Movie Review Instant Family

Instant Family (2018) 

Directed by Sean Anders 

Written by John Morris, Sean Anders

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Isabela Merced, Margo Martindale, Octavia Spencer 

Release Date November 16th, 2018 

Published November 17th, 2018 

I have struggled genuinely with how I feel about the comedy Instant Family starring Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne. This family comedy about a childless couple who decides to become foster parents to three orphan siblings is at times maddeningly, cringe-inducingly hard to watch. Characters occasionally drift into an area of being inhumanly silly. And yet, at the end of the movie, the uplifting message kind of works, to the point where I teared up. 

Did I tear up because the movie is that effective or because Instant Family is based on a true story and is, in many ways, a commercial for a charity of the same name, Instant Family, that works to unite orphaned kids and foster parents? I deeply admire the message of Instant Family and the few human moments that the movie gets right, it gets very right but did the movie cheat? Or is it actually good? 

Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne star in Instant Family as Pete and Ellie. Pete and Ellie own their own house flipping business where he handles the carpentry and she handles the design. Their lives are perfect but they’ve been so busy with business, they’ve neglected the notion of family. With Ellie’s sister Kim (Allyn Rachel) and her husband, Russ (Tom Segura), talking about having kids, it gets Pete and Ellie thinking about it. 

Both Pete and Ellie agree that they don’t want to be old parents, that they are passed the idea of having a baby. They are however, the right age for a 5 to 8 year old kid and thus adoption enters the equation. After Pete looks at a website of kids in foster care he is overwhelmed by the cuteness and the two enroll in an 8 week course to determine their fitness to be parents. Comedian Tig Notaro and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer are the heads of the adoption agency. 

After several bad comedy scenes of Pete and Ellie and a group of colorful but not too colorful extras failing and succeeding at the basic necessities of being parents, the couples are ready to choose their kids. For Pete and Ellie, they fall for Lizzy (Izabella Moner), a teenager who they feel pity for because no one even talks to kids Lizzy’s age about adoption, she’s 15. Lizzy has more reasons why she’s been hard to place, she has two younger siblings, Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). 

Challenged by the adoption agents, Pete and Ellie decide to take a big swing and agree to become foster parents to all three kids. Now the question becomes, can they actually handle having an instant family? And what about the kids’ mom, a former alcoholic who is just out of prison and in a program in hopes of perhaps getting her kids back? Will the forced drama ever cease and allow the movie to have a genuine moment. 

Instant Family was co-written and directed by Sean Anders whose taste for low brow humor and gag focused nonsense, led to the creation of terrible movies such as That’s My Boy, Sex Drive and Daddy’s Home 1 & 2. I recognize that some people like the Daddy’s Home movies, but I do not and by extension, I really don’t care for Instant Family either. I was wondering throughout why the shrill, awkward, and unfunny gags of Instant Family felt so familiar, then I looked at the director’s resume. 

Anders has a hard time trying to bring a real moment to the screen. He’s so focused on terrible jokes that he loses track of trying to tell actual stories with relatable characters. His taste for broad and crude caricatures sinks what little good there is about Instant Family. Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, and co-stars Margo Martindale, as Wahlberg’s mom, Tig Notaro and Octavia Spencer, appear to be trying to get to the heart of his material but the director and the script keep interrupting with nonsense. 

There is a running gag in Instant Family where the son, Juan, keeps getting hurt. It’s never funny but it just keeps happening where he’s hit in the face with any sporting equipment nearby, he steps in broken glass, he gets a nail in his foot. Why would anyone think this is a funny running gag for a child in a movie? Especially a child in foster care who may or may not have a history of abuse? 

There are occasional moments where the characters are allowed to be real but they are drowned out by moments of shrill hysterics such as a dinner scene that begins with a minor disagreement and ends with the kitchen table on fire and Wahlberg trying to put out the fire with ketchup. That sounds much funnier than it plays in the movie. In the movie it’s a lot of yelling and chaos and zero laughs. 

So why did I cry at the end of Instant Family? Because the film ends on a genuine note with Lizzy realizing that her new parents do really love her and her brother and sister and then the film cuts to a picture of the real family the movie is based on. And then it’s a montage of photos of families that the charity Instant Family has united over the years. You’d have to be some kind of soulless monster not to be moved by these photos. 

Does that mean the movie succeeds? No, it’s definitely cheating, even if it is cheating for a good cause. The movie is mostly bad but it does have its heart in the right place. I don’t recommend it as a movie but I do recommend Instant Family as a charity. It’s nice that Hollywood was kind enough to make a 100 plus minute commercial for Instant Family but that doesn’t mean the movie is worth your time. 

Instead, why don’t you google Instant Family Charity and look at the pictures of newly united families. You will have a far more moving experience without having to have this movie shout shrill gags in your ear for nearly two hours. 

Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindlewald

Fantastic Beast The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) 

Directed by David Yates 

Written by J.K Rowling 

Starring Eddie Redmayne, Dan Fogler, Johnny Depp, Ezra Miller, Zoe Kravitz, Katherine Waterston

Release Date November 16th, 2018 

Published November 16th, 2018 

Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald is some of the most fun I have had at the movies this year. This delightful entry in the Harry Potter universe brims with life and love and vitality. The script by author J.K Rowling weaves a wonderful mystery while also giving space for these wonderful characters to exist for us to enjoy as if they were brand new again. David Yates’ expert direction brings it all together in one magical package.

Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald opens with a harrowing escape from magical jail. The villainous Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is set to be returned to London from New York City where he’d been captured and unmasked in 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Despite having his ability to speak taken from him, Grindelwald uses his incredible powers of persuasion to convince one of his prison guards to take his place.

Once Grindelwald is on the loose the chase is on to locate Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller). Everyone in the wizarding world wants to find Creedence because his power may be unmatched by any other wizard and having him on your side could be the difference maker in the coming war between pure blood wizards led by Grindelwald and those who wish to live in peace with the Non-Magical world, led by the legendary Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law).

Caught in the middle is our hero, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne). While he certainly doesn’t side with Grindelwald, Newt would prefer not to have to fight anyone. Newt is content to live in peace while collecting his magical beasts and making sure they are cared for and not hunted or harmed. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Magic won’t let Newt travel legally in the magical world unless he agrees to help hunt down Creedence and Grindelwald.

Newt eventually gets drawn into the search for Creedence while he is searching for Tina (Katherine Waterston). Tina and Newt split at the end of the last film over her working as an Aura for the Ministry and his desire to remain apart from those in power. Now, he’s seeking her again to tell her how much he misses her. Joining Newt once again is his pal Jacob (Dan Fogler) whose memory was restored by Queenie (Alison Sudol) and the two are in love, though banned from being able to marry by the restrictive rules of the Ministry.

The race to find Creedence is also a race by Creedence to discover the secret of his true identity which he feels will be key in helping him find his place in the world. All sides want to tell him who he is but who can he actually believe? It’s a terrific mystery with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. Ezra Miller doesn’t have much to play beyond hurt and confusion but I enjoyed how this mystery and the misdirections around it drove the plot.

Despite a few awkward moments, I found myself completely wrapped up in Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald. I really enjoy the universe that J.K Rowling and director David Yates are revealing ever so carefully. Yes, the mythology is dense, especially the nods back to the Harry Potter franchise, and that can be daunting for some but for me, the film stood alone and didn’t spend a lot of time explaining or underlining anything for comic effect, a trap that sequels in this genre tend to fall into.

I found Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald to be delightful, an adventure and mystery with magic and romance and suspense. The ending even has some tragic qualities that echo some of the great hero journey’s like those of Star Wars. No joke, in interviews, actor Dan Fogler has referred to The Crimes of Grindelwald as the Empire Strikes Back of this franchise and he’s not wrong. The comparison is fair and genuine, both films have the quality of mixing tragic and triumphant moments.

I don’t know what I was expecting from Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald but I surely wasn’t expecting to be as moved as I was by the movie. I wasn’t in tears by the end but I was affected, I cared about what happened and I cannot wait to see how this plays out in the next movie. It was a delight to be so enthralled with a big budget blockbuster, one I could allow to enfold me and bring me fully into another world. This movie did that for me, I believed in this magical world from beginning to end.

Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald isn’t a flawless masterpiece by any stretch but by the standards of the genre, young adult adventure, it’s top notch stuff. This is some of the best young adult adventure going today. Fantastic Beasts and The Crimes of Grindelwald wildly imaginative and ingenious. The characters are wonderful and irresistibly charming. Even Johnny Depp’s appearance couldn’t ruin the movie which is so good, I forgot Depp was even there and just anticipated seeing his character get what was coming to him. Whether that happened or not I will leave you to discover.

When I interviewed Dan Fogler recently, he told me that there are still 5 more movies to go in this franchise. If they can maintain this high level of quality presentation, I am all in for 5 more movies from these incredible writers and directors.

