Movie Reviews: 'The Family,' 'Insidious: Chapter 2,' 'Riddick'

The Family

• Run Time: 110 Mins.

• Starring: Robert De Niro , Michelle Pfeiffer , Tommy Lee Jones , Dianna Agron , John D'Leo

Reviews:

Robert De Niro – wait for it – in the role of a mobster. Now there's an original idea. In The Family, not to be confused with De Niro's roles in GoodFellas, The Godfather: Part II, The Untouchables, Casino, Once Upon a Time in America, Analyze This, Analyze That (go on, make your list), De Niro plays Giovanni Manzoni, a mob snitch. For ratting out his own wiseguys back in Brooklyn, Giovanni is put in the witness protection program, dragging along his real family, wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), daughter Belle (Dianna Agron) and son Warren (John D'Leo). After working their way through the States, then Paris and now remote Normandy, the Manzonis are pretty fed up with their lot in life, which means living in fear that the mob will catch up with them at any time.-Rolling Stone Read more

The Family is a fish-out-of-water/buddy comedy/Mob flick. But most of all, it's a missed opportunity.

The bad pacing, humorless scenarios and repetitive gags (** out of four; rated R; opens Friday nationwide) undercut the few inspired moments, most of which hinge on the chemistry between Robert De Niro's Mob boss and Tommy Lee Jones' FBI agent. USA Today. Read More

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Insidious: Chapter 2

• Run Time: 105 Mins.
• Starring: Patrick Wilson , Rose Byrne , Lin Shaye , Ty Simpkins , Jocelin Donahue
• Director: James Wan
• Trailer

Reviews

Can we just say this about director James Wan? If you like horror films and you notice he’s directed a horror film, make the investment and see it.

Wan helmed 2010′s “Insidious,” a movie that cost $1.5 million to make and went on to earn over $97 million — and it wasn’t just because of a clever marketing campaign. The guy knows how to manipulate a horror audience. And so, here we are with “Insidious: Chapter 2.” - ABCNews Full Review

With his last helping of old-fashioned ooga booga, “The Conjuring,” still scaring up business in a few hundred theaters, James Wanreturns with two more hours of seat-clenching scares in “Insidious: Chapter 2,” a modestly scaled and highly pleasurable sequel to Wan’s low-budget ($1.5 million) 2011 smash that should have genre fans begging for thirds. Indeed, with a clever coda that suggests how this franchise might easily continue even without. - Variety.com See Full Review

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Riddick

• Run Time: 119 mins.
• Starring: Vin Diesel , Karl Urban , Jordi Mollà , Matt Nable , Katee Sackhoff
• Director: David N. Twohy 
• Trailer

Having been left for dead in more ways than one after the critical and commercial failure of 2004’s “The Chronicles of Riddick,” Vin Diesel’s futuristic fugitive Richard B. Riddick gets his lean, mean, R-rated mojo back for “Riddick,” an improbable but very enjoyable sequel that recaptures much of the stripped-down intensity of Diesel and director David Twohy’s franchise starter “Pitch Black.”  ~ Scott Foundas, Variety See Full Review

If only audiences, like the title character in Riddick (* out of four; rated R; opens Friday nationwide), were equipped with luminescent extra-vision eyeballs. Then it might be possible to muddle through the dark and incoherent action scenes. But to the ordinary naked eye, characters and landscape look bathed in dusty milk chocolate. It's often impossible to tell who's fighting whom or who's been devoured by a space alien. Not that it's really worth pondering.

Not only is this third installment in the series tedious, grisly and inane, its star, Vin Diesel, plays a ridiculous amalgam in the title role. He's a killing machine with a heart of gold, a malevolent mush-ball who plays fetch with alien critters. ~Claudia Puig, USA Today See Full Review

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The Getaway

• Run Time: 90 mins.
• Starring: Ethan Hawke , Selena Gomez , Jon Voight , Paul Freeman , Rebecca Budig
• Director: Courtney Solomon 
• Trailer

Thanks to the improbable success of the "Fast & Furious" franchise, car chase movies are apparently back in vogue. That's still no explanation for "Getaway," a laughably terrible grindhouse thriller masquerading as a "major" motion picture. This is a film that goes to the trouble of staging a certifiably insane amount of car crashes, wrecks, stunts and tricks and then buries them under a hyperactive visual style that ensures audiences can't see a damn thing. It's destruction porn run amok -- not so much a movie as a 90-minute headache. ~ Hitfix (Read Full Review)

Easily one of the dopiest major studio releases since Elie Samaha got out of the business, “Getaway” marks the not-very-anticipated return to the director’s chair of low-budget horror producer Courtney Solomon, whose prior helming credits include the risible 2000 adaptation of “Dungeons & Dragons” and 2005’s wan historical ghost story “An American Hunting” (where the scariest special effect was the squandering of stars Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland). Here, Solomon tries for his best Kathryn Bigelow or George Romero, thrusting us straight into the action, in medias res, with Hawke and the aforementioned Shelby careening wildly through a crowded Sofia park and adjacent pedestrian mall crowded with Christmas shoppers.  ~ Scott Foundas, Variety (See Full Review)

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World's End

• Run Time: 109 mins.
• Starring: Simon Pegg , Nick Frost , Rosamund Pike , Martin Freeman , Paddy Considine
• Director: Edgar Wright
• Trailer

Despite a too-long third act, dragging action sequences and an epilogue that would have been better left on the cutting room floor, the wordy wit and ingenuity of The World’s End is a sloppy triumph over this summer’s other alien/robot hybrid flick, "Pacific Rim." Full Review ~ New York Observer

A mix of comedy, science fiction, nostalgia, adolescent wish-fulfillment and beer, beer, beer, its parts shouldn’t fit together as neatly as they do. But somehow Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have again managed to make a movie that is knowing, touching and hilarious. Full Review Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

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The Butler

• Run Time: 126mins.
• Starring: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack 
• Director: Lee Daniels
• Trailer

"Make no mistake, Daniels is gunning for awards here; the movie has that sheen, that Big Important Feel. But the performances keep it grounded. Let someone else decide winners and losers. Just enjoy “The Butler” for the sometimes-moving experience it is." Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic. Full Review

"Crudely powerful. You can object to the thuggish direction and the script that’s a series of signposts, but not the central idea, which is genuinely illuminating." David Edelstein, New York Magazine. Full Review

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We're The Millers

• Run Time: 110 mins.
• Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Emma Roberts
• Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
• Trailer

"Though the cast partially eschews the family-friendly timidity that the film defers to in the end, this would-be wild thing remains little more than a rowdy endorsement of the status quo." Chris Cabin, Slant Magazine. Full Review

"Get past the comedy and there's something almost weird at the movie's core - a deep cynicism about family and a longing for family, both at the same time." Mike LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle. Full Review

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