TRUTH (3.5 out of 10) Directed and Written by James Vanderbilt, based on the book by Mary Mapes; Starring Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Elisabeth Moss, Bruce Greenwood, Stacy Keach; Rated R for “language and a brief nude photo”; Running time 121 minutes; In limited release October 23, expanding nationwide October 30, 2015.

With as lofty of a title as “Truth” and an attempt to explore modern journalistic ethics, a film really needs to come at you with something impressive. This inside examination of the CBS News documents scandal that ended Dan Rather’s career does neither of those. And its all-star cast unfortunately overshadows the people they are portraying.

First? When casting someone as familiar as an evening newscaster who was in peoples’ homes on a nightly basis for decades, don’t cast someone even more iconic than Dan Rather to play Dan Rather. Robert Redford is great here, but he’s always Robert Redford playing Dan Rather. At least in previous, similar forays, no one knew what Bob Woodward looked like, so it was fine to see Redford playing that role. Redford is able to channel that understated Texas charm and slight buttermilk twang, but it just doesn’t hit the way, say, Michael Fassbender does playing Steve Jobs, or even Redford playing journalist/author Bill Bryson just a few months ago.

Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, and Elizabeth Moss all try their best to really have fun with their supporting characters, but it unfortunately can’t save this film from the weight of its main story and actors not quite gelling.  Cate Blanchett is fine as the main character, Mary Mapes, but there just isn’t enough on the page to make something compelling. While the film is based on Mapes’ firsthand account of what happens, it’s unfortunate that they chose to focus on her so much, as she comes through as the least interesting of all of the characters.

All of which is entirely too bad. These events deserved a better story and a better film version of this. While the film makes the strong case (and proves it) that their story was accurate but they merely got caught up in not having more thorough fact-checking and were rushed by a network schedule that valued profit over hard news, they don’t tell that story in a compelling fashion. And there’s scant little musing about the search for actual Truth in the business of network news. 

Compared to this film’s peers, like the upcoming “Spotlight”, this is just not as good of a film. There is more Truth to be found in the fictionalized world of Atlantis Cable News on Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” than this story of an actual event.

It’s all so tragic. Dan Rather deserved better. Mary Mapes deserved better. America deserved better. The Truth deserved better. Audiences deserve better.

3.5 out of 10

Finally out of August and now into the doldrums of September, which means overall mediocre movies for at least another week or so. Both “A Walk in the Woods” and “Learning to Drive” fall squarely into the “meh” category, but Adam and Andy (Citizen-Bot) didn’t want to leave people hanging with nothing good to watch. They both came up with some great “based on a true story” films everyone should definitely check out! Oh, and the big shakeup over at Disney and Marvel was discussed in detail, so stick through to the end for that as well!

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Be sure to check us out at www.boredashellcast.com for everything including written reviews, and you can keep up with our musings and announcements on Twitter, @boredashellcast and Facebook.

 A WALK IN THE WOODS (6 out of 10) Directed by Ken Kwapis; Written by Rick Kerb, Bill Holderman, (Michael Arndt), based on the book by Bill Bryson; Starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Nick Offerman, Kristen Schaal; Rated R for “language and some sexual references;” 104 minutes; In semi-wide release September 2, 2015.

The naturalist John Muir once stated (and misquoted in this film and its trailer) “I never took much time to prepare for a trip—just long enough to throw bread and tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence.” 

Unfortunately, that sort of approach works well for hiking, but not so much for filmmaking. Despite being in development for almost 10 years, and an original script by Oscar winner Michael Arndt (later rewritten), the final version of this film feels thin and unsure of what it is trying to say or do. 

The film is based on Bill Bryson’s (played here by a charismatic-as-ever Robert Redford) bestselling memoir about his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail with his frenemy “Katz” (a curmudeonly Nick Nolte). Their misadventures play out as part nature porn as they hike through state and national parks and some of the most beautiful scenery in America, and part formulaic bad road-trip odd couple movie.

When the film works best is when it’s hiking through these amazing vistas that Bryson set out to explore in the first place. They’re a part of a shared national history that defines us and unites us across over 2,200 miles, 14 states, and over 200 years. In them, Bryson finds the connection he’s looking for and works out the midlife crisis that precipitates this ill advised hike by two people who really have no business attempting it.

The film is a lot less good when they stray into the towns that surround the trail to resupply. Besides the distaste of watching Nick Nolte hit on anything that moves and talk like the most mysoginistic frat boy dude bro (where most of the film’s R rating comes from), it’s just boring. And unbelievable. And dumb.

We’re supposed to believe Robert Redford is considering cheating on his wife, played by Emma Thompson, with the proprietor of a motel/restaurant where they stay, played by Mary Steenburgen. Yeah, no. And this is only prevented because Nick Nolte hooked up with someone at the laundromat, only to be chased literally out of town by her husband. Yeah, no.