Movie Review The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) 

Directed by The Coen Brothers

Written by The Coen Brothers

Starring James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Liam Neeson, Tim Blake Nelson, Tom Waits, Harry Melling 

Release Date November 9th, 2018

Published November 6th, 2018 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was intended to be western anthology series and not an anthology movie. But when the Coen Brothers and Netflix came to the decision not to move forward with it as a series, the idea came to make the vignettes that were already completed into one anthology movie ala The Twilight Zone or Creepshow from the 80’s movies that weren’t one story but multiple stories with different casts but similar themes. 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs contains six stories with the theme of death and boredom in the old west running through each but with that twist of the Coen Brothers dark wit to set it apart from anything you might otherwise recognize. These incredible mini-movies within The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are better than most of the movies that have been released theatrically this year. I know I would rather pay to watch the Coen Brothers make a 24 minute movie than watch almost any teen-centric horror movie or YA romance released this year in theaters. 

The first of the six mini-movies is the title story, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Actor Tim Blake Nelson portrays Buster Scruggs, a songsmith and gunslinger on his way to a new town. Buster has a habit of singing his thoughts even if only his horse is listening. He’s also a wanted man as he is the fastest gun in the west and an accomplished killer. We get to see Buster’s handiwork when he stops for a drink and winds up killing an entire bar full of thugs while barely breaking a sweat. 

Next, Buster rolls into a new town and immediately announces himself in search of a card game. When Buster refuses to ante up on a hand that isn’t his, he winds up in a dangerous situation with a man named Surly Joe (Clancy Brown). I will leave you to find out how this confrontation goes down. It’s both easy and difficult to guess what is going to happen in this vignette. Buster is the title character but the build appears to be toward his demise. You’ll have to see it for yourself but I loved the clever way the story ended. 

The next vignette stars James Franco as an outlaw attempting to rob a bank settled somewhere in the midst of a desert. The bank teller is a wild-eyed nut, played by Coen Brothers regular, Stephen Root. When Franco’s outlaw attempts his robbery he is thwarted by this crazy codger and his DIY bulletproof outfit that must be seen to be believed. Franco has the funniest line in the movie, a dry, rye observation that is dark at its heart and brilliantly timed. Let’s just say that gallows humor is quite literal in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. 

The third vignette is a brilliantly told story about an old prospector played by the perfectly grizzled Tom Waits. The eclectic singer-songwriter channels his inner Gabby Hayes for an ingeniously crazy performance as a man who has perhaps spent a little too much time alone pursuing gold like Gollum searches for the ring of power. This is another poetic and unpredictable piece of storytelling that has a tremendously unexpected twist ending. Waits is a genius who fits perfectly into the world of the Coen Brothers. 

Up next is a strange and sad story about a pair of hucksters with a unique gimmick. Liam Neeson stars as a man who travels from town to town putting on a remarkably unique show. He’s happened upon a man with no arms and no legs, played by Harry Potter veteran, Harry Melling, whose orations of legendary political speeches, Shakespearean sonnets and poems and bible verses have earned him a minor amount of fame. Neeson carries the armless and legless man with him everywhere, cares for his every need and appears to have been doing so for some time as we join the story. This is slowest and perhaps the darkest of the vignettes but even as the least of the movie, it’s better than most theatrical features in 2018. 

My favorite vignette in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is The Gal Who Got Rattled. In this story, a brother and sister, played by Jefferson Mays and Zoe Kazan, are joining a wagon train to Oregon where the brother has promised that he has a job waiting and a friend he can marry his sister off to. Unfortunately, the brother dies of Cholera on the trip and the sister is left at the mercy of the wagon train. 

Bill Heck and Grainger Hines are driving the wagon train and as the sister looks for a way to survive, Heck takes a liking to her and the two begin a very chaste and very sweet courtship. Tragedy hangs in the air and yet, Kazan and Heck are so lovely together that we allow ourselves to be lulled into caring about them and forgetting for a moment that each of these vignettes have been about tragic death. 

I won’t spoil the ending, it’s too perfect for me to take the moment from you dear reader. Watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and let Kazan and Heck draw you in and win you over. You will be blown away by the incredible way in which this small story plays out and combines classic western elements with grand dramatic tragedy. There’s also a little dog named President Pierce who plays a surprising role in how this story plays out, even getting a dramatic and breathtaking moment. 

The final vignette may or may not be a trip into the afterlife. Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, Jonjo O’Neill and Chelcie Ross star in the closing story and they have an exceptional banter about life and people and the afterlife sort of sneaks up on you. Gleeson and O’Neill each sing in this segment and do so beautifully, delivering sad, Irish tunes that brilliantly fit the mournfulness that hovers throughout this segment. 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is the best thing Netflix has ever produced. The film is remarkable with the Coen Brothers at the absolute peak of their game combining their love of western tropes with remarkably authentic characters that not only reflect classic Hollywood westerns of the 30’s and 40’s but with the blood, guts and gloom of the 60’s Italian westerns. The film is darkly funny but also incredibly easy to watch and enjoy. Stream The Ballad of Buster Scruggs immediately and if you don’t have Netflix, get it so you can see this movie. 

Movie Review The Girl in the Spiders Web

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) 

Directed by Fede Alvarez

Written by Fede Alvarez, Steven Knight

Starring Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Stephen Merchant

Release Date November 9th, 2018

Published November 9th, 2018

The Girl in the Spider’s Web stars Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander, famed hacker and righter of wronged women. Lisbeth has made it her mission to rescue women in trouble and in the opening of the movie we see her hard at work. Lisbeth has infiltrated the home of a rich businessman who has just beaten his wife. The man had been in court just the day before and used his money and influence to skate on charges that he beat up two prostitutes. 

Now Lisbeth has come to make him pay for his misdeeds. We see her snare him in a trap, confront him with evidence of his crime and use her hacking skills to steal all of his money and split it between the women he’s abused, including his wife. Lisbeth uses blackmail to keep the man from doing any further harm to his wife and in short order, even if you didn’t already know Lisbeth Salander from her previous efforts as an avenging angel in other movies and books, you know her now. 

This opening sequence as crafted by director Fede Alvarez is a terrific study in character building. It cleverly allows us to create in our minds a backstory for Lisbeth without the necessity for dimwitted expository dialogue where characters read to the audience a laundry list of the character’s achievements to establish them in our minds. It’s a great example of show don’t tell, one that I wish the rest of the movie had adhered to. 

That’s not to say that The Girl in the Spider’s Web is filled with exposition, the film is quite good about remaining in the moment. There are however, a few of those laundry list scenes that are part of what keeps The Girl in the Spider’s Web from transcending from solidly entertaining suspense flick to something more fully engaging. Had the rest of the movie more closely resembled the off-kilter and brilliantly smart opening section, we could be talking about one of the better movies of the year. 

The story goes that Lisbeth Salander has been hired by a client, played by Stephen Marchant, to retrieve a computer program he created for the American government. To get it, Lisbeth will have to hack the National Security Administration and do it from halfway round the globe. This, as you can imagine from the talent she’s already displayed, will not be her biggest challenge. 

The hack goes off without a hitch but someone has caught wind of what Lisbeth is up to and aims to interfere. An organization that we come to know as The Spiders, wants that computer program and they will do everything short of killing Lisbeth in order to get it. But why not kill her? That appears to be a major flaw in the movie until you get to the reveal that the organization is merely an elaborate revenge ruse perpetrated by someone from Lisbeth’s past with an aim toward a revenge better served if Lisbeth is alive to see it. 

I’m being very generous in my description of the plot. It’s not quite as elaborate as I may have made it seem. That is because the trailers for The Girl in the Spider’s Web ruined much of the most suspenseful part of this movie. I won’t be specific so as not to spoil things for those who’ve managed to miss the film’s two trailers. I will only say that I can imagine the movie playing in a more exciting fashion if I did not have the information from the trailer that is played as a twisty reveal in the movie. 

The trailers are part of the reason why I only like The Girl in the Spider’s Web and not love it. I want to love it, I definitely love Claire Foy whose performance is riveting throughout. Foy is a brilliant actress of great instinct and intelligence. Her Lisbeth easily rivals Noomi Rapace’s original Lisbeth in 2009 and Rooney Mara’s slightly watered down Lisbeth in 2012. 

Foy crafts an angry, injured, but fierce character of great intelligence and ingenuity. Lisbeth could easily be a reductive caricature in the wrong hands. Some have called Lisbeth a goth version of James Bond minus the spy schtick. That’s not entirely unfair, in a commercial sense, I am sure Sony might embrace such simple, digestible distillation of the character. But Claire Foy makes Lisbeth so much more than that with her subtle and nuanced touches. 

Equally strong is Lakeith Stanfield whose Edwin is one of the more original takes on an American spy we’ve seen in a movie, mostly because Stanfield is not the typical kind of actor who is chosen for such a role. Stanfield’s unique energy, part geek, part badass, makes for a wholly original character and Stanfield plays Edwin on his own, very unique vibe. Had it not, again, been for the trailer spoiling the nature of his character, this role could have been even more exciting and intriguing. 

