Sausage Party: Imagine All the Foods, Losing Their Religion

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kristen Wiig, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and David Krumholtz as foods in "Sausage Party"

The community at the center of Sausage Party is a vibrant melting pot, a diverse cross-section of ethnic backgrounds and religious faiths. But this neighborhood is also unified in its theism—although it hosts a number of different sects, most of its residents believe in some higher power. Some sing hymns together, while others pass down oral histories of their divinities; virtually all of them contemplate the existence of life after death and hope one day to ascend to a spiritual plane. In essence, this bustling hub of worship exhibits the kind of cultural variety that you might find in any American metropolis, where people regularly attend churches, synagogues, or mosques. There’s just one small difference that distinguishes the characters of this movie: They’re all foods.

The premise of Sausage Party, which was co-written by longtime best buds Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, sounds like an idea that they cooked up while getting stoned on the set of This Is the End, their woozy apocalyptic hangout comedy. (Virtually the entire voice cast of Sausage Party appeared in that film, while Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir, who both executive-produced it, also receive screenwriting credits here.) That movie used the Rapture as scaffolding for a thoughtful investigation of male friendship and insecurity, and Sausage Party features an even crazier concept that masks an even more provocative study of human behavior. Curiously, it’s the latter that leaves a mark. A self-professed work of “adult animation”, Sausage Party is frequently funny and persistently filthy, but its commitment to excess suffers from diminishing returns. It’s the skewering of organized religion that really stings. Read More

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Nerve: Gotta Catch ‘Em All, Your Life’s on the Line

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kimiko Glenn, Emma Roberts, and Miles Heizer in "Nerve"

The teenagers in Nerve are slaves to their smartphones, blindly following their devices’ directions even when they appear to be leading them toward certain death. This makes Nerve a very silly movie, though perhaps not as silly as it would have seemed a month ago. The recent Pokémon Go craze—in which people fixated on their Androids have stumbled into robberies, corpses, and murder—lends Nerve more than a whiff of topical relevance. What could have been a stupid and implausible dystopian thriller now becomes something resembling a cautionary tale, a didactic fable that concerned friends can relay to their Pikachu-obsessed peers. Unfortunately, while it’s less implausible than it might have been, it’s still pretty stupid.

Which doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. Directed with style and snap by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, Nerve is a big-screen experience that takes great heed to remind us how tethered we are to our pocket-sized monitors. Using a variety of flashy tracks—frequent POV shots, distorted camera angles, translucent screens, text running through images both horizontally and vertically—Schulman and Joost keep your eyes busy, soaking the frame in a neon-drenched aesthetic that recalls Spring Breakers. From the outset, Nerve doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and its narrative only deteriorates as it goes along, but it’s consistently eye-catching. Read More

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Jason Bourne: Angry Assassin Remembers, Again

Jeremy BeckReviews
Matt Damon returns in Paul Greengrass' "Jason Bourne"

Jason Bourne is a superhero. He may not have a costume or a secret identity or alien powers, but he’s nevertheless invincible, terminating his enemies with extreme prejudice and casual efficiency. What made him interesting in the past was his struggle to reconcile his superhuman combat skills with his search for self—there’s a reason that the first novel in Robert Ludlum’s original trilogy was called The Bourne Identity. Doug Liman’s 2002 adaptation of that novel was thrilling not just for its explosive action sequences but for the way it emphasized its protagonist’s confusion and vulnerability, amplified by Matt Damon in a performance of tender brutality. But now, three movies later—four if you count The Bourne Legacy, in which Jeremy Renner stood in for Damon as a Bourne-like surrogate—Jason Bourne knows who he is. The mystery has vanished; all that’s left is the brutality.

