BlackBerry

Director: Matt Johnson
Starring: Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Matt Johnson, Rich Sommer, Michael Ironside, Martin Donovan, SungWon Cho, Mark Critch, Saul Rubinek, Cary Elwes
Running Time: 121 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

The best thing about Matt Johnson's biopic depicting the creation of the BlackBerry mobile phone is how for extended periods you completely forget what it's supposed to be about. When the groundbreaking device makes its first appearance it actually feels like a shock, as if we haven't been building to that moment since its retro cool opening credit sequence. A mismatched pairing of two wildly different personalities, what transpires is far bigger than either envisioned, until eventually swallowing them both whole. But the best stuff comes before that when we see how this nerdy, inefficient entrepreneur reluctantly joins forces with a quick-tempered, cutthroat executive. And what should be a partnership from hell ends up working out better than expected, at least for a while.  

A character study to its core, this differs from other features about popular consumer products by deeply investing in the people involved, showing exactly how they were positively and negatively impacted by their venture. Unlike the recent Tetris, it doesn't try to be something it's not, instead examining the nuts and bolts of BlackBerry's rise to cultural prominence by getting inside the heads of those who made the magic happen. It explores their motivations and mistakes, while also charting the change they undergo when success arrives. It's not so much that they're flawed than unprepared for what awaits, suddenly forced to adapt or fall behind.

It's 1996 in Waterloo, Canada when Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and best friend and co-founder Douglas Fregin (Johnson) present their new "PocketLink" cellular device to an unimpressed, distracted executive named Jim Balsille (Glenn Howerton). After their pitch bombs and Jim's hubris gets him fired from his firm, he reaches out to Mike and Doug again, offering to work with them if he's named CEO of RIM and gets half the company. Jim instead settles for a third of the pie and a Co-CEO title alongside Mike, quickly realizing they need more help than he thought. 

Upon discovering RIM is a ragtag, money losing operation with engineers spending their days playing video games and watching movies, an intimidating Jim makes swift changes, landing him and Mike a meeting at Bell Atlantic to demonstrate an early "PocketLink" prototype that will soon be rebranded the "BlackBerry." It's a breakthrough, but the device's astonishing popularity soon makes the company a target, as they're fighting off hostile takeovers, the SEC, and the sudden emergence of Apple's revolutionary iPhone. A thrilling run while it lasts, what they built is about to come crashing down. 

Loosely adapted from the 2015 book, "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry," the whole setup is hilarious, with these men from two vastly different worlds somehow co-existing under one banner. Johnson's script really plays up just how awkwardly bumbling Mike and Doug are, making you wonder how they were let into Jim's office to begin with, much less founded a tech company of their own. The most creative liberties are probably taken here, but it helps make the story, as exceptional writing and performances breathe vibrant life into what could have easily been the driest of topics.

Mike and Jim need each other more than they know, since this brilliant but underachieving slacker  lacks the business savvy the latter brings to the table. Conversely, Mike possesses the technical expertise Jim can only fake. While they mix like oil and water, it's clear Jim sees potential in his impressionable co-chair that can be exploited so long as he handles the financial end. The film's pivot point is a Bell Atlantic meeting where Mike comes to the rescue, saving the pitch and setting them on a path where the company soars, growing at an uncontrollable rate neither can fully comprehend.

When BlackBerry takes over the cell phone market in the mid 00's, there's no turning back, which is bad news for bandana-wearing, movie obsessed co-founder Doug, who soon becomes the odd man out. Discovering an autonomy he never knew he had, Mike realizes his best friend's laid-back approach no longer fits into this new corporate structure and the days of needing Doug's input fall by the wayside. One of the funniest details come when RIM offices move, and despite the upgrade, 80's movie posters still hang, the goofing around persists and nothing changes beyond their location. But it needs to, and despite his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wallet and video game tees, even Doug sees the writing on the wall that he's become the Woz to Mike's Steve Jobs. 

Having mortgaged his home to finance a project that's now made him richer than he ever thought possible, Jim's on top of the world. But he also has an enormous ego that's about to fly off the rails as he fends off scheming Palm CEO Carl Yankowski (Cary Elwes), installs a new no-nonsense COO in Charles Purdy (Michael Ironside) and attempts to purchase a hockey franchise. Mike and Jim's abilities to cover the other's flaws are undone by mounting legal woes that pale in comparison to their inability to counter the iPhone. The film's final scene isn't just an ingenious callback to Mike's obsession with problem solving, but how he's forced to do something he swore he wouldn't in order to keep going.