I really like and I do recommend The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The trailers do drain some of the suspense but what’s left is still strong enough for me to recommend it. I could offer a few other quibbles like the charisma free performance of the actor portraying Mikael Blomqvist, the pivotal co-star of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or the laundry list scene that introduces Stanfield’s Edwin, but they don’t ruin the movie. 

I do want to call attention to one other scene however. There is a scene near the end of The Girl in the Spider’s Web that is, to employ a pun only funny once you see the movie, breathtaking. You’ve seen a glimpse of this scene in the trailer but the actual, full length scene in the movie is nearly as strong as that opening scene I mentioned before. In terms of visceral effects, the scene is actually superior but that could be just because it tapped a very specific fear I have regarding breathing. 

Movie Review The Grinch

The Grinch (2018) 

Directed by Scott Mosier, Yarrow Cheney

Written by Michael LeSieur, Tommy Swerdlow 

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury 

Release Date November 9th, 2018

Published November 9th, 2018

I went into The Grinch assuming I would see the standard rehash of a beloved classic combined with the modern pop culture references that 'clever' filmmakers believe to be an innovation. That’s what modern Hollywood tends to do so why should I expect anything more? Horton Hears a Who for example is merely a projectile vomited version of the Seuss story dressed up with references to anime and the standard amount of gross out humor that the kids enjoy.

What reason would I have to expect more from The Grinch? The film comes from Illumination, the company behind The Secret Life of Pets, Despicable Me and Minions so that certainly wasn’t going to aid my expectations, they’re basically a marketing machine that happens to make movies. There is Scott Mosier as co-director, that caught my eye.

Mosier has been the right hand of writer-director-podcast magnate Kevin Smith for years. At the very least, I could count on him not to countenance any falseness or saccharine sentimentality Indeed, the makers of The Grinch do avoid schmaltz and unearned sentimentality but the surprising thing is how often, what is still a product intended to sell tickets and toys, comes to genuine, unforced emotion.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the voice of The Grinch, the dyspeptic, cave-dwelling, Christmas-hating, loner from the imagination of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr Seuss. This version of The Grinch matches The Grinch we’ve always known, at least early on. He’s grumpy and rude and judgmental and then, of course, that famous song, reimagined by Tyler The Creator, comes along to pile metaphor, atop metaphor, to remind us what a bad guy The Grinch is.

But listen to that song for a moment. First of all, it’s all kinds of strange with Tyler The Creator’s odd approach to composition and his only vague interest in the original lyrics, he has a very particular fascination with the line ‘You’re a bad Banana, with a greasy black peel’ for whatever reason. But, that’s not the part I’m talking about. There is a line that Tyler invented for this version that has a pointed quality that hints at something about The Grinch character in this movie.

When Tyler The Creator says ‘Halloween comes around, we ain’t knockin’ at your door’ he says the line with a disbelieving quality that asks ‘what are you so mad about? We’re happy to leave you alone.’ This hits at the main thesis of this new version of The Grinch, loneliness, isolation and social anxiety. The reason The Grinch is so desperately unhappy is because he doesn’t really want to be alone.

This plays into a very modern theme that the filmmakers lay under the traditional Grinch story. While we’ve come for the Christmas stealing and the lesson learning, the makers of The Grinch have evolved the story to examine the inner, emotional life of The Grinch in an unexpectedly thoughtful fashion. The film gives weight to the idea that The Grinch doesn’t hate Christmas, he hates the alienation that the family holiday inspires within him.

It’s a simplistic notion, sure, but one the filmmakers treat with the right amount of seriousness and deliver in the midst of a solid number of jokey jokes to keep from getting too weighty for a kids flick. The Grinch has just the right amount of believable angst and silliness that I found myself satisfied on all sides by this charming new take on this iconic story.

Whereas the original Dr Seuss take on The Grinch was as a grouchy, grumpy figure of malevolence inspired by the perceived hypocrisy of the Who’s to try and teach them a lesson, only to have the lesson turned on him, this version of The Grinch gives generous space to the emotional side of The Grinch character. In this version, The Grinch is allowed time to reveal his nature to the audience rather than the live action movie version of the story busily, noisily and clumsily attempting to explain The Grinch while Jim Carrey ranted and vamped.

This version, thankfully, is less chaotic and has a genuine thoughtful quality. That’s not to say that the movie plumbs the depths of The Grinch, mining for insight. Rather, the movie is about the emotional journey of a character overcoming years of traumatic memories and isolation to step out into the world in hopes of acceptance. That’s a strong journey for a character and not one you expect of a character as seemingly uncomplicated as The Grinch.

For that, and the lovely animation, I must say, I very much enjoyed this modern, neurotic take on The Grinch. It’s silly and sweet and it looks great. The crisp character design has the quality of bringing together the classic lines of Seuss and a modern quality of today’s most advanced CGI, a marriage that has, until now, struggled to connect.

Movie Review The Front Runner

The Front Runner (2018)

Directed by Jason Reitman 

Written by Matt Bai, Jason Reitman, Jay Carson

Starring Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K Simmons, Alfred Molina 

Release Date November 6th, 2018

Published November 4th, 2018

My mother, Sue, loved Gary Hart. As a lifelong Democrat she saw in Hart not just another handsome politician, but the first real heir to the President she’d grown up idealizing, the late John F. Kennedy. I was only 11 years old in 1987 but my mom made sure I knew who Gary Hart was and why he was so important to her. In her opinion, he was going to be the next President of the United States. 

Obviously, we know that did not happen but what did happen? To Gary Hart, I mean, not the race for the Presidency in 1988, we know that then Vice President George H.W Bush trounced the overmatched Mike Dukakis. But, what happened to Gary Hart? Why did his promise flicker out so quickly? Why did the man who appeared destined to be the next President of the United State at one moment become a massive punchline and cautionary tale in the span of weeks? 

The new movie, The Front Runner starring Hugh Jackman, and directed by Juno director Jason Reitman, aims, if not to answer the question of what happened, to at least place a context and a frame on what we believe happened. It’s a story about a sea change in the world of journalism and politics, the end of the buddy-buddy bedfellows of Washington D.C and the beginning of a rampant decline in our political discourse that remains to this very day. 

The story begins in 1984 when Gary Hart first attempted to run for President. Hart, a relative newcomer and young lion at just 44 years old gave the establishment Democratic candidate, Walter Mondale, a pretty good scare, all the way to the Democratic convention where he was finally forced to concede to the former Vice President. Mondale would go on to the worst electoral beating in American history while Hart remained the biggest young star in his party. 

Cut to 1988, Gary Hart is back in the Presidential race. He’s announcing his candidacy and while his staff is struggling to keep up with his Western values, including a candidate announcement at Red Rocks in Colorado, well outside the political and media mainstream, Hart was dynamically bursting into the Presidential race as a front runner. Immediately after the announcement of his candidacy, polls placed the Colorado Senator as a frontrunner not merely for the Democratic nomination, he was up double digit numbers over VP Bush for the general election. 

It was, in 1987, beginning to feel like an inevitability that Gary Hart was going to be President of the United States. Inside the campaign however, cracks were showing relatively early, earlier than anyone outside Hart’s inner circle were aware. The cracks were showing in how candidate Hart and Senator Hart felt about questions related to his family and rumors of infidelity. Hart bristled at any talk of family or personal profiles, even sitting for photos with his wife appeared to be sticking points for Gary Hart. 

Eventually, with a remarkably entertaining and engaging setup, we arrive at the meat of The Front Runner. In May of 1987 with things going swimmingly on the policy side of things, Gary Hart accepted an invitation for a boat ride in Florida with an old friend and lobbyist named Billy Broadhurst (Toby Huss) and a few invited guests, including a beautiful model that Hart had met before by the name of Donna Rice (Sara Paxton). 

Rice and Hart spent time together socializing and perhaps flirting on the boat, photos were taken but nothing initially came from the boat trip to Bimini. Things actually kicked into gear when one of Rice’s friends tipped off a Miami Herald reporter named Tom Fiedler (Steve Zissis) that a woman was headed to D.C to meet Hart. Fiedler, along with another reporter played by comedian Bill Burr, ends up staking out Hart’s Washington D.C townhouse on a weekend when Donna Rice comes for a visit. 

It’s here where the most important moment in The Front Runner unfolds in a fashion that is riveting and memorable. Hart figures out that someone is stalking him out and assumes it is Republican operatives. He is genuinely confused to find Tom Fiedler, a reporter who had been on his campaign bus, now hiding in his bushes. Hart confronts the reporters who stand their ground, asks where Donna Rice is, asks if she’s staying at his townhouse and thus ends the era of the press and politician glad-handing. 

In one fell swoop the personal lives of Presidential candidates, the rumors, the gossip and the private peccadillos suddenly became front page headlines. Here, director Jason Reitman rather brilliantly lays out the moment. In a scene set inside the offices of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee (Alfred Molina) relays a story about Lyndon Johnson warning the press to give his private life the same wide-birth they’d given to Kennedy or they would witness a parade of women who were not Lady Bird Johnson, leaving the White House. 

