Movie Review: The Spy Who Dumped Me

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) 

Directed by Susannah Fogel

Written by David Iserson, Susannah Fogel

Starring Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan, Hasan Minaj, Justin Theroux

Release Date August 3rd, 2018

Published August 3rd, 2018

The Spy Who Dumped Me stars Mila Kunis as Audrey, an underachiever working a menial job and celebrating her 30th birthday. Audrey is sad about the state of her life, not just the job but also her now ex-boyfriend, Drew (Justin Theroux), who dumped her via text message. Things aren’t all bad however as Audrey has a best friend, Morgan (Kate McKinnon) who is a constant source of support and great entertainment.

Audrey’s meaningless existence is changed forever when Audrey is thrown into the back of a truck with a pair of secret agents, Duffer (Hasan Minaj) and Sebastian (Sam Heughan), who inform her that Drew is a C.I,A Agent and he’s gone missing. When he pops up at her apartment he tells her that he has a mission she must help him with; she must travel to Vienna and deliver a package to another spy named Vern in order to save the world.

When Drew is left unconscious, Audrey and Morgan decide to actually go to Vienna and try to carry out his mission with the CIA hot on their tale. Once in Vienna, the two end up in gun battles, getting tortured, and facing off against some of the world’s greatest spies. The film travels to Prague and eventually to Paris as the globetrotting and gun toting get going the film gets really, quite funny.

Director Susanna Fogel does a great job of taking good advantage of her talented stars. The story of The Spy Who Dumped Me is a tad thin, so much of the film relies on the clever riffing of Kunis and McKinnon. Fogel smartly gives them room to roam within this goofball adventure to search for as many funny, and often quite dirty jokes. A lesser cast, actors without the ability to riff would unquestionably expose how thin this silly plot truly is.

Mila Kunis continues to grow into a reliable leading lady. Where it once seemed like she was destined to be outshined by funnier supporting players, like Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms, here Kunis is able to hang in and be as funny as her co-star. Perhaps it’s her improv background, but Kate McKinnon comes off as quite a generous scene partner. It’s clear that McKinnon is capable of dominating a scene, and she certainly takes over a few scenes, but for the most part she is matched riff for riff by Kunis.

That said, McKinnon does star in my favorite sequence of The Spy Who Dumped Me. The scene is late in the movie and involves a Cirque Du Soleil style routine on a trapeze, McKinnon in a wacky costume and a icy contract killer played by Ivanna Sakhno. The scene is high level goofy and McKinnon earns big laughs throughout with some terrific physical comedy. Sakhno is pretty great to having to play completely straight opposite McKinnon’s clowning.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is terrifically funny if a tad uneven. The movie is mostly riffing rather than story but when the riffing is this good it’s hard not to appreciate it. Kunis and McKinnon have remarkable chemistry and the fun they’re having is infectious. I could complain about predictability and the stop start nature of the pacing of the film but The Spy Who Dumped Me is far too fun for such complaints.

The Spy Who Dumped Me opens nationwide on August 3rd.

Movie Review Teen Titans Go to the Movies

Teen Titans Go to the Movies (2018) 

Directed by Peter Rida Mitchell, Aaron Horvath

Wirtten by Michael Jelenic, Aaron Horvath

Starring Scott Menville, Khary Payton, Greg Cipes, Hynden Walch, Kristen Bell, Nicolas Cage 

Release Date July 27th, 2018

Published July 28th, 2018

I am only vaguely aware of the Teen Titans cartoon series. I know that I have flashed past it on cable television, alway pausing for a moment when I would see a recognizable superhero, like a Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman, before moving on with my life. I’m aware that it has a reputation of being irreverent and quite funny for the age group it is aimed at, and even some older audiences who appreciate its satiric, deconstructionist take on comic book characters, or so I’m told.

Teen Titans Go to the Movies attempts to bring the magic of the small screen satire to the big screen and it works, for the most part. Teen Titans Go to the Movies is a funny and strange concoction that finds a group of super teenagers fighting for the respect that people their age don’t often get from adults. That’s a story that any teenager or former teenager should easily be able to relate to.

The Teen Titans are Robin (Scott Menville) aka Batman’s sidekick, Beast Boy (Greg Cipes) who can turn into any animal, Cyborg (Khary Payton) a half-human half transformer robot, Raven (Tara Strong) a misanthropic witch, and Starfire (Hynden Walch) a sweetheart alien Princess. Together they fight crime when they aren’t bickering or coming up with coordinated song and dance routines to tout how great they are.

The rest of the superhero world view the Titans as a joke and the opening sequence illustrates why. While they goof around rapping about their powers in front of a giant balloon monster wrecking havoc over a city, Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern show up and do the actual fighting of the big bad before explaining to the Titans and to us that the Titans are a bunch of goofs who should stay out of the way of the real heroes.

The Titans brush off the lambasting and decide to follow the heroes to the premiere of Batman’s new movie, even though technically, they weren’t invited. After sneaking into the premiere they meet Jade Wilson (Kristen Bell) who explains to them why they will never have a movie of their own, they don’t have a good nemesis, a bad guy foil who could raise their profile, an arch-nemesis if you will.

When the call goes out for a crime in progress the Titans leap into action and, as luck would have it, they stumble into a crime being committed by the evil mastermind Slade (Will Arnett). Though Slade laughs off the Titans offer to be their arch-nemesis, he does beat the team up and leave with his criminal booty. Robin meanwhile, is determined to make Slade their arch-nemesis and ride that rivalry to his own movie.

Eventually, Slade does take the Teen Titans seriously which leads him to try to destroy the team using Robin’s desire to be a movie star to drive a wedge into the group. His very obvious accomplice is a rather clever and funny running gag in a movie that has plenty of clever and funny gags. And yet, the comedy doesn’t mean that co-directors Aaron Horvath and Peter Rida Michall and their team of 8 credited writers, don’t ground this in some minor melodrama.

Teen Titans Go to the Movies takes somewhat seriously the relationship between the team and that grounding makes the jokes funnier and the plot more familiar, easy to follow even if you’re not a Titans regular. The group dynamic is goofy but with a bloated self-seriousness on the part of Robin that is the funniest thing about the group. Robin can be a goof just like the rest of the group but it’s his pompous belief in himself as a hero that is repeatedly punctured to strong comic effect.

The rest of the characters are less well rounded with Cyborg and Raven barely making an impression while Beast Boy and Starfire get a few solid punchlines though not much depth. The character that arguably has the most well-rounded arc is Will Arnett’s Slade who may not change much from his arrogant, growling bad guy-ness but does slowly come to respect and fear the Titans as they slowly come to prove themselves as heroes, goofball heroes, but heroes nonetheless.

If you like obscure reference humor you will love the fact that Nicholas Cage is in Teen Titans Go to the Movies. The joke is that Cage once was set to play Superman in a Tim Burton directed Superman movie that went as far as having a script and a new super suit and a long-haired Superman. Footage of Cage testing out this new look Superman went online a few years ago and Cage has maintained he would still like to play Superman and it’s nice to hear him get the chance here.

Teen Titans Go to the Movie is not a memorable movie, it’s not a lasting animated classic. It’s a well-made and quite funny television adaptation that likely won’t spawn a film franchise. But, for what it is, with it’s mild ambition and big laughs it’s not bad. Given the state of the D.C movie universe at the moment, it’s arguably among the best of the D.C comics adaptations, but that’s not saying much when you consider Man of Steel and Suicide Squad are part of that universe.

Movie Review: Blindspotting

Blindspotting (2018) 

Directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada

Written by Daveed Diggs

Starring Daveed Diggs, Rafael Cassal, Janina Gavankar, Ethan Embry

Blindspotting is a stunningly modern, of the moment movie. Directed by first time feature director Carlos Lopez Estrada and written by and starring Daveed Diggs, Blindspotting attacks our moment in time with a powerful story of race, crime. Fear and getting by. Set in Oakland, the film makes the changing city a character as well as Silicon Valley spills outward, gentrification feels like a threat, not exactly the worst threat these characters face. 

In Blindspotting Daveed Diggs stars as Collin, an Oakland twenty-something with just three days left on his probation. Collin spent several months in jail and has spent the past year in a halfway house but in three days he’s free. All he has to do is stay out of trouble. This is harder than it seems as Collin’s best friend, Miles (Rafael Casal) appears determined to locate trouble. One of the first scenes in the movie finds Miles, with Collin unwittingly in tow, buying a gun. 

Miles says it is to protect his family but Collin doesn’t care, he just wants to never see it and hope that he doesn’t get in trouble for being near it. The two men have been friends since childhood and it was Miles who came to see Collin in jail every week and gave him money and generally looked after him. Miles makes this very clear in conversations about Collin’s ex-girlfriend and current boss at a moving company, Val (Janina Gavankar). 

