Not Enough Pieces of Toast This Week For Half-A-Loaf!
Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast
New Releases For the Week of 3/24/17
CHIPS (R)
Starring: Dax Shepard, Michael Pena, Jessica MacNamee, Adam Brody, Vincent D’Onofrio, Kristen Bell
Director: Dax Shepard
Larry Wilcox “disavows any knowledge “ of the actions in this film. Wilcox starred as Jon Baker, the blonde, motorcycle-riding, California Highway Patrolman in the kid-friendly, ’77-’83 TV show of the same name. His partner, Ponch Poncherello was played by Erik Estrada—the same guy in the TV infomercials who tried to sell us “affordable” 1-acre lots in “incredible” California Pines. In this new, so-called comedy version of CHIPS, Groundlings and Punk’d alumni Dax Shepard directs and plays Jon, while Michael Pena is Ponch. Despite Shepard’s wife, Kristen Bell, playing the female lead, this movie is miles away from being family-friendly. Ponch is an undercover FBI agent investigating dirty cops, and with every woman being disrespected by the foul-mouthed, chauvanist pigs onscreen, there’s lots of sexist, scatological dirtiness going around.
1 piece of an insult to the real CHIPS toast
Life (R)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, Olga Dihovichnaya, Hiroyuki Sanada
Directed by: Daniel Espinosa
When life is discovered on Mars, the microscopic life-form is brought back to the international space station. The crew somehow ignore the fact that an alien being which fought to survive on a planet with minimal oxygen, food and water, might grow exponentially when these assets are plentiful. The rest is a predictable reboot of James Cameron’s Aliens.
2 pieces of worth seeing for the decidedly different special effects toast
Susanna (NR)
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Veronica Echugui, Ashley Grace, Jadyn Wong
Directors: Roberto Sneider
A marginally employed TV actor is a smooth-talking scoundrel so involved with himself that he doesn’t notice his wife has moved from their Mexico City home to join an Iowa writers workshop. Reporting his wife as missing to the police, they tell him the truth, and after the required scenes of narcissistic disbelief, the guy boards a plane North. Supposedly comedic episodes with Customs officers and cabdrivers thwart the guy’s original intention of turning his charm meter up to eleven. There’s the annoying problem of Americans calling his wife Susie, and the even peskier issue of her hooking up with a fellow student. What’s a machismo male with a strong double standard supposed to do‚especially since he really loves Susanna? The answers to this dilemma may surprise you.
2 and 1/2 pieces of smooth-talking scoundrel toast
Power Rangers (PG-13)
Starring: Elizabeth Banks, Bill Hader, Bryan Cranston, R.J. Cyler, Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, Ludi Lin, Becky G.
Director: Dean Israelite
By scuttling the much beloved “morphin’” process which elevated the original teen superheroes TV show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to cult status, we are left instead with a Breakfast Club ripoff. Seriously, the kids in detention are a disgraced football hero, sexting cheerleader, and tech geek inventor. To bring the team up to the magic number five, they add a delinquent with an ill mother, and a tomboy. It takes a snoozingly long time for this crew to find the magical coins in an alien spaceship and adopt the powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. For some reason, everything is filmed through a dark, murky filter, but the biggest problem is that it isn’t superhero realistic enough or charmingly campy enough to work.
1 piece of two hour Krispy Kreme Donuts ad toast
Wilson (R)
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Isabella Amara, Cheryl Hines, Judy Greer
Directors: Craig Johnson
An apparently unemployed misanthrope learns that his former wife didn’t have an abortion after they separated way back when, and therefore has a teenage daughter. The reason for the breakup is obvious from the second we meet the guy. He is obnoxious, self-obsessed, hyper-critical, and foul-mouthed—and those are his positive traits. I have no idea why the filmmakers thought the tale of an anti-anti-anti-hero thrust into a fish-out-of-water parenting predicament would appeal to audiences. If you like films about cads, go see Gael Garcia Bernal in Susanna. He’s a cad you can like.
1 piece of Woody Harrelson plays a truly obnoxious human being toast