The press in D.C and the politicians used to have an understanding. They would drink and commiserate and members of the Congress would happily trade stories off the record with friendly reporters who would use the background for news stories. Politicians would look the other way when reporters took pieces of conversations and stretched them into stories as long as it was political and not personal. 

This ended for good with the Gary Hart scandal. No longer would the press abide by the gentleman’s agreement regarding sex and infidelity. With the rise of the religious right and the growing political power of the church in America, suddenly the issue of character and morality became buzzwords and political litmus tests. Candidates suddenly had to be open about religion, their marriage and their families. 

Was this a genuine change? It’s hard to say. Had Gary Hart not been the front runner in question would these questions have come up? It’s clear the Republican Party saw a weak spot in Hart’s campaign when it came to women and with him being so presumptive a leader, it made sense that making character and morality into political issues was a smart and effective tactic against a Senator with a strong political resume. 

However, the film makes a strong point that this sea change was coming with or without Gary Hart. Ari Graynor plays a reporter for the Washington Post and while her part is quite small she does make one of the most important #MeToo points in the movie when she says that Gary Hart is a man with power and opportunity and that takes a certain responsibility. “If he were just some day trader, screwing around with cocktail girls, I could handle just not liking him. But, as our potential next President, that makes me nervous.” 

She’s talking about Hart but she could be talking about Bill Clinton or even President Trump given their very public proclivities. It’s a strong moment and it leads to another remarkable scene where Hart is confronted with his behavior by a reporter and backed into a corner of his own making. The movie is quite fair and doesn’t let Hart off the hook just because journalists have begun crossing lines between gossip and journalism. 

The Front Runner is a superb film filled with tremendous drama and excitement and a lead performance by Hugh Jackman that captures Gary Hart in a way that feels authentic. Jackman perfectly captures the duality of Hart and the times he lived in. A man of the 60’s and 70’s where the loose morality was a given among the boys club of politics and the highly intelligent and thoughtful communicator who, despite his dalliances, may have perhaps made a great leader or have been just one scandal from a downfall at all times. 

The Front Runner offers a tantalizing what if story that is fair to all sides. Did journalists cross boundaries? Yes, they did. Were politicians including Gary Hart making character arguments while sleeping around on their wives? Yes they were. Does a candidate's infidelity demonstrate a lack of character? Yes, as does lying about it but does cheating make someone bad at being a leader or even a President? That last question is one that The Front Runner beautifully lays on us with no clear answer. 

Movie Review: Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Directed by Bryan Singer 

Written by Anthony McCarten

Starring Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Mike Myers, Aiden Gillen

Release Date November 2nd, 2018

Published November 2nd, 2018

Part of the reason I despise Bohemian Rhapsody so much is my own fault. I projected some very high expectations onto this Freddie Mercury biopic, expectations that were perhaps too high given my experience with similar movies, biopics of rock and pop stars. Take Ray for instance, I reviewed that recently and while Jamie Foxx is incredible, the movie overall was mediocre because it is trying to capture an outsized talent and personality in a familiar box of genre cliches, crafting a portion sized life of glamorous peaks and ugly valleys that rarely exemplify a real life. 

I should have known better than to expect a Hollywood biopic to capture the joy and sorrow, the genuine complexity of the life of a great artist. Hollywood has rarely done this well before and I don’t know why I expected Hollywood to do better this time. I should have been especially wary of Bohemian Rhapsody because the life of Freddie Mercury is among the most complex and tragic in rock history. It would take several movies to capture the multitudes of Mr Fahrenheit. Trying to do it in this one movie renders Freddie’s life drab and miserable outside of concert footage that could just as easily be enjoyed on vinyl recordings. 

Bohemian Rhapsody appeared, to me, to posit the life of Freddie Mercury as a struggle of almost constant pain, sorrow and loneliness. To believe the narrative of Bohemian Rhapsody is to believe that the legendary lead singer of Queen had no joy in his life whatsoever. His friends brought him no joy, his varied love life brought him only heartache and even his musical creations were fraught with the infighting of the band over writing credits and placement on each album. 

It’s apparent from the movie that the only time Freddie Mercury experienced anything close to joy was when he was on stage performing. The performance portions of Bohemian Rhapsody are pretty good. Problematic director Bryan Singer, who was fired part way through production, does give a unique look to the concert scenes with a genuinely innovative camera angle that looks out from Freddie's piano as he plays some of his most iconic songs live. 

Now, you might assume that the pain that Freddie Mercury experienced in his life off of the stage would fuel his creativity but you would be wrong about that. Not one single Queen song performed in Bohemian Rhapsody reflects Freddy’s heartache. For all of the rock and roll power of Queen, they were not a band that reflected upon themselves or life. They were about irony, humor and poetry. Somebody to Love perhaps could be the closest we get to something reflective but I will leave you to earnestly parse that song which is more about Freddie’s love of Aretha Franklin and the sonic experimentation of vocal layering but yeah, it’s called Somebody to Love so that passes the anti-intellectual pop psych, literal reading of the song if that’s what you want. 

Rami Malek does the best he possibly can with the material of Bohemian Rhapsody but he’s ultimately defeated by some of the worst and most awkward dialogue in any movie in 2018. Trying to sound like a human being while spouting some of the dialogue forced on him in Bohemian Rhapsody is a challenge that would defeat most actors. That Malek doesn’t come off badly is a strong testament to his talent. He was beaten before the cameras even rolled but he gave it a go and didn’t embarrass himself. 

The actors playing the rest of the band perhaps should have been played by extras for all of the depth they are given in Bohemian Rhapsody. We get thumbnails of the backgrounds of Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon but not much. May was a physicist in college, Taylor was a dentist and when Freddie insults John Deacon in one scene we find out he was once an electrical engineer. We know that Freddie called the band his family but very little of the movie focuses on that aspect, the script prefers wallowing in how miserable Freddie Mercury was when he wasn’t spouting awkward or banal dialogue.

I understand that the Brian May and Roger Taylor were involved in the making of the movie but if that indeed was the case, one wonders just how much they actually liked their late lead singer. As a character, Freddie Mercury is a wisp of a person with no agency of his own. Freddie’s life was always predicated on what others were demanding of him and how he joylessly followed their direction. This is especially true of how Freddie’s relationship with the band’s tour manager Paul Prenter is played in the movie. 

Prenter is portrayed as a cartoonish villain who bullied and cajoled the fragile Freddie Mercury into the life of a gay socialite, a life he never wanted if the movie is to be believed. Actor Allen Leech doesn’t help matters by playing Prenter as a complete weasel with only the worst intentions in mind for Freddie Mercury. Prenter likely was a really bad guy, his interviews after being fired by Mercury indicate an opportunistic slimeball but the portrayal in Bohemian Rhapsody is so comical that Leech should have played the part with a tiny mustache he could twirl in order to underline his villainy.

Mike Myers, that famously cantankerous cartoon of an actor, shows up briefly in Bohemian Rhapsody and serves to demonstrate the bankruptcy at the heart of the film. Myers functions like a terrible meta-dad joke as he’s employed solely so that he can play a record executive at EMI who rejects the legendary Bohemian Rhapsody. Bohemian Rhapsody is, for those who don’t know, a song that Myers himself was responsible for returning to popular culture with his inclusion of the song in his hit movie Wayne’s World.

Someone thought it would be super funny and not terribly awkward to have Myers pointedly state that kids in cars won’t be singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody. Essentially, one of Queen’s most incredible artistic achievements gets reduced to a mediocre reference gag.  That Myers is also almost unrecognizable and using another of his nearly incomprehensible accents only serves to make the whole scene unnecessarily awkward while being terribly unfunny. The late career of Mike Myers will make for a fascinating documentary one day as few people of such talent have done so much to make themselves so completely repellent as Mike Myers has done in the decade since he was last a relevant performer. 

Yes, if you can’t tell, I loathe Bohemian Rhapsody. I have sympathy for Rami Malek and I love, love, love, the music of Queen but this movie is atrocious. The final act tries to redeem the abysmal whole by abandoning acting in favor of pure mimicry by having the cast re-enact Queen’s famed performance at Live Aid but it is impossible to escape the fact that we are watching pantomime and not performance. You could have as much fun listening to the movie soundtrack, which carries the entirety of the Live Aid performance re-enacted here and you could do so without having to spend time wallowing in Freddie Mercury’s seemingly endless suffering. 

Movie Review: What They Had

What They Had (2018)

Directed by Elizabeth Chomko

Written by Elizabeth Chomko

Starring Michael Shannon, Blythe Danner, Robert Forster, Hilary Swank, Taissa Farmiga

Release Date October 19th, 2018

Published October 18th, 2018

What They Had stars Hilary Swank as Bitty, a chef living in Los Angeles and disconnected from her family back in Chicago. As the movie begins, Bitty is called by her brother Nick (Michael Shannon) to come home because their mother, Ruth (Blythe Danner), has disappeared. Ruth has Alzheimers and her memory is slowly slipping away. In a frightening scene, Ruth leaves home in the middle of the night in her nightgown and a shawl. There is a blizzard coming in and everyone fears the worst. 

