Movie theaters are about to get flooded with a ton of movies
this week since Thanksgiving is upon us and movie studios want to keep us entertained
while we laze about in our stuffing and turkey comas. Then about two weeks later, the rest of the
prestige pictures and holiday blockbusters roll out. Before that deluge occurs, I thought I would
do a round-up of the big movies that came out the last few weeks in case there
was something you were curious about.
First off, everyone seems either to love “A Star Is Born”,
based on its’ big box office revenues, or has expressed a really strong
interest in seeing it. I was hesitant
about it at first since it is a drama, a third remake of the original movie,
and features a first time director and first time lead actress. Then again, I’m actually the target audience
for the movie. No, I’m not a millennial
(I wish!) but I haven’t actually seen any of the other versions of the movie so
it will supposedly be fresh and new to me.
I know the general plot line though, from having seen the trailer and
from reading the Mad Magazine parody of the 1976 version with Barbara Streisand
and Kris Kristofferson. Also I’m in the
target audience because I’m curious to see how Lady Gaga does in the movie
since I’ve followed her musical career and, like everyone who saw the trailer,
I want to see the scene where she just starts wailing out a song by going from
a vocal standstill to full bellow!
I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. There was nothing in the plot that surprised
me but there were a lot of small pleasures along the way that kept me engaged
and enjoying myself. Lady Gaga did a
great job as Ally, not just with the vocal performances but with the acting as
well. The small gripes I had about her
character – how she acted once she became famous and how it was contrary to the
personality she established earlier in the movie - were more the fault of the script
than her acting. She sang great although
I wasn’t in love with the songs she was working with- I much preferred
director/lead actor Bradley Cooper’s songs.
Speaking of Cooper, he does a marvelous job in his directorial debut
especially considering that he had a significant acting role in the movie as
Jack, the male lead. His visual
technique, his scene-framing choices, and his editing decisions were all spot
on. I’m fully expecting Academy Award
nominations for him in both capacities.
I also enjoyed Andrew Dice Clay in a small role as Ally’s father, the
look at the music industry, Sam Elliott as Jack’s long suffering brother, and
the live crowds in some of the performance scenes. One crowd scene was even an indirect homage
to Kris Kristofferson’s role in the 1976 film, since Kristofferson let Cooper
have 15 minutes of stage time during one of his concerts in order to film a
song scene with a live audience. So
overall, I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to anyone who thinks they
might want to see it.
A couple movies I saw fall into the ‘If you think you want
to see it, you will like it.’ Free Solo is about a rock
climber who attempts to free-climb the El Capitan mountain in Yosemite National
Park. Free solo refers to a type of rock
climbing where the climber climbs by himself without using any pitons, ropes,
or fail-safe protection. Basically, it means
there is a guy in a t-shirt and climbing shoes and around his waist is a bag of
chalk powder that he uses to keep his hands dry as he navigates the cracks and
small handholds of the rock surface to climb a mountain. Sounds crazy, right? On top of that, El Capitan is supposed to be
one of the tougher mountains to climb even with fixed ropes and companions
because of how sheer and smooth it is.
Doesn’t that sound like a fun way to spend some time outdoors? Oh, I didn’t yet mention that this is a documentary so that means this dude Alex actually tried this climb. His new girlfriend is a little worried about him and why he feels the need to do this. The documentary follows the couple around and shows how they each go about preparing themselves for the attempted climb – Alex with his training regimen and Sanni with how she copes with her emotions and fears about Alex trying such an insane thing. The human aspect is compelling and the camera views during the climbing scenes are incredible. This is a pretty intense documentary even if you know the outcome – in the theater, I felt my palms getting sweaty and all I was doing was sitting in an air-conditioned theater. I definitely recommend this one, even for people who have a fear of heights.
For comparison, look at Fantastic
Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald.
This is a sequel to the Fantastic Beasts movie which was a sort of
sequel to the Harry Potter movies. In
this movie, the CGI is great, it has a more light- hearted tone then Venom, the
action scenes are restrained, and the movie doesn’t depend on one person to
carry everything by themselves. It is
also much less fun and quite disappointing. Even though JK Rowling wrote the screenplay,
it feels like a Harry Potter knock-off.