Best known for his supporting comedy roles Jay Baruchel gets a long deserved showcase, as he credibly conveys the inexperienced Mike's transformative ascent and eventual decline. Subtly indicating a constant sense of insecurity and guilt, he plays the character as if he fears everything is a fluke that could disappear at any moment. There's no such trepidation in Jim, with Glenn Howerton imbuing this greedy piranha with a slick, bombastic bluster that enables him to steamroll over everyone in his way. Knowing the clock's quickly running out, he's determined to milk every last bit of leverage, with self-sabotaging results. 

Matt Johnson provides the largest dose of comedic relief, further highlighting just how seismic a shift his friend undergoes. Doug's left in the dust, even if you can't help but think he comes out the least damaged of the three. Comfortably feeling every bit like a Canadian production in both its setting and casting, Johnson's most important contribution comes as co-writer and director, with the filmmaker showing the potential downsides of having an idea years ahead of its time. The public has to be ready for it, the technology flawless, and the capital available. If just one is missing, it's wise to brace for eventual failure.  

These guys knew exactly where the future was headed, but the obstacles proved too much, turning this into a cautionary tale that isn't entirely dissimilar to The Social Network or the great AMC series Halt and Catch Fire. It's nice to get there first, but a greater feat to actually be the last left standing at the end. BlackBerry rarely needs to remind us we're looking at the individuals who invented the smartphone, as they appear equally in awe themselves, struggling to figure it all out as they go along.

No Strings Attached

Director: Ivan Reitman
Starring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Greta Gerwig, Cary Elwes, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell, Olivia Thirlby, Ludacris
Running Time: 110 min.
Rating: R

★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

If you're counting, No Strings Attached is the second of about 75 Natalie Portman movies released within the past three months. But that's okay. While most other actors or actresses' careers would greatly suffer from such overexposure (see Jude Law circa '04), Portman's an exception. I'm not sure it's possible for her to be overexposed given how much goodwill she's built up with moviegoers who seem to feel she can do no wrong. In my mind though, she actually needs to clock in all this work to justify the massive hype that's surrounded her for years. That's why taking a formulaic romantic comedy like this doesn't feel like a step down, if only because it's something different and presents the opportunity for her to stretch in a way she hasn't previously. Unlike others, it's advisable for her to "sell out" a little.

It's a credit to Portman that my expectations for what would normally be a fluffy, throwaway chick flick were somewhat high going in. Mostly, I was curious if she'd be able to strike while the iron's hot and capitalize on her recent Black Swan Oscar win, showing she's finally turned a corner and evolved into the multi-faceted actress her fans have often incorrectly asserted she's been throughout her career. Based on the evidence here, she's at least on her way. Natalie has a spark to her in this I've never seen. And she's actually funny. In fact, I was so taken by her she almost tricked me into thinking the movie works. It doesn't. At least not completely. Parts of it do and there are these little moments that are really smart and nail what it's like to be single in your late twenties-early thirties. But it starts off on the wrong foot and has a tough time recovering after that, as the script tries to jam in to many characters and do too much when it only really needs to focus on one thing.

Emma (Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) are childhood friends from camp who keep bumping into each other every few years. They reconnect again as adults when Emma is a resident at a local hospital and aspiring screenwriter Adam works as an assistant on a Glee-like TV show. When his father, famous former sitcom star Alvin Franklin (Kevin Kline), steals his girlfriend a drunk Adam goes through his cell phone looking for any one night stand he can find before waking up naked in Emma's apartment which she shares with three roommates. Both agree to an arrangement where they meet and have casual sex with no strings attached. As long as they're clear on the rules and it can't lead to anything more, then no one gets hurt. Interestingly, Adam is the one interested in taking things to the next level while the fiercely independent Emma is terrified of anything even slightly resembling a relationship and says she doesn't believe in love. The more Adam tries the more she pushes him away. If you've seen any romantic comedy you know where this is going, and more or less exactly how long it'll take to get there. Longer than it should.

The film makes its first mistake early in how it presents the "friendship" between its two lead characters. Needlessly skipping through time with three flashback sequences in a span of only a few minutes, they meet up, lose touch, meet up again, lose touch then finally meet up again for the story to start. As a result they seem more like acquaintances than friends, occasionally bumping into each other every five years or so. When they do sleep together and begin their arrangement we hardly care since they're essentially strangers. The opening minutes would have been better spent with one brief flashback sequence establishing them as friends since childhood so when they do hook up as adults it means more and the stakes are higher. It's a clumsy decision that seems minor on the surface but it affects the rest of the narrative, preventing me from fully engaging in the premise. It'll be interesting to see if the upcoming Friends With Benefits with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis makes the same crucial error. This takes a page out of the book of the recent, very similar Love and Other Drugs in that we have a jaded, cynical lead female character afraid to take the plunge into a relationship, a popular plot device lately and a reversal from the days when movies taught us that only guys can't commit. And like Love and Other Drugs, it tries to shoehorn an R-rated sex romp into a fluffy rom-com, though this doesn't have that film's heavy, depressing sub-plot and the tone doesn't fluctuate as wildly.