But that isn’t the story. One night after dropping off Miles and returning the moving truck to the company, Collin sees a young black man run past his truck, followed by a white police officer (Ethan Embry). The officer shoots the man in the back as the young man yells ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!.’ Collin and the cop lock eyes for a moment before other cops arrive and Collin is told to leave the scene. 

You think you know where Blindspotting might be headed after that but you will be surprised. The film is rarely about the shooting. The full breadth of this story is about the shooting but it’s about it in a much wider context of racism in general. The shooting is endemic of the larger problem at the heart of American race relations. It’s about how we see each other, the assumptions we make and how we fail to question those assumptions. 

Blindspotting features one of the best scenes of 2018. I won’t spoil it for you, it’s the ending of the movie. Daveed Diggs is known for his stage performance as Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton and he takes some of that Hamilton stage skill and bring it to this powerful scene in which he raps about all that we’ve seen before in the film and in the life experience of the character. It’s stagy, yes, but I could not rip myself away from it. 

The scene is incredibly powerful and director Carlos Lopez Estrada deserves a lot of credit for the staging of the scene. He creates a suspenseful ticking clock using a security system that keeps the scene incredibly tense throughout on top of Daveed Diggs’ incredible monologue. Rafael Casal’s Miles is only a witness in the scene but even how he’s used plays into the deep emotions of the scene, his face is indelible in the moment. 

The use of close-ups in Blindspotting is also quite powerful. A scene where Collin is walking down an empty street with a gun in his pocket and a cop pulls u-turn is punctuated by a close-up of Diggs’ face in the bright light of a police spotlight and then darkness. It’s a minor scene but it is filled with a remarkable level of emotion and that close-up is stunning. There are other powerful close-ups as well in the shooting scene and in that powerhouse ending that I talked about. 

Blindspotting is a testament to the powerful words of Daveed Diggs who wrote the screenplay and stars and to director Carlos Lopez Estrada who found a terrific way to introduce himself to feature filmmaking. This is an arresting, fascinating, suspenseful and emotional movie. Diggs and Casal use their friendly dynamic to make the movie less oppressive and more watchable than my description, the film does loosen its grip to let you breath and even laugh but, for the most part this is a tightly wound and engrossingly modern drama. 

Movie Review: Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade (2018) 

Directed by Bo Burnham

Written by Bo Burnham

Starring Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson

Release Date July 13th, 2018

Published August 15th, 2018

Eighth Grade is a movie of this moment; vital and real. Eighth Grade appears uniquely in tune to the teenage mind in a way that we’ve rarely seen in a feature film. Not since perhaps Catherine Hardwicke’s breakthrough 2003 feature, Thirteen, have I seen a movie that feels so uniquely on the wavelength of the modern teenager. Sweet, sensitive, smart and funny, Eighth Grade is one of the best movies of 2018 thus far.

Elsie Fisher stars in Eighth Grade as Kayla, a shy young woman at the end of her middle school years. Is Kayla really shy? Yes and no, she does have her own YouTube channel which is indicative of a desire to communicate with people. However, at school, Kayla has no friends and is given the award as the ‘Most Quiet’ girl at school. Kayla is awkward and angst-ridden around the other kids and it is a constant struggle between that angst and her desire to connect.

That struggle tends to manifest itself quite negatively in Kayla’s relationship with her single dad, Mark (Josh Hamilton), a doofy, dad joke spouting, good sport who is struggling with his own loneliness and insecurity about being a good father. The relationship with father and daughter is quietly the center of the plot of Eighth Grade which is otherwise plotless. Writer-Director Bo Burnham isn’t interested in plot but in atmosphere and especially in observing character.

In Elsie Fisher’s Kayla, Burnham has a character very much worth observing. Fisher’s remarkably innate likability and acute sensitivity make Kayla such a wonderful character. Unique and independent, Kayla may struggle with meeting friends but she does not struggle in evoking our heartfelt sympathy and care. I cared about Kayla the first moment she came on screen with her painfully earnest YouTube advice show as a window into her young soul.

Bo Burnham uses the device of Kayla’s ‘show’ to great effect as we learn things about the character in a way that feels fresh and organic and doesn’t resort to voice-over or other well-worn gimmicks of information exchange. Kayla isn’t an over the top personality, her YouTube show comes from a place of comfort where the only judgment she faces are from the likes, dislikes and page views, what few views she gets.

The aching, angsty,  earnestness of the millennial is captured here in a way that feels almost documentary-like. Burnham has a strong incite into this age group as it has been millennials who’ve helped to raise his profile and made his Netflix special a must see. He’s not pandering to them, he’s going out of his way to be understanding of them and careful in how he portrays them. While Burnham does resort to the kids always on their phone gag, the payoff that comes late when Kayla confronts a pair of phone-toting popular is worth the well-worn trope.

Elsie Fisher is a remarkable find, a young actress of the most natural instincts. Burnham has given her a wonderful character and range to play but Fisher is the one who makes Kayla sing. It’s a performance of layer and nuance and the empathy Fisher evokes for Kayla is the bond that drives the movie. We feel for her, worry for her, laugh with her and urge her forward as she pokes her head out into the world beyond her YouTube channel,

Equally excellent is veteran actor Josh Hamilton as Kayla’s lovingly befuddled father. Though he is the constant focus of his daughter’s unearned ire, we know he’s just as much of a lost soul as she is and loved how the movie never makes it easy for father and daughter to connect. Hamilton’s awkwardness reflects Fisher’s and bonds the two as parent and child. A scene between the two late in the film may be one of the best and most moving scenes in any movie in 2018 and much of the credit for the scene belongs to Hamilton.

Bo Burnham has made a lovely, insightful, warm, and funny movie that feels fresh and like nothing else in theaters today. It’s the first truly millennial movie, the first film to take on this generation and understand them and their unique sensibilities. He captures the earnest qualities that seem to be a very large part of the millennial experience and he does it all with great humor and without pandering. Eighth Grade is one exceptional film.

Documentary Review: Three Identical Strangers

Three Identical Strangers (2018) 

Directed by Tim Wardle

Written by Documentary 

Starring Edward Galland, David Kellman, Robert Shafran 

Release Date June 29th, 2018

Published August 25th, 2018

Nature or nurture is a question as old as when man began to question his very existence. This question speaks to the very soul of humanity: am I a product of how I was raised or is my existence a reaction to my environment. To me, the answer is rather simply, a mixture of both but that isn’t exactly a satisfying answer if you’re a social scientist. For years, the field of mental health would draw battle lines surrounding the nature vs nurture debate and it led to something rather monstrous in its coldly calculating science.

In 1961 a psychiatrist by the name of Peter Newbauer decided there was one way to settle nature vs nurture. With the help of a wealthy and well respected adoption agency, he would oversee the separation of sets of twins at birth, sending the siblings to different homes with different demographic make ups and track how they grow up via interviews mandated as part of the adoption agreement.

What? You’ve never heard of this monstrous experiment? There’s a reason for that, it was never published. The fact that this ever happened likely never would have came to light if Bobby Shafran hadn’t decided on attending community college, the same community college attended by Eddy Galland, his heretofore unknown twin brother. Even then, it seemed like a brief heartwarming accident, the kind of story that closes a local newscast. 

But then it was revealed that Bobby and Eddy had another brother, David, and were, in fact, adopted triplets. The story became a media sensation in 1980 and carried on for a few years with the triplets parlaying off of their minor fame. That to, could have been the end if the triplets story hadn’t intrigued an award winning journalist into looking into how something so strange could have taken place. What he found turned this heartwarming story, into a heart-rending scandal.

Three Identical Strangers is an incredibly compelling documentary. Director Tim Wardle is new to feature length documentary, he’s worked for several years in television but Three Identical Strangers feels like the work of a veteran. The story unfolds with remarkable clarity and vision with a strong hand at the narrative. Wardle sets us up brilliantly and then employs brilliant twists that are never forced or overly dramatic, but rather perfectly calibrated to documentary storytelling.

Wardle has a cinematic eye as well as a documentarians eye. Notice a scene in which he describes the adoptive parents meeting with the adoption agency after the triplets have found each other. There is a moment here that is dramatized and it is apart from the rest of the doc which is more traditional, face to camera interviews. The father of one of the boys witnesses the adoption agency people toasting over having seemed to dodge a bullet in their meeting with the parents. Your first thought is that this is a throwaway scene and this will now turn into a legal battle, but you’re wrong. I was wrong while watching it as well.

The scene is urgently important for setting up the rest of the documentary narrative. The whole film turns on this dramatized moment and it is an ingenious way to shift the structure of the narrative. The heartwarming and curious portion of the story is now over and the murky and darker side of this story is fully begun and what an incredible story we’re being told in Three Identical Strangers.

The film even begins the debate of nature vs nurture by seeming to take one side before switching and pleading the case of the other side. Again, I find this shift to be incredibly smart and in keeping with the clever way Wardle shifts from heartwarming curiosity to mysterious and murky morality play. The nature vs nurture debate will not be decided here or likely in any kind of text, filmic or otherwise, but Three Identical Strangers offers something unique and fascinating to that debate.