The plot is convoluted and the characters are one-dimensional. No actor overcomes the laborious script to
provide a spark for the movie to fan into a lively flame. The main actors I loved in the first Beasts
movie- Eddie Redmayne (Newt), Katherine Watterson (Tina), Dan Fogler (Jacob) and
Alison Sudol (Queenie) seem to be sleepwalking through their roles. Queenie in fact not only seems to be
sleepwalking, she seems downright possessed because everything she does in this
movie contradicts what she was like in the first one. I felt betrayed by her character’s portrayal
and bored by the other’s. Thank God that
Jude Law was in it to provide a jolt in his scenes as a young Dumbledore even
though it wasn’t enough to salvage film entirely.
There aren’t enough beasts in it either. Is there such a thing as gratuitous creature
scenes? For a movie supposedly about
beasts, especially considering how much wonderous creatures contributed to the
enjoyment of the first movie, they weren’t integrated very well here. It was like they were tacked on to the script
to justify the movie’s title and just used as a prop in the effort to stop
Johnny Depp’s Grindelwald bad guy. The
whole endeavor felt inert.
Bohemian Rhapsody
had some problems too but overall it succeeded at what it wanted to do, which
was showcasing the life or Freddy Mercury and celebrating the music of his
band, Queen. Rami Malek did a great job
of becoming Freddy Mercury, revealing his insecurities and ego, conveying his
talent and the excesses that harmed the band, but still keeping him likeable,
relatable and somehow an underdog despite being the lead singer in one of the
biggest bands in the world.
What the film glosses over is the contributions of the other
band members, what their life was like outside of Mercury’s orbit, and how the great
songs in their catalog were created.
Freddy didn’t just sit down at a piano and instantly create magic by
himself, as the movie mostly implies.
Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon brought their own talent to the
process and in fact wrote some of the band’s bigger hits. There are references to this but you kind of
have to be in the lookout for them since they occur in throw-away lines and
writing credits that scroll past in collage scenes. I also would have liked to see a little more examination
of the period after his HIV diagnosis.
How did the band work through that emotionally? What was their relationship like at the end
and as a band afterwards? How did they
create the later albums that I consider part of my favorite Queen era- The
Game, The Works, A Kind Of Magic, The Miracle, and Innuendo?
Overall though, I liked the film a lot. I learned new things about the band, how the
Live Aid appearance came about and Freddy’s lifelong friendship with Mary
Austin, played by the lovely Lucy Boynton from a recent favorite movie - “Sing
Street”. It reminded me how much I liked
Queen and how interesting they were. I
also got to hear some great songs played on a big theater sound system which
totally immersed me in the music. That
can’t be really be recreated at home on a TV’s speakers.
Nutcracker And The
Four Realms is a perfectly acceptable movie. I say that assuming you are under 16 years
old, or have never seen a fantasy movie like Chronicles Of Narnia or Alice In
Wonderland before, or don’t like things that are too intense or scary, or like
uncomplicated plots, or thought the animation in The Polar Express was really
creepy, or think holiday themed movies need more annoying chipmunks. If you don’t happen to feel that way though,
you won’t be impressed by Nutcracker. It
has a plot that anyone over 16 has either seen before or can easily guess, it
copies ideas and images from other fantasy movies, and the action and thrills
are fairly sedate and tension free. As
for the chipmunks, that was a kinda freaky thing and seems to belong in some
other movie. The actors all do a decent
job, including Mackenzie Foy as the leading little lady. The real wild card in the movie though, and
the reason I wanted to see this, was Keira Knightley.
At first, I was surprised she was even in the
movie - as the Sugar Plum Fairy, a ruler of one of the four realms- because it
seemed like a step down for her to be a small supporting character in the quest
to save the kingdom. Then as the movie
placidly chugged along, Knightley’s Sugar Plum Fairy role kept getting bigger
and got more interesting and eventually cracked wide open into a bizarre
performance I hadn’t seen from her before.
That redeemed the movie for me, or at least made it worth the time spent
watching it instead of re-watching Frozen, or Scrooged, or Home Alone, or literally
a dozen other similar movies. So you
have been warned- if you want a mostly wholesome movie for the family to watch
this season and possibly crack jokes about, this is it.
