Getaway (2013)

The 2013 “Getaway” is terrible. Horribly “Can You Believe This Shit!?!” bad. Do not confuse it with the 1970s Steve McQueen flick or its Alec Baldwin remake. This stiff has Ethan Hawke as Brent Magna, an ex-NASCAR driver living in Bulgaria (!?!) who steals a Mustang and causes havoc on Sofia streets as ordered by an unseen criminal mastermind who has kidnapped Magna’s wife as collateral. Brent’s task: Blow up the city’s power station –- protected with a key pad lock (!) -– so the mastermind can pull off a daring robbery in darkness. The howler: Brent destroys the power grid … and not a street light blinks or a McDonald’s arch darkens. Nothing. Nadda. But. BUT. The actors pretend it is pitch dark. Seriously. The leap of logic gymnastics is breathtaking. Director Courtney Solomon -– he made the incompetent “Dungeons & Dragons” -– shoots and edits every car chase -– it’s nothing but –- as split-second visual seizures, and repeats the same footage. Hawke must have been desperate for money. The final nail: Selena Gomez (!?!) plays a pistol-packing carjacker. GTFO. F

Chinatown (1974)

Halfway through Roman Polasnki’s perfect crime noir “Chinatown,” the femme fatale played by Faye Dunaway bumps a car horn with her head during a moment of distress. The noise startles her and seat mate PI Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson). It is the coldest punch of foreshadowing I’ve ever seen, and I only noticed it on what may have been my 15^th (?) viewing. The next viewing I noticed a new twist: Gittes’ love of horses. That’s the beauty of Polanski’s tale of 1930s Los Angeles and ex-cop Gittes, who spies on wondering spouses, and wears fine suits. Plot: The wife of LA’s water engineer hires Gittes to bust her cheating husband, except the woman isn’t the engineer’s wife, and when the man turns up dead, Gittes realizes he’s been played. Gittes takes action. Except the cruel joke of “Chinatown” is Gittes is a fool, so lost and clueless the deeper he sinks into ancient familial evil, by film’s end he is left in shock, helpless. Robert Towne gets the screenplay credit, but Polanski wrote the unnerving finale. Polanksi’s direction is as smooth as jazz, with perfect interior car shots. As the villain, John Huston plays a monster for the ages. A+

Grudge Match (2013)

Who would win in a fight, Rocky or Raging Bull? Twenty-five years ago that would have been a semi-serious whisky-laced conversation among movie fans who like their heroes damaged but triumphant. Oh, times have changed. A joke gabfest has turned actual movie with “Grudge Match,” featuring Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro having signed on for what I can only guess are gold bricks. I knew “Match” could be bad, a desperate fan fiction nostalgia trip to make us Gen X’ers recall how great these actors were on screen, and how huge the dramas of Rocky Balboa (dark, with redemption) and Jake LaMotta (far darker, none) were, once. But I wasn’t prepared for how endlessly mediocre every single boring moment would be, right up to the final sentimental boxing match that lasts six years as two 70-year-old actors mock-beat each other, and I became physically angry watching it all turn shit brown. I hated every bullshit wink-nod-wink inside joke: Stallone’s working class stiff visiting a meat freezer, De Niro’s smirking playboy and his comedy bar entertainment. A bad film that dares shits on two classics. Fuck this. F

Beautiful Creatures (2013)

I’m calling it the “Vonnegut Rule.” Anytime a teen drama needs to quickly illustrate its hero is a cool-sensitive outsider, he will be seen reading Vonnegut. Always “Slaughter House Five.” We get that scene moments into “Beautiful Creatures,” another YA adaptation about teens amongst supernatural angst and humanity-ending danger. Our reader is Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), a high schooler with a DOA mom and MIA dad who falls for the new girl (Alice Englert) in class, because she’s witchy, and has, in fact, invaded Ethan’s dreams for months: Violent memories not his own. I know nothing of the books. But writer/director Richard LaGravenese’s movie peaks midway with a family dining room table fight that literally sends table and room spinning as one silent cousin sits, eating. (Why can’t the film be about him?) The remainder is blasé and anticlimactic, with part of the cast –- Emma Thompson -– camping it up “Batman” TV style, and the rest –- Ehrenreich and Englert –- crying over doomed love, all of them wrestling Southern accents that come and go, often in a single scene. Read some Vonnegut instead, eh? C