Three Identical Stranger is one of the best movies of 2018 and were it not for my deeply emotional connection to the Mr. Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, I might call it the best documentary of the year. It’s a wildly fascinating and exceptionally well told story. Tim Wardle is a terrific new voice in a feature documentary and I can’t wait to see what he does next after his remarkable triumph with Three Identical Strangers.

Movie Review The Catcher Was a Spy

The Catcher Was a Spy (2018) 

Directed by Ben Lewin 

Written by Robert Rodat 

Starring Paul Rudd, Sienna Miller, Mark Strong, Jeff Daniels, Tom Wilkinson

Release Date June 22nd, 2018

Published July 8th, 2018 

The Catcher Was a Spy stars Paul Rudd as Morris ‘Moe’ Berg, a former major league baseball catcher turned international spy. Berg played 15 years with the Boston Red Sox before retiring at the end of 1938. By 1941 Berg, known as Professor Berg among his teammates, a graduate of Princeton University, sought and received a position at the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA.

Rudd plays Berg as a man of many secrets and discretion. An early scene finds Berg going to a bar, thought by many as a haven for gay men. When he’s followed there by a suspicious teammate, Berg turns to violence to try to cover his tracks. Later, on a baseball tour of Japan next to luminaries such as Babe Ruth, Berg took the initiative to dress in Japanese garb and covertly film footage of a Japanese naval yard. He then parlayed the footage into his position with the OSS.

Sienna Miller co-stars in The Catcher Was a Spy as Estelle, Berg’s girlfriend. The relationship is fraught by Berg’s unwillingness to commit to Estelle, his desire not to have children and Estelle’s seeming awareness of Berg’s proclivities. A side mistress is less aware leading to an argument that illustrates Berg’s commitment to being discrete, even if it means losing someone he appears to care about.

Once Berg moves toward becoming a spy we meet his new OSS boss, played by Jeff Daniels. Daniels’ blunt, blustering military man turned spy is impressed by Berg’s initiative and ambition though wary of the secrets he keeps from the secret keepers. Nevertheless, it’s the OSS chief who assigns Berg to go to Italy and eventually on to Sweden to investigate how close Germany may be to having an atomic bomb.

Along on the mission in Italy, where he faces down enemy fire from fleeing German soldiers, are an army Colonel played by Guy Pearce and a physicist played by Paul Giamatti. Their target is the well known German Physicist Werner Heisenberg, played by Mark Strong. Heisenberg was one of the few scientists who chose to stay in Germany after the Nazi take over and was appointed head of the German effort to make a bomb.

The question is, is he helping or hurting the German cause? The Catcher is a Spy is ingenious and exciting in laying out Moe Berg’s mission and what is at stake. Having been a major league baseball player turned spy, Moe has never had to kill a man and much tension and drama is built around whether he could, if called upon, kill Heisenberg to keep him from building the atomic bomb.

History tells us how that played out but if you, like me, aren’t fully aware how this turned out, it’s an exciting and exceptionally well told story. The Catcher Was a Spy was directed by Ben Lewin, a Polish director best known for his 2012 feature The Sessions starring Helen Hunt, a film that earned high praise for Hunt who was thought to be a possible Oscar contender. Hunt played a sex therapist working with a handicapped man played by John Hawkes in an equally lauded performance.

Similar acclaim could be coming for Paul Rudd who brilliantly plays Moe Berg. Rudd, known for his work as Ant-Man and as the comic foil of director Judd Apatow in several films, plays Berg very low key, almost unknowable. It’s a complex character to play, a man so insular, who kept his own council, with few broad strokes in his personality. Rudd finds smart beats to play, especially employing Berg’s talent for languages which Rudd and the story use late in the film as part of the spy play. Listen for his intentional lack of accent in an important scene, subtle but ingenious.

The Catcher Was a Spy will be a treat for anyone who loves an old school spy movie, one without the trappings of a James Bond or Jason Bourne. The film played as part of a new series of Independent Films at the Putnam Museum. The Putnam is partnering with the New York Film Critics Series to show 10 independent features unlikely to play at local multiplexes. The next feature for the month of July is yet to be announced.

You can keep an eye out for The Catcher is a Spy on on-demand services such as Amazon Prime over the next few months.

Movie Review Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (2018) 

Directed by J.A Bayona 

Written by Derek Connelly, Colin Trevorrow 

Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeff Goldblum, Rafe Spall, B.D Wong 

Release Date June 22nd, 2018 

Published June 21st, 2018 

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom picks up the action of Jurassic World not long after the action of the first film in the reboot franchise. Here we find Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire now working as a dinosaur advocate. Claire is lobbying the government to mount a mission to Isla Nublar, former home of the Jurassic World theme park, to rescue the dinosaurs who are threatened with extinction due to an active volcano on the island.

When the government declines the effort, on the advice of none other than Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jeff Goldblum’s character from the original Jurassic Park, Claire is forced to accept the help of secretive billionaire Benjamin Lockwood (Jame Cromwell) and his associate Eli Mills (Rafe Spall). Lockwood was a partner of the original park owner, Dr. Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough from the original Jurassic Park), before he dropped out of the project following the death of his daughter.

Lockwood and Mills will bankroll a secret expedition to save as many dinosaurs as they can but only if Claire can convince her old flame Owen (Chris Pratt) to come with her. Owen is the only person on the planet who can likely convince Blue the Raptor to remain calm enough to be captured and taken off the island. Once he agrees, the expedition is all set but of course, there is a secret agenda at play and once the dinosaurs are secured, plans get underway to bring them to Lockwood’s estate and not the island sanctuary that Claire was promised.

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom was directed by J.A Bayona who took the reins of the franchise from Colin Trevorrow. Trevorrow had left the project behind after he’d been hired to direct the final film in the Star Wars franchise, a film he was famously fired from. Trevorrow remains on this project however as one of the screenwriters alongside Kong Skull Island screenwriter Derek Connolly. Bayona brings a unique, childlike sensibility to Fallen Kingdom that makes the film scary yet still family friendly.

Bayona was the director of the wonderful 2016 family adventure A Monster Calls and that experience appears to have influenced the making of Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom. The film features a subplot involving the granddaughter of Benjamin Lockwood, Maisey played by newcomer Isabella Sermon. This subplot brings a child’s perspective to the film similar to the perspective in the original which featured a pair of kids in peril.

There is a warmth to the production design of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom that was lacking in the original. This is owed to the main setting of the film, an elaborate mansion filled with dinosaurs as the film progresses. Despite the chilling scenes of suspense and terror with characters running for their lives, the mansion is actually rather inviting, like a library or a museum but filled with real dinosaurs.

The strong production design of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom extends to the special effects which are top notch. The dinosaurs remain an extraordinary sight and the ways in which the effects interact with the human characters are as remarkable today as they were in 1993 when Steven Speilberg made us believe that dinosaurs had roared back to life in Jurassic Park. The effects and design go a long way to make up for a tepid script and lacking characters.

I remain a fan of Chris Pratt but boy does he need to change up his style soon. His Owen is barely a step away from his Star Lord character from Guardians of the Galaxy. Owen is perhaps a tad more muscled up and slightly more mature but the wisecracks and tough guy posturing remain Pratt’s prominent acting tricks. Howard meanwhile, has moments when she breaks out of damsel in distress mode but it’s a mostly one note performance undermined by a script that doesn’t seem to know what to do with her.

The human villains are the weakest part of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. Rafe Spall’s weasley assistant and Toby Jones rat-like underground arms dealer the ostensible villains but they never prove necessary beyond providing a reason to get the dinosaurs to the mansion. They lack personality and their ambitions appear silly. The notion that gangsters and arms dealers are paying millions to buy dinosaurs never registers as realistic and the supposed buyers are mere caricatures of villains from other movies.

The best villain in the film is the one that doesn’t have an agenda or a scheme. The Indo-Raptor is a remarkable creation, combining the DNA of a T-Rex and a Raptor. The bad guys were hoping to create a hunting, killing dinosaur that could be controlled and used as a weapon. But, when the Indo-Raptor gets loose, there is no controlling it and its rampage provides the best parts of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom.

I don’t love Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom but by the lowered standard of brainless summer blockbuster, it’s not bad. Turn off your brain and enjoy the remarkable dinosaur CGI and you will have fun with this movie. It may not be great art but it’s fun enough for me to say take the kids and have a good time. Keep in mind, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is rated PG-13 and the violence can be scary for young kids, especially the Indo-Raptor is a potential figure for children’s nightmares but as long as you prepare them and hold their hands, kids 8 and up should have a good time here.