I watched Colette
because for about a month it was the only thing my MoviePass subscription was
offering as a choice. And because I love
Keira Knightley as an actress. She does
amazing work in anything she is in and this was no exception. Watching her as the naïve young country bride
who grows into the savvy, provocative bi-sexual writer of the scandalous Claudine
novels leaves me amazed at her talents. It
isn’t just the way the script is written but also how she inflects the words
based on the character’s situation and the physical behaviours she uses and how
body language and visual gaze play into her delivery. I’m flabbergasted that she has never won an
Academy Award and only been nominated twice.
Watch her metamorphosis in this movie and you will feel the same
way. The movie itself is very by the
numbers as a historical biopic but Keira’s performance elevates the whole movie
to another level.
I just saw Ralph
Breaks The Internet and really enjoyed it. “Wreck It Ralph” was a surprise animated classic
a couple years ago and featured an arcade video game villain named Wreck It
Ralph who longed for a change of pace and a friendly face in his mundane existence
as a video bad guy. He meets an
adorable girl from the Sugar Rush Race game and they become best friends as
they fight to save the characters in the games at the video arcade. The movie worked as a commentary on
friendship, about how to be a good person, and as a sly commentary on video
game culture. The new movie, where Ralph
and Vanellope now have to save all of the internet rather than just their neighborhood
arcade, stands alone and does a good job of delineating the characters for
those who aren’t familiar with the first one.
You can see this one and still get almost all the jokes - and there are
a bunch of them because the targets have expanded to include the whole internet
and our social media obsessed culture.
Go see this and enjoy scenes like the one where C-3PO gives the Disney
Princesses a five minute curtain call reminder or the one where Ralph becomes a
screaming goat meme. Oh, and you have to
stay through at least the middle of the credits to see one of the most
hilarious and slightly gross scenes in the movie but if you like to get
“Rick-rolled”, then stay all the way through to the end. The movie was loads of fun.
I don’t normally watch slasher films although I have seen
some, like the whole Nightmare On Elm Street series and the Scream movies, but
I consider those more of a fantasy series and a thriller series. I think I might have watched one Halloween
movie or parts of one but was interested in this Halloween because it was supposed to be more suspenseful
rather than gory, a return-to-roots reboot and it featured Jamie Leigh Curtis
so her tacit endorsement swayed me. Plus
the trailer was very engrossing – ominous but compelling and well-shot. It seemed more like a vigilante movie than a
slasher movie, one where Curtis’ Laurie hunts down the villainous Michael and
tries to eliminate him. In the end, it
wasn’t very different than a normal slasher flick. People did stupid things and got killed,
people fought back but still got killed, people attacked the killer and
supposedly beat him but he might have somehow survived. Nothing spectacular but not bad either.
Now speaking of vigilante movies, that is a genre I
love. I’ll watch the good ones, the bad
ones, the crazy ones, all of them. I
enjoy a vigilante movie because I like seeing the struggle between good and
evil and how close the protagonist comes to crossing the line between right and
wrong. All my life I have hated it when
people did bad things and got away with it.
I hated the mean girls and bullies in elementary and high school, the
irrational and spiteful bosses at work, the entitled jerks all around me, the
scammers and criminals who get off scot free, the crooked politicians. You get the idea- there are lots of people in
the world who deserve to be punished for what they do but it never seems to
happen. I play by the rules but they
don’t and they still get away with everything.
I like watching bad people get put in their place and having to face the
consequences for their actions.
Granted, a vigilante movie is a more extreme example of this
desire. The repercussions for the
fictional characters are much higher than what I would want in real life but it
is a vicarious thrill to see extreme retribution. It’s kind of like playing a video game- you
might shoot zombies and aliens and squash anthropomorphic mushrooms and snake
in the game but you don’t really want to do that in real life. It is really just a way of venting and
relieving stress and anger.
A couple months ago, Jennifer Garner was in the female
vigilante movie Peppermint,
and I saw it of course. I enjoyed it
although it wasn’t particularly original, aside from the female protagonist. It followed the same template that many of
these type movies follow- something bad happens to the hero or his family or his
friends and he alone survives and seeks out the bad guys who did it and exacts
revenge on them because the police won’t do anything to bring them to justice. This basic template was established in the
1974 movie “Death Wish” with Charles Bronson. I saw that movie and a couple of the sequels years
later on VHS but I don’t recall too much from them now except that they
definitely helped establish the plotline for countless movies that followed. And that Bronson was looking really frail in
the last one and I hoped he never got into a fist fight with anyone. Combine
that series with the Clint Eastwood cop movies of the 1970’s, like The
Gauntlet, Dirty Harry, and Magnum Force and an excitring new genre was
born.
