How can I resist

the combination of Soderbergh, Craig, and Tatum in this bit of weirdness?

I can't, of course.

A movie quiz for this weekend

Will you go see a nearly talent-free male star try to keep his career going in a weak franchise vehicle

OR

will you skip Channing Tatum in Magic Mike XXL and go see Arnold in Terminator Genisys?

Decisions, decisions.

Foxcatcher

is one of the most powerful and relentless movies I have seen this year.  I admire it, but I have to say that I cannot recommend it except for the intensity of the experience it provides. 

Foxcatcher is a two-hour-and-fourteen-minute beating.  The three leads--Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, and Steve Carrell--deliver superb performances in the service of a brutal, grinding story.  Tatum's portrayal of Mark Schultz is pitch perfect, at least as far as the film's plot goes.  (I know almost nothing about the real person, Mark Schultz.)  A driven but not very intelligent man who knows he lives in his brother's shadow, Channing's Mark Schultz is easy prey for Steve Carrell's John du Pont.  Ruffalo's David Schultz is a good man grappling with conflicting loyalties and responsibilities.  You won't always like Mark and David, but you will care about them.  Carrell's du Pont, on the other hand, is creepy from start to finish, so creepy that in even his most sympathetic moments you can't help but worry about what type of man he is.

I don't want to spoil the movie for you--though the fact that it's based on a true story means you can do so easily enough if you choose to--but I will say that even when the horrible ending came, and even knowing it was coming, I found it shocking. 

As I said earlier, I admire this movie, and I am glad to have seen it, but I recommend it only if you want to see great performances and a powerful, grinding story--and are willing to take an emotional beating to do so.

22 Jump Street

is not a good movie, but it is, most of the time, a very enjoyable bad movie.  The small group of us that went to see it the other night laughed for the majority of the film, though in some moments it was so bad we groaned.

In its best moments, the movie delivers good sight gags, bad jokes, and great self-deprecating bits from Channing Tatum, who is way better at comedy than many people give him credit for.  Jonah Hill plays himself, the only role I've ever seen him play, but Tatum stays to his character throughout. 

The movie is also chock full of self-referential jokes, and though sometimes they fall flat, most of them work quite well.  During the credits, which are worth sitting through, you see the next dozen or so possible sequels, each just amusing enough to justify its seconds on screen.

If you're in the mood for a lot of cheap laughs on a hot summer night (or afternoon, for this would make a great way to escape the heat), check out 22 Jump Street.  Just don't go in expecting more than it is.

White House Down

I love the fact that we have two capture-the-White-House movies in one year.  I went to the first, so of course I had to go to the second.

It was big fun. 

Make no mistake about it: White House Down is a B movie.  It's a guilty pleasure, with a plot that makes as little sense as you would expect, a script that abuses foreshadowing to the point that the term begs to be shot and put out of its misery, and a cute kid as a central character. 

It's still fun. All of us who went together had a good time despite the movie's many flaws.

As with so many other films, you know from the trailer whether you're in the target audience for this one.  I am.  If you are, check it out, and have a good time.  

Magic Mike

Curiosity about the film.  Being a fan of Soderbergh since Sex, Lies, and Videotape.  Curiosity about whether the predominantly female audience would be as rowdy as I'd heard.

Those reasons and more led me to join a group of women in seeing Magic Mike last night.  I don't regret going, and the movie certainly offered some of Soderbergh's trademark flourishes, but I also can't recommend the film without serious reservations. 

The movie's story is dumb.  I won't even bother to summarize it, because, let's face it, no one is going for the plot. 

The characters are worse.  There's not a single human being in this film I would want as even a casual friend. The smartest characters are fairly dumb and venal, and the dumbest are far worse.

The acting ranges from okay to horrible.  Matthew McConaughey gives the best performance of the film as the head of the strip team. Channing Tatum displays three expressions: stonefaced dumb, slight smile, and confused dumb. (Yes, the two dumbs are slightly different.) Fortunately for him, the lead actress, Cody Horn, is so amazingly bad, such a sucking vacuum on screen, that Tatum looks almost like a real actor in the scenes next to her.  The only other good performance comes from Olivia Munn, who not coincidentally has the most interesting character to portray.

None of those things mattered to our theater's audience, however, because they came to see mostly nekkid men dancing around on screen.  When the men were dancing--and grinding and humping and grinding and humping--a great many of the eighty or so women in the theater (though none of those in our group) screamed almost as if they were at a live strip show.  The men definitely looked good, with body's ranging from Alex "the Kid" Pettyfer's "I wish I were that thin" physique, to Channing "Magic Mike" Tatum's "I'm juicing but only a little, and I hate ab work" body, to Joe "Big Dick Richie" Manganiello's "Holy shit, hard work and a ton of steroids really pays off" awesome build.

If Soderbergh wants to make the DVD a hit, all he has to do is offer all the dance scenes in full and, if possible, uncut, and those seeking nekkid hot men will flock to it. To paraphrase one of our group, "When your boyfriend dumps you or treats you badly, grab a pint of Chunky Monkey, pop in that bad boy, and watch the dances."

Watching hot men strip does nothing for my crotch, but if you're a woman or man who goes that way, I expect you will forgive the rest of the movie's many shortcomings and enjoy it. 

If you're expecting to like anything other than the dances, though, you may want to consider an alternative entertainment.