Robocop for the modern world

Liberty Theatre

Robocop

***

Stars: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton  

Director: Jose Padilha

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri 2:30pm, 6pm, 9pm; Sat 2pm, 6pm, 9pm; Sun 2:30pm, 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 2pm, 4:30pm 7:30pm.

Runtime: 108 minutes

Action, crime, sci-fi.

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s original 1987 Robocop — in which man was merged with machine to fight lawlessness — was a savvy slice of science fiction that not only tapped into the era’s fear of crime but also gave viewers a neat send-up of corporate connivance and media manipulation.

Almost 30 years later, hotshot Brazilian director Jose Padilha kicks the story into the 21st century and his cacophonous, pummelling remake is nothing if not current. The clever pre-title sequence, in which a loudmouth TV talk show host in 2028, Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson), takes us to a U.S.-occupied Iran to show how drones and robots control the population, feels as contemporary as a CNN news bulletin.

It’s unfortunate, then, that this Robocop reboot shrugs off the pointed satire too soon, devolving into just another big-action vehicle — even if it’s a well-made, entertaining one at times. 

Neptune Theatre

The Nut Job

***

Stars: Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Liam Neeson  

Director: Peter Lepeniotis

Rated: PG

Showing: Fri 7:30pm; Sat 2:30pm, 6pm; Sun 2:30pm, 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 2:30pm, 7pm.

Runtime: 85 minutes

Animation, adventure, comedy.

The Nut Job is strictly fun for kids. They will go nuts for the tale.

But adults may just go nuts waiting for the rather redundant comic humour to end. The film is filled with colourful woodland creatures that inhabit an idyllic park. Winter’s coming and they are dangerously low on food. 

A new supply is needed, especially when squirrel loner Surly (voiced by Will Arnett) puts an even bigger damper on the winter menus.

After being expelled from Liberty Park for actions unbecoming a woodland creature, Surly and his silent sidekick, Buddy, stumble upon the Holy Grail of goobers — a local nut store just ripe for the taking. All they have to do is figure out how to steal the nuts while a group of human bank robbers use the nut house as a means to their local score. 

Speciality Theatre

The Lego Movie

****

Stars: Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell. 

Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller.

Rated: PG

Showing: Fri 1pm, 4pm, 6:15pm; Sat 2pm, 4:30pm, 7pm; Sun 1:30pm, 4pm, 5:15pm; Mon-Thurs 1pm, 3:30pm, 6pm.

Runtime: 100 minutes

Animation, action, comedy.

Finally! A comedy that works. An animated film with a look — a kinetic aesthetic honouring its product line’s bright, bricklike origins — that isn’t like every other clinically-rounded and bland digital 3-D effort. 

A movie that works for the Lego-indebted parent as well as the Lego-crazed offspring. A movie that, in its brilliantly-crammed first half especially, will work even if you don’t give a rip about Lego. 

About Last Night

***

Stars: Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Regina Hall

Directors: Steve Pink. 

Rated: R

Showing: Fri 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 9:30pm; Sat

2:30pm, 6:15pm, 9pm, 9:30pm; Sun 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm; Mon-Tues 

2:30pm, 6:15pm, 8:45pm; Wed-Thurs 2:30pm, 6:15pm,  8:45pm. 

Runtime: 100 minutes

Comedy, romance.

Kevin Hart brings his ‘A’ game to About Last Night. For those of us despairing that we’d ever see the little man at his antic best, after that lame second concert film and half-speed blockbuster Ride Along, that’s good news.

Paired up with Regina Hall, who gives as good as she gets, in the raunchy romantic African-American remake of the 1986 Rob Lowe / Demi Moore romance based on David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Hart knocks back drinks and blasts out one-liner observations about the opposite sex and relationships.

And Hall, as Joan to Hart’s Bernie, throws it right back at him and anybody else within range.

Their banter is so sharp and so well-timed that in many of their scenes, this ill-matched but perfectly-suited couple are shouting funny stuff at the same time. And they’re so good they do what other versions of this once-cutting-edge piece only flirted with. They overwhelm the romantic leads.

That would be the “serious” couple, played by Rob and Demi back in the day, here performed with a minimum of pathos and comic pop by Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant. Theirs is the relationship we track in this story, one so predictable and bland that the movie is waiting on Hart to show up again and Hall to march into the scene and take him down. 

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