Movie Review Tag

Tag (2018) 

Directed by Jeff Tomsic

Written by Rob McKittrick

Starring Jeremy Renner, Ed Helms, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, Hannibal Burress

Release Date June 15th, 2018

Published June 16th, 2018

Is Tag juvenile? Of course, the comedy featuring an all star cast playing an extreme version of the schoolyard classic game will inspire a number of think pieces about growth stunted man-boys and their unwillingness to grow up. This however, misses the genuine and very sweet, and very funny point of Tag. Based on a true story, Tag is an ode to friendship and how the friends we make as children remain special whether we stay in touch or not.

Tag stars Ed Helms as Hoagie, a veterinarian with a thriving practice, a loving and supportive wife, played by Isla Fisher and even kids that we don't meet in the movie. However, for one month of each year, all of Hoagie's grown up responsibilities go out the window. In the month of May, Hoagie plays an unending game of Tag with his group of childhood friends including Callahan (Jon Hamm), Chili (Jake Johnson), Sable (Hannibal Burress) and the best of the best Tag champion, Jerry (Jeremy Renner).

In the nearly 30 years that these friends have played Tag, Jerry has never been tagged and now, he's decided to retire, un-tagged. This sends Hoagie and the rest of the gang on a desperate quest to get Jerry before the end of the month and his retirement. How far is Jerry willing to go to keep his streak alive and make things interesting? He's scheduled his wedding on May 31st and specifically did not invite his four closest friends.

Naturally, Hoagie finds out about the wedding and notes it as the perfect time to tag Jerry. However, these guys are actually Jerry's friend and don't want to ruin the big day, thus allowing for rules to be in place specifically to cater to the feelings of Jerry's new bride, Susan (Leslie Bibb), who may or may not be in on Jerry's scheme to remain un-tagged. Along for the ride is a Wall Street Journal reporter, Rebecca (Annabelle Wallis) who drops her story on Callahan as the CEO of a major company in favor of this story about this epic game.

Tag is the first feature film for director Jeff Tomsic. Previously, Tomsic has made his career in television, directing comedy specials for people like T.J Miller and sitcoms such as TBS's underrated The Detour and Comedy Central's much loved Broad City. Tomsic doesn't yet have much visual invention in his work but it's solid and professional. The stand out moments are the big comic set pieces such as a forest chase where Jerry has an elaborate escape and a church set scene that once again finds Jerry out thinking about his buddies.

As I was saying in the opening however, as juvenile as Tag unquestionably is, there is a good heart to it. The goal of these guys, characters who are based on a real group of friends in Oregon, is to remain friends and remain in touch, quite literally. Many of the set pieces in Tag are based on bizarre things these real guys have actually done including dressing in costumes and chasing one another on golf carts.

The point is that the childlike joy inspired by the game Tag keeps these lifelong friends from growing complacent. That's the thing about friendships from childhood, complacency and distance creeps in and while modern technology allows many ways for us to stay in touch, there is nothing better than a milestone moment of being in the same place at the same time to really remind you how important having friends is. Life can so easily get in the way, a game of Tag now and then, or your friendship equivalent, may be just the thing an adult needs to get by.

Documentary Review: Won't You Be My Neighbor

Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018)

Directed by Morgan Neville

Written by Documentary

Starring Mr. Rogers 

Release Date June 8th, 2018

Published June 8th, 2018

What is missing from the world in this day and age? Kindness. Kindness appears to be missing in this day and age. While everyone is yelling at each other and becoming tribal via social media, kindness is becoming more and more rare. Kindness exemplifies the work of Fred Rogers, the remarkable host of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. The life and work of Fred Rogers is now being celebrated in a new documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?).”

In the 1951, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Fred Rogers was on his way to become a Presbytarian Minister when he first saw a television. The remarkable invention inspired him with its seemingly endless possibilities. Mr. Rogers would become a Minister eventually as well as a music scholar with a degree in music composition from Rollins College in Florida before settling into the world of television at WQED in Pittsburgh.

Rogers determination from the beginning was to work in children’s television and by 1963, the seeds of what would become Mr. Rogers Neighborhood were sewn. You likely know about Mr. Rogers and his sweaters and his songs and puppets but did you know he studied child development with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh alongside? That’s just one of the fascinating notes that make Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?) so unique and interesting.

"Won’t You be My Neighbor(?)" was directed by Morgan Neville, a documentarian who specializes in music documentaries. His “20 Feet from Stardom” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature at the 2013 Academy Awards. Neville is a smart, thoughtful and curious director who comes at the material of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” with an eye toward a conventional documentary narrative, a linear, life story, approach.

However, the unusual part of the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” is in the weight Neville gives not just to telling Mr. Rogers’ life story but explaining the impact he had on the lives of his viewers. Rogers was a quiet revolutionary, a Republican who fought for the funding of PBS in front of Congress and won. In 1968, in the wake of the death of Robert F. Kennedy, Rogers engaged his child audience in a conversation about death.

That same year, as controversy raged over civil rights and black people were being kicked out of public pools, Rogers enlisted his friend, Francois Clemmons as Officer Clemmons in the Neighborhood, to share a soak in his pool. The conversation had nothing to do with race or the raging controversies, it was just pleasant small talk about the weather but the visual of two people, black and white, sharing a kindly conversation, said what the conversation did not.

Clemmons is among the very emotional interviews that are featured in “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?), alongside Rogers’ sons and his wife, Joanne. Naturally, everyone has lovely things to say about Rogers but the stories aren’t saccharine hagiography, but rather an earnest, emotional, fond remembrance. The film humanizes Rogers, especially near the end of the film when we get a glimpse of Rogers’ own insecurities, the kinds of things he helped children get passed.

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” is a remarkable documentary without being showy or over-dramatic. Like its subject, the documentary is quietly revolutionary, playing to our emotional attachment to Mr. Rogers while genuinely educating us about this remarkable man and his impact on the world. For me, his kindness is a model. Rogers’ kindness is a superpower better than most superhero powers. Kindness is at the heart of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?) and that kindness, remembering that kind of kindness, makes this the best documentary of 2018 thus far.

Movie Review I Feel Pretty

I Feel Pretty (2018) 

Directed by Abby Cohn, Marc Silverstein

Written by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein

Starring Amy Schumer, Rory Scovell, Michelle Williams

Release Date April 20th, 2018

Published July 17th, 2018

I Feel Pretty stars Amy Schumer as Renee Bennett, an attractive and funny woman who doesn’t find herself attractive. Renee’s low self esteem has hindered both her personal and professional life where she works for a famed makeup company but works in the I.T department in a basement office, well away from the glamor and fashion that the company is known for. Though she longs to be in the big office, she lacks the confidence to go for what she wants.

Things change when Renee takes a spin class and proceeds to tumble off of her bike. Having hit her head hard, Renee’s concussion changes her life and personality. Suddenly, post head injury, Renee is super-confident and believes she is the best looking woman in any room she’s in. This causes a rift with her friends, Aidy Bryant and Busy Phillips, but it does help her climb the corporate ladder as she lands a gig working in the big building at the makeup company owned by Avery LeClaire (Michelle Williams) and her grandmother Lily (Lauren Hutton).

Renee’s personal life also takes a positive turn as her confidence attracts a boyfriend, Ethan (Rory Scovell) and the attention of Avery’s stunningly handsome, playboy brother Grant (Tom Hopper). Ethan is a perfectly down to earth guy while Grant is a dreamboat and when Renee finds herself the object of both of their affections, even her newfound confidence can’t contain her nervous excitement.

I Feel Pretty requires a bit of unpacking in your emotional response to it. For me, I’ve always found Amy Schumer attractive, dating back to before her popular Comedy Central series, Inside Amy Schumer, to her time as a stand-up comic on the rise. It was hard to accept the gags that intended to show Renee as being unattractive as I did find her attractive. The key however, is to remember that this is Renee’s perspective of herself and not an objective take.

Here, the inexperience of the writing and directing team of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein shines through. A more experienced filmmaker would have found a way to let audiences in on the idea that we are seeing the movie not from our objective position but completely from Renee’s subjective perspective, how she sees the world and assumes the world sees her. From that perspective the story of I Feel Pretty makes more sense.

It’s not that the direction failed to communicate the perspective, it’s rather that it was clumsy in communicating that idea and thus it’s easy to misunderstand the story as an objective idea of how the world sees Renee. If taken the wrong way, it can seem as if Renee is the butt of all of the jokes, as if the movie is making fun of her for seeing herself as attractive. Once you look at it subjectively and recognize that the film is entirely Renee’s unreliable, biased perspective, it makes the film easier to understand and enjoy.

Rory Scovell, in his first leading man role is quite good at reacting to Schumer’s bawdy antics. A scene, well-featured in the film’s trailer, has the two of them visit a bar that happens to be hosting a wet t-shirt contest. Watching Scovell’s shocked reactions to Schumer first wanting to go on stage and then what happens when she actually is on stage is very funny, and the scene immediately after that has a nice romantic undercurrent that I wish the film had been better at presenting in other scenes.