Later we find out that Ruth had boarded a train that she thought would take her back home to her childhood home in Amboy, Illinois, a train route that no longer exists. Nick has called on Bitty to come home to Chicago because he wants her to help him convince their father, Bert (Robert Forster) to let them send mom to a Memory Care facility, something he is adamantly opposed to. He feels she is better off, memory-wise with the person she has spent the last 50 years with. 

Nick is adamant that Ruth needs to go into the facility that he has found that also has an apartment for Bert. Bert however, hates the idea and insists that they are going to move to Florida. Witnessing all of this is Bitty’s daughter, Emma (Taissa Farmiga). Emma has traveled with her mom to Chicago after having been kicked out of her dorm room at college. Secretly, she’s planning on dropping out of college but she’s afraid to tell her mom. 

What They Had was written and directed by Elizabeth Chomko in her feature film debut and what a debut it is. She certainly didn’t make it easy on herself taking on a very difficult and emotional topic as memory loss and the end of life. It’s a huge topic with pitfalls that even an experienced filmmaker might struggle with but Chomko absolutely nails it. A story like the one in What They had requires sensitivity and compassion and Chomko builds that into the movie brilliantly. 

The key is the performance of Blythe Danner, a veteran character actress who invests a reality into Ruth that demonstrates that she studied this disease and took care with her details. Danner is remarkable, never failing to invest Ruth with a beautiful humanity. There is a danger that a role such as this could turn into a burlesque of simplistic and childlike tics, but not here. Danner may play Ruth as spacey but you can sense the struggle that anyone who has dealt with memory loss has experienced, that desire to maintain some form of identity. 

Robert Forster is heartbreaking in What They Had. Stubborn and bitter with his children, Forster’s Bert could not possibly be more loving to Ruth. At one point in the film we are told the story of what happened when Bert returned from the Korean war. The story contains the details of the kind of love you absolutely believe has lasted 50 years. A monologue Forster delivers midway through the film that ends with him simply stating ‘she’s my girl,’ is making me well up as I type this. 

Michael Shannon is the kind of actor we take for granted. Shannon’s performances are so consistently brilliant that you could be forgiven for forgetting how natural and instinctive he is as a performer. Nick has a difficult arc in What They Lost that includes having to play the bad guy who pushes for the memory care facility against his father’s wishes while also dealing with a personal life that has crumbled while he tried to start a business and be there whenever his mother goes missing which is becoming more frighteningly frequent. Shannon balances bitterness and caring in his typically authentic fashion. 

Finally, there is Hilary Swank, one of our finest actresses. Even though she has won two Academy Awards, Swank is somehow desperately underrated as a leading lady. She doesn’t have Sandy’s box office or Jennifer Lawrence’s youth and thus her marketability isn’t particularly large. Swank however, succeeds where it matters: in her characters. Swank is a brilliant actress, and in What They Had she reaffirms her brilliance with a performance that has layers and layers that get peeled away throughout. 

Swank is two for two in brilliant and little seen dramas released to theaters in 2018. In September she starred in the unfortunately overlooked, based on a true story gem, 55 Steps opposite Helena Bonham Carter. She’s even better here playing a complex, prickly and awkward character caught right in the middle of the drama playing out among her family. Then there are her daughter and husband and that’s a whole other can of worms she’s trying to contain. 

I adored What They Had but be aware, the film is incredibly sad. If you aren’t prepared for a good cry, this movie is not for you. It’s an exceptionally moving story that earns your emotional involvement and never panders to get your tears. My tears were completely genuine and induced by deep empathy for these characters and for the lovely and caring way the director told their story. I highly recommend you see What They Had for yourself. 

Movie Review: Wildlife

Wildlife (2018) 

Directed by Paul Dano

Written by Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano 

Starring Ed Oxenbould, Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, Joe Camp

Release Date October 19th, 2018 

Published October 16th, 2018

Wildlife stars Carey Mulligan as Jeanette, mother to Joe (Ed Oxenbould) and wife of Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal). Jeanette is a complex woman with a strong instinct for survival. The film is set in the early 1960’s and the family at the heart of this story has just moved to Montana as Jerry searches for regular work. Most recently, he’s been working at a golf course. When he loses that job over his pride, the strain on the family becomes too much. 

Deep in the distance from their small town Montana home, over a ridge of mountains, there is a wildfire raging. Men are coming between the town and the fire with stories of many men being injured severely or killed. Firefighters can make good money but they have to live to collect it. Desperate for a job, Jerry signs on to become a firefighter and Jeanette is desperately upset. You assume her hurt is concern for Jerry’s well being but there is so much more to it. The job means Jerry could be gone for weeks or months at a time. 

Eventually, with money tight, Jeanette herself gets a job teaching swimming at the local YMCA. It’s there that she meets Warren Miller (Joe Camp). We, the audience, only view their relationship through the eyes of Joe and that view is course and unforgiving. One day Joe comes home from his own job, working for a local photographer, to find Mr Miller making himself at home on the couch. The tension is thick and the implications are even thicker. 

Mr Miller is not what many would call a handsome man. He’s middle aged and thick in the middle but he dresses well and he has a big car. Mr Miller has what Jerry doesn’t have, financial security. Mr Miller is the owner of a local car dealership and he has a large home in a nice neighborhood. Joe’s eyes tell the story better than anything as he turns his accusing glance to his mother while giving his concern to his absent father. 

Wildlife was co-written by Paul Dano with his wife Zoe Kazan, and directed by Dano in his directorial debut. My description would indicate that the story makes Jeanette the villain, alienating her husband’s affections in favor of the comforts of financial security. But, Wildlife is much stronger and more complicated than that. Jerry is not a saintly victim here, he’s crude and driven to flights of anger and alcoholism. Jeanette meanwhile is a good mother who does what she does in part for Joe and in part out of the fear and uncertainty of a world where women were only beginning to assert their independence. 

The movie is based on a 1990 bestseller of the same name by Richard Ford and Dano and Kazan’s script is a bare bones adaptation. Dano has taken the text and made much of the subtext by relying on his actors to get across the reams of inner story that you’d find on the pages of a novel, into looks, gestures and a much tighter amount of dialogue. It’s a smart play as these four actors at the center of this story are superb at saying everything while saying very little. 

Young Ed Oxenbould is the main character here and for a young actor he has some real heavy lifting here. Not many actors of Oxenbould's age would have the talent to stand toe to toe with Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal but Oxenbould does and fares exceptionally well. He’s witnessing these major dramatic shifts in his home life while himself being at an age when he’s just coming of age and beginning to experience life. 

Take the film’s most powerful moment. Jeanette wants Joe to go with her to a dinner at Mr Miller’s home. It’s the last thing Joe wants to do as he’s been desperately trying to find ways to bring his broken family back together. The dinner is terribly awkward with Jeanette drinking heavily and beginning to act out. The scene plays as if Jeanette is trying to show Joe the lengths she feels forced to go to care for the two of them, that she must make a spectacle of herself over Mr Miller to assure his continued kindness. 

Joe’s reaction is desperate and sad and drives a wedge between mother and son that may or may not be repairable. It’s a masterfully played scene brimming with conflicting emotions. Mulligan’s desperate attempts to appear at ease and in the moment are heart rending but it’s Oxenbould’s reaction, his inability or unwillingness to understand his mother’s perspective that gives the scene a gut punching power. 

Wildlife is exceptionally acted and well directed. For a debut feature, it is no surprise that Paul Dano is an actor at heart. He gives his actors room to breathe and live within their characters. He’s terrific at letting a scene build in tension and allowing it to play out in a fashion that is dramatic and yet authentic. I’m excited to see what the actor turned director does next. If Wildlife is an indication, we can expect something incredible.

Movie Review: Bigger

Bigger (2018) 

Directed by George Gallo

Written by George Gallo 

Starring Tyler Hoechlin, Kevin Durand, Julianne Hough, Tom Arnold, Colton Haynes, D.J Qualls, Victoria Justice

Release Date October 12th, 2018

Published October 10th, 2018

Bigger stars Tyler Hoechlin, former Teen Wolf star and current Supergirl co-star, as Joe Weider. If that name sounds familiar it’s because it is the name behind the greatest fitness empire history. Joe Weider is, perhaps, best known for having discovered Arnold Schwarzenegger but his life was far more than that as he revolutionized the fitness game by creating bodybuilding as we know it and changing the way the world viewed getting in shape. 

Bigger begins poorly by taking us back, unnecessarily to the early life of Joe Weider and his brother Ben (Aneurin Barnard). We learn that Joe’s mother wanted him to be a girl and never came around to having two sons. She mistreats the brothers throughout their life and while Weider would go on to say that what his mother withheld from him and Ben became the impetus for building his empire to fill that void, it rings hollow if you consider it as him crediting emotional abuse for being successful. 

The film begins to get watchable when Tyler Hoechlin finally takes the role as Joe and Ben leave Toronto behind and move on to college and empire-building. Unfortunately, this leads to another brief derailment in Joe’s first marriage. Former Nickelodeon star Victoria Justice plays Kathy Weider and the characterization here is pretty odd. Initially, the chemistry between Justice and Hoechlin isn’t bad but director George Gallo fumbles that very quickly. 