This not only provides a serious tonal shift in the movie, but a needless one. And when they get back to the woods and the trail, the movie gets good again.

There’s another issue of believability here. Quick fact-check: Robert Redford is 79. (WOW! Really? He looks amazing for being 79!) Nick Nolte is 74.

The real Bill Bryson? He’s only 63. And when he published A Walk in the Woods he was 47.  Two people hiking the Appalachian Trail in their 40’s is a completely different affair than hiking it in your 60’s or 70’s. Some of the more frank sexual dialogue might have been more palatable, and midlife crisis more relatable, if it had been between, say, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who are actually age appropriate for this film.

Also age appropriate for this role? Nick Offerman, who is criminally underutilized here. I’d have much preferred a movie about Nick Offerman camping in the woods than what we got here. Also underutilized were Kristen Schaal and Emma Thompson. Schaal shows up just long enough to insult our main characters, annoy them, sing Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”, and allow them to basically have a “kids these days and their hiking and rock and roll music and . . . ” moment. But every moment Thompson was on screen was a delight, and there were far too few of them. I’d have preferred a movie about her camping in the woods as well.

There’s a version of this film that would work incredibly well. And it’s modeled more on the success of The Trip and its sequel The Trip to Italy. Those films took similar character types and a similar premise and, for lack of a better term, knew where they were going. There was a strong sense of purpose and relatable character arcs. A Walk in the Woods fails to connect on these levels. Perhaps it will do better with audiences of a certain age, but it seems silly to sacrifice relatability for the comedy of old guys who have no business camping.

But for being based on such a well-written and enjoyable memoir, this film doesn’t capture that magic other than showing off the amazing scenery of some of our best national and state parks and forests and wilderness areas. Enjoy it for the nature porn and Redford’s still-amazing charisma, but not much else.

(6 out of 10)

Note: Citizen-Bot is an employee of the conservation club founded by John Muir in 1892. Not sure if that constitutes some sort of conflict of interest here, but in the era of GamerGate, we wouldn’t want anyone claiming I’m an Environmental Justice Warrior and that somehow colored my review, would we?. No, wait. I’d totes love that.
SJW/EJW for life.  I’m “in the tank” for the environment.

By Jeff Michael Vice

It hit me, as I was trying to relocate the dislocated toe in my foot: I just wasn’t excited about the Sundance Film Festival this year.

First things first, I somehow managed to dislocate the middle toe on my left foot. In my sleep, no less. Trust me, it was less fun and was considerably more painful than it sounds. And after the severe swelling and subsequent treatment for the self-inflicted injury, that meant I was going to miss at least two days of this year’s festival, which ran Jan. 16-26.

Who knows how that influenced my mood and general disposition towards the festival, known worldwide for being the premier showcase for independently produced feature films and documentaries in the United States. I’ve now been to 18 of them as an “industry professional,” so there was also bound to be a certain level of festival burnout, and that certainly didn’t help my general malaise.

But I regret to say that I wound up seeing a grand total of one Sundance movie during the festival: “Mitt,” the surprisingly watchable documentary about one-time U.S. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, which was actually produced for Netflix by director Greg Whiteley, a Sundance alum, who was there in 2005 with “New York Doll”). Worse, I watched that one online, with a link provided by the film’s publicists, so my physical presence at the festival was negligible at best.

In fairness, I should mention that there were Sundance 2014 films that did have some interest for me, such as “Life Itself,” the documentary profile of late film-reviewing great Roger Ebert, the Nick Cave documentary “20,000 Days on Earth,” Zach Braff’s Kickstarter-funded follow-up to “Garden State,” “Wish I Was Here,” and the martial-arts/action-thriller sequel, “The Raid 2.” However, I knew all of them either had secured theatrical distribution or were in the process, so I could see them in the future, without having to hit the festival screenings.

Since the 2014 festival concluded over the weekend, I’ve been having an internal back-and-forth about the merits and problems of the festival, which has been praised by the independent-film community and criticized by some members of that same community because of the “star-gazing” media circus that’s become so prevalent at Sundance over the past decade.

So bear with me as I run down some of the pros and cons of the Sundance Film Festival, asking “Is Sundance still relevant?”

PRO: THEY SHOWED MORE, INDEPENDENTLY PRODUCED FILMS THAN EVER.

According to festival organizers, Sundance showed 118 feature-length films in 2014 – from 37 countries and from 54 first-time filmmakers. These films were selected from 12,218 submissions (up 72 total submissions from the previous year. Breaking that down: 4,057 were features and 8,161 were shorter-length works.

Of the feature-film submissions, 2,014 came from the U.S. and 2,043 were international. And 97 of those feature films were world premieres.

CON: WE’VE SEEN THIS FESTIVAL SLATE BEFORE.