It's odd to call Michelle Williams a scene-stealer as she is a well known, Academy Award nominated actress but indeed, scene-stealer is her role here. As Renee's boss and idol, Williams plays Avery As confident, assured and comically disconnected with the world beyond her bubble of rich excess. The baby voice that Williams affects in the movie is a terrific device to show how everyone has something they are insecure about no matter how rich or confident they appear. In another, lesser comedy with a lesser actress that voice would be the extent of the character. 

Amy Schumer is a terrific comedian with a great sense of timing and the jokes in the movie are terrific. Yes, some of the gags are a little forced and Schumer is put in the position of using broad physicality to sell some of the lesser material but there are plenty of well-timed and quite funny moments in I Feel Pretty. At the very least, there are enough good jokes for me to recommend the movie on Blu-Ray, DVD and On Demand on Tuesday, July 17th.

Movie Review: Borg-McEnroe

Borg vs. McEnroe (2018)

Directed by Janus Metz Pedersen

Written by Ronnie Sandahl

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Sverrir Gudnasson, Stellan Skarsgard

Release Date April April 13th, 2018

Published August 10th, 2018

Usually when a movie bombs in spectacular fashion there is a very good reason why. Whether it was production delays, a star who finds trouble in the media, or a general lack of quality, there is usually an obvious reason to point to why something failed. Thus far however, it’s hard to say exactly why Borg Vs McEnroe is one of 2018’s biggest losers. Despite an 83% positive rating from critics at RottenTomatoes and an audience score nearly as good, the film barely broke the surface in terms of attention and with a $65 million dollar budget, there is not excuse for the movie tanking so badly.

Borg vs McEnroe takes audiences behind the scenes of one of the most epic battles in tennis history, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe’s spectacular fight over the 1980 Wimbledon Championship. With Borg chasing his 5th straight Wimbledon and McEnroe the cocky upstart, making consistent headlines with his consistently bad on-court behavior, the match up was instantly iconic and more than lived up to its legendary expectations.

Bjorn Borg (Sverrir Gudnasson) wasn’t always a Swiss Cyborg with laser focus and no emotion on the court. As we learn from Borg vs McEnroe, Borg had more in common with the young John McEnroe than we ever imagined. Borg was cocky and filled with rage as a teenager and nearly found himself kicked out of tennis before he could ever become a champion. Borg nearly chose hockey as a more apt outlet for his rage filled tennis game.

Then, Borg met Swedish tennis legend Lennert Bergelin (Stellan Skarsgard). It was Bergelin who rescued Borg’s career when he was nearly kicked out of the game as rage fueled teen. It was Bergelin who taught Borg to slow down and take one point at a time and, most importantly, not to let his opponent see his emotions. Despite Borg’s cyborg behavior on the court we learn from the movie that he had perhaps a form of OCD, or at least a deeply held superstition, that drove him mad and could at times hamper his on court abilities.

John McEnroe is at once more and less complicated that Borg. As played by Shia LeBeouf, McEnroe is quick to rage on the court and stand-offish off the court. McEnroe was friendlier than Borg and actually made friends on the tennis tour, while Borg practiced in private and rarely left his highly appointed hotel room with his ritualistic layout of tennis gear and his fetishistic approach to sleep temperature.

There are more interesting details about Borg and McEnroe in Borg vs McEnroe but I won’t spoil them here. Director Janus Metz does terrific job of setting the stage for Borg and McEnroe’s epic match. We get a great sense of the character’s histories and how they form the men they are on the court and the more volatile behind the scenes moments have a riveting quality in the context of the final act of the movie, the Wimbledon final of 1980.

Sverrir Gudnason is a real life tennis pro, once Sweden’s number 1 player though not someone who broke out into worldwide fame. His credible impression of Borg on the court is a highlight even as the film appears to be hiding Lebeouf behind quick cuts. Lebeouf does well to look credible but it’s hard to imagine he would be good enough to recreate the actual style of Borg vs McEnroe as even the real life Borg and McEnroe struggled to find the magic in real life.

Borg vs McEnroe is a terrific sports movie. It’s conventional but still compelling. Gudnason is strong for a guy who plays professional tennis for a living. He’s genuinely compelling as Borg even if it never seems like we get a glimpse into what he’s really thinking. LeBeouf gets the showier part and it works as Lebeouf’s own youthful troubles seem to somewhat mirror McEnroe’s.

Why did Borg vs McEnroe fail so spectacularly? The film made only $7 million dollars worldwide on a budget of $65 million dollars. It’s hard to say why it happened but it wasn’t the fault of the movie. The film is solid, well made and well acted. The characters are compelling, the tennis is exciting. What happened to make fans reject the film so hard by not buying a ticket? It’s baffling but there it is. $65 million dollars down the drain all because audiences decided to skip on seeing a pretty good sports movie to the point that it didn’t even make it to nationwide release.

Borg vs McEnroe is available now on Blu-Ray, DVD and On-Demand Streaming.

Movie Review: A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place (2018) 

Directed by John Krasinski 

Written by John Krasinski, Beck and Woods

Starring Emily Blunt, John Krasinski

Release Date April 6th, 2018

Published April 5th, 2018 

A Quiet Place stars John Krasinski and Emily Blunt as husband and wife and parents of three kids in a post-apocalyptic Midwestern America. We meet the family 89 days into this seeming apocalypse as they are gathering supplies in the dusty remains of a pharmacy. One of the kids is sick but the bigger issue is the youngest son who has set his eyes upon a battery powered toy rocket.

Why is the toy rocket a big deal? In this apocalypse, sound is your greatest enemy. The slightest hint of noise can bring the arrival of nasty, assumedly alien, beasts that strike quickly and kill mercilessly. When the boy flips the switch on his new toy, his parents were unaware he’d taken it, the tension is off the charts and A Quiet Place gets off to a stunning start that becomes a relentless, tension soaked 90 minutes.

John Krasinski directed A Quiet Place from a script initially penned by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck though Krasinski is also credited on the script. The premise is clever and Krasinski as director makes smart choices in how he capitalizes on the premise to create incredible tension. The toy rocket is just the first of several ways the movie capitalizes on the central notion of not making a sound.

The other major set-piece comes with the reveal that Blunt’s character, none of the characters are named until the closing credits, is pregnant. The logistics of attempting to give birth under the circumstances of this plot is clever if a tad unrealistic. We are forced to simply accept that these otherwise careful characters had very quiet sex and took the risk of pregnancy despite previous experience that told them how nearly impossible a silent birth would be.

One of the audience members at my screening of A Quiet Place was rather apoplectic at the notion of silent sex, though I do believe there is an attempt to explain it. That however requires reading far too much into what is an otherwise straight forward character study that also happens to be a horror movie. Let’s just say that a sound proofed room may or may not have been designed and leave it at that.

I have a number of quibbles with A Quiet Place, little loose strings I could tug on for a while but those are very much secondary to the excitement created by Krasinski’s smart direction. I will say that the clichéd exchange when a husband tells his pregnant wife she’s beautiful and she responds that she’s ‘fat’ and he makes a wise-crack about how he didn’t say that, is not refreshed simply by being said in ASL. If we could retire this conversation in movies I would be very happy.

Like I was saying however, my problems with A Quiet Place are relatively minor compared to how smart the movie is elsewhere. The monsters are scary, the action set-pieces are well staged and the tension, especially during the birth scene, is off the charts fantastic. Krasinski’s deft camera choices play up the tension exceptionally well and the sound design smartly underlines the tension, even when it’s just a silly jump scare.

Is A Quiet Place a revolutionary new wave in horror? No, the hype in fact is probably doing a great disservice to the movie. A Quiet Place is very good but considering it as anything more than a terrifically thrilling genre piece is only going to cause future audiences to feel a tad disappointed. A Quiet Place doesn’t rethink the genre, it’s not a landmark event and if you go in expecting something iconic you may come away thinking you missed something.

Movie Review Suspiria

Suspiria (2018) 

Directed by Luca Guadagnino 

Written by David Kajganich

Starring Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Grace Moretz,Mia Goth, Angela Winkler

Release Date October 26th, 2018 

Published December 15th, 2018

I’m embarrassed to say that I am completely defeated by Suspiria. I have no idea what this movie is intending to say. I recognize that the filmmaking is lush and gorgeous and a few scenes in the movie are striking and memorable, but I cannot, for the life of me, find a point in the fine filmmaking. Suspiria isn’t scary enough for full on horror, despite some high level gore, and it doesn’t appear to have much of a political message. So what the hell did I just watch? 

Suspiria stars Dakota Johnson as Susie Bannion, a former Quaker turned wannabe dancer who has moved to Berlin to study under the famed Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). Susie has done this on spec, she is not even guaranteed the chance to try out. The school year has already begun and there may not even be space. But, Susie takes the chance nevertheless and something in her dance strikes a chord so deep in Madame Blanc that Susie earns her way in. 