When we first meet Jason in this new movie that bears his name, he’s lying low in Greece, numbly participating in underground bare-knuckled boxing matches. (In this, the film oddly resembles the opening of Creed.) Beyond establishing the obvious—that even at age 45, Matt Damon still looks awfully good with his shirt off—this curt opening sequence is designed to demonstrate Jason’s isolation. Yet it tells us nothing we didn’t already know. Jason starts this movie alone, and he ends it alone. There is no character progression, no soul-searching, no catharsis, no real meaning of any kind. Where Jason Bourne was once a superhero, he’s now morphed into a different sort of genre staple: the looming figure who moves implacably toward his quarry, inexorable in his silent bloodlust. He’s the killer in a horror movie. Read More

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Star Trek Beyond: Deep in Space, a Crew Bands Together

Jeremy BeckReviews
Simon Pegg, Sofia Boutella, and Chris Pine in "Star Trek Beyond"

“Things have started to feel a little episodic,” Jim Kirk confesses at the beginning of Star Trek Beyond, the fleet and fun third installment of the rebooted Star Trek franchise. He’s musing about his role overseeing the increasingly routine voyages of the Starship Enterprise, but it doesn’t require a doctorate in meta to connect his observations to the other vehicle he’s piloting, namely the Star Trek franchise itself. Kirk’s opening voiceover articulates the central challenge that every studio-sanctioned cinematic series faces: How do you continue serving your fans but prevent the proceedings from growing stale? Can you deliver something more without just providing more of the same?

Star Trek Beyond—directed by Fast & Furious veteran Justin Lin, taking the reins from J.J. Abrams (who has since migrated to a different galaxy)—doesn’t entirely solve this paradox, but it does thread the needle about as well as a big-budget three-quel can. Light and lively, with a refreshing focus on character and a blessed scarcity of mind-numbing spectacle, it’s a satisfying continuation, one that cannily plays up the franchise’s strengths (interpersonal dynamics, cheeky comedy) while minimizing its weaknesses (lack of stakes, weightless space battles). It may be just another episode in the adventures of the Enterprise crew, but it’s a damn good episode. Read More

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Ghostbusters: Slime, Ghouls, Women, and Other Scary Stuff

Jeremy BeckReviews
Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon in "Ghostbusters"

Can women be funny? Is Chris Hemsworth just a pretty face with an accent? Should fans of a beloved classic feel rightfully outraged when it’s remade featuring members of a different sex? The answers to these questions are so obvious—for the record, they are “yes,” “no,” and “are-you-serious-just-shut-the-fuck-up”—that we hardly needed a reboot of Ghostbusters to answer them. But perhaps this loose, breezy new film, which arrives in the polarized age of the hot take and the down-vote, can still teach us something, something beyond the seemingly hard-to-grasp axiom of “don’t judge a movie before you actually watch it”. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that action-comedies are advised to focus on the comedy rather than the action. When the heroes of this revamped Ghostbusters (directed by Paul Feig from a script he co-wrote with Katie Dippold) are stuck in the lab, trapped in the subway, or confined in any other location where they can joke, whine, titter, and bicker, this movie is a blast. When they’re actually busting ghosts, it’s a snooze.

Thankfully, the proton guns and laser rays stay hidden for most of the film’s first half, allowing Feig to unhurriedly assemble his team of all-star comediennes. Naturally, this begins with Melissa McCarthy, Feig’s regular lead who shot to fame (and an Oscar nomination) five years ago in Bridesmaids and last year delivered a career-best performance in the underrated Spy. (When the Golden Globes honor McCarthy 30 years from now, her clip reel had better feature this.) McCarthy plays Abby, an eccentric scientist who has devoted her life to researching the paranormal. She even long ago wrote a book on the topic, the recent publication of which consternates Erin (Kristen Wiig, in her comfort zone), the manuscript’s co-author who is currently up for tenure at an exalted university. (How exalted? When Erin tenders a recommendation letter from a Princeton professor to her dean, he advises her that she obtain a reference from a school that’s a bit more prestigious.) Once a true believer, Erin has spent years trying to distance herself from her collaborations with Abby, so she’s none too pleased that they’ve resurfaced. Read More

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