Transcendence (2014)

A week after seeing Wally Pfister’s “Transcendence,” the flick barely registers in my brain. I vaguely recall the finale as insulting, and unfathomably boring, everything proceeding a slog lacking any remote urgency. That’s an unexpected turn for director Pfister, who served as DP on all of Chris Nolan’s films, including “Inception.” Johnny Depp is Will, an AI genius obsessed with loading a person’s consciousness to the Cloud because, I mean, that’s safe. When fate deals Will a blow, his scientist wife (Rebecca Hall) uploads hubs to a supercomputer lest she lose him forever. Will 2.0 takes his new environment too well, becoming a HAL high on Orwell: Watcher of all, raiser of dead, and controller of the Cloud, and clouds. The folks at Infowars might shake in fear. I yawned. See, Depp -– appearing like a ghostly sleep-deprived Max Headroom -- mumbles his lines and gets halfway creepy, but never dangerous. This film desperately needs danger. Skip HAL. Will becomes a lovesick Speak N’ Spell. I won’t spill the end, but know this: It defies logic in such a leap that it left me fuming. Artificial intelligence has never been slower. D+

The Internship (2013)

Even if you haven’t seen “The Internship,” you’ve seen it. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson reprise their tired roles as the 40-year-old past-cool frat boys from a dozen prior movies. You know the map: The best-pal guys are cool king cats who get blown low, mope, find a crazy angle to hit it big, and against all odds succeed and learn to be real adults. Credits. Nothing new. Even the fuck granny jokes play like repeats a decade old. But, damn it, I laughed when these guys con their way into gigs as Google interns, competing against tech geeks half their age and double their IQ. I got suckered. The hook: Vaughn and Wilson are roped into a Quidditch match, the actual field game inspired by Harry Potter and played by thousands of college youth. “Who the fuck is that?,” Wilson asks, dumb founded as a man in a glittery gold outfit takes the grass. It’s a comedy of generational divide, yes, repetitive, yes, and definitely too long, but I got it. I work on a college campus, where students play Quidditch, and I knew what Wilson spoke of. B

Art of the Steal (2013)

“Art of the Steal.” That’s the title of a great 2010 documentary about a raw deal between an art museum in rural Pennsylvania and the City of (Big) Brotherly Love, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It crackled with betrayal, and was all talking heads. Art geeks, even. Now, it’s the title of an “Oceans 11”-type caper with Kurt Russell playing ex-con Crunch Calhoun, out to steal a Gutenberg-printed book that could undo the story of Jesus. On Crash’s crew: His half-brother (Matt Dillon) who previously put our hero in prison for 5 years, and Jay Baruchel as a young crook who acts like Jay Baruchel and blurts out ad-libbed one-liners that scream ad-libbed one-liner. Kurt Russell is a great actor. So, I hate to say this, but “Art” is an ugly-dull bore. Director/writer Jonathan Sobol tosses in endless editing tricks to make his flick soar, but it’s dead at launch, topped by a woeful laughably predictable ending. One highlight: A brief, strange bit where we break from the regular plot to watch Russell play a man who steals the Mona Lisa 100 years ago. Russell’s eyes sparkle. He smiles. He scowls. Boom. Russell deserves a major comeback. C-

RIPD (2013)

What’s a studio to do when a major franchise such as “Men in Black” dries up over tired scripts and fuck-off-looking tired actors (bye, Tommy Lee Jones)? It finds a place holder. A substitute teacher to keep the kids happy. “RIPD” fits the task. Ryan Reynolds plays a smart-aleck city cop swept up in a secret worldwide police force that pops supernatural criminals on sight, guns blazing, and his new partner is a crusty geezer with a piss attitude. Whoa, man. We’re not talking aliens, though. No, sir. That would copying. Here’s it’s the undead, ghosts. Not aliens. That would be copying. And, yes, there’s a big-city battle that means the end of the world. God help me. “RIPD” means Rest in Peace Department. Get it? Reynolds smirks at action and lays on puppy dog eyes at drama, just as he did in “Green Lantern.” He is endlessly fucking boring. As the cranky partner, Jeff Bridges -– great actor -- replays his role from “True Grit,” thinking paycheck. “Men in Black” had crazy wit and an ending that had me gasping with laughter. “RIPD”? I was looking at the clock. And the damn thing was as DOA as this grinding imposter. D+