Meanwhile, in a prologue, we’ve met Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), a deeply troubled young girl who is visiting her psychiatrist, Dr Klemperer (also played by Tilda Swinton under heavy and convincing, old man makeup). The doctor believes that Patricia’s rants about witches at her dance school, the same one that Susie is to attend, are delusions. However, when Patricia goes missing, Dr Klemperer is forced to look at her delusions in a different manner. 

Caught in the midst of all of this, the disappearance of Patricia and the arrival of Susie, is Sara (Mia Goth). Sara was Patricia’s closest friend and has been tasked by Madame Blanc with helping Susie get situated, in Patricia’s former room no less. Sara slowly becomes suspicious and her suspicions drive much of the plot in the second act or is it the 4th? The film is divided into multiple parts with a prologue and an epilogue and an epic length, nearly an hour longer than Dario Argento’s original Suspiria. 

The style of Suspiria is top notch. The gorgeous deep focus cinematography of Call Me By Your Name cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom takes a few notes from Argento’s original, especially with the use of the color red, but has its own unique beauty in the remarkable angles and striking use of light and dark. I have no problems whatsoever with the technical side of director Luca Guadagnino’s production. 

The issues in Suspiria arise when I attempt to bring the film into some kind of greater focus. I am trying to extract a point. One fellow critic I read said the decision to set the film in Berlin, the original was set in Freiburg, Germany, was intended to evoke the division of the city after World War 2 juxtaposed with the division of the self, i.e the public and the private, the duality at the heart of so many of us, the side we show others and the side we keep to ourselves. 

I kind of see that but it doesn’t help me understand the film's final act of blood and dance. I genuinely have no clue what happened in the final act of the movie. I could describe it in full spoiler mode because I don’t know what I would be spoiling if anything. The final blood-soaked scenes are striking but what they have to do with anything either in the story the film is telling in text or metaphorically in subtext. 

I’m embarrassed because I am usually rather adept at sussing out metaphors and deeper meanings, it’s kind of my thing. If I can’t suss one directly, I can usually assign one but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what Suspiria is intended to say about women, sexuality, dance, or witches. Maybe it’s not intended to mean anything and is just an experiment in form. If that’s the case, it’s not very clear from the characters who seem to be striding toward some kind of point, even if I can’t seem to follow it. 

Movie Review Support the Girls

Support the Girls (2018) 

Directed by Andrew Bujalski

Written by Andrew Bujalski

Starring Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Shayna McHayle, A.J Michalka

Release Date August 24th, 2018

Published October 10th, 2018

Support the Girls stars the brilliant Regina Hall as Lisa, the fed up manager of a Hooters-esque sports bar in some nameless California strip mall. Lisa has played den mother to a core group of waitresses for a few years now, including Maci (Haley Lu Richardson) and Danyelle (Shayna McHayle), among others. Lately, Lisa has grown fully weary of the place where she works. The pay isn’t great, the boss, played by James LeGros, is a jerk and even her girls are becoming a bit of a pain. 

On this day that we are watching unfold in Support the Girls things have begun in a most trying fashion. Krista (A.J Michalka) has dumped her boyfriend and is having a serious legal problem and no money to help her get out of trouble. She’s going to stay at Lisa’s house while Lisa figures out a way to help her. Krista will be at Lisa’s alongside Lisa’s husband, who has recently lost his job and has become shiftless and depressed. 

When Lisa arrives at the restaurant she finds the place has been broken into and the thief is trapped in the ceiling. In climbing into the ceiling, the thief has taken out the cable so now she has a sports bar with no sports and a big fight tonight that is supposed to bring in a big crowd. At the very least, Lisa does get an idea to help Krista, she’s going to do a charity car wash with the help of a group of eager young applicants who showed up for job interviews that Lisa forgot about. 

The car wash will need to come off without her boss, Cubby (LeGros) finding out about it, meaning no social media push. She also needs to come up with a fake charity because if people know it’s just for some girls' legal defense they may not be sympathetic. The problems continue to mount both big and small including Maci spending too much time with an old man customer and Danyelle lacking child care and thus bringing her son to work with her. 

None of these situations that Lisa is dealing with are particularly funny in and of themselves but as they add up, one after another after another, there is a compelling narrative that always keeps your attention. Regina Hall is a wonderful actress, endlessly sympathetic and when she’s fed up, you feel it and you can’t help but be in that moment with her. Her bickering with LeGros’ Cubby has a nasty quality to it with an edge that tells you perhaps she’s going to be fired at any moment. 

That sparky kind of tension is perhaps the real driving force of Support the Girls. Throughout the movie these types of sparky if not flat out, fiery exchanges bubble up and kick the plot forward. Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria is in the movie as a tough talking customer who feels a deep protectiveness toward the girls and isn’t afraid to throw down if someone is getting out of line. Delaria keeps amping up tensions in each of her scenes and she is incredibly fun to watch. 

Haley Lu Richardson is a complete doll as the endlessly chipper Maci. Maci is the party starter, the sexy chick who is both putting on an act and living that act. Credit to Richardson, and to screenwriter and director Andrew Bujalski, for never settling on Maci’s stereotypical qualities. She takes the flirting with the old man customer story to a place of genuine, unexpected pathos in a scene that really made me smile. 

Smiles are the par for the course of Support the Girls. The film isn’t big on drama or comedy. It’s a slice of Life movie that consistently engages via smart and charming characters and lead performance by Regina Hall that you can’t resist rooting for. The film isn’t perfect but it will make you happy for the most part. Support the Girls achieves very modest goals of being engaging and charming if not deeply artful, moving or laugh out loud hilarious. 

Movie Review Stan & Ollie

Stan & Ollie (2018)

Directed by Jon S. Baird

Written by Jeff Pope

Starring John C. Reilly, Steve Coogan, Shirley Henderson, Nina Arianda, Danny Huston

Release Date December 28th, 2018

Published December 26th, 2018

Stan & Ollie is a late addition to my best of the year list. This wonderful film chronicling the final tour of the legendary comedy duo Laurel & Hardy is funny and poignant without ever becoming cloying or pushy. Steve Coogan and John C Reilly beautifully capture the history and the strain between the two great friends and partners as they attempt to salvage one last bit of glory before the spotlight fades for good.

In 1954, having not made a movie together in 15 years, Laurel & Hardy reunited for a tour of England in hopes of getting a movie project off the ground with an English producer. Things don’t get off to an auspicious start as their tour manager, Delfont (Rufus Jones) books them a run down hotel and a small theater that they are unable to sell out. Worse yet, the producer of their proposed film project won’t take Stan’s calls.

Things become so dire that it appears as if the tour will be cut short as ticket sales lag. Meanwhile, we cut to the back story of what led to their break up 15 years earlier. Danny Huston portrays legendary producer Hal Roach, the man who put the duo together and brought them to the big screen. While Ollie is content with their arrangement, Stan, who once partnered with Charlie Chaplin before his days in the movies, wants to make more money.

With Stan’s contract up, he’s managed to book a deal with Fox but only for Laurel & Hardy, not just for himself. The deal fell through when Ollie decided to remain with Hal Roach and even made a movie, Zenobia, without his long time partner. Zenobia wasn’t a hit and for more than a decade both men’s careers foundered. We don’t know what brought them back together but a payday in England appears to have been the reason.

Even still, the two have a tremendous stage act that we get glimpses of and those glimpses are hysterically funny. As the story progresses, the two begin to do press for the tour and eventually the tour begins to gain ground and sell out shows. Naturally, old tensions come back into light and the tour is thrown into chaos when it appears that Hardy’s health won’t allow him to continue.

Stan & Ollie was directed by Jon S Baird whose previous film, Filth, starring James McAvoy, is quite a departure from the gentle and sweet poignance of Stan & Ollie. Nevertheless, Baird does a tremendous job keeping a good pace and with cinematographer Laurie Rose, he’s crafted not just a funny movie, but quite a beautiful movie. Credit also goes to prosthetics makeup designer Mark Coulier for turning the lanky Mr Reilly seamlessly into the corpulent Mr Hardy.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also praise screenwriter Jeff Pope who worked from the book Laurel & Hardy: The British Tours by A.J Marriott. The dialogue, though mostly inferred, feels real, dynamic, and authentic. The lovely recreations of the Laurel & Hardy performances are wonderful but it is the private moments that resonate deeply, especially a near break up scene that plays as comedy for those who can’t hear the deeply hurtful things the two say to one another.

And then, of course, there are the two incredible performances at the center of the film. John C Reilly has earned both a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award nomination for his performance as Oliver Hardy and both are much deserved. Reilly, even under pounds of prosthetics finds the heart of Oliver Hardy in lovely fashion. He appears to have been a lovely man and while the film likely shaves the edges off of all of these characters, this is a lovely way to remember these men.

