake iphones along the border.

Maybe you are thinking this sounds pretty similar to the plot of the first “Super Troopers”? You'd be right. It's almost the same movie, which is exactly what I wanted in a “Super Troopers” sequel. That movie was perfect: raunchy, irreverent, poking lighthearted fun at pretty much everyone. “Super Troopers 2” revisits everything that made the original so great, and I loved every minute of it. The movie is loaded with back-and-forth Canadian/American insults, riffs on French-Canadians, and dick jokes, lots of dick jokes.

“Super Troopers 2,” the original “Super Troopers,” and a handful of other films including 2006's "Beerfest" star the Broken Lizard comedy team: Jay Chandrasekhar (Thorny), Kevin Heffernan (Farva), Steve Lemme (Mac), Eric Stolhanske (Rabbit), and Paul Soter (Foster). These guys don't always knock it out of the park. 2004's “Club Dread” was pretty lame, and 2009's “The Slammin' Salmon” was just alright. When they are on, though, these guys produce a brand of intelligently coarse comedy that allows smart people to laugh uproariously at bathroom humor. It's hard for me to explain why it works, but it does. I laughed 'til I cried at jokes about ball-shaving and anal sex, and never felt bad about it.

Admittedly, “Super Troopers 2” is not for everyone. If you didn't think the first movie was an instant classic, you will hate this one, too. For all of us civilized people, the 2018 Oscars race is already over. “Super Troopers 2” wins! You should drive as fast as you can to the theater to see this one. Just watch out for the cops!

5 stars out of 5

Diner (1982) **1/2

There are some movies that we remember as being way better than they are. I recently wrote about how "Alien" is one of these, for me. Well it turns out 1982's “Diner” is another. I was probably in my late teens when I saw the film for the first time, and I had fondly recalled it as a classic, a funny and poignant depiction of friendship, from a time that seemed simpler, but really wasn't. Watching it now, I just found it mildly amusing and mostly annoying.

Packed with stars and future stars, “Diner” is about a group of friends: Eddie (Steve Guttenberg), Shrevie (Daniel Stern), Boogie (Mickey Rourke), Fen (Kevin Bacon), Billy (Tim Daly), and Modell (Paul Reiser). Friends from high school, the boys get together over Christmas Vacation to drink, chase girls, and most importantly, hang out at their late-night diner. The diner is where they meet to eat disgusting food and unpack the details of their dates with girls, mainly how far they got with the girl and what their prospects are for getting further next time. They also bullshit about music, movies, and all the usual stuff guys talk about with other guys.

These boys have got some issues. Boogie, the lady's man, has a gambling problem. Eddie is engaged, but looking to back out of the marriage by making his girlfriend take a football-trivia test. Shrevie is already married, and has no idea how to interact with his wife as a human being. Fen is brilliant, but mentally unhinged.

My problem with “Diner” is that I found it difficult to care about any of these doofuses. Frankly, they are annoying. These are grown-ass men acting like teenage boys. Admittedly, there are aspects of the film that are so ludicrous, like Eddie's fiance agreeing to submit to that football quiz, that the story should probably be viewed allegorically. Even suspending disbelief to that extent, it's impossible for me to like these guys. Mickey Rourke's Boogie probably comes the closest to being a fully-developed, sympathetic character. Rourke really flexes his limited acting muscles to make Boogie seem redeemable. The Billy character is meant to be the most reasonable of the crew, but Tim Daly's wooden acting makes him feel less substantial than Paul Reiser's Modell, who isn't even supposed to be one of the main characters. Reiser manages to steal quite a few scenes with his clever patter, but when you pay attention to him, he is really just doing his standup routine, not conversing.

“Diner” won quite a few rave reviews, and it gets credit for pioneering the “Seinfeld” style of scene-making, filled with characters talking about banalities. The movie also packed a lot of talent into a small space, launching the careers of Rourke, Bacon, Reiser, Guttenberg, and Ellen Barkin, who plays Shrevie's wife. I've been pretty critical here, but I should note that “Diner” has its moments. Some of the conversations feel stupid and contrived, but there are moments that feel genuine, and a couple that are hilarious. The popcorn scene, in particular, is a classic piece of comedy that makes the film worth seeing. I would say it's worth seeing once, but for me it didn't hold up to a repeat viewing.

Maybe the reason I remembered “Diner” so fondly is that I saw it when I was young and callow myself. I shudder to think that I might have actually identified with these scrubs at some point, but maybe that's the explanation. Fortunately, I grew up into someone who has better things to do than hang out with these annoying characters for a couple of hours. Let's hope Eddie, Boogie, and the gang find it in themselves to do the same.