As proof of the impact that Bronson’s movie had, Death Wish got rebooted in 2018
with Bruce Willis in the lead role. The
remake was unimpressive overall but there were several well-done scenes, like the
assault of his family at home while he is at work in the hospital, the bar
scene, and the walk-ups on local scumbags.
I think the reason this one didn’t work is because Willis, or the
character, or both, were too detached and couldn’t make the non-violent scenes
come to life so the violent scenes didn’t seem to be coming from a place of
grief and anger. That made the character
seem too nihilistic and unsympathetic. An
example of how to do things right is Death
Sentence, starring Kevin Bacon. I
believed Bacon’s motivation and his descent into vigilante justice and the
bloodshed, although incredibly brutal, was very satisfying in a cathartic way. This is a movie I think of as a benchmark in
the genre. Of course, nobody ever saw it
but if you want a stellar example of this type of movie, this should be one you
see.
Now for things you can skip, there is The Punisher (2004) with Thomas Jane and The Punisher (1989)
with Dolph Lundgren. I don’t think I
need to spend any time explaining why the Dolph Lundgren movie is skippable but
for the Thomas Jane one, the problems are not as simple as wooden acting and
lame action scenes. The Punisher is a
comic book character who is similar to the main character in the Executioner paperback
book series. The Punisher is an extreme
vigilante – any wrong doing is punished with massive overkill. At various points in the comics, he even
hunts down superheroes because he thinks they coddle criminals. So you would think that a movie version of
the character would be a hard ass. Nope,
the 2004 movie is more like a bad version of This Is Us. It is a group of misfits moping around in a
scummy apartment building and whining about how bad their life is. The Punisher is more of a sad sack than an
agent of justice. I almost want the bad
guy, played by John Travolta, to come out victorious because he is way more charismatic
and focused. That’s what made The Punisher: War Zone (2008) so
satisfying. There was no equivocating or
second guessing, just lots of action and righteous avenging. I think I need to re-watch this because I
remember absolutely nothing about this movie except that it was a necessary
antidote to wash out the mealy taste left in my mouth by the 2004 movie.
Sometimes it doesn’t take brutally murdering someone’s family
to turn them into a vigilante. In the
case of John Wick, all it
took was stealing Wick’s car and killing his puppy. When this movie came out, it was a welcome
surprise. I didn’t figure Keanu Reeves
would be worth watching since he had flopped in so many movies since The Matrix
series ended. This gives him new life
because the two, so far, John Wick movies are delicious examples of
over-the-top gun play, honoring debts, doing the right thing, and never giving
up until you’ve accomplished your objective.
Lots of people get killed but it isn’t really gory. It is more of a ballet of bullets. The first movie is the best, a noir-ish revenge
thriller where the action scenes are gun battles rather than fist fights and it
is another benchmark of the genre. The second
movie expands the “Wick world” and sets John Wick on a fugitive path where he
has to fight to survive even though he is in the right in the conflict.
Finally, I will point out that vigilante movies don’t have
to be set in urban environments. For
example, getting back to Clint Eastwood, he did several Westerns, like Hang ‘Em High and High Plains Drifter where a wronged
man sets things right. The idea of vigilante
justice originates much further back than 1974’s Death Wish. There are other templates and other stories
equally as compelling. I loved watching
Michael Douglas go batshit crazy in Falling
Down as the hundreds of small injustices people face each day finally
built up into overwhelming frustration and he fought back at society before
finally going over the edge and becoming part of the problem.
In Edge
Of Darkness, Mel Gibson watches harm come to his daughter due to
corporate greed. He sets out to make
things right and punish the immoral perpetrators. It chronicles his near-obsession and what it
costs him to get justice while also examining all those questions about right
and wrong and finding where the moral line sits and deciding whether there is
any justification for crossing that line. Mel Gibson has actually done several movies
with this type of theme- Mad Max
and Payback are also excellent
movies that examine how far a man will go to right a wrong or exact revenge.