Steve Coogan in many ways has a much harder performance. Stan Laurel played the fool in many of the Laurel & Hardy movies, bumbling his friend into one silly bit of nonsense after another, but behind the scenes, Laurel was a force to be reckoned with. Laurel wrote much of the duo's routines for stage and screen and was even deferred to by many directors for how to film those routines, though he never earned a directors credit.

Coogan movingly captures the pain and frustration that made Stan Laurel so driven and yet so kind. He wasn’t wrong to want to get the duo more money, they were rather underpaid given their success, and it is a fine tribute to the man that he never stopped fighting for the recognition that he felt they both deserved, but especially for the endless hours of work he put in to make them so successful.

Stan & Ollie is a wonderful movie, a true crowd pleaser. It’s a movie that fans and friends and family of the legendary duo can be proud of. Yes, they had their petty differences and egotism but at the heart, they were showmen and dedicated friends. Stan & Ollie is the kind of tribute these two men deserve after so many years of being under-recognized behind contemporaries such The Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and the copycats who came after such as Abbott & Costello and, to a lesser extent, Martin & Lewis.

Movie Review Sorry to Bother You

Sorry to Bother You (2018) 

Directed by Boots Riley

Written by Boots Riley 

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Danny Glover, Terry Crews, Patton Oswalt, Armie Hammer, David Cross, Steven Yuen, Omari Hardwick, Jermaine Fowler

Release Date July 6th, 2018

Published July 6th, 2018

Sorry to Bother You is among the most bracing and stupefying movies of this century. Directed by Boots Riley, no film aside from perhaps Get Out, has felt this alive in this moment of our shared American history. This absurdist masterpiece about identity politics, corporate greed, liberal guilt and moral licensing, works on so many unique levels of satire it can be hard to keep up with but it’s damn sure worth trying to keep up with.

Sorry to Bother You stars LaKeith Stanfield, a star of the aforementioned Get Out along with equally of the moment series Atlanta on FX. Stanfield plays Cassius Green, a lean and hungry young man, quite literally hungry, he has almost no money, who we meet as he attempts to lie himself into a new job. Cassius is applying to work at a telemarketing firm and once hired he finds himself struggling to make sales.

Then, an older telemarketer, Langston (Danny Glover), gives Cash some very important advice, use your white voice. Here’s where the transgressive kick of Sorry to Bother You kicks in. Immediately, Langston gets on the phone and the surreal voice of Steve Buscemi is coming out of the mouth of Danny Glover. Soon, Cash gives his white voice a shot and he’s a natural with the voice of David Cross laying over that of LaKeith Stanfield.

This is the first layer of the identity politics satire at play in Sorry to Bother You. It gets a great deal more intense after that, after Cash realizes how powerful he can be with his ultra-confident white voice. Soon, Cash is promoted to Power Caller and is working in a pampered office with a six figure salary while his friends, including Union organizer, Squeeze (Steven Yuen) and girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson) are left behind to try and fight for more pay without the power of Cash’s earning power to help their position.

Cash’s rise through the ranks is rapid and he soon catches the attention of the company’s biggest client, a slave labor corporation known as WorryFree. WorryFree CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) is a psychotic mashup of Martin Shkrelli and Elon Musk, with just a dash of Jeff Bezos’ union busting egotism. Whether intentional or not, the notion of Worryfree signing workers to lifetime contracts that offer them room and board in exchange for permanent employment feels like a shot at Bezos and the conditions he’s rumored to have created for Amazon warehouse workers.

Then again, the way it is framed, the corporate satire could play off of any number of modern, soulless, labor busting CEOs. Where this satire winds up is a stunner of transgressive ideas that are terrifyingly and yet hilariously staged. Sorry to Bother You is wildly unpredictable  and boldly weird, a refreshingly artful and funny mix. A scene featuring a party at Lift’s house features one of the most explosive and uncomfortably real scenes I have ever witnessed.

The scene is textbook moral licensing, a concept wherein people, or a group of people, excuse their worst behaviors by doing something they feel is moral or selfless. In this case, allowing Cash into their world gives the white people at Lift’s party, in their minds, the moral license to ask him to demean himself and his race for their amusement and it's okay because they claim he is now one of their peers.

We aren’t finished though with the multiple levels of transgressive satire in Sorry to Bother You. Boots Riley turns social science into a gorgeous work of art. With an incredible cast that also includes a stellar performance by Tessa Thompson and a horrifyingly pitch perfect villain turn from Armie Hammer who combines the worst qualities of the billionaire class and amps them with eye-bulging energy.

President Calvin Coolidge famously said of D.W Griffith’s Birth of a Nation that it was “History written with lightning.” I’m taking that statement away from Griffith’s racist screed and giving it here to Boots Riley Sorry to Bother You. THIS is history written with lightning, just history that is in progress, as we speak. This film is a bolt of lightning to our collective soul, an electrifying and vital work of art.

The more we allow corporate greed to separate itself from moral guidance, the closer we get to Sorry to Bother You. The more we condone or fail to recognize moral licensing, the closer we get to the vision of Sorry to Bother You. We need to recognize these things and Sorry to Bother You is a clarion call to recognize these vital issues and its artfulness is a hilarious and horrifying guide to the kind of moral rot that could be our future if we fail to change.

Identity and politics and satire all in one package, Sorry to Bother You deserves Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Lakeith Stanfield, Best Supporting Actress for Tessa Thompson, Best Supporting Actor for Armie Hammer, Best Director for Boots Riley and Best Screenplay, among other awards. That’s how incredibly brilliant Sorry to Bother You is. I haven’t seen a movie this excitingly, scathingly, bravely, transgressive as this in my life and I am excited this exists.

Movie Review Mamma Here We Go Again

Mamma Mia Here We Go Again (2018) 

Directed by Ol Parker

Written by Ol Parker 

Starring Amanda Seyfried, Cher, Christine Baranski, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walter, Dominic Cooper

Release Date July 20th, 2018

Published July 19th, 2018

Low expectations and an upgrade in the director’s chair have combined to make a Mamma Mia sequel so unexpectedly good that I am still humming about it. Mamma Mia Here We Go Again has no right to be as fun and entertaining as it is, based off of the horror show that was the sloppy, 2008 original, and yet here we are. Director Ol Parker has brought order to the chaos of the original Mamma Mia and delivered a prequel/sequel far superior to the dismal original.

Mamma Mia Here We Go Again picks up the story of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) five years after the action of the original story. Now 25, Sophie is running her mom’s, Donna (Meryl Streep), hotel and is about to hold a gala grand opening. Unfortunately, mom won’t be there. Nor will two of her three adopted fathers, Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Harry (Colin Firth). Luckily, Sam (Pierce Brosnan) is at hand, along with Auntie Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Auntie Rosie (Julie Walter).

Worse yet though, Sky (Dominic Cooper), despite being Sophie’s one true love and business partner, will not be there either and is considering a job offer in New York. This leads Sophie to once again pick up her mom’s diary for some bolstering. The diary is the lead-in for a flashback to that glorious Greek summer when Donna met Harry, Bill and Sam, and became pregnant with Sophie. Best of all, it brings us the vibrant Lily James as the young Donna.

Do you recall that time you first saw Julia Roberts’ megawatt smile in Pretty Woman? If you’re my age you likely do and you remember the electricity of seeing a movie star emerge before your eyes. That’s Lily James in Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, a star bursting to life before our eyes. Sure, she was great in Cinderella and has honed her craft in other films, but here, she bursts forth with charisma to spare in a one of a kind performance.

James is so great she overwhelms all three of her male co-stars, none of whom make a dent in your memory despite being young and handsome. I could list their names but I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup even after having just seen the movie. James’ vibrancy is such that her co-stars don’t really matter, they are but mirrors through which to bask in Collins’ star-making performance. Can she sing? Yeah, well enough, but like Streep in the first film, she can sell the singing with passion and performance and that’s what matters.

I kept getting annoyed with the present day Sophie storyline for getting in the way of the flashbacks which were far more compelling. Slowly but surely however, the main story begins to turn an emotional corner. The flashback story begins to underline the action of the modern story in lovely ways and what emerges is a story for mothers and daughters and one that isn’t about the absurd and nasty notion of turning into one’s mother. One would count themselves lucky to become Donna.

As for the music of Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, my favorite performance is Waterloo, though it is arguably the most superfluous in terms of the plot. Indeed, I can recognize that praising the one performance that violates the order and structure that I have praised as a remarkable improvement over the original, is slightly contradictory. That said, Lily James and Young Harry (Hugh Skinner) really steal the show in this performance.

Director Ol Parker sets the scene in Paris where Harry and Donna met in 1979, the same summer she left for Greece. Though Donna is leaving, Harry nevertheless, throws himself at her feet and tells her he loves her and then they sing Waterloo at a French restaurant where waiters are dressed as Napoleon (Ho, Ho!). It sounds cheesy and it is, intentionally so. Director Parker directs the performance like an old school, early 80’s music video, a-la Adam Ant’s Goody Two Shoes, with wacky set pieces and even slightly grainy cinematography to really sell the bit.