Looking as relaxed and comfortable on screen as she ever has, Portman knows the kind of movie she's in and isn't asked to do anything too crazy, which suits her just fine. A far cry from the manic pixie twerp she played in Garden State, Emma is a confident, intelligent woman realistically struggling with doubts and insecurities and Portman brings a certain warmth and sophisticated humor to the role. It won't go down as a great performance per se since she isn't asked to do anything incredibly taxing, but it may be more important than that in showcasing a different side to her as a performer we haven't seen. Who knew she could not only star in goofy chick flicks with Ashton Kutcher and actually enhance the material? As for Kutcher, the recent Sheen surrogate is like a bump on a log in this, failing to transmit even so much as a trace of charisma. A male model could have stood in for him and it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference in the film's overall quality, and that's coming from someone who doesn't actively dislike him as an actor and was curious how he'd fare opposite her. It still takes two to create chemistry and there's only so much Portman can do without any help. The decision to focus on both characters rather than take a point of view and present the far more interesting Emma as the true lead is a mistake, so we're left with a bunch of your typical supporting story threads, slightly more entertaining than usual due to the talent involved. Kevin Kline is funny as the philandering TV dad while the delightful Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling, both of whom could easily be headlining their own movies instead of supporting Portman, get a few moments as the underwritten friends jammed in for comic relief. Lake Bell plays Adam's boss, or the "other woman" brought in at the eleventh hour to cause a relationship rift, but bonus points for casting her against type as a socially inept geek. In an even weirder bit of casting, a nearly unrecognizable Cary Elwes shows up every now and again as a doctor whose function to the story is ridiculously unclear. His appearances are so randomly pointless they're almost a distraction, as if an entire sub-plot involving him was left on the cutting room floor, maybe next to the foot he sawed off the last time he played a physician.

Lost in all the hoopla surrounding the odd Portman/Kutcher pairing is the fact that this was directed by Ivan Reitman. Whether this bit of information was downplayed to salvage his reputation or not is irrelevant since it isn't that bad, thanks mostly to a glowing Natalie Portman, who gives this character a life far more interesting than the one supplied by the script. Despite its "R" rating this project was supposedly much edgier when it made the rounds in pre-production so I'm curious if concessions were made to appeal to a broader audience once the two stars jumped on board. You can feel a less formulaic rom-com struggling to break through, most notably when the two characters go on a miniature golf date that leads to the film's funniest moment. Then everything settles back into a predictably mainstream groove, dragging to its wimpy finish. No Strings Attached may be a slight misfire, but it's a brilliant career move for Portman, who shows her range and deserves credit for trying to challenge herself with a part you'd think would be outside her comfort zone.

Saw: The Final Chapter

Director: Kevin Greutert
Starring: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Bestsy Russell, Sean Patrick Flannery, Cary Elwes, Chad Donella
Running Time: 90 min.
Rating: R

★★ (out of ★★★★) 

Saw: The Final Chapter (released theatrically as Saw 3D), the seventh and supposedly final installment of this long-running horror franchise, is also its worst, combining all the weakest elements of the series into one gigantic mess. Police procedural confusion. Kills for the sake of kills. A needlessly complicated plot. Too many characters. Amateurish acting. Continued emphasis on a pointless feud. Jigsaw relegated to a cameo. Anyone hoping for answers or even just some semblance of coherency will be disappointed. Even the highly anticipated return of one of the franchise's most important figures is botched badly.

After coming off the surprisingly decent Saw VI, that film's director (and longtime series editor) Kevin Greutert returns after Twisted Pictures exercised a "contractual clause" in his contract preventing him from directing Paranormal Activity 2 to torture us with this instead. And that makes perfect sense since this looks and feels like someone was blackmailed into making it (possibly at gunpoint). The one thing it does have going for it is unintentional comedy, as there were many scenes where I couldn't stop laughing, providing some hope that maybe this will have a future shelf life as some kind of awful curiosity. But fans who stuck with this long-winded saga through thick and thin deserve a reward, not this cruel punishment.

As usual, we pick up exactly where the action of the last film left off as the battle over Jigsaw's legacy rages on between rogue detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) and Jigsaw's ex-wife, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell). After failing to kill him with the bear trap, she's now revealed his identity as Jigsaw's successor to authorities and is under protective custody, while officer Matt Gibson (Chad Donella) is hot on his former colleague's trail. But Hoffman's already set his sights on the next game subject, self-help guru Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flannery), who's achieved success as an author and television personality by falsely claiming to have survived a Jigsaw trap. Now in order to save his wife, best friend, publicist and lawyer, he'll have to survive a real one. Further complicating matters is the mysterious reappearance of Jigsaw's most infamous survivor, Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes). At last, we finally find out what happened to him after he sawed off his foot and crawled out of the bathroom to apparent safety in the original film.