That is what I like about this genre - it makes me think
about the what is acceptable behavior and what I would do if I am confronted
with a situation that crosses that line.
I don’t think I will become a
gun-toting urban vigilante but I can decide what small things I can do to a right
a wrong or make things better for people that have suffered unfairly. I can help make the world a better place in a
very small way if I can see that injustices have occurred. I like that positive impulses can come from
seemingly brutal situations and violent movies can help show a way to make the
world better in the end.
Now let’s leave the bleak vigilante landscape and jump into the
shiny happy world of holiday movies and Oscar bait that is barreling toward us.
I know that I am looking forward to a
bunch of things- Mary Poppins Returns, The Favourite, Creed II (i.e. Rocky 4
Part 2), Green Book, Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, A Private War, Anna And The Apocalypse,
Mortal Engines, Bird Box, Holmes & Watson, and Serenity. I’ll catch you up on those once I’ve seen
them. Have a great holiday season and Happy
Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!
Earlier this year:
The Meg
The Meg is exactly what you expect it to be, a somewhat
entertaining movie where Jason Statham battles a monster prehistoric shark
called a Megaladon. Almost plot points
were obvious and predicted by the guy sitting next to me who was shouting
things at the screen. I also predicted
what would happen in the movie, based on having seen the trailer for the movie
and figuring what a lazy script would do with this premise, but I didn’t shout
it out loud, because decorum.
This is probably the 10th most enjoyable shark movie I’ve
seen (behind Jaws, The Shallows, Deep Blue Sea, Open Water, 47 Meters Down, Jaw
2, Shark Night, Planet Of the Sharks, Megalodon: The Monster Shark That Lives.)
Crazy Rich Asians and A Simple Favor
If you want to see a movie that is fun and entertaining but
still has some depth, you should check out Crazy Rich Asians or A Simple
Favor. Crazy Rich Asians is a very
well-done romantic comedy with an Asian cast and setting. It is a high-end comedy, about how rich
people are different than us poor people but still seem to have the same issues
with dating, family pressures and the desire to fit in.
A Simple Favor is a mystery that might actually be a murder
mystery too and it stars Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and - oddly enough – Henry
Golding from Crazy Rich Asians. When new
friend Emily (Lively) disappears after leaving her son with Kendrick’s demure
and hesitant Stephanie, Stephanie has to figure out what happened to her. She
teams up with Emily’s husband (Golding) to dig into Emily’s past for clues and
discovers an unexpected history that turns her from widowed mommy blogger into aspiring
Nancy Drew.
You might guess some of what happens here but you will be
surprised by other things and one thing you don’t expect is that it is also really
funny. This is likely why director Paul
Feig (The Heat, Spy, Ghostbusters) was drawn to the project- it was a chance to
do a more dramatic movie that still played to his strengths of portraying
unusual relationships and mining them for comedy. Every
actor, in both these movies, does an excellent job and I recommend them both.
Eighth Grade, Ladybird, Juliet Naked,
Puzzle, and Tully
If you aren’t a fan of somewhat frivolous fare, you might want
to try some of the other movies I’ve seen recently. If you are in the mood for a contemplative
meditation on how the hopes and dreams of your younger self matches up against
your current reality and what actions you end up regretting, I’d suggest doing
a marathon of Eighth Grade, Lady Bird, Juliet Naked, Puzzle and Tully. It won’t be a fun binge session bill since
they are all serious dramas tinged with some dark humor, but all of them get to
the heart of how people act, what reality they are hoping to achieve, the wrong
paths they took on their journey, and how to put yourself on a different path
that leads to what you now realize is best for you.
Eighth Grade is
about how the hopes and dreams your younger self bump up against the reality of
your social setting, in this case the other eighth grade students, and what you
do to try to make those dreams happen.
The movie mostly examines one student who fails, heartbreakingly, to be
the person she imagines herself to be and how she presents herself in video
blog. She does everything society has
told her she is supposed to do to be successful- believe in herself, take
calculated risks, have a social media presence, and of course cozy up to the
cool kids. What do you do once you have
failed? Do you keep trying, do you give
up, do you find a different dream to follow?