Needing to get Kathy out of the story to move on to the more interesting part of Joe Weider’s life, Gallo chooses to have Kathy pretend she has completely forgotten who she married. From their first meeting to their first date through their marriage, Joe is consistently only interested in bodybuilding, nutrition and health. It’s all this version of Joe Weider ever talks about. He shoots everything including his first kiss through the prism of health and fitness as a metaphor for life and love. 

So when Kathy returns home to find Joe and Ben working on their muscle and fitness magazine in their dining room Kathy, seemingly out of nowhere, takes umbrage. Kathy is shocked that the man who has talked almost nonstop about his plans to legitimize weightlifting as a sport and a lifestyle is suddenly spending his time building his dream. She turn angry and bitter and by the end of the scene an editing dissolve sends Kathy packing. 

Amid the tumult of Joe’s personal life, his professional life becomes a struggle as a more established bodybuilding publisher named Hauk keeps preventing the best bodybuilders in Canada from working with Joe. Hauk, played by character actor Kevin Durand, is a loutish, boorish, bully who tries to keep the Weider brothers from getting into his field of business. When Joe finally gains a foothold by proving his methods of training and nutrition are superior, Hauk finds other ways to try to derail his competition. 

Kevin Durand is by far the worst thing about Bigger. I get that he’s a villainous character whom we are supposed to dislike and distrust but Durand’s big, broad, oafish performance stretches credulity. Sure, Mr Hauk is not remembered to this day for a reason while the Weider’s went on to riches and fame and that does seem to indicate that much of what Bigger says about Hauk is based in some reality, Durand’s caricature of Hauk is far too silly and broad to be taken seriously. 

I have spent more time complaining about aspects of Bigger than praising the movie which is strange considering I am recommending the movie. So, let’s talk about the positives. I really liked Tyler Hoechlin’s performance as Joe Weider. I enjoyed how earnestly and honestly to the exclusion of all other things, Joe Weider was dedicated to his craft. The script is a tad broad but Hoechlin had me believing in Joe Weider’s obsessive personality that finds him looking at sex as something athletic and marketable. 

Hoechlin also sparks well with Julianne Hough as Joe’s second wife, legendary pinup Betty Weider. Betty was a model who Joe first spied on the cover of a magazine. Eventually, he would use his connections via his good friend Jack Lalanne (Colton Haynes) to arrange a meeting that he then uses to cast Betty for a photo shoot with one of his bodybuilders. The bodybuilder in question turns out to be Joe himself and the two begin falling madly in love. 

As I said, the chemistry between Hoechlin and Hough is terrific. Unfortunately, director George Gallo nearly ruins this relationship as well with his whipsawing female emotional developments. For no good reason, Betty nearly breaks up with Joe because he talked about fitness in the bedroom. Once again, it’s a case of marriage amnesia as Betty is forced to briefly forget the man she married and ask that he be an entirely different person who doesn’t speak exclusively via the language and metaphor of bodybuilding and fitness. 

I’m not kidding when I tell you that I found the single minded way that the script and Hoechlin play Joe Weider is charming. As a character, Joe Weider is fully formed, he is a bodybuilding obsessive who single mindedness drive can either making him irresistibly earnest and naive or can drive people to want to smack him in the face to see if they can find an actual human being beyond the tightly coiled musculature. 

Bigger is not groundbreaking, it’s barely even something I can recommend. Joe Weider doesn’t have a real arc in the traditional sense. Weider appears to move from success to success in his career without fail and even in lean times his single minded approach to getting what he wants sustains him. Tyler Hoechlin mines that to create a fully formed if quite odd character. Joe Weider was an oddball but Hoechlin makes him a really interesting oddball, even as the movie around him crumbles under any real scrutiny. 

Hoechlin is so winning that I can’t help but recommend Bigger. Oh and one more note: the bodybuilder turned actor who portrays the young Arnold Schwarzenegger, circa 1968, is outstanding. Calum Van Moger looks ludicrously like a young Schwarzenegger. It’s uncanny when he’s first revealed and when he’s posing in the first Mr Olympia, Von Moger unveils that classic Schwarzenegger grin as one final flawless touch on a very minor performance. 

Documentary Review Hal

Hal (2018) 

Directed by Amy Scott

Written by Documentary

Starring Hal Ashby, Bud Cort, Beau Bridges, Louis Gossett Jr. 

Release Date September 7th

Published December 12th, 2018 

One thing that arrogant film critics like myself hate to do is admit our blind spots, those places in film where we are less than educated. One of my significant blind spots is the work of director Hal Ashby. It’s not that I am not aware of him or his reputation as a genius and I have even seen two of his films, Shampoo, which I greatly disliked, and Being There, which I adored. I’ve seen portions of his final movie, 8 Million Ways to Die but as the new documentary, Hal, indicates, I don’t have much need to return to that troubled project as any kind of indication of Hal Ashby’s talent. 

Hal tells the life story of Hal Ashby as he went to Hollywood in the mid-1960’s and began life as an iconoclast and stayed that way. Ashby came to prominence as an editor and found fame when he worked with his closest friend, Norman Jewison on the Oscar winning In the Heat of the Night. Ashby’s editing of that AFI Top 100 movie won an Oscar and from there Ashby and Jewison’s friendship blossomed into a partnership that finally allowed Ashby the chance to be a director. 

His first feature film was a daring note on racial attitudes of the 1960’s and the burgeoning 1970’s, called The Landlord. The film stars Beau Bridges and Louis Gossett Jr and it featured a story about race and politics that many other filmmakers would not have had the nerve and boldness to approach. As attested to by Jewison, who produced the film, and Beau Bridges and Louis Gossett Jr, who starred in The Landlord and are interviewed in Hal, the film was in line with the left wing politics of the time and yet had a freshness that came specifically from Hal Ashby. 

The documentary movies chronologically through Ashby’s career picking up next with his indelible cult film Harold & Maude, a film I have found to be a particular challenge to my sensibilities. I suppose that is the point of that movie, to challenge preconceived notions but I have thus far found myself unable to watch the movie which has the premise of a depressed young man, played by Bud Cort, who falls in love with an 80 year old woman played by Ruth Gordon. 

Everyone I know who has seen Harold & Maude and I can’t intellectualize my issue with the movie beyond the simplistic prejudice that I am sure the film confronts. I can tell you that from the documentary, the film appears to be as daring and fascinating as any of Ashby’s work I have seen. Sadly, Bud Cort is not interviewed for the documentary but footage of him speaking at an event in Ashby’s honor following his death in 1986 gives insight into the strange relationship between the two that helps to shape the unending uniqueness of Harold & Maude. 

The Last Detail is next and again, the film lacks the big interview with Jack Nicholson, though an interview he conducted at the time he was filming is featured. What Nicholson’s relationship was to Hal Ashby is not mentioned but he was known for being beloved by his actors for his loose, improv style that used scripts mainly as an outline and not the gospel for how a film was to be crafted. Ashby shot reams and reams of footage for his films and culled from there a take that suited his sensibilities which in many cases conflicted with the original intent of the writers. 

Ashby himself appears in the film via recordings he made in the midst of making his movies. Especially near the end of his career when wars with studio executives became a significant part of his life. Ashby was labeled as difficult and his copious use of marijuana was portrayed by Hollywood power players as an addiction that affected his filmmaking. I don’t buy that but we can never tell by Ashby’s 1980’s output which consists mostly of films he made and then were taken from him by studio executives. 

Hal is a fascinating and immersive documentary with a film historian's eye for detail. I loved the use of scenes from Ashby’s movies and scraps of interviews at the time the films were being made and I was particularly struck by the repeated use of an old school editing machine and a very old film camera as interstitial devices. These capture the time of Hal Ashby and recall his love of the editing room and the hours he would spend pulling together his vision from reams of film that he’s portrayed as knowing backwards and forwards. 

Hal was directed by Amy Scott who is in a strong position to make a movie about Hal Ashby. Scott also began her career as an editor and made her feature directing debut here. She also edited the documentary and it's a tremendous piece of work. Especially insightful are interviews with directors who were deeply influenced by Hal Ashby including Judd Apatow, David O. Russell and Alexander Payne whose works carry in them the kind of warmth and insight and oddity that Ashby was well known for. 

Hotel Transylvania 3 Summer Vacation

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) 

Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky

Written by Michael McCullers, Genndy Tartakovsky

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Andy Samberg, David Spade, Selena Gomez

Release Date July 13th, 2018

Published July 14th, 2018

Hotel Transylvania Summer Vacation is the third and least offensive of this trilogy of Adam Sandler starring animated comedies. I wasn’t a fan of the first two Hotel Transylvania movies which felt, to me, too scatological, like a sanitized version of what Sandler does in his live action work. This time, however, with the franchise leaving the titular hotel there is something of a different feel to everything and for the first time, I laughed out loud more than once watching a Hotel Transylvania movie. 