2.5 stars out of 5

The Leftovers (HBO, 2014-2017) *****

This is usually a movie blog, but I just finished watching this 3-season HBO show, and I had to write about it. “The Leftovers” is an absolute tour-de-force, better than any movie I saw this past year. I had previously considered “Breaking Bad” to be the best story I ever saw told on television, and it is a great show. But where “Breaking Bad” sprawls over 5 seasons, sometimes losing the narrative arc and repeating story lines, “The Leftovers” is tightly-crafted within its 3 seasons, with nothing wasted.

 

The show is based on the book of the same name by Tom Perotta, and Season 1 starts out much like the book. We enter the small town of Mapleton, New York in a world where, 3 years earlier, a seemingly-random 2% of the world's population vanished in an event called the “Sudden Departure.” This event left mothers suddenly pushing empty strollers, babies without a babysitter, cars without a driver, and prison cells empty. Naturally, Christians try to view the event through the lens of the Biblical Rapture, but with murderers having departed while faithful believers were left behind, no one can make sense of it.

In the wake of this, traditional religions have declined, while cults have sprung up like mushrooms. One of these cults is the Guilty Remnant, a group of nihilists who view the Departure as a sign that nothing matters, not family, not personal happiness, not life. Members give up speaking and take up smoking, and they silently follow regular people around to remind them of the Departure.

Police Chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) is one of the lucky ones who didn't lose any family in the Departure. Unfortunately, the aftermath of the event drove his wife, Laurie (Amy Brenneman) to join the Guilty Remnant. This leaves Kevin alone to raise their daughter Jill, worry about their son Tom (who is secretly off in another cult), and deal with his own mental demons. He meets Nora (Carrie Coon), a tough, but bruised woman who lost her husband and both kids in the Departure. The two fall in love, while Kevin tries to keep Mapleton from tearing itself apart, as the Guilty Remnant works to recruit new members and enrage the rest of the town.

Season 2 finds Kevin and Nora and their crew moving to Jarden, Tx, a small town renamed Miracle because no one from there Departed. The town's seemingly protected status has made it a magnet for seekers from all over, and it is fenced off and managed as a national park. Nora buys an outrageously overpriced house in Jarden, and they settle in to make a life in what they think is a safe place. Jarden, of course, turns out not to be as placid as it seems.

The third, and final, season details the days leading up to the seventh anniversary of the Sudden Departure. Seven is a number of recurring biblical import, so people are attaching a lot of significance to this anniversary. Many, including Kevin's insane father (Scott Glenn), believe it will be the end of the world, so crazy behavior is even more prevalent than usual. Kevin and Nora outwardly have their acts together, but we find that there is a lot of turmoil under the surface. Meanwhile, Nora's brother, Matt (Christopher Eccleston) is writing a holy book based on Kevin's life. It gets weirder from there. Ultimately, many, but not all, things are explained, and the show wraps up in a somewhat mystifying, but beautiful, finale.

Producer Damon Lindelof (“Lost”) and author Tom Perotta co-wrote the series, and they have succeeded in turning Perotta's excellent book into something much greater. The book covers roughly the same events as Season 1 of the show. From there, they are in completely original territory.

The show is a deep exploration of loss. We all fear losing people we love, and the Sudden Departure caused a significant proportion of humanity to experience that loss all at once. This leads to a secondary loss, for many, of their religious faith, which suddenly seems to make no sense. One of the lessons of the show, however, is that loss is universal. The Departure leaves people feeling like they have experienced a world-ending cataclysm, but to put things in perspective, only 2% of the population was taken in the Departure. The Black Plague killed 30-60% of Europe's population in just a few years. Of course, the Black Plague also caused massive religious, cultural, and political upheaval. The story of humanity is a series of such convulsions. “The Leftovers” is simply an individual look at what it might be like to be part of one of those events.

The show is also about Family, and the many ways of defining and re-forming a family after things go wrong. Even the Guilty Remnant is a type of family, giving its members something they couldn't get from their previous relationships.

This story has incredible empathy for the characters that inhabit it. Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon are the stars, but there are no small roles in “The Leftovers.” Every character owns their own story, their own arc. Matt, for example, is first introduced handing out flyers detailing the sins of individuals who departed. He is trying to convince people that the Departure could not have been the biblical Rapture, and he comes off as a pious jerk. As the story progresses, however, he turns out to be a guy who consistently puts aside his own interests to help others, and whom you can call to help bury a body.

The worst tv shows string the audience along, with their only goal being to get you to keep watching for as long as the network can squeeze money out of the show. At its best, tv tells a narrative, which ends when it should, not when the audience quits watching. “The Leftovers” is TV at its best, with a narrative arc that makes sense, and a gigantic heart.

5 stars out of 5