Murders in small-town Texas (“Cold in July”). Somali pirates (“Fishing without Nets”). Juvenile delinquents (“Hellion”). Musical romances (“God Help the Girl”). Gay-marriage documentaries (“The Case Against 8”). Transgendered musicians (“My Prairie Home”). Groundbreaking scientific discoveries (“I Origins”). Perpetual adolescents (“Laggies”). Nazi zombies (“Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead”).

What do they have in common? Earlier Sundance features with the same exact plot (among them, “Ain’t Those Bodies Saints,” “Thirteen,” “Once,” “8: The Mormon Proposition,”  “Dark Matter,” “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and the first “Dead Snow”).

If that wasn’t bad enough, one of the Sundance 2014 “Park City at Midnight” features not only had the same plot as a 2007 selection, it had the same exact name: “The Signal.”

PRO: IT REALLY WAS ABOUT THE MOVIES AND NOT THE CELEBRITIES THIS YEAR.

If you followed the news wires (as I do faithfully), the impromptu photo shoots and celebrity news from Sundance 2014 petered out pretty quickly, which probably pleased the festival’s head honcho, Robert Redford – who’s always trying to take the emphasis off the “star-gazing” and directing audiences to the movies, even as he’s being followed/stalked by the paparazzi himself.

CON: OH, YEAH? LINDSAY LOHAN, WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?

Lohan didn’t actually have a movie in this year’s festival. But that didn’t stop her from hitting Park City to get some attention from the celebrity hounds. (She used the media circus as an excuse to announce a new movie project, the psychological thriller “Inconceivable,” as well as promote an Oprah Winfrey Network reality television show in which she stars.)

Ironically, Lohan also told the press she hadn’t been to the festival before – conveniently forgetting her appearance at Sundance 2007, with the thriller “Chapter 27.”

PRO: THERE WERE GENUINE SLEEPERS IN THE 2014 FILM SLATE.

No one was really talking up the musical drama “Whiplash” (featuring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons), the aforementioned “Fishing without Nets” or the documentaries “Watchers of the Sky” and “The Overnighters.” But those four films wound up taking the lion’s share of Sundance competition and Audience Awards, and were hot properties for studios trying to acquire festival hits for U.S. theatrical distribution.

CON: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME SUNDANCE HAD A GENUINE HIT?

Unfortunately, those films still might not wind up at your local googolplex and may not make back their respective filmmakers and studios’ investments.

While such previous Sundance selections “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” “Hustle & Flow,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “In a World … ,” “In Bruges,” “Winter’s Bone” and “The Cover” all won festival awards – a couple even got some Oscar nods and wins – they weren’t exactly box-office successes.

In fact, the last certified hits from Sundance were “Garden State” and “Napoleon Dynamite.” And that was 10 years ago, believe it or not.

IN CONCLUSION: IT STILL MATTERS. WHERE IT COUNTS.

Obviously, commercial success is not the be-all, end-all of filmmaking, despite what Hollywood would like us to think. And there will always be down years in filmmaking quality and diversity. It’s not Sundance’s responsibility to make directors produce breathtakingly, mind-blowingly original works. It’s the festival and Institute’s responsibility to show the best works of a particular year, and to foster creativity through Sundance’s screenwriting and filmmaking labs.

And stars like Michael B. Jordan, Elizabeth Olsen and Jennifer Lawrence gained real legitimacy through Sundance showcases recently, as did actor-turned-filmmakers Lake Bell, Zach Braff, Joshua Radnor,  Brit Marling and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Sundance is adding new categories to the festival and is continually changing things up to make things fresher. A new “Sundance for Kids” section, featuring animated works that were more family friendly, was a welcome change of pace.

Plus, there’s always next year, right?

Jeff Michael Vice, aka Jerk-bot, can be heard reviewing films, television programs, comics, books, music and other things as part of The Geek Show Podcast (www.thegeekshowpodcast.com), as well as be seen reviewing films as part of Xfinity’s Big Movie Mouth-Off (www.facebook.com/BigMovieMouthOff

(Jeff Michael Vice, aka Jerk-bot, is attending and covering his 18^th Sundance Film Festival this year … yikes! He will be blogging and Tweeting throughout the festival’s 10-day run. And for more information on this year’s festival, including movie listings and ticketing information, visit www.sundance.org/festival.)

Does this, to you, look like the face of someone who once danced with the lovely Australian actress Rose Byrne? Or, for that matter, does it look like someone who once had a date with actress Hope Davis, or someone who once flirted shamelessly (and not unsuccessfully) with actresses Leslie Bibb, Laura Dern and Sissy Spacek?

Continuing on, does it look like someone who once had brief “bro-mances” with actors Antonio Banderas, Tom Hanks, Heath Ledger and Tim Robbins, and author Nick Hornby?

