Opening Everywhere: The Counselor, Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
Opening Somewhere: Blue is the Warmest Color
Two Documentaries You Can Watch If You Want: Blood Brother, I Am Divine
FilmDrunk Suggests: I’ve been super excited about The Counselor from day one, so I am trying my hardest to not let the negative reviews kill the buzz. And, trust me, they are quite negative.
The Counselor
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 44% critics, 97% audience (I think the critics score dropped 2% in the 5 minutes that I had the page open)
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
It’s an OK movie that seems like it should have been a great one, but falls well short of that mark. – Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
Ultimately, this dull tour of a thieving, primal underworld is just a lot of high-talking hogwash. – Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
Armchair Analysis: The reviews aren’t great for The Counselor, but they’re not terrible. They’re still at barely above passing, if you use the Florida education system’s “Eh, 40 is good enough” grading system. Still, how can you say no to Fassbender, Pitt and Bardem? You can’t. It’s like a tractor beam of dudes I want to be best friends with.
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 66% critics, 95% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Knoxville and the perfectly cast Nicoll have great chemistry throughout. But longtime “Jackass” director Jeff Tremaine consistently cuts away too quickly, undermining each joke in order to rush on to the next. – Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News
The joke is really on Knoxville, who, despite flinging himself through a glass wall and rigging up a fake poo-sprayer in his pants, gets fewer laughs than his boy sidekick. – Amy Nicholson, L.A. Weekly
Armchair Analysis: I like Johnny Knoxville, despite some of his more awful movies (looking at you, Ringer, you horrible, stinking pile of mung), but this is… disappointing. Just the existence of this movie feels like one-part cash grab and one-part attention plea, which is fine, because when the well starts to dry up post-40, I can understand that a guy wants to go back to what made him famous. But the “GOTCHA! JOKE’S ON YOU, JOE EVERY MAN!” comedy genre is pretty tired, too. I’m sure plenty of people will see this and possibly love it, because the bar is still low and the brow is even lower, but I just wish we could evolve a little.
Blue is the Warmest Color
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 92% critics, 89% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
From the moment when Adèle first catches sight of Emma, on a busy crosswalk, the movie restores your faith in the power of the coup de foudre and yet redoubles your fear of its effect; love, like lightning, can both illuminate and scorch. – Anthony Lane, New Yorker
Seydoux and Exarchopoulos deliver worthy performances, but Kechiche mishandles his ultrawidescreen frame by shooting almost every scene in the same shallow-focus medium close-up. – Drew Hunt, Chicago Reader
Armchair Analysis: Laremy strongly encouraged me to see this movie. I can’t explain why, but I hope the NSA had fun reading that email conversation.