Ladybird is about
a high school senior who refuses to let failure stop her. She will not give up on her dream life and if
one tactic doesn’t work, she tries another, and she continuously reinvents
herself to fit the new plan. She
manipulates social settings to her advantage and sheds her old selves as she
moves up each rung of the social ladder.
This movie asks whether Ladybird is a good person, if she deserves to be
rewarded for her ruthless efforts, and what her success costs her.
Juliet Naked is a
little more lighthearted than the previous two movies but still shares some of
the same questions. Adapted from a Nick
Hornby novel, the movie follows Annie (Rose Byrne) who has mostly set up the
life her younger self had planned. She
is in a long-term relationship with an intelligent man, she is working in the
family business- a curator at a local museum, she has a lovely house and
several good friends. The only thing
missing is a child, something her boyfriend Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) has no
interest in. He’s too busy being a smug
college professor and obsessing over forgotten musician Tucker Crowe on his
blog.
When Annie hears a remixed reissue of Crowe’s seminal album,
she pans it on her boyfriend’s blog as a record company cash-grab which
ironically results in her befriending Tucker Crowe. Duncan, who is in exactly the life he
imagined, doesn’t realize how well he has it, because he is only concerned
about himself and sees everyone else as props who are expected to support his
dreams. This obliviousness to the
feelings of others leads him to cheat on Annie and then dump her for the
exciting new relationship. I see this
movie as building on the themes in Eighth Grade and Ladybird. Annie achieved most of what she was looking
for, but what happens when other people won’t let you live out the life you
have set up because it isn’t what they want?
Even when you have gotten what you expected, you can be forced to
re-evaluate your situation. When this
happens, do you start over and rebuild what you had or do you makes changes and
try a different path?
Juliet Naked is the movie that comes closest to a happy
ending and might be a good place to pause before diving into the last two which
are a bit brutal. Tully is about a mother, Marlo (Charlize Theron), who is having
trouble handling her life after the recent birth of her baby. Things get so bad she ends up taking on a
night nanny to handle the baby, her kids and her household so she has a little
time to get back control of her life and reconnect with her husband. The situation is really bleak and the night
nanny, Tully (MacKenzie Davis), helps her navigate the obstacles that have
knocked her down and demolished the ideal life she envisioned in her earlier
years. Tully’s effervescence and
effortless success forces Marlo to evaluate her past hopes and dreams and
compare them to how her life has turned out and the comparison is not
favorable. Marlo ditches her
responsibilities and tries to relive the life of her younger self which leads
to complications and unexpected consequences.
This is the most depressing movie of the bunch but it is still very
engaging because it is also the most surprising and filled with dark
humor.
The final movie in this hypothetical and contemplative
marathon is Puzzle. This film is about Agnes (Kelly MacDonald)
who has everything figured out and put together the life she envisioned yet she
is not happy. The people around her
either don’t respect her or they put their needs ahead of her because that is
the way it has always been. She has
sacrificed her happiness for that of her family’s and is not appreciated for
that. When she gets assembles a jigsaw
puzzle that was given to her as a gift, it awakens something in her and as she
gets more into “puzzling”, she starts exploring the boundaries of her life and
deciding where her hopes and dreams fit into the family life she has
created. The movie draws some obvious
parallels between doing jigsaw puzzles and figuring out your life’s path and
they are well-done and beautifully acted but there is one plot point I was not
in favor of because it went contrary to my belief in who Agnes is. Still, I was impressed by the movie despite
the Hollywood cop-out towards the end.
On thing in particular that set the tone for this drama and knocked me
out was the opening scene. It was as
powerful as any action movie opening sequence.
So if you are in the mood to contemplate your life choices
and where they led you, these are some movies that will help you figure out the
questions to ask yourself. They cover
from middle school to high school, early adulthood to early parenthood, and
finally to married life. Now, if you are
not in the mood for such serious fare, then I refer you back to Crazy Rich
Asians or A Simple Favor. Just thinking
of Anna Kendrick in her car singing along to gangster rap is making me smile. Or maybe try the fabulous Mission Impossible:
Fallout, where the stakes are really high but it won’t force you to consider
your own life situation. Unless you
happen to be a covert government agent out to save the world with your incredible
derring-do, in which case skip the movies- we should hit a bar and you can
share some of your stories with me.
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