Buzz Blog

Jackass Forever **1/2
Depending on which individual segment you’re watching in the latest Jackass feature, ringmaster Johnny Knoxville’s hair is either dyed, or naturally grey, which kind of feels like a metaphor for what an odd experience this is—watching a bunch of 50-year-old guys still treating their bodies like they did when they were 30-year-old guys. While a few new faces have been added to this latest parade of mayhem, the base group of Knoxville, Steve-O, Jason “Wee Man” Acuña, Ehren McGhehey et al. still take the brunt of the punishment, which still falls into three basic categories: people being catapulted into the air; people threatened by dangerous animals; and people—well, dudes, specifically—getting their junk pummeled. Maybe you’re willing to acknowledge an inner middle-schooler that finds some of these bits funny, although it’s hard to imagine anyone in the audience laughing as hard at what befalls these people as their friends do. And that really points out the fact that Jackass has always been less about the stunts themselves than about that uniquely male quality of turning your buddies’ pain into your mirth (which makes the addition of a woman to the cast feel really weird). Still, the aging of the primary Jackass-es makes for a cringe-ier experience than these movies used to be. The closer Knoxville gets in age to his Bad Grandpa made-up-like-a-retiree Irving character, the harder it is to chuckle at damage that’s getting harder to recover from. Available Feb. 4 in theaters. (R)

Moonfall ***
God bless Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla ’98, 2012) for knowing exactly who he is as a filmmaker more than 30 years into his career: Someone who delights in subjecting humanity to apocalypses. His latest cataclysm-heavy adventure involves a discovery that the moon has changed its orbit and is months away from a collision course with Earth, inspiring a desperate mission involving acting head of NASA Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry), disgraced former astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John Bradley), who’s convinced that the moon is actually a structure created by aliens. The expected fragmented family dynamics are of course part of the narrative, including Wilson’s relationship with his rebellious teenage son (Charlie Plummer), and they’re as utterly perfunctory as they tend to be in the disaster movie formula. Bradley’s performance adds at least a little kick of energy to a cast that generally seems to be sleepwalking through the end of the world, so it’s left almost entirely to how much nuttiness Emmerich can inject into his doomsday scenarios. And the guy who gave us “outrunning the ice age” in The Day After Tomorrow comes through with enjoyable ridiculousness like “gravity waves” that turn a standard car chase into a chance to surf across uprooted chunks of the landscape. I’ve not always appreciated the self-awareness Emmerich brings to his big dumb blockbusters, but when the cameo appearance he employs for government-conspiracy exposition evokes JFK, it’s hard not to smile. Available Feb. 4 in theaters. (PG-13)

Sundown **
How long can a slow-burn burn before it feels like someone’s trying to cook a steak with a desk lamp? Writer/director Michel Franco’s psychodrama opens with a British family vacationing in Acapulco—siblings Neil (Tim Roth) and Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), along with Alice’s mostly-grown children—before the fun is interrupted by a troubling call that Neil and Alice’s mother has died. At the airport to return home, Neil claims to have forgotten his passport, and must return to the hotel, except he hasn’t, and he doesn’t. So why does Neil abandon her sister in her time of need, pretending to be working with the consulate, then eventually ignoring calls altogether while he hooks up with a local woman (Iausua Larios)? That’s the big question, and Roth maintains a steadfastly enigmatic demeanor throughout, while Franco shoots him from a distance or focused on the back of Roth’s head, as though daring us to guess what might be going through Neil’s head as he drops out of the world. The police presence on the beautiful beaches and the persistent sound of sirens hints at darker developments ahead, and indeed there comes a moment when something actually happens. But is the payoff worth the 80 minutes spent in the presence of one man’s impassivity, and only the vaguest sense of what he’s fleeing? Available Feb. 4 in theaters. (R)

The Wolf and the Lion **
Based on this feature and Mia and the White Lion, it’s clear that director Gilles de Maistre is keen on building narratives around cute animals and their relationship with well-meaning people. It’s too bad he’s got such a clunky narrative structure trying to support that animal cuteness. Here we get the story of a 20-year-old music student named Alma (Molly Kunz) who returns for the funeral of the grandfather who raised her to the remote wilderness area where she grew up. While she’s there, a plane carrying a lion cub captured for the circus crashes nearby, and the baby lion is adopted by a mother wolf, leading to the young lion and a wolf pup becoming adoptive “siblings.” Not surprisingly, the movie is fairly enjoyable while the little critters are being rambunctious, and even once they’re grown and still having fun together. It’s the rest of the story that’s tremendously confused, starting with the sense that it’s equating forced circus performance with scientific research as equal evils perpetrated on wild animals, then moving on to the late addition of a young boy (Rhys Slack) as a kind of secondary protagonist. There’s even a weirdly inappropriate attempt at humor for this ostensibly family-friendly movie, involving Alma’s godfather (Graham Greene) avoiding another relationship obligation. The natural beauty is naturally beautiful, and kids will probably get invested in the animals’ fate. When humans are involved, however, not much that’s going on here makes sense. Available Feb. 4 in theaters. (PG)