Hotel Transylvania Summer Vacation finds our hero Drac (Sandler) lonely. Sure, he has a loving family and great friends but he wants a companion and at the same time feels guilty for wanting one for the first time since the death of his wife. Drac’s daughter Mavis meanwhile, mistakes his loneliness for stress and comes up with a solution, a dream cruise to the Bermuda Triangle. The whole family is going including Frank (Kevin James), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Murray the Mummy (Keegan Michael Key) and Wayne the Wolf and his wife Wanda and ALL of their kids. 

While Drac appreciates his daughter’s effort a cruise for a hotel owner feels rather redundant but things pick up when he Drac meets the Captain of the Cruise ship, Ericka (Kathryn Hahn). Drac is immediately smitten and I must say, the scenes with Drac overcome with feelings on meeting Ericka is very cute and it made me smile. The follow up scene in which an over-confident Drac struts around the ship to Bruno Mars’ “24 Karat Magic” is delightful with a funny if not all that original payoff. 

So, we have a love story on our hands and that means we need obstacles and this movie has a pretty good one. Ericka has a secret, the cruise is a sham and she has set it up so she can get revenge on Drac. You see, Ericka is Ericka Van Helsing, of the vampire-killing Van Helsings. She’s trained her whole life to kill Drac. Her great-grandfather Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) has stayed alive long past a normal lifespan, just to see his granddaughter vanquish Drac as he had failed to. 

That’s a pretty clever conflict, I gotta admit, I really liked that. The first film played a similar conflict with Andy Samberg’s human falling for Selena Gomez’ vampire but that was somehow far less fun than this. This film seems to delight a little more in the conflict as Drac is the one who is unaware of the danger he’s in. I really enjoyed the romantic sequence of Drac repeatedly saving Ericka while she’s attempting to recover a weapon she intends to kill him with. She begins to fall for him and yet she’s torn. It’s just clever enough to be amusing. 

My favorite gag in Hotel Transylvania could not be more simple. It’s a flashback to Van Helsing attempting to capture Drac and his friends on a train. We see Van Helsing enter, we know the monsters are hidden at the front of the car. We see Van Helsing pull out a box of matches, the tension builds because we know what’s coming, we know from the other movies how Frank reacts to fire. When Van Helsing lights the match, Frank freaks out and the scene and the movie are off and running. There’s nothing special here, but the simplicity made me laugh. 

Hotel Transylvania 3 Summer Vacation is nothing special, it’s certainly not a Pixar quality work. This isn’t art but for a shallow kiddie flick, it’s pretty good. It made me laugh at these monster characters for the first time in the entire franchise so that’s something. Having low expectations certainly helped matters. But there is something more genuine and winning about this outing in the Hotel Transylvania franchise. Something slightly more clever and less lowest common denominator. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed it enough to say this one is worth seeing. 

Movie Review: A.X.L

A.X.L (2018) 

Directed by Oliver Daly

Written by Oliver Daly 

Starring Alex Neustaedter, Becky G, Dominic Rains, Thomas Jane

Release Date August 24th, 2018 

Published August 29th, 2018

That A.X.L even exists is rather baffling. Just who thought this was a good idea: A dirt bike racing teen befriends a robot dog and attempts to save him from the evil corporation that created him. It’s a concept that might have worked in a 1970’s Disney movie but in 2018 it comes off like an idea we’d poke fun at for being like a 1970’s Disney movie. A.X.L is a deeply, painfully, earnest story without wit or consciousness.

 A.X.L stars Alex Neustadter, a star of such magnitude that he is listed third in the credits on IMDB despite being the star of the movie, aside from the CGI. Miles, as the character is named, is a dirt bike racer without a sponsor who is befriended by Sam (AlexMacNicoll), a big time racing star from the same hometown in California. Through Sam, Miles meets and falls for Sara (YouTube sensation and pop star Becky G, top-billed on IMDB) whose mother works for Sam’s family.

The three form a love triangle that will be tested when Sam and Miles are pitted against each other on the dirt bike track. Or, at least, that was the plot to one of the movies that someone cobbled together into A.X.L. The other movie is about a robot dog created by an evil corporate operative played by Dominic Rains and his lackey played by Lou Taylor Pucci. Thomas Jane and Ted McGinley round out the cast as ineffectual parents or actors just picking up a paycheck.

A.X.L is one of the most misguided movies I have seen come along in some time. The plot is utter nonsense, Short Circuit meets The Dirt Bike Kid perhaps, and the performances are irredeemably bland. Poor Alex Neustadter looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than pretending to be acting in front of a robot dog and Thomas Jane appears to be on hand to have a beer and get paid for the privilege.

None of the cast appear to be all that interested in the movie with everyone seeming to adopt the same wide-eyed, gape-mouthed expression to communicate every emotion of every scene. No joke, try watching this movie and not noticing the number of blank-eyed stares. It’s rather humorous but I wouldn’t recommend it as a drinking game. Then again, I don’t recommend anything about A.X.L.

One last note, A.X.L has the dubious distinction of having brought down its studio. Global Road Entertainment, according to industry magazine Variety, is trying to off-load the last of its movies after falling into the hands of lenders. It wasn’t all of A.X.L’s fault, the studio also released the pricey bombs Midnight Sun, Hotel Artemis and Show Dogs, but A.X.L with its CGI robot puppy, could not have helped matters, especially after opening to less than 3 million dollars opening weekend at the box office. Woof!

Movie Review: Alpha

Alpha (2018) 

Directed by Albert Hughes

Written by Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt

Starring Kodi Smit McPhee, Johannes Haukur Johannesson 

Release Date August 17th, 2018

Published August 18th, 2018 

Alpha is the kind of action movie drama that stacks the odds far too high against the main character creating cartoonish levels of odds to overcome. Albert Hughes, the director of Alpha, sets his scenes in such a way that even Elmer Fudd might shake his head at the lack of believability, and he was repeatedly shot in the face by his own gun. The odds stacked against the lead character in Alpha on top of some silly looking at times special effects make Alpha a right laugh.

Keda (Kodi Smit McPhee) is undersized and gawky and also the son of a chief and therefore a future leader of his tribe. He’s about to go on his very first Bison hunt and his mother is concerned that he’s far too sensitive to be a hunter. His father, a barrel of a man, played by Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, believes that the hunt is exactly what his son needs to develop as a man and as a future leader. 

A bison hunt is a strange event, especially as filmed by Mr Hughes in Alpha. The chief tracks the bison by their… droppings and immediately the scene is followed by the tribe smearing themselves in something that looks exactly like the dung. It is apparently mud but the cut from the almost tasting of the bison leavings to the smearing of mud on his son’s face is clumsy and I am left to wonder if this was a failed attempt at a visual joke.

From there, the hunters sneak to within a football field distance from their prey and then drop the stealth entirely so as to begin running toward the bison and screaming. Why did they need the mud bath if this was the plan all along? The goal then becomes using spears to sort of shepherd the bison off the side of a cliff where they can be easily harvested at the bottom of the cliff. This goes wrong when Keda fails to find the ability to move either left or right when a charging bison is running straight at him. Our hero ladies and gentlemen.

Keda has the poor fortune of having one of his garments snagged on the horn of a bison that is running toward the cliff’s edge only to stop right at the edge and throw Keta over the side. Thinking his son has been killed, the father leaves to mourn but the boy isn’t dead and thus a journey of survival and discovery is set in motion, one filled with ever-increasing implausibility and survival and some supposedly heart-warming nonsense about a wolf, quickly domesticated.

Alpha isn’t as bad as I am making it out. Kodi Smit-McPhee is a nice young actor, though his perfectly shampooed hair will likely drive those in search of verisimilitude up a wall. He has a sympathetic quality that is undeniable and a steeliness that could be believable in a less cartoonish context. His mastery of whatever language he’s speaking is impressive, even if at times it comes off sounding like Leeloo from The Fifth Element, whom he oddly resembles in some scenes.

I respect the movie enough to not want to spoil anything by going too far into the implausible scenarios that Keda survives. Let’s just say that Leo in The Revenant was not as lucky as Kodi’s character in Alpha. The Revenant, at the very least, had some recorded history behind it whereas Alpha is based on a theoretical history of how early man interacted with nature. There is some theory that states humans were tougher then but tough enough to survive the trials of this movie? I found it too hard to believe.

I was going to mock the notion of Alphas and the Alpha Male construct but the movie actually does one thing right in how it eventually plays out that outmoded notion. For those who don’t know, the scientist who came up with the concept of the Alpha Male in the early 1970’s now decries it and points to new science that indicates that such things as battles for dominance among wolves are more like familial squabbles over thinning rations and not some battle over leadership or control. The Alpha is not the toughest, he’s the father and provider and his pack are more often than not, his children.

Even then, it’s not always a male wolf that was the provider. In some cases, female wolves acted as the provider for the pack. So, really all of those silly people who consider themselves Alphas and operate on the notion that being the most ruthless making them a leader are operating on their own shoddy intellectual construct and not the actual science of the wolf pack. The science states that a good leader is a good provider for the pack and thus is followed by the pack, not out of fear but necessity. 

