Man on Film: Red 2

It's weird being the youngest people in the theater by at least 20 years, but when TSLF and I went to Red 2 Friday afternoon, that was definitely the case. This was TSLF's choice, as she really enjoyed the first entrant in the series. That isn't to make like I was an unwilling participant. When I gave threw out the option of going to a movie when she got home from work, I did so under the unspoken assumption that, when I let her choose the movie, she'd choose Red 2.

Red 2 is a far cry from a groundbreaking film, but if you saw the first one and liked it, you're probably going to like this one as well. Bruce Willis miraculously isn't in mailing it in mode, something that has occurred with far too much frequency of late. Anthony Hopkins is surprisingly funny. Helen Mirren and especially John Malkovich are rock-solid. Neal McDonough takes to the role of the villain with the flair that anyone who's been paying attention for the past ten years or so has come to expect. Byung-Hun Lee, Mary-Louise Parker, and Catherine Zeta-Jones fill out the rest of the cast sufficiently, if not spectacularly.

Dean Parisot's direction is serviceable, the action sequences are well choreographed. The script, penned by Jon and Erich Hoeber--who also wrote the first one (and the forgettable Battleship)--strikes the right tone for the action-comedy genre. Of course, the film gets by on the audience's ingrained affection for the its stars, and the bulk of the audience isn't going to take the film back home with them, thinking about it for days afterwards, but this is a perfectly passable movie in the same vein as The Losers that you'll likely end up watching part of more than once while it's making its way around the premium movie channel rotation.

Men in Film

After seeing the second--and last--Bart Freundlich movie I've seen in my life, World Traveler, I have discovered that I am both upset* by his films and have grown to dislike Billy Crudup.

*I would hate for my use of the word upset to be taken the wrong way. In no way am I insinuating that writer/director Bart Freundlich is hitting a chord that strikes too close to home and therefore disturbs the very core of my being to the point that I am physically revolted with myself. I am not giving that much credit to Mr. Julianne Moore. Any further elaboration will exist outside of this clarification of the word usage, however.
As far as World Traveler and to a lesser extent Trust the Man are concerned, it seems as though his preoccupation with male desertion is a deep-seeded pathological issue that he would prefer to use the chair of director to masturbate--er, pontificate--but while doing so, he is wasting the time of the audience. His take on the dilemma of the weak, self-absorbed modern male is simply not interesting, and his preoccupation with the subject makes me feel bad for his wife, who surely has to deal with his wanderlust on a consistent basis. Moreover, the ease at which his philandering heroes win back their doting spouses is insulting, especially in World Traveler.

All attacks on Freundlich aside, it is actually Billy Crudup who finds himself atop my shit list right now. It seems like the more I see of him in film, the more his fatal character flaw resulting in the abhorrent desertion of then seven months pregnant Mary-Louise Parker comes through in each character he plays, with World Traveler serving as a harbinger of what was to come. Moreover, he left the incredibly cute Parker for the much younger but less attractive/talented Claire Danes, which calls into question his taste in addition to his character and his ability to fulfill his duties as a man.

Even more so than his inability to commit to a relationship or weakness when faced with the prospect of fatherhood, his choice of roles in which his characters are almost largely afflicted with his internal struggle that he faces seems both sad and would indicate a possible lack of range that I had previously not occurred to me.

Men have obligations, dude.