Waterloo is wildly funny and a wonderfully shorthand way to bring Donna and Harry together before taking them apart. The other standout is My Love, My Life, which will leave many audience members, especially moms and daughters, a weepy mess. The trailer has spoiled that Sophie is pregnant and the correlation between her pregnancy and her mother’s pregnancy, is brought to bear on this wonderful performance with James and Seyfried singing in different time frames with the same meaning.

Ol Parker had an uphill battle to bring the unwieldy mess that was the Mamma Mia backstory into some semblance of order and he’s done an exceptional job. Sure, he takes the easy way out by mostly ignoring the problematic elements of the original backstory, but what he cobbles together works and the orderly plot helps strengthen our bond with these characters, something that was missing in the first film while we puzzled over how all of the pieces fit.

Thanks to director Parker, we can forget about the nonsense of figuring out when the film is set. It's 1979 when Donna meets Sophie’s dad, by the way, and the movie simply gets on with enjoying some Abba. The disco backlash of the early 80’s robbed us of the joy of Abba’s pop silliness and soapy dramatics and I’m glad to have it back, even if it isn’t the most respectable comeback. Abba was a heck of a lot of fun if you give over to them and we’re able to do that here with far less work involved than in the original.

By the time we reach the credits climax with Super Troupers, a reprise from the original movie, featuring the full cast in full Abba regalia, the movie has won us over with its bubbly spirit and Lily James star-calibur, Awards calibur performance. James is a powerhouse movie star. I won’t go as far as to say she deserves an Academy Award, though I am not opposed to the idea, but wow, we don’t need to see anyone else when it comes Golden Globe time, this is your Best Actress in a Comedy or a Musical, hands down.

I went into Mamma Mia Here We Go Again with a sour attitude, assuming it was going to be as insufferable as the original. What a joyous surprise to find that the sequel makes logical sense, fixes the holes punched in the space time continuum in the original, and crafts a heartfelt and quite funny story out of a bunch of goofy, funny, melodramatic tunes from one of the most underrated groups of all time. This is what Mamma Mia should have been all along, a brassy, blowsy, ballsy, belting it to the back of the room Broadway comedy in execution as much as in idea.

Movie Review Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Directed by Rob Marshall

Written by David Magee, Rob Marshall, John DeLuca

Starring Emily Blunt, Lin Manuel Miranda, Pixie Davies, Ben Whishaw

Release Date December 19th, 2018

Published December 17th, 2018

If you had told me there would be a sequel to Mary Poppins and that I would enjoy it even more than the version I grew up singing along to, a week ago I would have told you that you were crazy. But now, well, now I have seen it for myself and, indeed, it’s true, I enjoyed Mary Poppins Returns starring Emily Blunt and Lin Manuel Miranda even more than I enjoyed the original. That’s high praise as I used to pretend I was Dick Van Dyke and sing along with the songs in that movie when I was 7 or 8 years old. Mary Poppins Returns had to overcome a lot of nostalgia. 

Mary Poppins Returns is a direct sequel to the 1964 Disney original. It’s not a remake, it’s not re-imagining, it’s a sequel featuring the original characters played by new actors. Emily Blunt takes up the role that Julie Andrews made famous as Mary Poppins, a nanny who can fly. In the original movie, Mary came to help the Banks children, Michael and Jane cope with their fun-hating father and flighty mum. 

Twenty years have passed between the original and the sequel and Michael (Ben Whishaw) is all grown up with his own three children. Jane (Emily Mortimer) has inherited her mother’s activist spirit which has left her without much of a social life. Recently, Michael’s wife passed away and it has thrown his life and the lives of his children, Annabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson), into chaos. So much chaos in fact, they may lose their home unless they can find their grandfather’s long ago shares in Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, where Michael now works as a teller. 

Into this maelstrom comes Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt), arriving, as she does, on the end of a kite being flown by Georgie. Mary Poppins sensed trouble when the kids, rather than just being kids, were beginning to act like adults. Mary Poppins immediately sets about giving the children childlike adventures which include a trip under the sea via their bathtub and some magic bubbles and a lovely cartoon carriage ride inside a cracked old bowl that their mother gave them. 

The cartoon carriage ride is the most inspired part of Mary Poppins Returns. It recalls, of course, the legendary dancing penguins, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious performance from the original, with a penguin cameo no less. Herein, Blunt performs the big showstopper of Mary Poppins Returns alongside Lin Manuel Miranda who plays Jack, ostensibly the Bert of this sequel. The song “A Cover is Not the Book” is completely delightful, a rollicking and slightly risque tune that wonderfully combines animation and live action even more seamlessly than the original. 

The best song in Mary Poppins Returns however, is the one that is likely going to make you cry. It made me wipe away a tear. The song is called “The Place Where Lost Things Go” and it’s an emotional piece that gets at the heart of grief and loss and parental love. Relatively easy targets for a tear jerker but wait till you hear Emily Blunt sing it before you get cynical. Blunt’s beautiful voice soars and the kids’ back-up on the song hits right at the heart. 

Mary Poppins Returns was directed by Rob Marshall and marks a return to form for the director who was last seen torturing the movie musical genre with his unbearable Broadway adaptation, Into the Woods. Marshall hasn’t directed anything nearly as good as Mary Poppins Returns since he won an Academy Award for adapting Chicago to the big screen in 2003. He’s helped by having much better music here than he did in Into the Woods. Marc Shaiman and lyricist Scott Wittman have truly hit it out of the park with not one bad song in the movie. 

I wasn’t expecting much from Mary Poppins Returns. I was kind of expecting the film to fall on its face while rehashing the original. Instead, what we get is a gleefully fun romp that recalls the spirit of the original movie and, in many ways, improves on the original. Emily Blunt is fantastic, Lin Manuel Miranda is lively and energetic and the music is spectacular. Have no hesitation, Mary Poppins Returns is everything you could want from a Mary Poppins sequel and so much more

Movie Review Slay Belles

Slay Belles (2018) 

Directed by Dan Walker

Written by Dan Walker 

Starring Hannah Wagner, Richard Moll, Barry Bostwick

Release Date December 15th, 2018

Published December 21st, 2018

Slay Belles is the latest in a surprisingly long line of Christmas themed horror movies. For me, this type of faux rebelliousness, ‘aren’t we cute making the most innocent holiday into a horror movie’ nonsense, wore out its welcome with the Silent Night Deadly Night franchise. Somehow though, filmmakers continue to fool themselves into cashing in on the novelty of Christmas related blood and guts. The latest failed effort at this novelty is streaming now and called Slay Belles. 

Slay Belles stars Kristina Klebe as Alexi, the stick in the mud of a trio of friends who refuse to steal when they go shopping. Alexi’s friends are Dahlia (Susan Slaughter) and Sadie (Hannah Wagner), a pair of cosplay loving, minor YouTube celebrities. Dahlia and Sadie host a YouTube series they call Adventure Girls in which they travel to abandoned locations and strut around in odd costumes while preening for the camera. 

This time, Dahlia and Sadie have dragged Alexi along for the show and they have a wacky new location, a former Santa’s Village that has gone out of business. What they don’t know and are about to find out, is that Santa Claus is real, here played by Barry Bostwick of Spin City and Rocky Horror Picture Show and now desperately slumming it. Santa is in the midst of a pitched battle with The Krampus, a monster that is somehow physically connected to Santa and is murdering most of a small town just before Christmas. 

The girls must team up with Kris Kringle and a local forest ranger, Sean (Stephen Ford of MTV’s Teen Wolf), to battle The Krampus and stop him before he begins murdering children around the world. I will give the movie one bit of credit, The Krampus costume that they made or purchased or whatever, looks pretty great. Yes, it probably resembles more of a werewolf but, then again, what the heck is a Krampus anyway. The monster looks appropriately monster-like and that’s all that matters. 

Unfortunately, the rest of Slay Belles is far less inspired. The performances are insipid, the direction is all over the place stylistically, with a camera bouncing around in every scene, and Barry Bostwick appears to be in some sort of stupor. The veteran actor limps through scene after scene with just enough energy to just avoid yawning over his own lines. Bostwick never really clicked in the mainstream on the big screen but even he seems to be above the nonsense of Slay Belles. 

I referred to Slay Belles as a Christmas themed horror movie but the aim appears to be ‘horror comedy’ and not merely blood and guts scares. I add the caveat ‘appears to be’ because despite what seems like a light tone, I didn’t find a single laugh in the entire movie. I did almost give a small laugh at the expense of how tired Barry Bostwick appears to be in Slay Belles but I don’t believe that laugh was what the filmmakers were going for. 

Slay Belles is rated R for Language and brief nudity. The film is streaming now on Amazon and will soon be on the shelves at what remains of video stores across the country.