That’s a bit of a tangent but only, again, because the ending of Alpha actually acts to deconstruct that notion as well by being much closer to the scientific truth of wolves than I was expecting. That is, unfortunately, the most impressive thing about the movie. The action is stilted, the stacked odds are cartoonish and the special effects are rather weak. Alpha isn’t terrible but it is much closer to terrible than being good.

Movie Review: Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Directed by John M. Chu

Written by Adele Lim, Peter Chiarelli 

Starring Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Awkwafina

Release Date August 15th, 2018

Published August 15th, 2018 

Crazy Rich Asians stars Constance Wu, star of the hit series Fresh Off the Boat, as Rachel Chu, an Economics Professor who is in love with Nick Young (Henry Golding). What she doesn’t yet know is that Nick’s family is crazy rich. The Young family has made billions of dollars and are a big deal in their home country. So big a deal in fact, that when Nick’s best friend is getting married much of the speculation and attention surrounding the ceremony centers on Nick and his family.

Rachel is about to get a crash course in Asian high society when she agrees to go as Nick’s date to his best friend’s, Colin (Chris Pang) and Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno), wedding. They will travel around to the other side of the globe, be immersed in the kind of glamour only the super rich understand and Rachel will have to deal with Nick’s disapproving mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh, glamorous as ever), while navigating the choppy water of being the girlfriend of the most wanted man in Asian high society. 

On the bright side, Rachel’s pal from college, Peik (Awkwafina) is on hand to help, as is the one member of Nick’s family that Rachel has met, fashion icon Astrid (Gemma Chan). Rachel will need all the support she can get, especially when she’s thrown to the wolves at a bachelorette party where it appears that only women who’ve failed at dating Nick in the past are on the guest list and each has their eye on taking down Rachel the outsider. 

Crazy Rich Asians is a relatively basic romantic comedy when you take away the social politics at play in having a mainstream romance with an all Asian cast. What director John Chu gets right however, is not relying on the tired romantic comedy plot requirements. The best modern rom-coms are aware that we know everything about their plot mechanics, what we want are great characters who stand apart and above stock stories. 

Constance Wu’s Rachel is just the kind of character we need to get passed all of the overly familiar elements of Crazy Rich Asians. Wu is a wonderful comic actress with smart instincts and a terrific face, brilliant eyes that communicate as much as any dialogue might. She’s a wonderful comic player and yet down to earth enough to ground the story of Crazy Rich Asians in something we can relate to and invest in. 

Henry Golding is terrific as well, if a little more eye-candy than his co-star. Golding’s shirtless scenes are plentiful in Crazy Rich Asians and the the beefcake is rarely necessary. Thankfully, he’s also given a few normal scenes where we get a sense of how much he loves Rachel and the sacrifices he’s willing to make to show her how much he loves her. He is an active part of the plot rather than a function of Rachel’s half of the plot, opposite Michelle Yeoh’s scheming Eleanor. 

Another thing I must commend Crazy Rich Asians for is creating realistic stakes surrounding Rachel and Nick’s relationship and the class warfare at play. A lazier movie might ask us to simply accept that class is a reason why two people who love each other would be pushed apart, but Crazy Rich Asians digs into the emotions at play and makes them part of the game of chicken that Rachel is forced to play with Eleanor. 

It’s not a revolutionary plot but it’s done well enough and with enough laughs that I really enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians. That the film has an all Asian cast is the most notable thing about the movie but the creators didn’t rest on history or novelty, they hired a brilliant cast and gave them rich characters and emotions to play within a familiar plot circumstance. We’ve seen much of this before but not with this racial twist and not with these wonderful characters. 

John M. Chu is greatly improving as a director. His previous feature outing was Now You See Me 2 and while many critics didn’t care for it, I found it to be a heck of a lot of fun, the work of a playful director. With Crazy Rich Asians that playfulness is on display once again and again, I found it charming. Chu has a great eye for set design when he has a good budget and he takes full advantage of his significant budget here, showing us all of the glamour and excitement having money can bring. 

The lavish setting serves to help further put us in the mind of Rachel who is completely overwhelmed by the surroundings and is reeling emotionally from the aspects of Nick’s life that he was hiding from her and the family that is not accepting of her as an outsider. It’s a whirlwind of emotions and Constance Wu is incredibly sympathetic but also feisty and intelligent, able to cut through the nonsense and stay true to herself. 

Again, all of that is pretty standard culture clash, fish out of water, romantic comedy stuff. It’s just greatly elevated  by one of the best comic actresses to come along in some time. Wu is a real winner and because of her and the fun direction by John M. Chu, I’m eager to recommend Crazy Rich Asians. 

Movie Review: Dog Days

Dog Days (2018)

Directed by Ken Marino

Writen by Elissa Matsueda, Erica Oyama

Starring Tone Bell, Vanessa Hudgens, Nina Dobrev, Adam Pally, Rob Corddry, Eva Longoria

Release Date August 8th, 2018 

Published August 10th, 2018 

Dog Days is an ensemble, family comedy, part-time romance, about people and the dogs who love them. It’s cheesy as the day is long but there is a particular charm to the direction Ken Marino brings to the film. That charm emanates from his terrific cast of comedy veterans toning down their act for the family set. People such as Tig Notaro, Lauren Lapkus, and Jessica St. Clair, make cameo appearances in Dog Days, and not just cameos, they have killer jokes to go with those cameos.

The plot centers on a universe of people beginning with Elizabeth (Nina Dobrev), the host of a popular daytime TV show. Elizabeth is so close to her dog that she leaves her TV on while she’s not home so her pup can laze around and watch mom on TV. Sadly, the dog is there when Elizabeth catches her boyfriend cheating on her and is apparently so broken up about the break up that he has to go to doggy therapy.

Elizabeth would like to be alone but that’s not going to happen as she is then given a new co-host for her talk show, Jimmy played by Tone Bell. Jimmy is a former football player and fellow dog lover who credits his pooch with saving his life after his football career ended abruptly. His style of winging it on the job flies in the face of Elizabeth’s buttoned up, very prepared style. Naturally, this means they are meant to be together.

There are four parallel plots in all in Dog Days. The next biggest involves Vanessa Hudgens as a coffee shop worker who begins volunteering at a dog shelter. Initially, she’s trying to impress a handsome but vacuous veterinarian but soon she begins to find purpose in working with the animals. This leads to a friendship and budding flirtation with the shelter owner, Garrett, played by the always awkward John Bass, last seen embarrassing himself deeply in Baywatch the movie.

Next up are Rob Corddry and Eva Longoria as a married couple who have adopted a young girl named Amelia. The child is sullen and distant despite the attempts of the couple to soften her up but things change when they find a lost pug. The pug becomes Amelia’s best friend and she begins to warm up to the new parents who’ve given her the dog. Unfortunately, we know where the dog came from, plot strand number 4.

Plot number 4 involves Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard as a pizza delivery boy with a bad attitude. When he delivers a pizza to an elderly man, played by Ron Cephus Jones, the elderly man’s dog gets out of the house only to be rescued by Amelia and her new family. The old man is kind and the dog belonged to his late wife. The emotional pull of this part of the story is surprisingly strong, even as it is quite admittedly pulling hard on the heartstrings.

Did I say there are four plots in Dog Days? I meant 5, there are 5 plots in Dog Days. Adam Pally plays a shiftless wannabe rocker who is tasked with dog-sitting for his pregnant sister, played by the brilliant Jessica St. Clair and her husband played by Thomas Lennon. Not allowed to have pets in his apartment, Pally is saddled with a running gag about hiding his dog inside an music equipment box and people thinking he’s transporting a body or a kidnapped person.

It’s not a particularly good gag, it earns mostly groans, though the payoff physical gag isn’t bad. Pally is terrific at playing a slothful layabout, a moocher with charm to spare. His part here is mostly as filler to the other plots but Pally is likable enough and his big puppy is cute enough that the plot doesn’t get in the way of anything and kind enhances the charm of Dog Days thanks to Pally’s inherent appeal.

There is a whole lot of plot here but it works for the most part. Many have, rather unfairly compared Dog Days to the work of the late hack Garry Marshall with his sprawling cast and nebulous plotting but that’s a rather significant insult to this movie. Marshall’s cloying, manipulative, holiday-based dreck were sloppy and earned a consistent series of ever-deepening groans before sloughed off the screen in a heap at their laugh-free conclusion. Dog Days is tighter, smarter and has actual laughs, something the Garry Marshall films only dreamed of having.

I did not expect much of Dog Days and it’s that low bar that likely has us here right now with me recommending the movie. That said, rather backhandedly, I do recommend this movie. The cast is charming and funny, the dogs are cute and it has legitimately big laughs in more than one scene. Given the landscape of modern comedy, Dog Days is a minor miracle as it provides a modern PG comedy with real laughs that don’t all require the sacrifice of one’s dignity via pratfall or bodily function humor. I personally want to give Ken Marino an award of some sort for this modest achievement but I am in the minority of positive opinions of Dog Days.