Or, more likely, does it look like someone who once creeped out actress Amy Adams … and Diane Lane … and Natalie Portman … and Rachel Weisz?

But wait, before you answer … the correct answer would be “yes” to all of those questions. In my capacity as an “industry professional” (and yes, I use that term loosely), I’ve had all kinds of crazy celebrity encounters at the Sundance Film Festival. Some of them were good, some were bad and some were, well, let’s just say they were pretty crazy.

First off, here’s the thing about Byrne (“Bridesmaids,” “X-Men: First Class”). She and Ledger were both regarded as up-and-coming actors when they appeared in “Two Hands,” a cheeky Australian crime-thriller that debuted at Sundance in 1999. I interviewed the film’s writer/director, Gregor Jordan, who then invited me to an after-hours party where I met both actors. There, I had a beer with Ledger, who called the American version of the brew “weak” (but in the nicest possible way), and I showed off some of my old dance club moves to Byrne. She has a very lovely laugh, by the way.

As for Davis (“About Schmidt,” “American Splendor”), she and I really hit it off during an interview for the 1998 movie “Next Stop, Wonderland,” and she invited me to have muffins and coffee with her. I’d like to point out that she was the one who used the term “date,” even though most of the time was spent talking smack on other annoying critic types she had met there.

Bibb (“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” “Wristcutters: A Love Story”) even hugged me. Dern insisted I call her by her first name. And Spacek kissed me on the cheek and actually made me blush!

Hanks also hugged me, after calling me “some poor shlub with a notepad and pen.” (He seemed a bit annoyed by the pushy television crews, who wouldn’t take no for an answer to interview requests.) Robbins, who was at Sundance to accept the now-defunct, Piper-Heidsieck Tribute to Independent Vision award, got me pretty trashed, especially when we went to an after-hours party for the competing Slamdance Film Festival. An interview with Hornby for the 2009 movie “An Education” went much longer than the scheduled 30 minutes, as we discussed our favorite music acts and filmmakers – annoying the impatient publicist scheduling his itinerary.

But I will admit that I’m not always so suave, clever or well-composed. While offering a hand up to Weisz, who had slipped on the ice, I made a lame crack about how our last names are pronounced similarly … so she wouldn’t have to change much if we married. Blarg. I was similarly star-struck and moon-eyed over Portman and Adams, almost to the extent of “stalker” behavior, and couldn’t stop staring at Lane, who had failed to button up her blouse correctly and was showing some inappropriate flesh during our interview for “A Walk on the Moon.” Whoopsie.

And now for the craziness. Sundance has also seen me swapping lines of dialogue with the likes of Bill Murray, Joaquin Phoenix and “Breaking Bad” co-star Bob Odenkirk. On the red carpet for “Get Low,” premiering in Salt Lake City, “Mr. Murray” was amused by me asking if he “had any regrets,” a call-back to his scene-stealing turn in “Zombieland.” Phoenix and I had a competition to see which of us was more “sorely vexed” (aping his best line in the Oscar-winning “Gladiator”). And Odenkirk uttered the correct response line, “Thank you!” when I quoted from his “Monsters of Megaphone” sketch from HBO’s “Mr. Show.”  

I haven’t always been so shameless at Sundance, though. I once helped actor Stanley Tucci (the “Hunger Games” movies) change a flat tire on a rental vehicle, so he could be on time to pick his wife up from the Salt Lake International Airport. (He tried to pay me, and I refused. Sometimes you have to do the right thing, for purely karmic reasons.)

My most ridiculously flustered moment at Sundance, though, came in front of veteran character actor Bob Balaban (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Moonrise Kingdom”). He saved me from sliding into traffic after I slipped on the treacherously icy Park City sidewalks. Not knowing who it was that offered me a hand, I got up and stammered, “Thank you,” pausing briefly to recognize him and utter almost questioningly, “Bob Balaban?!” He fired back quickly with, “You’re welcome, whoever you are!” and then went on his merry way.

I should note that when I slipped, I was actually hurrying to an interview with Banderas. I’m glad I did, though. We swapped compliments (including him calling me “polite” several times), I may have gotten lost in his eyes at one point (you would, too!) and I finally got him to “do the Bee voice” – in reference to commercials in which he voiced a helpful insect pitching the over-the-correct Nasonex medication.

Oh, and one more thing: Robert Redford, the festival’s head honcho, loves me. Well, at least he knows who I am. But we’ll get into that later …

Jeff Michael Vice, aka Jerk-bot, can be heard reviewing films, television programs, comics, books, music and other things as part of The Geek Show Podcast (www.thegeekshowpodcast.com), as well as be seen reviewing films as part of Xfinity’s Big Movie Mouth-Off (www.facebook.com/BigMovieMouthOff).

For a full list of films scheduled to play during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and ticket information, go to www.sundance.org/festival.