This installment does give us something we've never seen before in its opening with a trap that takes place in broad daylight as a crowd of onlookers witness two guys in a buzz saw battle for the life of their unfaithful girlfriend in a storefront display window. That's at least something different and bizarre, broadening the scope by moving away from the dark, dingy warehouses and garages the action usually takes place in. It's kind of surreal watching a Saw trap take place under these unusual circumstances, made unintentionally hilarious due to the laughable performances and cheesy gore effects. While the idea of the latest victim being a famous fake survivor milking other people's trauma for profit isn't as hilariously creative as Saw VI's plot of Jigsaw extracting revenge from beyond the grave on a health insurance executive for denying him coverage, it does have a lot of promise. Unfortunately it's undercut by a uninspired performance from Sean Patrick Flannery, who can't convey the charisma of a motivational speaker and isn't slimy enough for us to believe he's capable of manipulating anyone.

Flannery's "butter hands" Bobby character is portrayed as a total tool, so completely inept at Jigsaw's games that we never doubt for a second he'll die while failing to rescue everyone. This leads to the funniest scene in the film (and possibly the franchise's history) when he has to "guide" his blindfolded friend Cale (Dean Armstrong) across a series of wooden planks and get him a key before he's hanged. Poor acting and confusing direction results in the sequence playing like a Survivor challenge gone mad, causing tons of unintentional laughs. But as tempting as it is to recommend the film on just the basis of that spectacle, I'll resist.

The Saw series isn't  known for containing Oscar caliber performances but the acting all-around in this entry is by far the most embarrassing it's been, not helped any by the inexcusable absence of Tobin Bell who's featured in all of two (!) brief scenes as the deceased Jigsaw/John Kramer. Whether present in small or large doses, Bell's peerless performance was always the driving force behind these movies so here's hoping he doesn't get typecast for life and is given the opportunity to move past this in other roles. He often gave much more than the writing deserved, while hardly ever getting his due for it.

With the filmmakers apparently oblivious to the fact that in the final stretch it's imperative the plot return to its basic roots by being as simple and focused as possible, the ridiculous, never-ending feud between Hoffman and Jill takes center stage. But at least we finally get to see both characters for what they are: Albatrosses sinking this franchise since their initial major appearances in the fourth film. It's clear now that writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan never had plans for either aside from using them as poor stand-ins to distract us from the fact that Jigsaw wasn't around anymore. Their ongoing struggle, much what's happened in Saws IV through VII, and especially the character of Hoffman, is deemed entirely pointless by the events that conclude this film.

The movie delivers the ending we always wanted, not counting on the fact that by the time we get there, it's impossible to still care. It all feels thrown together at the last minute with the re-appearance of Dr. Gordon coming off as just a bone the producers are throwing at fans to make them happy because they ran out of options. Besides his flashback being clumsily edited and nothing that couldn't have been inserted into the previous sequels, a noticeably heftier Elwes is almost unrecognizable, which is unavoidable, but off-putting just the same. Since no effort was made to flesh out his back story or provide any kind of explanation for what he's been up to, the producers probably would have been better off just keeping his return a secret and working him into the narrative in a more surprising fashion. Or at least in a way that makes sense and doesn't negate the events that came before. Instead viewers are left feeling as if they've wasted their time.

The central idea this whole foundation of the franchise was built on is absent here, replaced with the most gruesome traps possible as the initial intriguing premise of a dying moralistic serial killer teaching victims a lesson is thrown out the window in favor of continuous, in-your-face murders and gore (the film was re-submitted six times to receive an R rating). The second the filmmakers turned their attention toward topping themselves with the most extreme and graphic traps, they lost their way and a series that started as a compelling mystery thriller devolved into torture-porn horror. If they do eventually reboot, the goal should be to go back to basics since we've already seen what a TV series like Dexter or a film like Se7en is capable of with a similar premise. Those should be the template, with skilled actors and a director experienced in extracting the most from that kind of material.

On the bright side, it's worth a round of applause that it took until the seventh film in the series for this to actually get as bad as everyone's accused it of being since the beginning. You could argue they just ran out of creative gas but in all honesty they've been running on fumes for a while now. It's indicative that as a longtime fan of the series, I couldn't even motivate myself to watch it in theaters (3D or not) and have problems mounting any kind of suitable defense for this fiasco. Going in I didn't believe for a second we'd seen the last of the franchise and now after seeing how open-ended they left it, I'm even surer. You can expect a re-boot a few years down the line, after the lingering stench of this final installment dissipates. Until then, it's game over.